bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Conclusion: Ottoman Cairo’s legal system and grand narratives
Authors: Baldwin James E.
Published: September 2017

The conclusion reflects on the implications of the book’s findings for longer-term narratives of Islamic legal history and Ottoman history. Drawing on recent studies of the medieval period and the nineteenth century, the chapter sketches a revised grand narrative of Islamic legal history in which political and military officials play a much more prominent role, and the modernizing reforms of the nineteenth century build on indigenous precedents as well as western influences. The conclusion also refines the prevailing model of decentralization in the historiography of the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Ottoman Empire. Although the imperial government often found itself unable to impose its will on powerful provincial elites, provincial subjects continued to demand the intervention of imperial institutions, in particular legal institutions, into their affairs. In many ways, Istanbul’s authority in Egypt was invited, rather than imposed.
Reformed Masculinity: Ministers, Fathers and Male Heads of Households, 1560–1660
Authors: Nugent Janay
Published: September 2017

This chapter explores the reformed minister as an archetype of Scottish masculinity. Piety, discipline, restraint, obedient and submissive to God and his Kirk, frugality, humility, seriousness of mind and sobriety were all masculine ideals of reformed ministers. These masculine traits were to be embodied by reformed ministers; with clerical marriage making them models for married men. As married men were heads of household and fathers, their conformity to the ideals of reformed masculinity ensured the success of the Scottish Reformation. This was a critical path for the tenets of the Calvinist faith as reformed men constructed the ‘godly community’ in their homes, taking the message of the reformers beyond the kirk and into their families.
The Importance and Impossibility of Manhood: Polite and Libertine Masculinities in the Urban Eighteenth Century
Authors: Carr Rosalind
Published: September 2017

This chapter explores the continuum of polite and libertine expression of manhood in eighteenth-century Scotland through an examination of violence, independence, sexuality and friendship, drawing particularly on life writing by men such as James Boswell and the minister Thomas Sutherland. Shifting ideals of behaviour and sentiment served to assert manhood among different men and individuals could adopt different manly personas ranging from the polite gentleman to the libertine depending on locale and time of day. Among the issues discussed are changing responses to duelling, amended definitions of honour, the importance of economic credit and independence, varied attitudes to the sexuality of women, and the conflicting pulls of virtuous self-governed manhood and the opportunities for sexual licence, both heterosexual and homosexual, provided in the growing towns of Edinburgh and Glasgow.
Contrasting Kingly and Knightly Masculinities in Barbour’s Bruce
Authors: Mainer Sergi
Published: September 2017

The chapter examines the multiple representations, evolution and opposition of masculine constructions in John Barbour’s Brus (c.1375) which tells the story of Scotland’s First War of Independence. The two main heroes, Robert Bruce and James Douglas are shown to represent a fluid masculinity, adapting to the changing social and political circumstances of medieval Scotland. This is contrasted with the negative models of Edward I and Edward Bruce. The chapter discusses the results of the initial absence of proper leaders and male models, secondly the evolution of Bruce and Douglas into ideal king and knight, and finally the interactions of the male protagonists with women. Patriarchy is shown to operate not only in the power of men over women, but also in the authority that groups of men exercise over other groups according to social hierarchies.
Introduction
Authors: Kiss Miklós , Willemsen Steven
Published: September 2017

Starting from the illuminating example of Julio Cortázar’s 1956 mind-bending short story Continuidad de los parques (Continuity of Parks), this chapter offers an introductory outline of the aims and approaches of this study on narrative complexity in contemporary film. Cortázar’s intricate story generates various questions for its readers that are related to the topics explored in this book. What do such puzzling and enigmatic stories do in cinema? How do viewers make them work? What difficulties do they pose? What is engaging about these stories’ challenges, and what do audiences draw from these experiences?
Slums on and off Screen
Authors: Krstić Igor
Published: September 2017

Taking vital clues from the ‘spatial turn’ in the humanities and social sciences, the chapter discusses slums both off and on screen, as urban as well as cinematic (or represented) spaces. It provides in that way an interdisciplinary discourse on some of the book’s larger conceptual frames: the ‘planet of slums’, the ‘cinematic city’, ‘representation’ and the notion of ‘world cinema’. The author suggests that it is important to take critical voices into consideration that explain the ‘mass production of slums’ (Davis) as an effect of global capitalism (Castells et. al.). However, in accordance with recent empirical research, particularly with UN-HABITAT’s global report The Challenge of Slums (2003), the author suggests to also acknowledge the diversity of slums. This double-perspective – acknowledging diversity while also considering the historical dynamics of globalisation – is also useful when approaching world cinema. The author conceives world cinema consequently in terms of global-local exchanges (or ‘glocalisation’): employing the riverine / maritime metaphors used by film and globalisation scholars alike, the author proposes to look at representative examples via their local historical contexts as well as through considering the larger global flows (currents or waves) of documentary and realist styles in world cinema.
Sensational Remediations
Authors: Krstić Igor
Published: September 2017

This chapter takes the decade of the birth of cinema, the 1890s, as a vantage point and tackles the question of how, by that time, the slum has become a topic of high visibility in various media. The author identifies the notion of ‘remediation’ (Bolter and Grusin) as this era’s key paradigm, because clichéd slum imagery and sensationalist stories (of violent crime, immorality, abject poverty etc.) travel around 1890 across (old and new) media, from the stage to the cinema, from photo books to magic lantern shows. The chapter focuses thereby on the ‘documentary impulse’ (Gunning) to disclose urban pauperisation, which emerges together with the photographic apparatus and the reform movement. Accordingly, the chapter’s case example, a famous reformist photo book / magic lantern lecture which promotes the urgent need to improve the housing conditions in New York’s notorious neighbourhood Five Points, How The Other Half Lives (Riis 1890), illustrates how reform movement, technological innovation and remediation go hand in hand. The chapter finally draws comparisons to a contemporary transmedia project, The Places We Live (Bendiksen 2008), in order to demonstrate the (dis-)continuities between nineteenth and twenty-first century documentary photography of slums.
Digital Realisms
Authors: Krstić Igor
Published: September 2017

The chapter looks at contemporary depictions of slums in digital cinema. Joining recent scholarship (Nagib, Elsaesser, Rombes) that argues for a correlation between the advent of DV and a renewed return to realism in world cinema, the author rejects the notion that the advent of digital technologies marks a ‘loss of indexicality’, as claimed by some (Rodowick; Manovich, Grusin). Instead, the author argues that today’s independent (festival, art or new wave) cinemas (e.g. Dogme 95) enter into a post-postmodern phase since they attempt to re-materialise the filmic signifiers, precisely by refashioning the filmmaking practices and principles of earlier movements such as Italian neorealism or cinéma vérité. To illustrate this, the chapter looks at how Manila’s slums have been represented by the filmmakers of the ‘Philippine New Wave’ (e.g. Mendoza) and at Pedro Costa’s Fontainhas Trilogy, which depicts a slum once located on the outskirts of Lisbon. The chapter concludes that these filmmakers use digital technologies, albeit very differently, to reanimate a political kind of cinema that has been declared dead, turning their films into acts of resistance to the digital confections of today’s entertainment industries as well as to the blatant social inequalities of our ‘planet of slums’.
Détente, Human Rights and Anglo-American Relations
Authors: Robb Thomas K.
Published: September 2017

This chapter contextualizes Jimmy Carter’s promotion of a human rights agenda coupled to efforts to maintain superpower détente. By doing so, this chapter highlights how London often fought to restrain the president’s promotion of human rights for a mixture of reasons predicated upon geopolitical assumptions and the need to maintain British commercial interests. All told, the advent of the Carter administration created considerable unease in British policy making circles.
Embracing the Special Relationship, 1977–8
Authors: Robb Thomas K.
Published: September 2017

This chapter surveys the first year of Carter’s handling of the Anglo-American relationship. The new president brought a bold agenda to both foreign relations and to the Anglo-American relationship as he sought to bring about a majority rule settlement in Rhodesia as well as solve the “Troubles” inside Northern Ireland. Such efforts created difficulties with London, not least as both sides had competing ideas as to how best to balance concerns with morality and pragmatism in settling this questions. This chapter also demonstrates how the institutional aspects of the special relationship, those concerned with nuclear and intelligence cooperation continued to be maintained.
Merdeka for Malaya: Imagining Independence across the British Empire
Authors: Rice Tom
Published: September 2017

In his chapter on ‘Merdeka for Malaya: Imagining Independence Across the British Empire’, Tom Rice explores how this film produced by the Malayan Film Unit in 1957 portrays Malaya’s path to independence. Through this case study, Rice brings relevant nuances to the accepted discourse of change between the colonial and post-colonial periods. He demonstrates that both the film and the film infrastructure reveal a continued British influence, although they also validate the transition to an independent state. In his argument, the process of independence as it is recorded on film remains mainly idealised and conceals tensions for the sake of the project of imagining the new nation. Rice also Focuses on the period of the Malayan Emergency (1948-1960), and the Malayan Film Unit.
Imagining Ancient Arabs: Sources and Controversies
Authors: Webb Peter
Published: September 2017

The study of Arab identity begins with the foundational question: when did people begin to call themselves Arabs and form an Arab community? The process of Arab community formation is much debated, and this chapter re-evaluates theories of Arab origins via critical survey of the ancient epigraphic and literary evidence about Arabia before Islam. The wealth of texts, spanning ancient Assyrian records, Greek/Latin literature and South Arabian inscriptions, give intriguing indications about pre-Islamic Arabian societies alongside enigmatic references to ‘Arab’-sounding words, but these sources have not yet been interrogated via theories of ethnicity and identity. Chapter 1 revisits the sources through a critical theoretical lens to offer a fresh interpretation of Arabian identities before Islam and a resolution to difficulties scholars face when trying to identify ‘Arabs’ in ancient history. The findings prompt us to question long-held theories of Arab origins and invite a wholesale rethink of Arabs and Arabia before Islam.
Arabs as a People and Arabness as an Idea: 750–900 CE
Authors: Webb Peter
Published: September 2017

The early Abbasid Caliphate marked a climax of Arab ethnogenesis. Urbanization, the centralisation of power, and the mixing of populations in cosmopolitan Iraq cultivated fertile ground for Muslim elites to rally around the banner of Arab identity as a means to maintain their status. This chapter engages models of ethnogenesis to investigate the consolidation of Arab identity under the first Abbasids and provides fresh insight into the significance of the putative Arab-Persian friction (al-shuʿūbiyya). Akin to the formation of ethnic identities elsewhere in the world, the consolidation of an Abbasid-Iraqi Arab identity prompted writers to imagine new origins for their community, forgetting the Arabs’ early Muslim-era ethnogenesis by transplanting their roots into much more ancient pre-Islamic Arabian pasts. This chapter investigates salient aspects of inventing Arab pre-Islamic origins which established paradigms about Arabness that persist to the present day. The chapter closes with investigation of sweeping societal changes in Iraq after AD 800, when a remarkable retreat from Arabness began: Muslims shifted from identifying themselves as ‘Arabs’, fundamentally altering the definition of Arabness in the process.
Imagining and Reimagining the Arabs: Conclusions
Authors: Webb Peter
Published: September 2017

By unfastening Arab identity from conventional cultural stereotypes, Bedouinism and ancient pre-Islamic Arabian bloodlines, this book sought to reveal the complexities and changing nature of historic Arab identity. The book was intended as an invitation to begin rethinking Arabness afresh, and by highlighting the shortcomings inherent in the static, monolithic manner in which historical Arab communities have often been discussed, our analysis sought to reappraise historic Arabness as an ethnicity, tracking its evolution and contextualising its development with close attention to the sociopolitical and ‘cultural stuff’ factors that sustain ethnogenesis....
The Cosmopolitan Mosque
Authors: Aljunied Khairudin
Published: September 2017

This chapter examines mosques and explains that these institutions are not just devotional places, they are also projections of the cosmopolitan temperaments of Southeast Asian Muslims. This is evidenced in the aesthetics and architecture of the mosques that draw upon so many religious and cultural traditions. The chapter delves into the sharing of sacred space by Muslims and non-Muslims, pointing to the close proximity between mosques and other places of worship. This nearness has encouraged worshippers of different faiths to help one another in a spirit of mutual tolerance and cooperation to ensure the safety and welfare of their respective religious institutions. The chapter also highlights the inclusion of women in the spaces and activities of Southeast Asian mosques — a distinguishing quality that is not so readily found in other parts of the Muslim world today.
Cosmopolitan Muslim Public Intellectuals
Authors: Aljunied Khairudin
Published: September 2017

This chapter looks at selected Muslim public intellectuals who have actively promoted cosmopolitan attitudes among Muslims in Southeast Asia. These public intellectuals are academics in universities and social commentators who write books and essays calling for cooperation between Muslims and non-Muslims in their countries. The chapter discusses the ideas of three prominent cosmopolitan Muslim public intellectuals: Chandra Muzaffar, Azyumardi Azra, and Hussin Mutalib. It focuses on three of the critical concepts that pervade their active writing and advocacy careers: Qur'anic justice, ‘Islam Nusantara’ (Southeast Asian Islam), and Islamic assertiveness — concepts which push the boundaries of thinking about Muslim cosmopolitanism in Southeast Asia.
Stop the Clocks: Lincoln and Post-9/11 Cinema
Authors: Scott Ian
Published: September 2017

As well as its discussion of American history and cinematic temporality Schopp's work on Tarantino is connected directly to Chapter Nine, Ian Scott's analysis of Steven Spielberg's Lincoln, by the presence of the enigmatic president in both of their narratives: while of course, Abraham Lincoln plays a central role in Spielberg’s Lincoln, the historical figure of Lincoln plays a peripheral but important figure in Quentin Tarantino's The Hateful Eight through the repeated appearance of Major Marquis Warren’s (Samuel L. Jackson) letter which he claims to have received from Lincoln himself. Ian Scott's analysis of Spielberg’s film reads Lincoln as one of the most resonant and culturally important historical films of the new millennium and explores how far it might resonate with the tempestuous political climate of the ‘War on Terror’ era. It was around the time of the production of Lincoln that several commentators began to talk of an 'Obama Cinema' (see J. Hoberman 2012 and Izo, 2014) and despite being set more than one hundred and fifty years before, Spielberg’s Lincoln was released at American cinemas in the same week that President Barrack Obama was elected for his second term of office. Scott offers a range of vibrant and compelling perspectives on the film: reading it as a challenge to traditional notions of the biopic, as a treatise on historical and cinematic time, but most importantly connecting it to cinematic depictions of the iconic president from D.W Griffith’s Abraham Lincoln (1930), through John Ford’s Young Mr Lincoln (1939) even to the allohistorical fantasy 'mashup' of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (2012).
Foreshadows of the Fall: Questioning 9/11’s Impact on American Attitudes
Authors: Joyce Stephen
Published: September 2017

Chapter Ten, a strikingly original piece by Stephen Joyce which questions the very nature of the influence of 9/11 and the 'War on Terror' on the American film industry. In "Foreshadows of the Fall: Questioning 9/11’s Impact on American Attitudes" he argues that it is possible to conclude that the changes many have seen in post-9/11 American cinema, and indeed America's real world reactions to the traumatic events which occurred on 11 September 2001, were actually comprehensively anticipated by American genre cinema throughout the second half of the twentieth century. Joyce's suggestion is not that American cinema was in any way prophetic, but that America's responses to 9/11 replicate patterns so encoded into American ideological belief systems that they have been filtered into Hollywood films for decades. Using three films made prior to 9/11: Pearl Harbour (2001), Independence Day (1996) and The Siege (1998) he traces these patterns contained within their narratives and even their mise en scene. Joyce's argument underlines the importance of avoiding the allure of simplistic connections between 9/11 and American film, the likes of which have permeated some otherwise very fine academic work on the subject. This is undoubtedly a manifestation of the apophenic desire to see 9/11 and the 'War on Terror' reflected everywhere (see Pollard). It is important for scholars of post-9/11 film to remember that explosions, dust clouds and debris existed, and were placed on the frames of American films before 11 September 2001. Just as important is the need to avoid hyperbole, as Kristian Verslys found it hard to do when he asserted that 9/11 represented a 'total breakdown of all meaning-making systems' (2).
The Terrible, Horrible Desire to Know: Post-9/11 Horror Remakes, Reboots, Sequels and Prequels
Authors: Kendrick James
Published: September 2017

Chapter Twelve remains with the horror genre, but takes a broader overview of one of the defining trends of the American film industry which has progressively gathered pace in the first years of the twenty-first century: the increasing prevalence of the remake. In "The Terrible, Horrible Desire to Know: Post-9/11 Horror Remakes, Reboots, Sequels, and Prequels" James Kendrick analyses the rising cultural and commercial fortunes of the American horror film which experienced between the years of 1995 and 2005 increases of more than 80% in terms of production and 106% in terms of market share (“Horror: Year-by-Year Market Share”). In this decade 2007 was the biggest year for American horror films (it was also the year of the release of The Mist discussed in the previous chapter) with thirty-one releases accounting for 7.16% of the total market share of the US domestic box office (“Horror: Year-by-Year Market Share”) as opposed to just sixteen releases in 1995. Yet Kendrick does not dismiss this development as being purely economically motivated, rather he asks what can these modern horror films, very often remakes of classic horror films of the 1950s and the 1970s, tell us about the cultural and political climate they emerge from? In an incisive analysis of the recurrent tropes in post-9/11 American horror films Kendrick points out that horror's persistent ties to cultural anxiety provide an intriguing insight into their times as they become increasingly darker, more graphic and deny their characters any sense of hope or redemption. Most interestingly, Kendrick observes, the contemporary horror film replaces the ambiguity of the defining horror films of the 1970s with a desire to explain and understand which he suggests parallels American society's need to understand following the terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001. Kendrick then turns to Rob Zombie's 2007 remake of John Carpenter's original Halloween (1978) as an articulation of many of the tropes discussed in the first part of the essay offering some surprising conclusions concerning the power of the horror film to reflect cultural unease.
The Price of Paradise: Robert Louis Stevenson, Joseph Conrad and British Expansion in the Pacific
Authors: Fuller Jennifer
Published: September 2017

The fourth chapter turns to British settlers in the Pacific whose attempts to create ideal colonies reveal the weaknesses inherent in the British concept of themselves as a “superior” civilizing force. In Robert Louis Stevenson’s Vailima Letters and The Beach of Falesá, he questions the right of the British to colonize or settle in the South Seas as part of a “civilizing mission.” By examining the effects of the invasive settler, explorer, and trader on the island landscape, Stevenson linked the health of the islanders and the state of the islands, presenting European invasion as a violent and potentially dangerous “disease.”
While Stevenson focused primarily on the interactions between British and Pacific islanders, Joseph Conrad instead focused on the ways in which life in the Pacific impacted British individuals in his later and largely overlooked Pacific works, Freya of the Seven Isles and “Because of the Dollars. Conrad’s work reflects an increasingly dark vision of British settlement in the Pacific, one that depicts British men and women as weak and degenerate.
The Unprecedented Return of St. Paul
Authors: Lambert Gregg
Published: September 2017

This statement takes up the frequency of contemporary philosophers who have returned to the epistles of St. Paul as the basis for a philosophy of truth and history. The chapter provides a close reading of an example in the recent writings of French philosopher Alain Badiou
Ancient History: Assyrians, Chaldeans, and Medes
Authors: Stronk Jan P.
Published: September 2017

In this chapter Diodorus himself gets the stage. The story is about the rise and decline of the Assyrian empire, starting with the reigns of Ninus and Semiramis and the construction of subsequently Nineveh and Babylon and ending with the reign of Sardanapallus and the fall of Nineveh. Next follows an account on the rule of the Medes, in which features amongst others also Queen Zarinaea of the Scythians. Finally, attention is paid to the Chaldeans and their importance for astronomy.
The Period of the Diadochs: The Rift Opens
Authors: Stronk Jan P.
Published: September 2017

In this chapter, the years 323/2- 318/7 bc are treated. After the death of Alexander III the Great, the empire he ruled became the plaything of several of his generals and trustees. Though all of them formally pledged loyalty to the lawful successors, Philip III Arrhidaeus, Alexander’s half-brother, and Alexander IV, the infant son of Alexander the Great by Roxane-both of them supported by Eumenes-, during a conference at Triparadisus, they in fact tried to secure their own positions, like Ptolemy I Soter did in Egypt, neglecting or even undermining the legal heirs’ position.
The Period of the Diadochs: The Rift Deepens
Authors: Stronk Jan P.
Published: September 2017

This chapter discusses the events of the years 317/6-311/10 bc. The really important Diadochs were now reduced to a select number, heading for a collision over absolute power. The main players, apart from Ptolemy I Soter who to the best of his abilities tried to become involved as little as possible, emerging for that confrontation were Antigonus the One-eyed and his son Demetrius, Cassander (the son of Antipater, a trusted friend of Alexander the Great and the latter’s stand-in at Macedonia during Alexander’s expedition: Antipater had died in 319), Lysimachus, and Seleucus I Nicator, the de facto ruler of Persia and Babylonia.
Matter in Revolt
Authors: McQueen Sean
Published: September 2017

This chapter recasts Karel Čapek's 1920 play, R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots), as the foundational biopunk text, as it reveals a profound intimacy between capitalism and the life sciences, though the play is better known for introducing the term ‘robot’ into SF (derived from the Czech robotá, meaning hard or enforced labour). The play dramatises the simulacral, autonomised organs of the working class, bodies in pieces that (mis)identify with the specular imago of the productivist ego, only to rebel against their bourgeois human creators. This chapter thus situates R.U.R. within the discourse of biopolitics, and explores how its technoscientific inventions make possible a contagious and revolutionary — though ambivalent in denouement — line of flight, thus making it an antecedent to biocapitalism and the bioeconomy.
Introduction: May Sinclair’s Interdisciplinarity
Authors: Bowler Rebecca , Drewery Claire
Published: September 2017

May Sinclair was a bestselling author of her day, but her versatile literary output, including criticism, philosophy, poetry, psychoanalysis, cultural history and experimental fiction, now frequently falls between the established categories of literary modernism. Her novels gained international praise and huge popularity in her lifetime. At the beginning of the twentieth century she was famous as the writer of ...
Feminism, Freedom and the Hierarchy of Happiness in the Psychological Novels of May Sinclair
Authors: Truran Wendy
Published: September 2017

May Sinclair, in her psychological novels The Three Sisters (1915), Mary Olivier: A Life (1919), and The Life and Death of Harriet Frean (1919-1921), develops a concept of happiness which critiques the social, psychological, and physical constraints that are placed upon women due to their emotional labour. For Sinclair, some forms of happiness are better than others, creating a hierarchy of happiness across her work. Drawing on contemporary affect theory, this chapter offers an analysis of Sinclair’s complicated and deeply ambivalent representation of the feeling of happiness.
The concept of happiness in Sinclair’s writing is protean. Certain forms of happiness must be resisted; for example the infantilizing contentment of Harriet Frean or the manipulative selfishness of Mary Cartaret. Still other forms should be actively pursued, for example Mary Olivier’s ecstatic and rapturous relationship with nature. Happiness can also become parasitic on suffering. Sinclair seems to be suggesting in both Mary Olivier and The Three Sisters that self-sacrifice, even self-abnegation, is the route to the “perfect” happiness. Affect can be dangerous in Sinclair’s work. To experience affect is to be affected and therefore the safest happiness is ecstatic: to be outside of the self, to be beyond the body.
Introduction
Authors: Nordlund Marcus
Published: September 2017

What if we could produce new data of real literary interest about Shakespeare’s complete plays? What if such data could uncover overriding patterns, and interesting exceptions from these patterns, that are not easily perceived by a single reader, or even by their author when he was still among the living? And what if we could combine these findings with traditional forms of scholarship that attend to finer nuances and place the works in a larger context? This could throw new light on Shakespeare’s authorial habits and help us perceive the special nature of individual plays, characters, and scenes....
Direction
Authors: Nordlund Marcus
Published: September 2017

Chapter 1 is entitled ‘Direction’, with a pun on the theatrical and the spatial senses of the word ‘direction’. The main purpose of the chapter is to mediate between, on the one hand, James Hirsh’s extended argument that Shakespeare’s soliloquies and asides were almost exclusively self-addressed, and, on the other, the modern tendency of scholars, actors, and directors to return Shakespeare to his medieval, audience-addressed roots. The chapter then turns to an extended reading of Launce’s soliloquies in The Two Gentlemen of Verona which explores how their satirical counterpoint to the main plot interrogates the underlying conditions of Shakespeare’s dramatic art.
Dialogue
Authors: Nordlund Marcus
Published: September 2017

The chapter begins with a systematic overview of selected figures of speech and related techniques that imbue the Shakespearean inside with some of its dialogical qualities: apostrophe (addressing absent or abstract entities), letters and reported words, prosopopoeia (personating an external speaker), erotema (the rhetorical question), illeism (speaking of oneself in the third person), and tuism (addressing oneself in the second person). Chapter 3 ends with a reading of Hamlet, demonstrating how the new research methodology can both produce fresh insights into one of the most closely studied works in world literature and place some aspects of received opinion about the play on a firmer footing.
Assessment of Clicker Training for Shelter Cats
Authors: Kogan Lori , Kolus Cheryl , Schoenfeld-Tacher Regina
Published: September 2017

Clicker training has the potential to mitigate stress among shelter cats by providing environmental enrichment and human interaction. This study assessed the ability of cats housed in a shelter-like setting to learn new behaviors via clicker training in a limited amount of time. One hundred shelter cats were enrolled in the study. Their baseline ability to perform four specific behaviors touching a target, sitting, spinning, and giving a high-five was assessed, before exposing them to 15, five-min clicker training sessions, followed by a post-training assessment. Significant gains in performance scores were found for all four cued behaviors after training (p = 0.001). A cat’s age and sex did not have any effect on successful learning, but increased food motivation was correlated with greater gains in learning for two of the cued behaviors: high-five and targeting. Temperament also correlated with learning, as bolder cats at post assessment demonstrated greater gains in performance scores than shyer ones. Over the course of this study, 79% of cats mastered the ability to touch a target, 27% mastered sitting, 60% mastered spinning, and 31% mastered high-fiving. Aside from the ability to influence the cats’ well-being, clicker training also has the potential to make cats more desirable to adopters.
A Comparison Study for Chloride-Binding Capacity between Alkali-Activated Fly Ash and Slag in the Use of Seawater
Authors: Jun Yubin , Yoon Seyoon , Oh Jae
Published: September 2017

This study aimed to investigate the chloride-binding capacity of alkali-activated fly ash (denoted as FSW) and slag (denoted as SSW) samples and their synthesized Cl-bearing phases, which are capable of binding and immobilizing chloride when seawater is used as the mixing water. This study also examined the progressive changes in the pore structures of the FSW and SSW samples over time. The results show that the SSW sample is significantly more effective in the uptake of chloride ions compared to the FSW sample at 28 days of curing. While the FSW sample forms Cl-bearing zeolites (Cl-chabazite and Cl-sodalite) (possibly with similar types of geopolymeric gels), the SSW sample synthesizes Cl-bearing, layered double hydroxides (LDH) (Cl-hydrocalumite and Cl-hydrotalcite). Although both samples involve Cl-binding phases, the FSW sample is likely to be less efficient because it largely produces zeolites (or similar geopolymeric gels) with no Cl-binding capability (i.e., zeolites X and Y). Meanwhile, the SSW sample produces Cl-bearing LDH phases as well as C-S-H(I), which can physically adsorb chloride. The SSW sample exhibits both pore-size refinement and porosity reduction over time, while the FSW sample only exhibits pore-size refinement. Therefore, the SSW system is more advantageous in the use of seawater because it more effectively prevents Cl ingression due to greater impermeability.
Enhanced Design of a Soft Thin-Film Vibrotactile Actuator Based on PVC Gel
Authors: Park Won-Hyeong , Shin Eun-Jae , Kim Sang-Youn
Published: September 2017

We fabricated a soft thin-film vibrotactile actuator, which can be easily inserted into wearable devices, based on an electroactive PVC gel. One of the most important factors in fabricating a soft and thin vibrotactile actuator is to create vibrational force strong enough to stimulate human skin in a wide frequency range. To achieve this, we investigate the working principle of the PVC gel and suggest a new structure in which most of electric energy contributes to the deformation of the PVC gel. Due to this structure, the vibrational amplitude of the proposed PVC gel actuator could considerably increase (0.816 g (g = 9.8 m/s2) at resonant frequency). The vibrotactile amplitude is proportional to the amount of input voltage. It increased from 0.05 g up to 0.416 g with increasing applied voltages from 200 V to 1 kV at 1 Hz. The experimental results show that the proposed actuator can create a variety of haptic sensations.
A Review of Three-Dimensional Scanning Near-Field Optical Microscopy (3D-SNOM) and Its Applications in Nanoscale Light Management
Authors: Bazylewski Paul , Ezugwu Sabastine , Fanchini Giovanni
Published: September 2017

In this article, we present an overview of aperture and apertureless type scanning near-field optical microscopy (SNOM) techniques that have been developed, with a focus on three-dimensional (3D) SNOM methods. 3D SNOM has been undertaken to image the local distribution (within ~100 nm of the surface) of the electromagnetic radiation scattered by random and deterministic arrays of metal nanostructures or photonic crystal waveguides. Individual metal nanoparticles and metal nanoparticle arrays exhibit unique effects under light illumination, including plasmon resonance and waveguiding properties, which can be directly investigated using 3D-SNOM. In the second part of this article, we will review a few applications in which 3D-SNOM has proven to be useful for designing and understanding specific nano-optoelectronic structures. Examples include the analysis of the nano-optical response phonetic crystal waveguides, aperture antennae and metal nanoparticle arrays, as well as the design of plasmonic solar cells incorporating random arrays of copper nanoparticles as an optical absorption enhancement layer, and the use of 3D-SNOM to probe multiple components of the electric and magnetic near-fields without requiring specially designed probe tips. A common denominator of these examples is the added value provided by 3D-SNOM in predicting the properties-performance relationship of nanostructured systems.
Multivariate Analysis of Laser-Induced Tissue Ablation: Ex Vivo Liver Testing
Authors: Park Suhyun , Kang Hyun
Published: September 2017

A number of laser parameters are often regulated to enhance ablation efficiency during laser surgery. As one of clinical treatments, laser removal of benign prostate hyperplasia has been well accepted by surgical urologists. However, due to complex interactions of the surgical parameters, the procedure is still lengthy and dependent upon the surgeon’s skill and experience. The aim of the current study is to evaluate the feasibility of response surface method (RSM) to comprehend ablative interactions of multi-parameters and to identify the optimal ablation rate (AR). As a surrogate model in the feasibility study, bovine liver tissue was utilized for ex vivo ablation testing. Three laser parameters pertinent to laser prostatectomy were selected: power (P), treatment speed (TS), and beam spot (BS). As a three-level fractional factorial RSM, Box Behnken design (BBD) was employed to identify the range of each parameter for achieving the optimal AR. The results showed that regardless of TS, AR was linearly contingent on both P and BS due to high irradiance. TS of 6~7 mm/s induced the maximal AR when P of 180 W and BS of 0.4 mm2. The corresponding volumetric density energy yielded an ablation volume of 80 mm2, which was close to a transition to volumetric saturation. The BBD-based model showed a good agreement with the experimental data in terms of ablation volume. The proposed multivariate parametric analysis can be an efficient design method to identify the optimal conditions for laser therapeutics. Further investigations will be performed on prostatic tissue to validate the proposed approach and to explore various optimization processes.
The Physiological and Pathological Implications of the Formation of Hydrogels, with a Specific Focus on Amyloid Polypeptides
Authors: Jean Létitia , Foley Alex , Vaux David
Published: September 2017

Hydrogels are water-swollen and viscoelastic three-dimensional cross-linked polymeric network originating from monomer polymerisation. Hydrogel-forming polypeptides are widely found in nature and, at a cellular and organismal level, they provide a wide range of functions for the organism making them. Amyloid structures, arising from polypeptide aggregation, can be damaging or beneficial to different types of organisms. Although the best-known amyloids are those associated with human pathologies, this underlying structure is commonly used by higher eukaryotes to maintain normal cellular activities, and also by microbial communities to promote their survival and growth. Amyloidogenesis occurs by nucleation-dependent polymerisation, which includes several species (monomers, nuclei, oligomers, and fibrils). Oligomers of pathological amyloids are considered the toxic species through cellular membrane perturbation, with the fibrils thought to represent a protective sink for toxic species. However, both functional and disease-associated amyloids use fibril cross-linking to form hydrogels. The properties of amyloid hydrogels can be exploited by organisms to fulfil specific physiological functions. Non-physiological hydrogelation by pathological amyloids may provide additional toxic mechanism(s), outside of membrane toxicity by oligomers, such as physical changes to the intracellular and extracellular environments, with wide-spread consequences for many structural and dynamic processes, and overall effects on cell survival.
Hydroconversion of Waste Cooking Oil into Green Biofuel over Hierarchical USY-Supported NiMo Catalyst: A Comparative Study of Desilication and Dealumination
Authors: Zhang Zongwei , Wang Qingfa , Chen Hao , Zhang Xiangwen
Published: September 2017

The hydroconversion of waste cooking oil into hydrocarbon fuel was investigated over the hierarchical USY zeolite-supported NiMo catalysts which were prepared by dealumination ((NH4)2SiF6)/desilication (NaOH). The physical and acidity properties of the hierarchical catalysts were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), the Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) infrared spectroscopy of adsorbed pyridine (Py-IR), ammonia temperature-programmed desorption (NH3-TPD), and H2 temperature-programmed reduction (H2-TPR). The Brønsted/Lewis (B/L) acid distribution was little affected by dealumination and the acid density decreased significantly. However, the highly-desilicated catalysts decreased the B/L ratio obviously. Therefore, many more Mo species in the NiMoO4− and MoO3 phases were produced in the AHFS-treated catalysts, while more high-valence-state Mo species in the NiMoO4− phase were formed in the NaOH-treated catalysts. The AHFS-treated catalysts showed higher catalytic activity and better DCO2 selectivity and selective cracking for jet fuel. The 42.3% selectivity of jet fuel and 13.5% selectivity of jet-range aromatics was achieved over the 8 wt % (NH4)2SiF6-treated catalyst with 67% DCO2 selectivity.
Active Site Mimicry of Glutathione Peroxidase by Glutathione Imprinted Selenium-Containing Trypsin
Authors: Huang Yi , Ge Dan-Yang , Zong Hui , Yin Ju-Xin , Qu Xiao-Nan , Lv Shao-Wu
Published: September 2017

In order to overcome the instability of natural glutathione peroxidase (GPx), scientists endeavor to produce GPx mimics. The popular method first uses biological imprinting (BI) to produce the substrate binding sites and then employs chemical mutation (CM) to obtain the catalytic site. However, BICM has a drawback in that the catalytic site is not clear. Some researchers therefore tried to change the order of the method. These new GPx mimics were prepared by first producing the catalytic site through chemical mutation, and then employing biological imprinting to produce the substrate binding sites (CMBI). It has a clear catalytic site, but its determination of enzyme activity and kinetic analysis are still not elucidated. In this study, we used CMBI to synthesize a GPx mimic using trypsin as the imprinted molecule and GSSG as the template molecule and compared the enzyme activity of the four intermediates (Trypsin-SeO2H (TSeO2H), Trypsin-Se-SG (TSeSG), Imprinted Trypsin-Se-SG (ITSeSG), Cross-linked Imprinted Trypsin-Se-SG (CITSeSG), we analyzed the properties of intermediate products. All values are the means of at least four determinations, ITSeSG was produced from TSeSG through bio-imprinting, the activity of GPx mimics synthesized by CMBI was 5.7 times greater than native GPx, because of bio-imprinting make KmGSH value of the mimics decreased from 4.82 ± 0.27 mM (TSeSG) to 0.52 ± 0.05 mM (ITSeSG). This proves that bio-imprinting is the reason for increased substrate binding capability.
Dysbindin-1 Involvement in the Etiology of Schizophrenia
Authors: Wang Haitao , Xu Jiangping , Lazarovici Philip , Zheng Wenhua
Published: September 2017

Schizophrenia is a major psychiatric disorder that afflicts about 1% of the world’s population, falling into the top 10 medical disorders causing disability. Existing therapeutic strategies have had limited success on cognitive impairment and long-term disability and are burdened by side effects. Although new antipsychotic medications have been launched in the past decades, there has been a general lack of significant innovation. This lack of significant progress in the pharmacotherapy of schizophrenia is a reflection of the complexity and heterogeneity of the disease. To date, many susceptibility genes have been identified to be associated with schizophrenia. DTNBP1 gene, which encodes dysbindin-1, has been linked to schizophrenia in multiple populations. Studies on genetic variations show that DTNBP1 modulate prefrontal brain functions and psychiatric phenotypes. Dysbindin-1 is enriched in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and hippocampus, while postmortem brain studies of individuals with schizophrenia show decreased levels of dysbindin-1 mRNA and protein in these brain regions. These studies proposed a strong connection between dysbindin-1 function and the pathogenesis of disease. Dysbindin-1 protein was localized at both pre- and post-synaptic sites, where it regulates neurotransmitter release and receptors signaling. Moreover, dysbindin-1 has also been found to be involved in neuronal development. Reduced expression levels of dysbindin-1 mRNA and protein appear to be common in dysfunctional brain areas of schizophrenic patients. The present review addresses our current knowledge of dysbindin-1 with emphasis on its potential role in the schizophrenia pathology. We propose that dysbindin-1 and its signaling pathways may constitute potential therapeutic targets in the therapy of schizophrenia.
Effects of Processing Parameters on Surface Roughness of Additive Manufactured Ti-6Al-4V via Electron Beam Melting
Authors: Wang Pan , Sin Wai , Nai Mui , Wei Jun
Published: September 2017

As one of the powder bed fusion additive manufacturing technologies, electron beam melting (EBM) is gaining more and more attention due to its near-net-shape production capacity with low residual stress and good mechanical properties. These characteristics also allow EBM built parts to be used as produced without post-processing. However, the as-built rough surface introduces a detrimental influence on the mechanical properties of metallic alloys. Thereafter, understanding the effects of processing parameters on the part’s surface roughness, in turn, becomes critical. This paper has focused on varying the processing parameters of two types of contouring scanning strategies namely, multispot and non-multispot, in EBM. The results suggest that the beam current and speed function are the most significant processing parameters for non-multispot contouring scanning strategy. While for multispot contouring scanning strategy, the number of spots, spot time, and spot overlap have greater effects than focus offset and beam current. The improved surface roughness has been obtained in both contouring scanning strategies. Furthermore, non-multispot contouring scanning strategy gives a lower surface roughness value and poorer geometrical accuracy than the multispot counterpart under the optimized conditions. These findings could be used as a guideline for selecting the contouring type used for specific industrial parts that are built using EBM.
Metabolic Engineering of Escherichia coli for Producing Astaxanthin as the Predominant Carotenoid
Authors: Lu Qian , Bu Yi-Fan , Liu Jian-Zhong
Published: September 2017

Astaxanthin is a carotenoid of significant commercial value due to its superior antioxidant potential and wide applications in the aquaculture, food, cosmetic and pharmaceutical industries. A higher ratio of astaxanthin to the total carotenoids is required for efficient astaxanthin production. β-Carotene ketolase and hydroxylase play important roles in astaxanthin production. We first compared the conversion efficiency to astaxanthin in several β-carotene ketolases from Brevundimonas sp. SD212, Sphingomonas sp. DC18, Paracoccus sp. PC1, P. sp. N81106 and Chlamydomonas reinhardtii with the recombinant Escherichia coli cells that synthesize zeaxanthin due to the presence of the Pantoea ananatis crtEBIYZ. The B. sp. SD212 crtW and P. ananatis crtZ genes are the best combination for astaxanthin production. After balancing the activities of β-carotene ketolase and hydroxylase, an E. coli ASTA-1 that carries neither a plasmid nor an antibiotic marker was constructed to produce astaxanthin as the predominant carotenoid (96.6%) with a specific content of 7.4 ± 0.3 mg/g DCW without an addition of inducer.