bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Of Mites and Motes: Shakespearean Readings of Epicurean Science
Authors: Pollock Jonathan
Published: May 2018

This chapter is devoted to the rediscovery of Lucretius in the early modern period. Even though Shakespeare had no access to writings by Epicurus, there is a strong likelihood that he knew the De rerum natura by Lucretius, were it only via Montaigne’s Essays. It is Jonathan Pollock’s contention that the prevalence of weather imagery in Shakespeare’s later plays not only results from his propensity to cloud-gazing but also from his interest in Lucretius’s use of meteorological models in order to explain the creation and disintegration of material objects and living beings. Epicurean science recognizes only (atomic) matter and void, it denies the reality of a spiritual “substance” (God or an immortal soul). It would seem that Shakespeare uses Lucretian doctrine as a means of establishing dialectical oppositions: set against Lear’s naive paganism or Cordelia’s redemptive figure, for instance, atomism portrays a world without Divine Providence of any sort, subject to purely material forces.
Unlimited Science: The Endless Transformation of Nature in Bacon and Shakespeare’s The Tempest
Authors: Popelard Mickaël
Published: May 2018

Mickaël Popelard provides a different and complementary interpretation of The Tempest. He explores the early modern concept of infinity in relation to the transformation of nature. Doing so, he takes a look at the making of early modern science and provides us with a number of epistemological reflections on Shakespeare’s knowledge and, in particular, on his approach to limits and the unlimited. Taking Macbeth’s idea of an essentially limited human nature as his departure point, Popelard first focuses on Bacon’s both speculative and practical stand, insisting on the fact that, for him, the role of the scientist is to bind together theory and practice so as to achieve “the effecting of all things possible.” While he posits that Bacon’s reform of science and philosophy is marked by its open-endedness and, therefore, by its absence of limits, he shows that, if a similar interest in boundlessness can be noted in Shakespeare’s late plays, characters such as Prospero remain constrained by their obsession with “limits”, “confines” or “boundaries.” Yet, for all his epistemological hesitancy, Shakespeare’s magician and/or natural philosopher shares some of Bacon’s ideas on science, the most important being the belief in an operative rather than a verbally oriented science.
‘Vat is the clock, Jack?’: Shakespeare and the Technology of Time
Authors: Chiari Sophie
Published: May 2018

Sophie Chiari opens the volume’s last section with an exploration of the technology of time in Shakespeare’s plays. For if the lower classes of the Elizabethan society derived their idea of time thanks to public sundials, or, even more frequently in rural areas, to the cycles and rhythms of Nature, the elite benefited from a direct, tactile contact with the new instruments of time. Owning a miniature watch, at the end of the 16th century, was still a privilege, but Shakespeare already records this new habit in his plays. Dwelling on the anxiety of his wealthy Protestant contemporaries, the playwright pays considerable attention to the materiality of the latest time-keeping devices of his era, sometimes introducing unexpected dimensions to the measuring of time. Chiari also explains that the pieces of clockwork that started to be sold in early modern England were often endowed with a highly positive value, as timekeeping was more and more equated with order, harmony and balance. Yet, the mechanization of time was also a means of reminding people that they were to going to die, and the contemplation of mechanical clocks was therefore strongly linked to the medieval trope of contemptus mundi.
‘Wheels have been set in motion’: Geocentrism and Relativity in Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
Authors: Campos Liliane
Published: May 2018

By decentring our reading of Hamlet, Stoppard’s tragicomedy questions the legitimacy of centres and of stable frames of reference. So Liliane Campos examines how Stoppard plays with the physical and cosmological models he finds in Hamlet, particularly those of the wheel and the compass, and gives a new scientific depth to the fear that time is ‘out of joint’. In both his play and his own film adaptation, Stoppard’s rewriting gives a 20th-century twist to these metaphors, through references to relativity, indeterminacy, and the role of the observer. When they refer to the uncontrollable wheels of their fate, his characters no longer describe the destruction of order, but uncertainty about which order is at work, whether heliocentric or geocentric, random or tragic. When they express their loss of bearings, they do so through the thought experiments of modern physics, from Galilean relativity to quantum uncertainty, drawing our attention to shifting frames of reference. Much like Schrödinger’s cat, Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are both dead and alive. As we observe their predicament, Campos argues, we are placed in the paradoxical position of the observer in 20th-century physics, and constantly reminded that our time-specific relation to the canon inevitably determines our interpretation.
Coda: Scepticism and the Spectacular – On Shakespeare in an Age of Science
Authors: Mazzio Carla
Published: May 2018

Carla Mazzio supplies the volume’s Coda, which reads as a general conclusion. Commenting on the conceptual trajectory of the book, she reassesses the status of staged science in Shakespeare’s England and shows how science and theatre intersected through a number of problems and representations. She puts forward the increasing disjunction between seeing and knowing at the turn of the seventeenth century, calling attention to the advent of scepticism, and in doing so, she offers new interpretative tracks to explore Shakespeare’s relationship to popular science and the cutting-edge developments of his time.
The Contingency of Necessity
Authors: Tritten Tyler
Published: May 2018

This book shows how all necessity – logical, mathematical, physical, transcendental or metaphysical - is consequent. It argues that reason and God, although necessary with respect to essence, are, with respect to existence, eternal contingencies. The first chapter critically reverses Meillasssoux’s claim for the necessity of contingency. The second chapter positively outlines the possibility of contingent necessity by means of Boutroux’s neglected book The Contingency of the Laws of Nature. The third chapter further grounds this possibility by means of the early Schelling’s reading of Plato’s Timaeus. Chapters four and five turn to Schelling’s late philosophy, detailing an ontology that treats reason and God as matters of fact rather than as truths of reason. Chapter six draws parallels and differences between Schelling’s approach and the “passing by” of the last God in Heidegger’s Contributions to Philosophy. The book’s final chapter argues for a new typology for philosophical theology, theomonism, and how this conception can provide a contemporary response to the Euthyphro Dilemma. While some authors, e.g. Meillassoux and Kearney, have recently argued for a possible God who does not exist now but may in the future, this book addresses an unexplored alternative, a contingent God that eternally exists but could have eternally never existed.
Meillassoux against the Principle of Reason: An Ontology of Factiality
Authors: Tritten Tyler
Published: May 2018

While Meillassoux has famously argued for the necessity of contingency, this chapter offers a critique of Meillassoux in order to pose the possibility of the contingency of necessity. An alternative conception of chaos, in opposition to Meillassoux’s Hyper-Chaos, is offered that is not amenable to an empirical rather than rationalist approach, even if Meillassoux does reject the principle of sufficient reason. In addition, Meillassoux’s argument for factiality and his argument that only contradictory beings are necessary beings, and therefore cannot exist, are exposed as sophistical.
On the Primacy of Matter: Neoplatonism Right-Side Up
Authors: Tritten Tyler
Published: May 2018

This chapter provides a close reading of Schelling’s early commentary on Plato’s Timaeus and then contrasts this reading with Neoplatonism’s, particularly Proclus’, understanding of this same text. While Neoplatonism views being according to a hierarchy of degradation or descent, with matter at the bottom, Schelling affirms that being potentiates itself into higher and greater degrees of order such that matter is not the last but the first. He is able to do this, however, only by rejecting the Platonic notion of participation. For Schelling, the participating acquires an independence from the participated so that an effect can be greater than its cause and, moreover, the effect exerts a retroactive after effect on the cause. The identity of a cause or antecedent is only constituted in and through its consequents. If matter is said to process from the One, then matter, in turn, is the consequent condition of the identity of the One as one rather than as many.
Event and De-cision: Towards an Appropriation of Heidegger’s Last God
Authors: Tritten Tyler
Published: May 2018

This chapter compares Heidegger, primarily utilizing his notion of the last God in Contributions to Philosophy and his analysis of the contingency of reason The Principle of Reason, with Schelling. A number of similarities are drawn while also being careful to explicate their essential differences. For instance, although Schelling offers a very elaborate philosophy and history of mythology, Heidegger proves more pagan insofar as the last God is to be ushered in by poets rather than by philosophers. Of particular interest is a certain ambivalence in Heidegger. Does the last God arrive because beckoned by the human being or does the last God arrive completely of its own accord?
A Response to Old Riddles and a New Typology: On the Euthyphro Dilemma and Theomonism
Authors: Tritten Tyler
Published: May 2018

This chapter argues for a reading of Schelling that is able to offer a satisfactory response to the Euthyphro Dilemma while also avoiding the pitfall of onto-theology, that is, grounding God’s existence in reason alone while grounding the being of reason in God. Eternal truths of reason exist only because God exists, but God only exists as God by means of this consequence. This does not, however, identify God and reason as onto-theology has done, as it is argued that all identification is only possible on the basis of a more radically conceived and more original process of differentiation. God only exists as God on the basis of a consequence that has acquired an independence and autonomy. There is thus not one God, but God only exists as One by means of that which results from him, hence theomonism rather than monotheism.
The Return of the National in a Mobile World
Authors: Triandafyllidou Anna
Published: May 2018

Nations are faced today with a new set of social and economic challenges: economic globalisation has intensified bringing with it a more intense phase of cultural interconnectedness and political interdependence. Globalisation has also further driven and multiplied international flows not only of capitals, goods and services but also of people. National states have seen their capacity to govern undermined by these processes. However, in Europe, the nation continues to be a powerful source of identity and legitimacy. This chapter offers a reflection on the centrifugal and centripetal forces that challenge the nation today and the kind of analytical tools that we need to connect wider socio-economic transformations with nationalism theories. The chapter is organised as follows. I first briefly review globalisation as a socio-economic phenomenon and the changes it brings at the identity level, leading to what Bauman has termed liquid modernity. In section three I am arguing however that the increased and diversified types of international migration and mobility that globalisation brings, lead to the re-emergence of the nation as a relevant point of reference for identification as well as a relevant political community that can protect people and tame the forces of globalisation. Last I am surveying developments in several European countries showing how citizens seek refuge from the social and economic challenges of globalisation and international mobility in the warm embrace of the nation that offers both the promise of political sovereignty and legitimacy and that of a feeling of shared destiny – something that for instance regional formations like the European Union cannot offer.
Reimagining the Nation, Migration and Citizenship: The Role of Cultural Institutions and New Institutional Responses
Authors: Levitt Peggy
Published: May 2018

The goal of this volume is to reconsider citizenship, integration, and diversity in the context of heightened mobility and permanent impermanence, where large numbers of migrants are long-term partial members of their societies of origin and settlement. Although cultural institutions are often sites where these categories are (re) negotiated, they are often left out of the scholarly conversation. In the first part of this chapter, I explore how one type of cultural institution—museums—are responding to immigration and globalization around the world. I ask if and how they are changing notions of citizenship, nationhood, and pluralism. The second half looks at new forms of transnational social protection that arise in response to the current world on the move.
Settlers or Movers? The Temporality of Past Migrations, Political Inaction and its Consequences, 1945–1985
Authors: Bock Jozefien De
Published: May 2018

Historically, those societies that have the longest tradition in multicultural policies are settler societies. The question of how to deal with temporary migrants has only recently aroused their interest. In Europe, temporary migration programmes have a much longer history. In the period after WWII, a wide range of legal frameworks were set up to import temporary workers, who came to be known as guest workers. In the end, many of these ‘guests’ settled in Europe permanently. Their presence lay at the basis of European multicultural policies. However, when these policies were drafted, the former mobility of guest workers had been forgotten. This chapter will focus on this mobility of initially temporary workers, comparing the period of economic growth 1945-1974 with the years after the 1974 economic crisis. Further, it will look at the kind of policies that were developed towards guest workers in the era before multiculturalism. This way, it shows how their consideration as temporary residents had far-reaching consequences for the immigrants, their descendants and the receiving societies involved. The chapter will finish by suggesting a number of lessons from the past. If the mobility-gap between guest workers and present-day migrants is not as big as generally assumed, then the consequences of previous neglect should serve as a warning for future policy making.
The Migration-Mobility Nexus: Rethinking Citizenship and Integration as Processes1
Authors: Gianni Matteo
Published: May 2018

In Western societies multiculturalism is increasingly perceived neither as a legitimate nor an efficient way to promote a fair conception of citizenship and an efficient integration of religious and cultural minorities. This has led to a higher political relevance of the notion of integration, defining the perimeter and the modalities of accommodation of minority groups. However, the dominant existing conceptions of integration and citizenship implicitly assume the immobility of immigrants. The chapter aims at thinking about a conception of democratic integration which is suited to tackle issues related to mobility of individuals and groups. It discusses the concept of integration in distinguishing two main conceptions of it, namely integration as adjustment and integration as an inter-subjective process of negotiation and/or reinterpretation of the specific content of common values and of common belonging. On the basis of the moral superiority of integration as process over integration as adaptation, there are not compelling reasons that this should preclude mobile individuals. Immobility is not needed to deliberate about democratic norms of common belonging. But this cannot result in the diminution of rights and resources of individuals who do not have the choice of mobility. Multicultural terms of fair integration are therefore still needed to accommodate societies where minority groups are marked by difference.
Introduction: Deleuze: In Practice
Authors: Flaxman Gregory
Published: May 2018

This chapter traces a philosophical genealogy of the concept of practice itself - from Attic Greek and Latin through to French, German and English, on the one hand, and from Aristotle to contemporary philosophy via Kant, Marx and Freud on the other. In doing so, it frames Deleuze’s claim for a radical constructivism in both philosophy and art, and, ultimately, between them, in a syncretic zone of mutual interference and provocation.
Experience and its Others
Authors: Rothfield Philipa
Published: May 2018

This chapter draws on Deleuzian thought in order to think through the role of experience within dance and the activity of dancing more generally. It contrasts phenomenological approaches to dancing, which appeal to notions of subjective agency, with a Deleuzian re-reading of subjectivity. In the process, it refers to Deleuze’s reading of Nietzsche, using Nietzsche’s concept of force to account for the many ways in which forces combine to produce movement. The notion of force is able to explain the way action unfolds without being the product of human agency. It offers a way of rethinking phenomenological notions of agency. According to this account, relations of force underlie action, as well as the many modes of interiority (subjectivity). But these two kinds of formation (of force) are different in kind. They belong to differing types (of force). The pursuit of action, including the utilisation of experience in action, constitutes a certain type of ethos, which Deleuze calls the active type, whereas the formation of experience belongs to ‘the reactive apparatus’, that which reacts but does not act. The active type drives a wedge between the dancing and the dancer. Deleuze’s treatment of Nietzsche can be adapted to account for the variety of dance practices, their production of training and technique, custom and virtuosity. In particular, it is able to account for the specific ways in which postmodern dance displaces the subjectivity of the dancer.
Confronting Domestic Violence and Familial Abuse: Once Were Warriors (Lee Tamahori, 1994)
Authors: Fox Alistair
Published: May 2018

This chapter points to the presence of three often-overlooked coming-of-age narrative strands in Lee Tamahori’s Once Were Warriors, in what is ostensibly a social problem film. A comparison with Alan Duff’s autobiographical novel from which the film was adapted, reveals strategies that Tamahori adopted to invest the story with a more standardized generic complexion that relates it to the Hollywood action films of filmmakers like Robert Aldrich and Sam Peckinpah and Sergio Leone’s spaghetti westerns for the sake of enlarging its box office appeal for an international audience. Finally, the discussion shows how Tamahori changed the ideological underpinnings of the story by converting Duff’s neoliberal vision of self-help into an assumption that a return to the values of traditional Māori culture is the remedy for the ills of socio-economically deprived Māori who have migrated to the city.
Delinquency and Bicultural Relations: Hunt for the Wilderpeople (Taika Waititi, 2016)
Authors: Fox Alistair
Published: May 2018

This chapter shows how Taika Waititi’s Hunt for the Wilderpeople, the most successful New Zealand film to date, adopts similar stylistic methods as Waititi’s earlier hit, Boy, in order to address similar themes: the effect of emotional deprivation as a result of parental abandonment, and the search for love and family. Through a comparison with the source novel, Barry Crump’s Wild Pork and Watercress (1986), the analysis retraces the means by which Waititi converts a story involving individuals into a symbolic representation of the history of New Zealand race relations at large with the aim of proposing a fruitful way forward for the future.
Uniting Earth to the Blue of Heaven Above: Strange Attractors in Whitehead’s Symbolism
Authors: Faber Roland
Published: May 2018

Symbolism is maybe one of the most obscure books of Whitehead's oeuvre: in between grand projects, small in appearance, seemingly integrated in other works, less known, and, to a certain extent, considered superfluous. Yet, on second thought, it might be that in its fringe existence Symbolism holds some gems to be rediscovered and cherished. Relating in maybe the most immediate way to current questions of language, ecology, and political philosophy by, at the same time, elaborating a highly creative conceptual multiplicity of modes of perception, Symbolism exposes us to a series of strange attractors which, while not absent from other works, might be found to be more densely interwoven here than elsewhere. The following considerations will name and relate some of these strange attractors to the issues the book seems to be addressing while speaking to us today, about a hundred years after its writing.
Ren and Causal Efficacy: Confucians and Whitehead on the Social Role of Symbolism
Authors: Lee Hyo-Dong
Published: May 2018

Confucians in East Asia have always dreamed of holding human communities together and constructing well-functioning polities in and through the binding and harmonizing power of rituals. Underlying their trust in the power of rituals is the notion that rituals constitute symbolic articulation and enchancement of our affective responses to the conditions of embodied relationality and historicity in which we always already find ourselves. This Confucian theory of rituals resonates with Whitehead’s theory of symbolism, insofar as the latter advances a primordially relational ontology of the subject by highlighting the hitherto neglected epistemological notion of perception in the mode of causal efficacy. As such, the Confucian theory of rituals offers a fresh cross-cultural perspective to understand Whitehead’s implied critique of the modern liberal social theories that are based on a view of human beings as atomized individuals who rationally consent to enter society.
Impossible Divisions: Fanon, Hegel and Psychoanalysis
Authors: Morgan Wortham Simon
Published: May 2018

This chapter concentrates on Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks, where the Hegelian theme of mutual recognition as the origin of man’s self-consciousness and potential freedom is tested against the complex circumstances of colonialism. Fanon’s idea that the ‘Negro slave’ is recognized by the ‘White Master’ in a situation that is ‘without conflict’ suggests a possibly double, or self-resistant, meaning: the colonial situation after slavery ushers in something like a phony war; but also colonialism’s historical interpretation is not exhausted by the Hegelian master-slave logic. Through this double possibility of the colonial, one wonders whether after Hegel it is historical interpretation or the historical process itself that has gone awry. Such dynamic tensions suggest an impossibly divided dialectics at work throughout Fanon’s corpus. The section of Fanon’s ‘The Negro and Recognition’ devoted to a critique of Adler points to an earlier footnote in Black Skin, White Masks which offers a lengthy engagement with Lacan, allowing us to reread the politics of racial difference into the scene of the Lacanian mirror-stage. Here, the resistant ‘other’ of psychoanalysis unlocks the possibility of another ‘politics’ capable of addressing, by better recognising, some of its most significant impasses.
Civility and its Discontents: Balibar, Arendt, Lyotard
Authors: Morgan Wortham Simon
Published: May 2018

This chapter concentrates on violence and civility in the work of Étienne Balibar. Is his concept of ‘anti-violence’ able to negotiate a lesser violence that preserves the possibility of civility, or is fated only to redistribute the modalities of violence, including revolutionary ‘counter-violence’ and pacifist ‘non-violence’, in a way that risks the greater violence of managed oppression and exploitation? Through references to the work of Hannah Arendt that connect their two ‘texts’, this chapter turns from Balibar’s writings to the work of Jean-François Lyotard, notably the short essay ‘The Other’s Rights’, in order to assess whether Lyotard’s thought offers pathways beyond the seemingly irresolvable paradoxes of ‘anti-violence’. Along the way, the chapter contemplates the debts of both these thinkers to the psychoanalytic corpus. If reconceptualising violence in its contemporary guises involves transformative re-engagement with psychoanalytic ideas and arguments, I suggest that Balibar’s thought inherits and assumes a resistance of psychoanalysis that may also be a resistance of psychoanalysis.
The University and the Hysteric (after Derrida and Freud)
Authors: Morgan Wortham Simon
Published: May 2018

This chapter turns to Freud’s writings on hysteria at the end of the nineteenth century, notably the case history of Elisabeth von R., where difficulties in walking, leg pains, uncertain balance and ‘locomotor weakness’ prompted Freud to diagnose a case of hysteria. If this predicament sounds a little remote from more conventional questions of politics, it acquires relevance as a way to extend Derrida’s discussion, in ‘Mochlos’, of the modern, post-Kantian university institution as constituted by a bodily division of its parts aimed at establishing proportion and balance but actually giving rise to certain difficulties that are somewhat akin to the ‘locomotor weakness’ that Freud associated with the hysteric. From this perspective, if it becomes possible to consider speaking of the university as itself hysterical or caught up in a case of hysteria, then this chapter considers the question of the institutional ‘politics’ that hysteria might allow or encourage.
Fear of the Open: Resistances of the Public Sphere
Authors: Morgan Wortham Simon
Published: May 2018

This chapter explores the theme of the ‘outside’, and the fears, desires, drives and indeed drift it seems to inspire, in order to raise the question of agoraphobia in a number of contexts. In particular, agoraphobia is not only about recoil or retreat from public spaces: surprisingly enough, an abiding fear of the ‘open’ may in fact generate the conditions of possibility for a democratically-oriented public sphere, however fragile and contradictory they may be. Agoraphobic fear of the space of the public square, whether crowded or comparatively empty, can produce inconsistent effects, provoking reactionary paranoia as well as inspiring political dissent. But if the appeal to the ‘rational ground’ of a public sphere is at least in part based upon agoraphobic, crowd-fearing impulses, its evocation of reason and duty is exceeded and resisted by a notion of Levinasian responsibility that has been described in terms of an ‘ethical agoraphobia’. If the ‘ethical agoraphobia’ of Levinasian responsibility entails a step into the ‘open’ that cannot simply be faced fearlessly, then this surely prompts critique of recent speculative materialism as in want of an object to be scared of.
Military Engineers, Maps and the Survival of the Savoyard State (1559–1798)
Authors: Storrs Christopher
Published: May 2018

The Savoyard state was an extreme example of the importance of military engineers and map making in the process of state formation because of the composite multi-lingual nature of the state and its vulnerable position between the power of France and the domains of the Austrian Habsburgs. The Dukes of Savoy attained royal status by often duplicitous policies and endless participation in wars on east and west which require extensive fortification. Their capital Turin survived a great siege in 1706. Latterly military cartography of high quality was produced in Savoy by its prestigious military engineers who inevitably bore responsibility when its expensive, ineffective defences collapsed before French Revolutionary armies.
Military Engineering in the Ottoman Empire
Authors: Sakul Kahraman
Published: May 2018

The Ottoman Empire was largely self-sufficient in the materials of gunpowder warfare, apart from tin. In the Danube and Mediterranean basins it had access to a culture of technological transfer not least from French and Walloon deserters whom the Habsburgs did not always pay regularly. Ottoman architects such as the great Sinan Aga were mathematically informed and expected to cover secular, religious and military tasks. A centralised regime sustained a small imperial engineering corps. Its modernisation after 1720 was impeded not by prejudice but by fiscal, political and military over-extension.
Amphibious Engineers and the Margins of Seaborne Empires
Authors: Lenman Bruce P.
Published: May 2018

The post- Vauban variety of geographical and engineering expertise in French armies from Louis XIV to Napoleon was unusual. On the maritime edges of most European overseas empires, military engineers were scarce. One source of relevant mathematical expertise was navigators. Captain Cook learned surveying from and worked with a Dutch military engineer in the British service in Canada. Felipe Bauzá the Spanish hydrographer-explorer was also a professor of fortification. Major James Rennell EIC and FRS epitomised the need for cross- fertilisation as a navigator, soldier, cartographer, and hydrographer.
French Military Engineers in the American Colonies, 1635–1776
Authors: d’Orgeix Emilie
Published: May 2018

The first French military engineers in the American colonies between 1635 and 1670 did not belong to a professional corps, being officers with expertise to do military land-surveying and construct emergency defences. Between 1670 and 1691 engineers were under the discipline of Vauban who chose them for missions in Canada or the French Antilles. After 1691, until 1776, they were all ingénieurs du roi. They ranged across citadel and fort construction, cartography and town planning (especially in Louisiana and Saint Domingue).They promoted the urban grid plan, as well as harbours and road construction. With incorporation in a royal Genie corps in 1776 they became much more strictly military.
Development and Experimental Evaluation of Machine-Learning Techniques for an Intelligent Hairy Scalp Detection System
Authors: Wang Wei-Chien , Chen Liang-Bi , Chang Wan-Jung
Published: May 2018

Deep learning has become the most popular research subject in the fields of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning. In October 2013, MIT Technology Review commented that deep learning was a breakthrough technology. Deep learning has made progress in voice and image recognition, image classification, and natural language processing. Prior to deep learning, decision tree, linear discriminant analysis (LDA), support vector machines (SVM), k-nearest neighbors algorithm (K-NN), and ensemble learning were popular in solving classification problems. In this paper, we applied the previously mentioned and deep learning techniques to hairy scalp images. Hairy scalp problems are usually diagnosed by non-professionals in hair salons, and people with such problems may be advised by these non-professionals. Additionally, several common scalp problems are similar; therefore, non-experts may provide incorrect diagnoses. Hence, scalp problems have worsened. In this work, we implemented and compared the deep-learning method, the ImageNet-VGG-f model Bag of Words (BOW), with machine-learning classifiers, and histogram of oriented gradients (HOG)/pyramid histogram of oriented gradients (PHOG) with machine-learning classifiers. The tools from the classification learner apps were used for hairy scalp image classification. The results indicated that deep learning can achieve an accuracy of 89.77% when the learning rate is 1 × 10−4, and this accuracy is far higher than those achieved by BOW with SVM (80.50%) and PHOG with SVM (53.0%).
An Effective Delivery System of Sitagliptin Using Optimized Mucoadhesive Nanoparticles
Authors: Haq Asif Afzal , Harsha Sree , Hodalur Puttaswamy Niranjan , E. Al-Dhubiab Bandar
Published: May 2018

Sitagliptin (MK-0431), is a potent oral hypoglycemic drug that is used for treating type 2 diabetes mellitus. However, the short half-life of sitagliptin requires patients to take a high dose of 50 mg twice per day, and the fraction of sitagliptin reversibly bound to plasma proteins is as low as 38%. In addition, it was reported that approximately 79% of sitagliptin is excreted unchanged in the urine for elimination without metabolism. Thus, a better delivery system is needed to improve the benefits of sitagliptin in patients. The drug content and percentage yield were found to be 73 ± 2% and 92 ± 2%, respectively. The optimized sitagliptin nanoparticle sizes were between 350–950 nm, and the surfaces were smooth and nearly spherical in shape. In addition, the optimized sitagliptin nanoparticles have an indicated excellent bioadhesion property of (6.1 ± 0.5 h). The swelling of the nanoparticles is 168 ± 15%. The pattern of sitagliptin release from the mucoadhesive nanoparticles follows the Korsmeyer-Peppas model. More importantly, the extended sitagliptin retention time, of up to 12 h in the gastrointestinal tract, suggests that the optimized mucoadhesive nanoparticle formulation is more efficient, and has a greater potential to be used for oral delivery compared to the conventional sitagliptin administration in the drug solution. This is the first developed delivery system using the optimized mucoadhesive nanoparticles to enhance the effectiveness of sitagliptin.
Sources of Embodied Creativity: Interactivity and Ideation in Contact Improvisation
Authors: Kimmel Michael , Hristova Dayana , Kussmaul Kerstin
Published: May 2018

Drawing on a micro-phenomenological paradigm, we discuss Contact Improvisation (CI), where dancers explore potentials of intercorporeal weight sharing, kinesthesia, touch, and momentum. Our aim is to typologically discuss creativity related skills and the rich spectrum of creative resources CI dancers use. This spectrum begins with relatively idea-driven creation and ends with interactivity-centered, fully emergent creation: (1) Ideation internal to the mind, the focus of traditional creativity research, is either restricted to semi-independent dancing or remains schematic and thus open to dynamic specification under the partner’s influence. (2) Most frequently, CI creativity occurs in tightly coupled behavior and is radically emergent. This means that interpersonal synergies emerge without anybody’s prior design or planned coordination. The creative feat is interpersonally “distributed” over cascades of cross-scaffolding. Our micro-genetic data validate notions from dynamic systems theory such as interpersonal self-organization, although we criticize the theory for failing to explain where precisely this leaves skilled intentionality on the individuals’ part. Our answer is that dancers produce a stream of momentary micro-intentions that say “yes, and”, or “no, but” to short-lived micro-affordances, which allows both individuals to skillfully continue, elaborate, tweak, or redirect the collective movement dynamics. Both dancers can invite emergence as part of their playful exploration, while simultaneously bringing to bear global constraints, such as dance scores, and guide the collective dynamics with a set of specialized skills we shall term emergence management.
Degradation and Loss of Antibacterial Activity of Commercial Amoxicillin with TiO2/WO3-Assisted Solar Photocatalysis
Authors: Arce-Sarria Augusto , Machuca-Martínez Fiderman , Bustillo-Lecompte Ciro , Hernández-Ramírez Aracely , Colina-Márquez José
Published: May 2018

In this study, a TiO2 catalyst, modified with tungsten oxide (WO3), was synthesized to reduce its bandgap energy (Eg) and to improve its photocatalytic performance. For the catalyst evaluation, the effect of the calcination temperature on the solar photocatalytic degradation was analyzed. The experimental runs were carried out in a CPC (compound parabolic collector) pilot-scale solar reactor, following a multilevel factorial experimental design, which allowed analysis of the effect of the calcination temperature, the initial concentration of amoxicillin, and the catalyst load on the amoxicillin removal. The most favorable calcination temperature for the catalyst performance, concerning the removal of amoxicillin, was 700 °C; because it was the only sample that showed the rutile phase in its crystalline structure. Regarding the loss of the antibiotic activity, the inhibition tests showed that the treated solution of amoxicillin exhibited lower antibacterial activity. The highest amoxicillin removal achieved in these experiments was 64.4% with 100 ppm of amoxicillin concentration, 700 °C of calcination temperature, and 0.1 g L−1 of catalyst load. Nonetheless, the modified TiO2/WO3 underperformed compared to the commercial TiO2 P25, due to its low specific surface and the particles sintering during the sol-gel synthesis.
Electrocatalytic Performance of Carbon Supported WO3-Containing Pd–W Nanoalloys for Oxygen Reduction Reaction in Alkaline Media
Authors: Cui Nan , Li Wenpeng , Guo Zengfeng , Xu Xun , Zhao Hongxia
Published: May 2018

In this paper, we report that WOx containing nanoalloys exhibit stable electrocatalytic performance in alkaline media, though bulk WO3 is easy to dissolve in NaOH solution. Carbon supported oxide-rich Pd–W alloy nanoparticles (PdW/C) with different Pd:W atom ratios were prepared by the reduction–oxidation method. Among the catalysts, the oxide-rich Pd0.8W0.2/C (Pd/W = 8:2, atom ratio) exhibits the highest catalytic activity for the oxygen reduction reaction. The X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy data shows that ~40% of Pd atoms and ~60% of the W atoms are in their oxide form. The Pd 3d5/2 binding energy of the oxide-rich Pd–W nanoalloys is higher than that of Pd/C, indicating the electronic structure of Pd is affected by the strong interaction between Pd and W/WO3. Compare to Pd/C, the onset potential of the oxygen reduction reaction at the oxide-rich Pd0.8W0.2/C shifts to a higher potential. The current density (mA·mg Pd−1) at the oxide-rich Pd0.8W0.2/C is ~1.6 times of that at Pd/C. The oxide-rich Pd0.8W0.2/C also exhibits higher catalytic stability than Pd/C, which demonstrates that it is a prospective candidate for the cathode of fuel cells operating with alkaline electrolyte.
Mitochondrial Fatty Acid Oxidation Disorders Associated with Short-Chain Enoyl-CoA Hydratase (ECHS1) Deficiency
Authors: Sharpe Alice J. , McKenzie Matthew
Published: May 2018

Mitochondrial fatty acid β-oxidation (FAO) is the primary pathway for fatty acid metabolism in humans, performing a key role in liver, heart and skeletal muscle energy homeostasis. FAO is particularly important during times of fasting when glucose supply is limited, providing energy for many organs and tissues, including the heart, liver and brain. Deficiencies in FAO can cause life-threatening metabolic disorders in early childhood that present with liver dysfunction, hypoglycemia, dilated hypertrophic cardiomyopathy and Reye-like Syndrome. Alternatively, FAO defects can also cause ‘milder’ adult-onset disease with exercise-induced myopathy and rhabdomyolysis. Short-chain enoyl-CoA hydratase (ECHS1) is a key FAO enzyme involved in the metabolism of fatty acyl-CoA esters. ECHS1 deficiency (ECHS1D) also causes human disease; however, the clinical manifestation is unlike most other FAO disorders. ECHS1D patients commonly present with Leigh syndrome, a lethal form of subacute necrotizing encephalomyelopathy traditionally associated with defects in oxidative phosphorylation (OXPHOS). In this article, we review the clinical, biochemical and genetic features of the ESHS1D patients described to date, and discuss the significance of the secondary OXPHOS defects associated with ECHS1D and their contribution to overall disease pathogenesis.
Synthetic Nax Zeolite as a Very Efficient Heavy Metals Sorbent in Batch and Dynamic Conditions
Authors: Ezzeddine Zeinab , Batonneau-Gener Isabelle , Pouilloux Yannick , Hamad Hussein , Saad Zeinab
Published: May 2018

The heavy metals removal efficiency of synthetic NaX zeolite has been studied. The sorbent was fully characterized by nitrogen sorption, X-ray diffraction, FT-IR and scanning electron microscopy. The batch sorption tests were performed taking into consideration several factors such as m/V ratio, contact time, pH and initial metal ions concentration. The maximum sorption capacities were 3.45, 3.86 and 4 mmol g−1 for Pb2+, Cd2+ and Cu2+, respectively. Fixed-bed experiments were carried out to test the applicability of NaX zeolite as well as column regeneration experiments.
Land Manager Perspectives on Conflict Mitigation Strategies for Urban Flying-Fox Camps
Authors: Currey Kaye , Kendal Dave , Van der Ree Rodney , Lentini Pia E.
Published: May 2018

Over the last 20 years, there has been a notable increase in the presence of flying-foxes (Pteropodidae) in urban areas in Australia. Flying-foxes congregate during the day in camps which at times may contain many thousands of individuals. The associated noise, smell, mess and concerns about disease transmission can result in significant conflict with local communities. Managers of flying-fox camps use a range of management approaches to mitigate tensions, but the success or otherwise of these has been largely undocumented. Land managers were surveyed to determine the relative cost and perceived effectiveness of mitigation strategies using semi-structured interviews and an online questionnaire. We found that five actions were commonly used to manage flying-foxes: (1) stakeholder education, (2) the creation of buffers between camps and adjacent residents via vegetation removal or (3) the creation of buffers via deterrents, (4) dispersal of flying-foxes via disturbance, and (5) dispersal of flying-foxes via vegetation removal. Perceptions of effectiveness varied considerably among managers. Overall, the creation of buffers via vegetation removal was considered the most effective action, and stakeholder education was perceived to be the least effective. Dispersal via disturbance was also considered effective at reducing complaints and improving amenity, but not particularly effective overall likely due to the often short-term relief provided to residents before camps were recolonised. It was evident that the actions taken by managers and their perceived effectiveness were influenced by the attitudes of the community. This highlights the importance of considering the human dimensions of human-wildlife conflict in mitigation strategies.
Response to Comment on Thigpen D. et al. The Role of Ultrasound in Screening Dense Breasts—A Review of the Literature and Practical Solutions for Implementation. Diagnostics 2018, 8, 20
Authors: Thigpen Denise , Kappler Amanda , Brem Rachel
Published: May 2018

Thank you for your thoughtful comments regarding breast density legislation[...]
Stochastic Entropy Solutions for Stochastic Nonlinear Transport Equations
Authors: Tian Rongrong , Tang Yanbin
Published: May 2018

This paper considers the existence and uniqueness of stochastic entropy solution for a nonlinear transport equation with a stochastic perturbation. The uniqueness is based on the doubling variable method. For the existence, we develop a new scheme of parabolic approximation motivated by the method of vanishing viscosity given by Feng and Nualart (J. Funct. Anal. 2008, 255, 313–373). Furthermore, we prove the continuous dependence of stochastic strong entropy solutions on the coefficient b and the nonlinear function f.
Bayesian Nonparametric Modeling of Categorical Data for Information Fusion and Causal Inference
Authors: Xiong Sihan , Fu Yiwei , Ray Asok
Published: May 2018

This paper presents a nonparametric regression model of categorical time series in the setting of conditional tensor factorization and Bayes network. The underlying algorithms are developed to provide a flexible and parsimonious representation for fusion of correlated information from heterogeneous sources, which can be used to improve the performance of prediction tasks and infer the causal relationship between key variables. The proposed method is first illustrated by numerical simulation and then validated with two real-world datasets: (1) experimental data, collected from a swirl-stabilized lean-premixed laboratory-scale combustor, for detection of thermoacoustic instabilities and (2) publicly available economics data for causal inference-making.
Shannon Entropy Estimation in ∞-Alphabets from Convergence Results: Studying Plug-In Estimators
Authors: Silva Jorge F.
Published: May 2018

This work addresses the problem of Shannon entropy estimation in countably infinite alphabets studying and adopting some recent convergence results of the entropy functional, which is known to be a discontinuous function in the space of probabilities in ∞-alphabets. Sufficient conditions for the convergence of the entropy are used in conjunction with some deviation inequalities (including scenarios with both finitely and infinitely supported assumptions on the target distribution). From this perspective, four plug-in histogram-based estimators are studied showing that convergence results are instrumental to derive new strong consistent estimators for the entropy. The main application of this methodology is a new data-driven partition (plug-in) estimator. This scheme uses the data to restrict the support where the distribution is estimated by finding an optimal balance between estimation and approximation errors. The proposed scheme offers a consistent (distribution-free) estimator of the entropy in ∞-alphabets and optimal rates of convergence under certain regularity conditions on the problem (finite and unknown supported assumptions and tail bounded conditions on the target distribution).
Rate-Distortion Function Upper Bounds for Gaussian Vectors and Their Applications in Coding AR Sources
Authors: Gutiérrez-Gutiérrez Jesús , Zárraga-Rodríguez Marta , Villar-Rosety Fernando M. , Insausti Xabier
Published: May 2018

In this paper, we give upper bounds for the rate-distortion function (RDF) of any Gaussian vector, and we propose coding strategies to achieve such bounds. We use these strategies to reduce the computational complexity of coding Gaussian asymptotically wide sense stationary (AWSS) autoregressive (AR) sources. Furthermore, we also give sufficient conditions for AR processes to be AWSS.
Women Rectors and Leadership Narratives: The Same Male Norm?
Authors: Carvalho Teresa , Diogo Sara
Published: May 2018

This paper examines how two Portuguese women rectors constructed narratives on their path to leadership positions and their performance of leadership roles. The study is based on a qualitative empirical analysis based on life story interviews with two women rectors in Portugal. The results from this research suggest that women rectors tend to develop narratives about their professional route to the top as based on merit and hard work, and tend to classify their leadership experience as gender-neutral and grounded on the establishment of good relationships with their peers along their professional path. These narratives may contribute to reinforcing the male norm that leads other women to blame themselves for not being able to progress in their career, hindering the creation of an organisational environment that is open to the development of institutional policies to improve equal opportunities. Portugal is a very interesting case study, considering that despite the long history of its higher education system and the high participation of women in higher education, there were only two women rectors in the country until 2014.