bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Oxidative Stress in Children with Chronic Spontaneous Urticaria
Authors: Dilek Fatih , Ozceker Deniz , Ozkaya Emin , Guler Nermin , Tamay Zeynep , Kesgin Siddika , Yazici Mebrure , Kocyigit Abdurrahim
Published: April 2016

The pathogenesis of chronic spontaneous urticaria (CSU) has not been fully understood; nevertheless, significant progress has been achieved in recent years. The aim of this study was to investigate the possible role of reactive oxygen species (ROS) in the pathogenesis of CSU. Sixty‐two children with CSU and 41 healthy control subjects were enrolled in the study. An extensive evaluation of demographic and clinical features was done, and serum oxidative stress was evaluated by plasma total oxidant status (TOS) and total antioxidant status (TAS) measurements. The median value of plasma TOS was found to be 10.49 μmol H2O2 equiv./L (interquartile range, 7.29–17.65) in CSU patients and 7.68 μmol H2O2 equiv./L (5.95–10.39) in the control group. The difference between the groups was statistically significant (p = 0.003). Likewise, the median plasma TAS level in the CSU group was decreased significantly compared to that of the control group (2.64 [2.30–2.74] versus 2.76 [2.65–2.86] mmol Trolox equiv./L, resp., p = 0,001). Our results indicated that plasma oxidative stress is increased in children with CSU when compared to healthy subjects, and plasma oxidative stress markers are positively correlated with disease activity.
Composite Adaptive Antidisturbance Control for Discrete-Time Switched System
Authors: Sun Haibin , Lu Qiang , Hou Linlin
Published: April 2016

A novel composite adaptive antidisturbance controller is developed for a class of discrete-time switched system. First, two composite adaptive observers are proposed to estimate the external disturbances and unknown parameters, respectively. Then, based on the estimation values, a composite adaptive antidisturbance controller is constructed, which can guarantee system has a good antidisturbance performance. A solvable sufficient condition is presented by using linear matrix inequalities (LMIs). Finally, a numerical example is shown to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed control approach.
Genetic Abnormalities in Biliary Brush Samples for Distinguishing Cholangiocarcinoma from Benign Strictures in Primary Sclerosing Cholangitis
Authors: Timmer Margriet R. , Lau Chiu T. , Meijer Sybren L. , Fockens Paul , Rauws Erik A. J. , Ponsioen Cyriel Y. , Calpe Silvia , Krishnadath Kausilia K.
Published: April 2016

Background. Primary sclerosing cholangitis (PSC) is a chronic inflammatory liver disease and is strongly associated with cholangiocarcinoma (CCA). The lack of efficient diagnostic methods for CCA is a major problem. Testing for genetic abnormalities may increase the diagnostic value of cytology.Methods.We assessed genetic abnormalities forCDKN2A,TP53,ERBB2,20q,MYC, and chromosomes 7 and 17 and measures of genetic clonal diversity in brush samples from 29 PSC patients with benign biliary strictures and 12 patients with sporadic CCA or PSC-associated CCA. Diagnostic performance of cytology alone and in combination with genetic markers was evaluated by sensitivity, specificity, and area under the curve analysis.Results. The presence ofMYCgain andCDKN2Aloss as well as a higher clonal diversity was significantly associated with malignancy.MYCgain increased the sensitivity of cytology from 50% to 83%. However, the specificity decreased from 97% to 76%. The diagnostic accuracy of the best performing measures of clonal diversity was similar to the combination of cytology andMYC. AddingCDKN2Aloss to the panel had no additional benefit.Conclusion. Evaluation ofMYCabnormalities and measures of clonal diversity in brush cytology specimens may be of clinical value in distinguishing CCA from benign biliary strictures in PSC.
Are GRACE-era Terrestrial Water Trends Driven by Anthropogenic Climate Change?
Authors: Fasullo J. T. , Lawrence D. M. , Swenson S. C.
Published: April 2016

To provide context for observed trends in terrestrial water storage (TWS) during GRACE (2003–2014), trends and variability in the CESM1-CAM5 Large Ensemble (LE) are examined. Motivated in part by the anomalous nature of climate variability during GRACE, the characteristics of both forced change and internal modes are quantified and their influences on observations are estimated. Trends during the GRACE era in the LE are dominated by internal variability rather than by the forced response, with TWS anomalies in much of the Americas, eastern Australia, Africa, and southwestern Eurasia largely attributable to the negative phases of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) and Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO). While similarities between observed trends and the model-inferred forced response also exist, it is inappropriate to attribute such trends mainly to anthropogenic forcing. For several key river basins, trends in the mean state and interannual variability and the time at which the forced response exceeds background variability are also estimated while aspects of global mean TWS, including changes in its annual amplitude and decadal trends, are quantified. The findings highlight the challenge of detecting anthropogenic climate change in temporally finite satellite datasets and underscore the benefit of utilizing models in the interpretation of the observed record.
Calcium Alginate and Calcium Alginate-Chitosan Beads Containing Celecoxib Solubilized in a Self-Emulsifying Phase
Authors: Segale Lorena , Giovannelli Lorella , Mannina Paolo , Pattarino Franco
Published: April 2016

In this work alginate and alginate-chitosan beads containing celecoxib solubilized into a self-emulsifying phase were developed in order to obtain a drug delivery system for oral administration, able to delay the drug release in acidic environment and to promote it in the intestinal compartment. The rationale of this work was linked to the desire to improve celecoxib therapeutic effectiveness reducing its gastric adverse effects and to favor its use in the prophylaxis of colon cancer and as adjuvant in the therapy of familial polyposis. The systems were prepared by ionotropic gelation using needles with different diameters (400 and 600 μm). Morphology, particle size, swelling behavior, andin vitrodrug release performance of the beads in aqueous media with different pH were investigated. The experimental results demonstrated that the presence of chitosan in the formulation caused an increase of the mechanical resistance of the bead structure and, as a consequence, a limitation of the bead swelling ability and a decrease of the drug release rate at neutral pH. Alginate-chitosan beads could be a good tool to guarantee a celecoxib colon delivery.
A Novel Time Synchronization Method for Dynamic Reconfigurable Bus
Authors: Weigong Zhang , Chao Li , Keni Qiu , Shaonan Zhang , Xianglong Chen
Published: April 2016

UM-BUS is a novel dynamically reconfigurable high-speed serial bus for embedded systems. It can achieve fault tolerance by detecting the channel status in real time and reconfigure dynamically at run-time. The bus supports direct interconnections between up to eight master nodes and multiple slave nodes. In order to solve the time synchronization problem among master nodes, this paper proposes a novel time synchronization method, which can meet the requirement of time precision in UM-BUS. In this proposed method, time is firstly broadcasted through time broadcast packets. Then, the transmission delay and time deviations via three handshakes during link self-checking and channel detection can be worked out referring to the IEEE 1588 protocol. Thereby, each node calibrates its own time according to the broadcasted time. The proposed method has been proved to meet the requirement of real-time time synchronization. The experimental results show that the synchronous precision can achieve a bias less than 20 ns.
Tolerability of Nasal Delivery of Humidified and Warmed Air at Different Temperatures: A Randomised Double-Blind Pilot Study
Authors: Bibby Susan , Reddy Sumeet , Cripps Terrianne , McKinstry Steve , Weatherall Mark , Beasley Richard , Pilcher Janine
Published: April 2016

Objectives. Delivery of warmed, humidified air via nasal high flow therapy could potentially reduce replication of temperature-sensitive viruses in the upper respiratory tract. This study investigates whether nasal high flow therapy is well tolerated by healthy adults at 37°C and 41°C.Methods. In this randomised, double-blind, controlled crossover pilot trial, nasal high flow therapy was used to deliver humidified air at 35 L/min, at either 37°C or 41°C, for three one-hour sessions of use over one day. The alternative was delivered at least 14 days later. Ten healthy, nonsmoking adults were asked, via questionnaire after each day’s use, whether they would use nasal high flow therapy while being unwell with a cold or flu if it was demonstrated to improve symptoms.Results. All participants completed both interventions. Eighty percent responded “yes” to future use of nasal high flow therapy, for both 37°C and 41°C. There was no significant change from baseline in saccharin times following either intervention or in the following morning.Conclusions. Delivering humidified air via nasal high flow therapy at both 37°C and 41°C is well tolerated by healthy adults. This supports investigation into the potential use of nasal high flow therapy as treatment in viral upper respiratory tract infections.Trial Registration. This trial is registered withACTRN12614000183684(tolerability study of nasal delivery of humidified & warmed air).
Complete Remission of Acute Myeloid Leukemia following Cisplatin Based Concurrent Therapy with Radiation for Squamous Cell Laryngeal Cancer
Authors: Mody Mayur D. , Gill Harpaul S. , Higgins Kristin A. , Saba Nabil F. , Kota Vamsi K.
Published: April 2016

Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is a myeloid disorder with several established treatment regimens depending on patient and leukemic factors. Cisplatin is known to have strong leukemogenic potential and is rarely used even as salvage therapy in relapsed or refractory AML. We present a patient simultaneously diagnosed with AML and squamous cell carcinoma of the larynx, who was found to be in complete remission from AML following treatment with cisplatin based chemoradiotherapy for his laryngeal cancer.
A Curious Case of Iron-Deficiency Anemia
Authors: Shaffer Seth , Brahmania Mayur , Shah Hemant
Published: April 2016

A 49-year-old Brazilian male presented to the emergency department with a five-day history of abdominal pain, dark stools, and syncope. Physical examination did not reveal any melena on digital rectal examination and there were no stigmata of chronic liver disease. Laboratory results showed hemoglobin of 47 g/L, MCV of 80 fL, and ferritin of 6 ng/mL. Liver enzymes and liver function tests were normal. Abdominal ultrasound showed a cirrhotic liver with splenomegaly and varices suggestive of portal hypertension. His past history was significant for cirrhosis based on a previous variceal bleed but a workup for chronic liver disease was negative and a liver biopsy did not show steatosis, fibrosis, or cirrhosis. A gastroscopy in this admission showed large esophageal varices without high-risk stigmata and no overt bleeding was seen. A colonoscopy was subsequently completed to the terminal ileum and was normal aside from a 5 mm sessile polyp in the descending colon.
An Augmented Discrete-Time Approach for Human-Robot Collaboration
Authors: Liang Peidong , Ge Lianzheng , Liu Yihuan , Zhao Lijun , Li Ruifeng , Wang Ke
Published: April 2016

Human-robot collaboration (HRC) is a key feature to distinguish the new generation of robots from conventional robots. Relevant HRC topics have been extensively investigated recently in academic institutes and companies to improve human and robot interactive performance. Generally, human motor control regulates human motion adaptively to the external environment with safety, compliance, stability, and efficiency. Inspired by this, we propose an augmented approach to make a robot understand human motion behaviors based on human kinematics and human postural impedance adaptation. Human kinematics is identified by geometry kinematics approach to map human arm configuration as well as stiffness index controlled by hand gesture to anthropomorphic arm. While human arm postural stiffness is estimated and calibrated within robot empirical stability region, human motion is captured by employing a geometry vector approach based on Kinect. A biomimetic controller in discrete-time is employed to make Baxter robot arm imitate human arm behaviors based on Baxter robot dynamics. An object moving task is implemented to validate the performance of proposed methods based on Baxter robot simulator. Results show that the proposed approach to HRC is intuitive, stable, efficient, and compliant, which may have various applications in human-robot collaboration scenarios.
Functional Responses ofNephus arcuatusKapur (Coleoptera: Coccinellidae), the Most Important Predator of Spherical MealybugNipaecoccus viridis(Newstead)
Authors: Zarghami Sara , Mossadegh Mohammad Saeed , Kocheili Farhan , Allahyari Hossein , Rasekh Arash
Published: April 2016

Nephus arcuatusKapur is an important predator ofNipaecoccus viridis(Newstead), in citrus orchards of southwestern Iran. This study examined the feeding efficiency of all stages ofN. arcuatusat different densities ofN. viridiseggs by estimating their functional responses. First and 2nd instar larvae as well as adult males exhibited a type II functional response. Attack rate and handling time were estimated to be 0.2749 h−1and 5.4252 h, respectively, for 1st instars, 0.5142 h−1and 1.1995 h for 2nd instars, and 0.4726 h−1and 0.7765 h for adult males. In contrast, 3rd and 4th instar larvae and adult females ofN. arcuatusexhibited a type III functional response. Constantband handling time were estimated to be 0.0142 and 0.4064 h for 3rd instars, respectively, 0.00660 and 0.1492 h for 4th instars, and 0.00859 and 0.2850 h for adult females. The functional response of these six developmental stages differed in handling time. Based on maximum predation rate, 4th instar larvae were the most predatory (160.9 eggs/d) followed by adult females (84.2 eggs/d). These findings suggest thatN. arcuatusis a promising biocontrol agent ofN. viridiseggs especially for 4th instar larvae and adult females.
In Vivo Imaging of Intraocular Fluidics in Vitrectomized Swine Eyes Using a Digital Fluoroscopy System
Authors: Tandogan Tamer , Khoramnia Ramin , Auffarth Gerd Uwe , Koss Michael Janusz , Choi Chul Young
Published: April 2016

Purpose. To describe the characteristics of intraocular fluidics during cataract surgery in swine eyes with prior vitrectomy.Methods. We prepared three groups of enucleated swine eyes (nonvitrectomized, core, and totally vitrectomized). Irrigation and aspiration were performed (2.7 mm conventional sleeved phacosystem) using a balanced saline solution mixed with a water-soluble radiopaque contrast medium at 1 : 1 ratio. We imaged the eyes using a digital fluoroscopy system (DFS) during phacoemulsification and compared the characteristics of the intraocular fluid dynamics between the groups.Results. The anterior chamber depth (ACD) after the commencement of irrigation differed between groups (2.25±0.06 mm;2.33±0.06 mm;3.17±0.11 mm), as well as the height of the fluid flowing from the anterior chamber into the posterior cavity that was identified by lifting up the iris to correct the infusion deviation syndrome (0.00±0.00 mm;0.41±0.04 mm;2.19±0.35 mm).Conclusions. DFS demonstrated differences in fluid dynamics during phacoemulsification in swine eyes with or without prior vitrectomy. In completely vitrectomized eyes, the large ACD, which developed during phacoemulsification, could be reduced by lifting the iris and allowing the fluid to shift to the posterior cavity. Recognizing the differences in fluidics of vitrectomized eyes as compared to those of the nonvitrectomized eyes may reduce the frequency of intraoperative complications.
Intuiting Archive: Notes for a Post-Trauma Poetics
Authors: Baker Houston A.
Published: April 2016

Always a term sonorous in its pr`onouncement and import, “archive” assumed even greater cache in its articulation by Derrida. Conservationist resonances of the notion were set in conversation with law, memory, and psychoanalysis. The yield was a feverish recognition that the putative verification and assurance yielded by the archives are, in sum, only “best practices” always determined by archons wielding hermeneutic authority. The feverish quest to still or dam the death urge registered in forgetting and the forgotten dead by recourse to the archive is never a success, only a fevered palimpsest. With Derrida’s enunciation in play, one can bring to the scholarly forefront the work of Zora Neale Hurston in its diaspora valences. Moses Man of the Mountain in combination with Hurston’s “Characteristics of Negro Expression” can lead to a reading of a hermeneutics of “relation” rather than set one in feverish quest to arrest time with “history” and “canons.” Invoking the labors of Joy DeGruy Leary, Vincent Wimbush, Édouard Glissant, and Richard Iton in the domains of trauma, emergency, intuition, and popular culture yields a practice of “reading darkly” to discover the fantastic creative vibrancy against trauma and the salvific memorial import of everyday life in black diaspora.
Elizabeth Keckley and Freedom’s Labor
Authors: Lewis Janaka B.
Published: April 2016

This essay examines the way in which Elizabeth Keckley uses references to physical labor to narrate a shift from the oppression of enslavement to freedom by her own agency. Following the arguments that gaining social recognition helped her to be able to purchase herself and her son, the article examines the culture of labor she describes as freedom “by her own hands” as she accounts for her life story and argues that her narrative of labor allows her to assess and assert her freedom in society.
“re: Source”: African Contexts of Nathaniel Mackey’s Ethics
Authors: Jenkins Grant Matthew
Published: April 2016

The poet Nathaniel Mackey draws on African cultural, religious, and ethical resources to fashion an other-conscious poetics in his twin long series, Song of the Andoumboulou and mu . This ethical poetics employs what he calls the indeterminate “creak” of language to remind us of our inescapable responsibility to others through the communality of “we-ness.” Through both form and content, Mackey reminds us that Africa has a long ethical tradition and that African American poetry’s history of “aesthetic othering” allows us to see through the West’s denial of black thought to find new possibilities of how to exist together peacefully.
In the Wake of Mexican Patrimonio: Material Ecologies in San Miguel Coatlinchan
Authors: Rozental Sandra
Published: April 2016

San Miguel Coatlinchan, a town 35 miles east of Mexico City, became famous following an episode of state-perpetrated dispossession. In 1964, the Mexican state enforced its legal claim to pre-Hispanic material culture as national property by removing a colossal pre-Hispanic monolith from its lands and transporting it to the capital’s National Anthropology Museum. Ever since, the stone sculpture that represents an ancient rain deity has stood at the entrance of the museum as an emblem of Mexico’s ancestral indigenous heritage or patrimonio. For the residents of Coatlinchan, however, the monolith’s removal brought about ecological and social disruptions: drought and other forms of scarcity which profoundly altered their town and its surrounding landscape. In this article, I draw on an ecological framework to explore the productive effects of dispossession and absence in Coatlinchan. Rather than analyzing its residents’ loss as that of a bounded artifact, I argue that material traces from the pre-Hispanic past are embedded within and integral to webs of environmental, material, and social relations that are essential for the production and reproduction of life itself.
From the Mayor’s Viewpoint: Political Speech and the “Spatialization of the State” in Northern Italy
Authors: Stacul Jaro
Published: April 2016

This article explores the ways the Italian state was represented as a spatial entity when the ascendancy of political forces with a neoliberal agenda challenged its role as the dominant framework for organizing the economy. Drawing upon ethnographic information collected in the Alps of Trentino, I discuss the role played by a mayor in “translating” between the world of officialdom and that of the local community, and particularly in affecting local perceptions of the state at a time of significant political transformations. The article draws parallels between the discursive practices of this mayor and those of media tycoon Silvio Berlusconi, who was Italy’s Prime Minister for eight years. It highlights the contradictions that inform these politicians’ constructions of the Italian state. When they want to present themselves as the leaders close to the people, they represent the state as an entity protecting its citizens. In contrast, when they get into legal troubles or when state laws work against their economic interests as businessmen, they avail themselves of the language of business, and cast the state as a distant and bureaucratic entity that needs to be modernized and rationalized. The spatial dimension of the state figures prominently in such constructions. Yet, while state officials often use spatial discourse to “encompass” people and link them to a particular territory, the mayor casts the state as a space “outside” of the people he represents. In suggesting that representing the state as a spatial entity may also serve to cast it as the “Other,” especially at the local level, this article pursues the argument that examining the spatiality of different forms of government also entails understanding the localized social processes through which state “spatialization” takes shape.
Hefty Dictionaries in Incomprehensible Tongues: Commensurating Code and Language Community in Turkey
Authors: Jamison Kelda
Published: April 2016

In this article, I consider one aspect of the larger linguistic–political project of rendering Kurdish an “equivalent” language in a world of standard languages: the material contours of text artifacts, and their commensurating capacities. In Turkey, where Turkish has long been the sole officially sanctioned code of public life, the project of asserting equivalence takes place in no small part as a function of an increasingly textualized and widely circulating Kurdish. Inserting Kurdish, both spoken and printed, into ever more arenas—disrupting the expectations of which code goes with which context—has become a central plank in a Kurdish political project. Yet relatively few people actually read the texts in question. The circulation of largely unread Kurdish texts allows us to investigate how material qualities of text objects—shape, sheen, heft, etc.—contribute to the assertion of particular forms of linguistic commensurability. I examine how textual forms anchor affiliations of loyalty and allegiance to language community, even without necessarily transforming speech practices and norms of pragmatic usage. In the Kurdish project of commensurating codes, the circulation of textual artifacts—stacked newspapers, glossy street signs, hefty dictionaries, paperback novels—works to signal the presence of the genres they are presumed to contain. At least three commensurating processes are at play here: between spoken Kurdish and its textual equivalent; between “Kurdish” and “Turkish” as the orienting codes of their respective language communities; and between “Kurds” and “Turks” as members of those communities, participants in a fiercely contested struggle over sovereignty and resources. At stake in these assertions of linguistic equivalence—the normative purchase of a would-be newly commensurate Kurdish—are politically and socially consequential mappings of groupness, polity, and political legitimacy.
The Work of Comparison: Israel/Palestine and Apartheid
Authors: Peteet Julie
Published: April 2016

The comparison of apartheid with the 45-year Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, and its guiding ideology, Zionism, has a genealogy situated in global and local politics as well as in scholarship. This article asks why the comparison emerged with vigor in the mid-1990s and early 2000s, and weighs its contemporary usefulness. What sort of work does the comparison do and what does it illuminate about the rule of modern colonial states? The article positions this comparison in anthropological tradition and tracks its genealogy. It fleshes out various elements of comparison in South Africa and Israel, states and societies constructed around the edifice of classification, distinction, and privilege. Central to human cognition and meaning-making, these classifications—Arab and Jew and Black and white—affected inequality and fueled a hierarchical social order pivoting around the designation of citizens and subjects, the configuration of space, and the distribution of rights.
Seeing Strange: Chinese Aesthetics in a Foreign World
Authors: Chumley Lily
Published: April 2016

This article contributes to a theory of commensuration by examining the discursive production of incommensurability between objects, aesthetics, and practices, and by extension, “cultures” and “civilizations.” Everyday objects—such as camping tables and cloth shoes—are often taken as emblems for distinctions between China and the West. This incommensurability is reproduced through a series of semiotic processes described here: first, an historical shift in the vocabulary for everyday things, in which marked foreignness is replaced by marked Chineseness, and reflections on that history in contemporary film; second, traditionalist performances of resistance to (and repugnance for) Western aesthetics, accompanied by a tendency to deploy markedly Chinese objects as emblems of cultural allegiance; and third, an artist’s lecture on the perplexity of negotiating this incommensurability in art practice. This boundary leaves out—or produces as excess—all those things that are designed, made, bought, and used in China, but which are not regarded as Chinese. I argue that this cryptocategory of the unChinese implicitly frames the work of Chinese artists and designers still called upon to produce a Chinese modern.
American Studies, the Middle East, and the Question of Palestine
Authors: Lubin Alex
Published: April 2016

This essay examines the intellectual history of American studies programs and departments in the Middle East, especially the relationship of these programs to US State Department efforts at cultural diplomacy or “soft power” after the Cold War. Through this examination, the essay theorizes the relationship of transnational American studies scholarship in the Middle East to the internationalization of the field. In their efforts to understand the United States, American studies programs in the Middle East have foregrounded the question of Palestine in ways that make these programs distinct from US-based American studies programs that still often regard Palestine as “America’s last taboo.” In their insistence on centering the question of Palestine within their vision of American studies, American studies programs in the Middle East demonstrate the unruly consequences of the internationalization of the discipline in political geographies where American primacy and exceptionalism are contested.
A Race Suicide among the Hogs: The Biopolitics of Pork in the United States, 1865–1930
Authors: Rosenberg Gabriel N.
Published: April 2016

The article examines meat agriculture as a site for the production of knowledge about gender, race, and sexuality that spanned human and nonhuman animals. Livestock breeders and commentators alike parsed animal bodies for their susceptibility and resistance to “race suicide,” a popular early twentieth-century concept that, when applied to humans, signaled concern that white middle-class reproduction and masculine vigor were faltering. Race suicide discourses gained traction in breeding literature precisely because animal breeding functioned as a popular laboratory of racial knowledge and biopolitical management. Porcine racial categories stabilized the rapidly reconfiguring infrastructures of American meat consumption and discourses of racial decline and contamination that included both human and nonhuman animals. These categories both reflected and constituted understandings of human race, and thus the article demonstrates how human and nonhuman racial knowledges were locked in a fluid conversation about what types of lives were livable and what types of bodies were fit to receive violence.
Is or Are: The “United States” in Nineteenth-Century Print Culture
Authors: Santin Bryan , Murphy Daniel , Wilkens Matthew
Published: April 2016

This article presents a computationally assisted analysis of conceptual changes in American national unity during the nineteenth century through grammatical singularization of the phrase United States in multiple contexts. The study uses corpora ranging from tens of millions to multiple billions of words assembled from books and newspapers published between the late eighteenth and early twentieth centuries. It is among the first of its type to draw on such a variety of broad-based resources. Our findings include significantly slower and less uniform movement toward singular treatment of the nation than has been previously assumed, as well as surprisingly similar rates of change in newspapers and books. We conclude that event-driven historical narratives of national unity centered on the outcome of the Civil War, as well as media-specific claims about the nationally unifying role of print during the period, are not well supported by the data. We consider the implications of performing cultural analysis with large-scale data and suggest an alternative model of conceptual evolution to explain both the observed rate of change and the convergence across media forms.
“The Whip Is a Very Contagious Kind of Thing”: Flogging and humanitarian reform in penal Australia
Authors: Edmonds Penelope , Maxwell-Stewart Hamish
Published: April 2016

This paper traces humanitarian debates over corporal punishment and the use of the lash in the Australian colonies in the nineteenth century, with particular attention to Quakers James Backhouse and George Washington Walker’s interventions in penal discipline in colonial Van Diemen’s Land. It examine the ways that corporal punishment of convicts and Aboriginal peoples was framed through abolitionist eyes and explores in detail specific objections to the lash, including ideas around suffering, abstract vengeance and pain. The paper considers the move to other punishment strategies such as silent and solitary confinement, promoted in place of the lash. As we show, the evidence provided by the travelling investigative Quakers did much to inform the 1837 Select Committee on Transportation chaired by William Molesworth. The same report is also credited with reducing the rate of flogging in the penal colonies. However, while the Molesworth Committee is regarded as a decisive turning point in the history of Britain’s deployment of convict labour, we argue that a shift in punishment strategies was already well underway before the late 1830s. Using new data on punishments awarded, we demonstrate that in Van Diemen’s Land the demise of the lash had begun well before the Molesworth Committee met. We conclude by arguing that the association between the great humanitarian moment and the demise of flagellation so often associated Molesworth, was more complex and less direct than is often supposed.
“We Are Sure of Your Sympathy”: Indigenous uses of the politics of protection in nineteenth-century Australia and Canada
Authors: Nettelbeck Amanda
Published: April 2016

The rise and fall of humanist imperial policy across Britain’s nineteenth-century empire has received considerable attention in terms of how the principles of Indigneous protection that underpinned the 1837 Report from the House of Commons Select Committee on Aborigines fared as a governmental imperative to meet the obligations of humane colonisation. In particular, scholars have examined the gulf between the theory and the practice of protectionist policy as an Indigenous legal right, the tensions between metropolitan initiatives to protect subject peoples and the neglect of those initiatives by local governments and settler lobbies, and the transition of protectionist agendas from an earlier model of Indigenous “amelioration” to a later model of Indigenous governance and surveillance. In comparison to the uses and failures of protection as a mechanism of colonial governmentality, less attention has been given to the strategic value that the humanitarian politics of protection, with its rhetoric of obligation and solicitude, might have held for Indigenous peoples. Within the comparative framework of nineteenth-century Australia and Canada, this paper will consider some of the contexts in which Indigenous people enlisted the humanitarian agendas and rhetoric of protection in encounters with representatives of the British Crown. As emergent British settler states, nineteenth-century Australia and Canada represent divergent ends of colonial governmental efforts to bring Indigenous people within the Crown’s jurisdiction. In much of what is now Canada, treaties were signed between Indigenous peoples and the Crown. They endorsed a principle that resources would be exchanged for the Crown’s protection, although in the years that followed, many of the expectations established by treaties would be disappointed. In Australia, the absence of treaty negotiations, and the subsequent violence that followed the path of settlement wherever it went, made the promise of the Crown’s protection a significantly ineffectual concept from the outset. Yet even if being within the Crown’s protection had little practical purchase in a daily sense, there were times when Aboriginal people found cause to enlist their status as the Crown’s subjects to call upon its obligations and sympathies. In different settings and across different times, their strategic engagements with the humanitarian politics of protection have much to say both about practical tensions in colonial conceptions of humane governance, and about the degrees of agency Indigenous people could deploy in asserting a political place within the colonial order.
“The Awful Depravity of Human Nature”: Violence and humanitarian narratives in New South Wales and Tahiti, 1796–99
Authors: Johnston Anna
Published: April 2016

Shocked by the abject failure of the London Missionary Society’s (LMS) first overseas mission to Polynesia, missionaries retreated to New South Wales in 1799 having had their evangelical certainties about morality, culture, religion, and race thoroughly shaken. White settler communities proved almost as disturbing as the islands for the disgraced missionaries. Samuel Clode was brutally murdered soon after arriving; lay missionaries found that their simple communal religious practices would not be tolerated by the established ministers of religion; and co-habiting with convicts, military men, and Aborigines seriously challenged evangelical social mores. John Youl wrote, “no other spot on the face of the Habitable Globe, contains more witnesses of the awful depravity of human Nature” (1801). Humanitarian narratives were central to British evangelical missionary work. Although humanitarian narratives often struggled to emerge in the early Australian colonies given the predominance of aggressive settler expansionism, the isolated voices of individuals associated with evangelical reform deserve attention because they provide troubling accounts of the problems and failures of settler colonialism. This article uses Clode’s accounts of his experience at Matavai Bay in Tahiti, and accounts of his death at Port Jackson, as nodal points through which to trace the moral contours of emergent settler modernities in Pacific Rim worlds. Colonial resistance to evangelical authority by both Europeans and Indigenous people confounded the expectations of the vigorous humanitarian lobby in Britain, and the information garnered by colonial agents provided considerable challenge to European expectations. Yet it also provided considerable ammunition to argue for religious models of the moral empire. In such ways evangelical experiences garnered from colonial locations became part of a globalising knowledge economy and a thriving print culture, which both supported and challenged the dominance of humanitarian narratives.
Occurrence of Stalking Victimization Among Female and Male Undergraduate Students
Authors: Myers Rachel K. , Nelson Deborah B. , Forke Christine M.
Published: April 2016

We examined the occurrence of stalking victimization among female and male undergraduate students attending three urban colleges. Specifically, we explored the proportion of students who experienced only stalking victimization and the relationship to the perpetrator identified by victims of stalking. Our findings suggest that stalking victimization is less frequently perpetrated by intimate partners and occurs independent of more commonly measured forms of interpersonal victimization. Given recent changes to the Jeanne Clery Act to include stalking victimization as a mandatorily reportable offense, these results provide insight to college administrators responsible for designing violence-related educational efforts, as well as to health care providers who counsel and provide care to college-aged young adults.
If I Can Do For My People, I Can Do For Myself: Examining Racial Factors for Their Influence on Goal Efficacy For Black College Students
Authors: Bentley-Edwards Keisha L. , Agonafer Edden , Edmondson Rashida , Flannigan Alaina
Published: April 2016

Using a sociocultural stress and coping approach, this study focuses on the antecedents of goal efficacy, or an individual’s appraisal that they can achieve their goals. Despite being in college, less than half of the participants demonstrated goal efficacy. Racial factors including racial cohesion, racial dissonance and race-related stress, along with the students’ reports of supports and barriers were assessed for their relation with goal efficacy for 242 Black college students. Racial cohesion and racial dissonance were positively and inversely related to goal efficacy, respectively. Racial factors also predicted the students’ specific goals and their support and barrier attributions.
Utilizing Critical Race Theory to Examine Race/Ethnicity, Racism, and Power in Student Development Theory and Research
Authors: Hernández Ebelia
Published: April 2016

Recognition of social forces (racism, privilege, power) to the extent that is required by critical race theory (CRT) results in a paradigm shift in the way that we theorize and research student development, specifically self-authorship. This paradigm shift moves the center of analysis from individual, to the individual in relation to her political, racialized, environment, which then provides a new vantage point to capture additional developmental processes. In this article, each dimension of self-authorship is reconsidered with revised questions that seek to examine the ways that race/ethnicity, racism, and power influence the self-authoring process.
Hip-Hop is the Healer: Sense of Belonging and Diversity Among Hip-Hop Collegians
Authors: Sulé V. Thandi
Published: April 2016

Sense of belonging is recognized as a factor contributing to persistence to graduation. Furthermore, interactional diversity is associated with learning and civic outcomes—touted higher education goals. Hip-hop culture, one of the most influential cultural creations of the mid–20th century, has succeeded in attracting devotees from diverse backgrounds. However, very little higher education research exists on the role of hip-hop culture in higher education institutions. As colleges seek ways to promote diversity and respond to diverse student experiences, members of hip-hop enclaves may provide insight into how to facilitate sense of belonging and interactional diversity.
Fitzhugh Lee, U.S. Consul in Havana from 1896 to 1898: An Ally of the Cubans?
Authors: Tarragó Rafael E.
Published: April 2016

El General Fitzhugh Lee, cónsul general de los Estados Unidos de América en La Habana de 1896 a 1898, ha sido considerado un aliado de los cubanos que buscaban la independencia de Cuba de España. Este artículo, basado en fuentes documentales, analiza la conducta del General Lee en Cuba durante su gestión como cónsul en La Habana, y durante su comisión en el ejército de ocupación de los Estados Unidos en Cuba desde diciembre de 1898 hasta noviembre de 1900. El autor nota la diferencia entre lo que Lee decía a sus superiores en Washington sobre la incapacidad de los cubanos para gobernarse y sus animadoras expresiones de apoyo a los cubanos que luchaban por la independencia de Cuba. Sus conclusiones cuestionan la aceptación como verdad infalible y sin reserva de los reportes de Lee a Washington y que éste era aliado de los cubanos que buscaban la independencia de Cuba.
La economía de Cuba ingresa al cuarto quinquenio del siglo XXI: Introducción al dossier
Authors: Domínguez Jorge I.
Published: April 2016

This article focuses on a diagnosis of Cuba’s economic problems principally since 2010, considers the country’s comparative advantages, describes some of the changes in economic policy, formulates a critical analysis of the problems that stem from—or persist in—these new policies, and characterizes some resistance to these policies. It draws from the other articles in this dossier, but its mistakes are this author’s sole responsibility; its conclusions are the author’s own. The combination of a bad economic legacy and a worse set of circumstances when the reforms started, along with the limitations of the new policies, their internal contradictions, and the resistance they provoke explain what happened in this century’s third five-year period. The results are insufficient for an economic takeoff for Cuba but point to a better future, provided that the process of change accelerates, the counterproductive policies adopted in recent years are terminated, and there is success in overcoming the resistance that prevents progress toward a prosperous and sustainable Cuban economy, without delay but with much greater speed.
“El trabajo os hará hombres”: Masculinización nacional, trabajo forzado y control social en Cuba durante los años sesenta
Authors: Madero Abel Sierra
Published: April 2016

This text explores models of social and political control deployed in Cuba during the 1960s against individuals who did not conform to the revolutionary framework. Specifically, I examine the implementation of labor camps known as Military Units to Aid Production. These camps were created under the umbrella of compulsory military service, with the goal of “rehabilitating” homosexuals, artists, people of various religious beliefs, criminals and young men of bourgeois descent. These units will be addressed here as part of a policing system, within a broader project of social engineering based on the systematic intervention at all levels of life, the control of sexuality, and a pedagogy that rested on the political rehabilitation programs.
Inversión y asignación de recursos: Una discusión del caso cubano
Authors: Pérez Ricardo Torres
Published: April 2016

Cuba’s long-term economic stagnation and its likely causes are recurrent in academic discussions both inside and beyond the country’s borders. This work points to low investment levels and especially the resource allocation mechanism behind them as a key reason for the island’s economic decline. It analyzes the interplay of several dimensions related to the problem, both domestic (low productivity, hypertrophied public administration) and external (international credibility and creditworthiness, remittances, foreign investment). It concludes that a radical change in the resource allocation mechanism should be at the center of economic reform, and more important, a temporary improvement in external conditions is no substitute for the former process.
“A Strong Antidote Against Unbelief And Seduction”: Carl Friedrich Scheibler’s Leben und Schicksale der Pokahuntas (1781) And the German Theological Enlightenment
Authors: Meyer Sabine N.
Published: April 2016

This article endeavors the first in-depth analysis and historical contextualization of the 1781 novel Leben und Schicksale der Pokahuntas, einer edelmuthigen Americanischen Prinzessin; eine wahre und lehrreiche Geschichte , written by the Pomeranian pastor Carl Friedrich Scheibler. Not only is this text the earliest surviving literary adaptation of the Pocahontas story, but it also explores new avenues with respect to the representations of Native Americans in Germany. In addition, Scheibler is the first to employ the Pocahontas story in order to position himself within a theological debate that was raging in Germany at that time.
Questions of Genre : Picturing the Hermaphrodite in Eighteenth-Century France and England
Authors: Thompson Courtney E.
Published: April 2016

The hermaphrodite posed a series of problems for Enlightenment philosophes and physicians, who, when confronted with the evidence of an ambiguously sexed body, were unable to say with any certainty whether the body was male or female, but yet could not quite countenance the existence of “true” hermaphrodites. This lexical and material uncertainty about the nature of the hermaphrodite was reflected in visual representations of such individuals in eighteenth-century France and England. These images represented uncertain gender, portrayed through ambiguous artistic genre. Like the hermaphrodite, caught between sexes, these images were caught between art and science.
“Life Beyond Life”: Reading Milton’s Areopagitica through Enlightenment Vitalism
Authors: Johnson Erik L.
Published: April 2016

Scientific attempts to define life, familiarly linked to romanticism and to poetic form, had an earlier and broader impact on literary interpretation. John Milton’s Areopagitica , which metaphorically treats books as living things, rose to preeminence during the eighteenth century as readers paid increasing attention to its literary qualities. A free adaptation by Honoré de Mirabeau on the eve of the French Revolution minimized Milton’s republicanism and drew out the tendencies toward vitalism inherent in his figurative language. Together with British responses to Samuel Johnson’s critical 1779 Life of Milton , Mirabeau’s adaptation demonstrates a way of reading informed by Enlightenment vitalism.
The Value Proposition of the Corporate Library, Past and Present
Authors: Black Alistair , Gabb Henry
Published: April 2016

Corporate libraries of the kind we would recognize today began to appear around the turn of the twentieth century. They were a response to a rapidly changing corporate and commercial environment, acting as adjuncts to both the rise of systematic industrial research and the office management revolution that accompanied the implementation of scientific management. A survey of American corporate libraries in 1916 by the British manufacturer Rowntree and Company provides a snapshot of their operations and perceived value. The survey was repeated with a selection of today’s corporate librarians. Their responses are strikingly similar to those of their early twentieth-century counterparts, despite intervening technological change. As it was a century ago, the value of the corporate library, even if it cannot be quantified, is accepted.