bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Moving Like a Ghost: Tarquin’s Specter and Agentive Objects in The Rape of Lucrece, Julius Caesar, and Macbeth
Authors: Angelo Lizz
Published: February 2023

All good ghost stories strike us as immediately familiar. As Shakespeare’s heirs, we know the story well, but from where? Is that Macbeth we see before us, his hand on Duncan’s door? Or do we spy on Brutus, reading a cryptic message in his balmy Mediterranean orchard? ‘Speak, strike, redress.’ The lightning suddenly becomes a meteor shower raining down on Rome. Perhaps we still misread—we see not Macbeth, nor Brutus, but Tarquin, the last Roman prince, stealing into Collatine’s room to rape his wife. The light dims to a candle flame—but only for a moment, until it falls prey to a cold tongue of midnight air.For four centuries, we have read this way, dissecting Shakespeare’s tragic protagonists backwards, opening first their souls, then their minds, and, finally, their bodies to our critical gaze. More recent scholarship implores us to rethink the reading and writing of history and explore alternative histories, especially the histories of nature, of objects, of things.
Mediating Human-Technology Relationships: Explorations of Hybridity, Humanity and Embodiment in Doctor Who
Authors: Cranny-Francis Anne
Published: February 2023

The relationship between human beings and technology has been a regular concern of the television series, Doctor Who. Though its titular hero moves through space-time by means of advanced technology and he is by his own admission a technological genius and Doctor 'of everything really', the program nevertheless consistently maps the unease that attends the interaction of humans and the technology - whether through the human characters' horror at the abuse of technology and its power or through characters who incorporate this interaction.The trope of the cyborg, the human-machine hybrid that articulates many contemporary fears (and desires) about the intrusion of technology on the 'human' is enacted and embodied in Doctor Who by the Daleks and the Cybermen - long-term enemies of the Doctor. In the recent new series (2005-2009) featuring Christopher Eccleston and David Tennant both Daleks and Cybermen have returned, to enact contemporary concerns about new technologies. This paper explores the recent Dalek double-episode, "Daleks in Manhattan" and "Evolution of the Daleks" (2007) for its representation of current human-technology relationships.
On Dwarves and Scientists: Probing for Technological Ethics in the Creative Imagination of J.R.R. Tolkien
Authors: Kidwell Jeremy
Published: February 2023

The presence of technology in contemporary life has become so pervasive that sociologist, Jacques Ellul has described this age as a "technological society". J.R.R. Tolkien lived in the midst of the ascension of this technological society at the turn of the twentieth-century, and though he is well recognized for the quality of his fiction, the specific treatment of technology in his works has not been fully appreciated. In Tolkien's work this topic may not be immediately obvious, especially given that technology is typically conceived in a narrow economy: freestanding and utterly contemporary. An example of this attitude might be the affirmation of a computer as "technology", but not the edge of a chef's knife. Tolkien casts his vision of technology with a more encompassing definition, treating it as the making of things by creatures. This paper seeks primarily to substantiate the presence of this technological theme, so defined, in Tolkien's work. Accomplishing this will require attention to two fronts: to Tolkien's theory and practice. In unpacking the theoretical basis for his technological commentary, I will first justify the use of "fairy stories" for broader ethical reflection and will draw attention to Tolkien's specific commentary regarding the use of this genre. I will further examine Tolkien's specific attention to the topic of technology, and will clear him of charges that he is anti-technological. I will spend the latter half of the paper explicating specific ways, in practice, that Tolkien deploys the concept of sub-creation in his mythical stories. My analysis in this paper will be limited to ways in which the narrative of the Dwarves in his fiction serves as an analogy for the scientific enterprise. Ultimately, I will suggest that in Tolkien's account the products of technological synthesis (making), are in themselves morally ambivalent. I choose "ambivalent", rather than "neutral", because, as will be developed more fully below, there is always a moral context for technology, either good or bad - but never neither.
The World of African Storytelling
Authors: Okpewho Isidore
Published: February 2023

My favorite introduction to a discussion of African storytelling is to recall a setting that Oyekan Owomoyela sketched out many years ago from his experience in the Yoruba city of Ibadan in western Nigeria. It is of a traditional family relaxing in their premises at the end of a hardworking day.After the evening meal, the members of the family gather on a porch and if there is moonlight, the younger members gather in the courtyard to play games like hide and seek.On the porch, the entertainment begins with riddles. What dines with an oba (paramount chief of a community) and leaves him to clear the dishes? A fly. What passes befor the oba’s palace without making obeisance? Rain flood. On its way to Oyo its face is towards Oyo, on its way from Oyo its face is still towards Oyo. What is it? A double-faced drum. After a few riddles, the tales begin (Owomoyela 264-265).
Irish voices for Irish visions: Gael Linn’s documentary film projects
Authors: Macdougall Heather
Published: February 2023

This paper seeks to analyse three important documentary film projects of Gael Linn – the Amharc Éireann newsreel series, Mise Eire and Saoirse? – in terms of the connection that they create between Irish-language cinema and the ideologies of Irish nationalism. Since Gael Linn was founded in 1953 in direct response to a perceived failure on the part of the newly independent Irish state to revive the Irish language, I will begin with a very short overview of the Irish government’s efforts in this direction, followed by an examination of the goals and objectives of Gael Linn when it was founded, before moving on to an analysis of the film projects.
To Speak or Not to Speak: An Encounter with J. M. Coetzee's Foe
Authors: Tansley Laura
Published: February 2023

For critics and authors, there has always been a tension between silence and voicing experience. My concern, as both author and critic is: What does it mean to speak or to be, not remain, silent; what are the consequences of voicing experience or choosing, rather than being forced, to be quiet? Through J. M. Coetzee’s Foe (1988), I hope to interrogate the tension between silence and voice and discover why, sometimes, silence is appealing.
ORAL HISTORY AS POLITICAL RESISTANCE: Posse and Once Upon a Time in Mexico
Authors: Wadenius Adam
Published: February 2023

In the introduction to his The Western Reader Jim Kitses observes that the Western film, a genre long-heralded as the “cornerstone of American identity,” (16) is itself not exempt from an undertaking of racial and cultural revisionism. He points to a resurgence of films from the 1990’s that, in an era of multi-culturalism, hybridity, and counter-strategies, have functioned to redefine the codes of the traditional Western, bringing to life the postmodern Western. The subversive politics of Jim Jarmusch’s Dead Man (1995), and Maggie Greenwald’s The Ballad of Little Jo (1993), are two such examples.
Plugs
Authors: Connor Steven
Published: February 2023

Plugs are peculiarly intimate objects. Plugs are archaic things, that belong to an economy of spaces in which what mattered was to seal, to store, to quarantine and dam up flow. But now the plug is used for different purposes, to establish connections, and to draw together places and times. Plugs are scale-transformers: they used to keep proximal things distant, now they bring distant things up close. We use plugs not to keep things apart, but to become a part of them, to plug in rather than plug up. Plugs used to keep things in their place, enforcing a world governed by the prepositions ‘in’, ‘on’ or ‘at’. Now the plug is the enabler of relationships signified by prepositions like ‘through’, ‘across’ and ‘between’. As such, the plug is a prime example of the interference between spatio-temporal dispensations that is so much a feature of the modern world. Perhaps the plug is itself a connector between the archaic and the contemporary.
Metamorphosis and Identity – “Cinetheatrical” Spaces in Peter Greenaway’s The Baby of Mâcon
Authors: Turi Zita
Published: February 2023

In his interviews, Peter Greenaway infamously claims that we have never seen films, only literature or theatre put on screen. He, being a painter himself, mostly characterises his construction of film-narrative as image-centred, a position in opposition to that of traditional plot-centred movies based on verbal narration. He wanted to make a cinema of ideas and not of plots, trying to use the same aesthetics as painting, which always paid great attention to formal devices of structure and the composition of framing (Woods 18). Not only is there a competitive relationship between the plot and the visual narration, but in his films the mediums used also vary. This contributes to the multi-layered structures of his movies, which are not limited by artificially imposed boundaries, but are centred on notions such as the place and space of performance and the self-reflective nature of art. The framework of intermediality, consequently, gains crucial significance within the discourse on Greenaway’s movies. On the one hand, it includes various mediums, allowing the interweaving of late-twentieth century visual arts (cinema and television) with theatre; on the other hand, it presupposes flexibility and a need for artistic fusion, creating a profusion of texts, images, and sounds within the given artistic constellation. This variability of expression requires variable spaces and this paper seeks to substantiate the interrelation between the metamorphosis of locations and identity in Peter Greenaway’s The Baby of Mâcon.
“Justified in the World”: Spatial Values and Sensuous Geographies in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road
Authors: Warde Anthony
Published: February 2023

In contrast to the conventional division between "early" and "late(r)" works, the development of Cormac McCarthy's oeuvre is typically described in geographical terms, with critics subsuming his first four novels under the heading "Appalachian Works" and his subsequent novels under the title "Western Works". Far from merely constituting a convenient categorising or framing device, these positional terms reflect an increasing concern with space and place in McCarthy's novels.[2] In this article, I address spatial concerns that are specific to McCarthy's 2006 novel, The Road, demonstrating how the protagonists' desire for positionality and directionality is both heightened and hampered by an apocalypse that has reduced the world to dust and ashes.Like many of McCarthy's previous works, The Road employs mapping motifs to explore the distinction between space and place, and to represent protagonists' struggle to both master and move through space. In the post-apocalyptic world of the novel, however, maps are associated with a visual, abstracted and purportedly objective understanding of space that is shown to be both illusory and wholly inadequate.[3] In place of traditional cartography, The Road asserts a more holistic human or sensuous geography, a manner of constructing space that highlights the interaction (and interdependence) of the human body and its surrounding land, rather than the dominance of the former over the latter.
“What a story it could be”: Identity and Narrative Strategy in Ali Smith’s Like
Authors: Bailey James
Published: February 2023

Remarking upon its dual narrative structure, muddled chronology and conflicting accounts of past events, Ali Smith described her debut novel Like as “a nasty warring book, a book of two sides” (qtd. in Murray 222). The connection made here between the “warring” nature of the novel and the opposing narratives that constitute its “two sides” is crucial, and reveals that the conflict described by Smith relates as much to Like’s fragmented structure as it does its content. Indeed, the “warring” that takes place in Like occurs not only in its various settings – the bedrooms, dormitories and theatres in which its protagonists, Amy and Ash, witness their carefully concealed relationship bloom and wither – but also between its contrasting sections, each narrated from a different point in time. What is at stake in this war of words is the memory and legacy of the love once shared between the novel’s now estranged protagonists: a love which is brought proudly to the forefront of Ash’s personal account of the past, yet is largely absent from the third person, present tense narrative that constitutes Amy’s section of the text. Offering the reader a series of readings (and re-readings) of events and encounters in this way, Like reveals itself to be a novel concerned with the strategies behind storytelling, with the memories one might artfully preserve, discard, embellish or invent when fashioning a version of one’s history and, in turn, of oneself.
Creating Oneself as a Mother: Dreams, Reality and Identity in Doris Lessing’s the Fifth Child (1988)
Authors: Casablancas i Cervantes Anna
Published: February 2023

"With a few symbols a dream can define the whole of one's life, and warn us of the future, too" (Schlueter 71).In this extract from an interview by Jonah Raskin in 1969, Doris Lessing explained the importance of dreams in her major work, The Golden Notebook; but it could just as easily be applied to a large part of her extensive novelistic corpus. Throughout her diverse literary output, Lessing uses traditional narrative methods such as tales and fables "as a creative vehicle to examine the states of consciousness of the human soul" (Galin 23). Through use of all these fantastic elements, she endows several of her novels, such as The Fifth Child (1988), with a dreamlike atmosphere in which reality and imagination merge. If dreams can define one's entire life, they will also provide the clues to one's own identity, illuminating areas that we do not have access to in conscious life. Identity is a major issue in the novels of Doris Lessing, especially those dealing with female protagonists trying to define their own selves amongst the different roles they perform in life. The subconscious, through dreams and imagination, plays an important part in this quest, since a person's identity is built up by both conscious factors and subconscious forces.The aim of this paper is to show how Doris Lessing's The Fifth Child can be read as a valid representation of a failure in the construction of identity; the novel dramatises the way in which the dreams and fantasies of the subconscious can destroy or fatally interrupt the identity-building process. The Fifth Child, which is described by Jones in the New York Review of Books as "a horror story of maternity and the nightmare of social collapse" (30-31), combines dreaming, imagination and a sense of female identity which is endangered and comes close to disappearing. A closer look into The Fifth Child and its multi-layered treatment of identity as a form of troubled self-creation will help us to appreciate its integral role in the Lessing canon.
The Burden of Authentic Expression in the Later Poetry of Geoffrey Hill
Authors: Baker Jack
Published: February 2023

Geoffrey Hill’s later work is increasingly concerned with the authenticity of the poet’s civic voice, and with the extent to which persuasive lyricism is at odds with the apprehension of moral truth. This concern provokes in his poetry a fierce, at times anguished obsession with the possibilities and limitations of language. Hill’s determination to forge an authentic and autonomous idiom, even as he acknowledges the essential “otherness” and intractability of language, underlies the strenuous difficulty that has characterised his work from the publication of Speech! Speech! in 2000. But, whereas many of Hill’s peers, from John Ashbery to J.H. Prynne, revel in linguistic indeterminacy, the poet-figure in Hill’s recent work emerges as one who strives to resurrect language, to preserve its capacity for “eloquence and apprehension” against the destructive tendencies of the age (CCW 349). These semantic preoccupations inform a broader anxiety about the public role of a poet in the modern world. Can he still aspire to the status of Shelley’s “unacknowledged legislators”, or has this aspiration since been undermined by Yeats’ dictum that “[w]e have no gift to set a statesman right” (Shelley 233, Yeats, MW 72)? Hill’s own acknowledgement of his diminished influence is coterminous with his refusal to accommodate popular whim, so that the authenticity of his verse as public utterance derives precisely from its difficulty, its anti-materialism and its resilient heterodoxy.
The Authentic Artwork? The Paris Review Author Interview
Authors: Roach Becky
Published: February 2023

The interview is a peculiar form. Ranging from good cop bad cop interrogations to Prime Minister’s Question Time to Plato’s dialogues to the chat show, the interview is multipurpose and pervades modern culture. The literary interview (a term which is used variously to refer to the interviewee, the content or the style of presentation) is so popular that one critic has complained that poets don’t write essays anymore, they give interviews (Bawer 424). Search “interview” in Project Muse or JSTOR and the hits number in the hundreds of thousands. Yet critical analysis of the use of the interview for literary (as distinct from more scientific) purposes is limited to a handful of articles. We must ask why this is.
Preface to FORUM Issue 12: Authenticity
Authors: Milnes Tim
Published: February 2023

Like many ideas forged in the Enlightenment, ‘authenticity’ has lost much of its lustre. The product of an eighteenth-century culture fascinated with the past, with notions of origins, essences, and depths, it was endowed by twentieth-century existentialism with a numinous quality that many theorists saw as ripe for deconstruction. Indeed, the traditional rhetoric of authenticity is emphatically un-postmodern in its auratic essentialism and its concern, in the absence of rational foundations, to locate some kind of centre for what is genuine and real. Such metaphysical earnestness is apt to cause embarrassment today, which is perhaps why commentators not bent on dismantling the notion of the authentic have approached it with circumspection. Among these, Lionel Trilling, whose 1971 study Sincerity and Authenticity remains essential reading, worries that ‘authenticity,’ like ‘irony’ and ‘love,’ is ‘one of those words [...] which are best not talked about if they are to retain any force of meaning [...]’ (120). More recently, Geoffrey Hartman has conceded that ‘“Spirit” and “authenticity” are word concepts that cannot be saved from their own pathos. Perhaps we should not even try to sober them up’ (1). The temperate critic, it would seem, is well advised to handle authenticity with care.
Mammary Landscapes and Mother's Figure: Vengeance and matrilineal legacy in the poetic drama of W.H. Auden
Authors: Campbell Andrew
Published: February 2023

This article will focus on The Ascent of F6 (1936) and work back to Paid On Both Sides, as both plays explore the psychological malaise of the protagonist and the domineering influence of the mother to striking effect. These dramas find their central protagonists grappling with the malignant influence of mothers who compel the climactic acts of revenge through the neurotic anxiety they have engendered within their sons. The first act of vengeance examined is figurative and illusory as the mother of the Ransom brothers pits her neurotic sons against each other in an Oedipal battle for glory or favour in F6. The second, more formative, action to be examined is literal and physical, as the matriarchs of Paid's Nower and Shaw families demand that their remaining sons commit acts of murderous revenge for slain fathers and brothers. Both are undoubtedly responses to the psychic deprivation and distress caused by the mother characters and their divided affections for their sons. While much work remains to be conducted in gendered approaches to the study of these texts, this article will explore the significance of vengeance and matrilineal legacy in W.H. Auden's poetic drama and locate this theme within the context of his poetry from the late Twenties to the late Thirties. This study anticipates further discussion of the role of matriarchal figures and gender debates arising from post-war literature.
The Violation of Representation: Art, Argento and the Rape-Revenge Film
Authors: Heller-Nicholas Alexandra
Published: February 2023

Considering the moral controversies surrounding films such as I Spit on Your Grave (Meir Zarch, 1976) and Baise-Moi (Virginie Despentes and Coralie Trinh-Thi, 2000), the rape-revenge film is often typecast as gratuitous and regressive. But far from dismissing rape-revenge in her foundational book Men, Women and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film (1992), Carol J. Clover suggests that these movies permit unique insight into the representation of gendered bodies on screen. In Images of Rape: The 'Heroic' Tradition and Its Alternatives(1999), art historian Diane Wolfthal demonstrates that contradictory representations of sexual violence co-existed long before the advent of the cinematic image, and a closer analysis of films that fall into the rape-revenge category reveals that they too resist a singular classification. Despite the broadness of the rape-revenge category, however, these films predominantly involve some kind of visceral skirmish between victim/villain, good/evil, female/male and right/wrong, and the desire for vengeance upon which their narratives rely provides a widely shared melodramatic foundation. The ideological leanings, thematic cores and moral messages of any given text hinge upon its representational mechanics-in this instance, how film formally constructs meaning-and can thus shift radically from text to text, despite the uniformity of the trope itself.
Exploring How William Blake Views The Sacred ‘Fall’ Of Judeo-Christianity As Triggering A Sacrilegious ‘Fall Of Man’, Utilising The Ideas of Friedrich Nietzsche
Authors: Hollander Jenny
Published: February 2023

To make use of the term ‘fall of man’ is perhaps ironic; it is associated with a Miltonic, Judeo-Christian ‘fall’, which has a semantic implication of the sort against which Nietzsche battles when he begs for the ‘death of God’ to be absorbed into society’s reasoning. The sacred theological ‘fall’ of man from the faultless prelapsarian Eden to the fallible realism of Earth is far from how Blake, and indeed Nietzsche, understands man’s sacrilegious ‘fall’ to his present state. Within this essay, Blake will take centre stage, as his poetry and prose imaginatively envisions and explores this ‘fall; most of my conclusions will be drawn from examination of his work. Nietzsche, although immeasurably valuable in his own right, will be used within this essay as a useful counterpart to clarify and assess Blake’s ideas; in some cases he will take Blake’s ideas further.
‘Numinous’ and ‘Negatively Numinous’ in Bram Stoker’s Dracula
Authors: Linforth Lucy
Published: February 2023

This paper seeks to explore the representation of both the numinous and negatively numinous presence in a late nineteenth century Gothic novel which occupies the complicated borderland between the supposed binary oppositions of the sacred and sacrilegious, holy and profane, of good and evil: Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897).
Tales of Torment: Death, Nature, and Genre in Keri Hulme’s Short Story Collection Te Kaihau/The Windeater
Authors: Seran Justine
Published: February 2023

This article engages in close reading of New Zealand Maori writer Keri Hulme's 1986 short fiction collection. It explores how she borrows from Western literary genres to create a syncretic literature of unease and build a universe where death and destruction are linked to an imbalance in the natural world.
Creative Ecologies: Derek Walcott’s Postcolonial Ecopoetics
Authors: Trott Emma
Published: February 2023

This essay explores the centrality of Derek Walcott’s poetics of nature to his creative imagination. Forensic attention to language illustrates how connections between the mind and its environments engage critical work at the intersection of ecocriticism and postcolonialism. Poetry’s contribution to a resolution of these discourses’ conflicting concerns is revealed, in a fresh analysis of Walcott’s poetic ecology.
Cliché: An Introduction
Authors: Legacy Jessica
Published: February 2023

Before writing the call for papers for this issue, I conducted an online search for 'cliché in writing.' Predictably, the search produced dozens of pages with tips for writers: '12 Clichés all Writers Should Avoid' (Klems), 'Avoiding Clichés in Writing' (Writer’s Web), and one article brewing dangerously close to a perfect meta-cliché storm: '681 Clichés to Avoid in Your Creative Writing' (Luke). Cautions about clichés extend to both creative and academic communities. This introduction offers thoughts on these academic recommendations and discusses the ab(use) and (un)necessity of clichés.
Editorial Introduction: The New Materialisms
Authors: Er, Co-editor Yanbing
Published: February 2023

The role of matter has been marginalised in much of historical and philosophical thought. Its proximity to the inertia of the physical, and its imbrications with the more basal nature of things, has cultivated a preference for an understanding of the world formulated as a flight from the tiresome weight of the material itself. Matter, as it seemed, has been a mere platform from which the exploration of more significant elements that characterised our experience as human beings could take off. This article explores the rise of new materialist strands of thought as a critical revisiting of the notion of materiality, and situates it within the increasing demand for contemporary paradigms of knowledge.
'To Keep Feelings in Circulation': Private/Public Sexuality and Queer Ambivalence in an Age of Assimilation
Authors: Jones Joshua
Published: February 2023

The concept of ambivalence in U.S. queer studies has tended to be less a subject of enquiry in itself and more a component of, or catalyst for, broader arguments about how heteronormative culture shapes, restricts,and challenges queer subjectivities. In this article I explore threeforms of ambivalence in order to argue that the foregrounding of publicly ambivalent positions is essential for renegotiating what it means to be queer in an age of respectability politics and conditional mainstream acceptance.
Preface
Authors: Halsey Katie
Published: February 2023

In the preface to this special issue of FORUM on Readers and Writers, I wish to take the opportunity to think briefly about a question that preoccupies all historians of reading, to a greater or lesser extent, and that is the problem of evidence. Reading is an evanescent activity, which mostly goes unremarked, unrecorded, and very often, unnoticed. Under such circumstances, how can we retrieve its history? From Robert Darnton in 1986, outlining his ‘first steps toward a history of reading’, to those of us still working on the history of reading in 2016, we have been wrestling with precisely the same problem. As Simon Eliot put it in 1992, ‘any reading recorded in an historically recoverable way is, almost by definition, an exceptional recording of an uncharacteristic event by an untypical person’.
“Narrative Truth and Historical Identity”: Identifying as Choctaw and Irish in LeAnne Howe’s novel Shell Shaker
Authors: Shaffer Linda
Published: February 2023

“Narrative Truth and Historical Identity” examines the complex relationship between poststructuralism, marginalization, language empowerment, and constructions of historical knowledge and truth. Employing the ideologies of both Derrida and Foucault, the article proposes and outlines the concept of literary discourse communities as one means of negotiating truth in a culturally diverse society. The article then provides an example of the potential for discourse and knowledge/truth construction through literary discourse communities by applying the concept to an interpretation of Choctaw author LeAnne Howe’s novel, Shell Shaker.
Perspective in Australia’s Outback: Travel and Truth
Authors: Giles Mary
Published: February 2023

This paper explores the blurred genre of travel writing and the obligation placed on the traveller to provide an authentic, truthful tale. Using their own perspectives and cultural biases to describe the Australian Outback, the three discussed travel writers cross the line between non-fiction novel and fictional memoir.
Counter Cultures
Authors: Alston Ashanti
Published: February 2023

This article examines the development of countercultures from the Black Panther movement in the 1960s to the present day.
Spregelburd’s Stubbornness
Authors: Bollig Benjamin
Published: February 2023

In recent years I have almost religiously gone to see something by or featuring Rafael Spregelburd whenever I visit Argentina, on stage or screen. On my last trip, this March, alongside two films(Florencia Percia’s debut Cetáceos and Lucrecia Martel’s historical drama Zama) and a talk, in conversation with the academic Gabriel Guz, it was his ambitious play La terquedad (Stubbornness). Spregelburd is widely acknowledged as one of Argentina’s most significant contemporary dramatists. His work appears regularly on European festival stages, and has won prizes worldwide. He has translated Harold Pinter, Sarah Kane, and other British playwrights for performance in Spanish. Yet it is a number of years now since The Argentine Moment appeared at London’s Royal Court, and his namewill hardly be familiar to British readers. Some may recognise him as a screen actor, playing the proverbially tortured political artist, gruff husband to the eponymous heroine, and love rival to SamHuntington’s lead in Nico Casavecchia’s Finding Sofia (2016).
The function of small tools in Europe during the Middle Pleistocene: The case of Marathousa 1 (Megalopolis, Greece)
Authors: Guibert-Cardin Juliette , Tourloukis Vangelis , Thompson Nicholas , Panagopoulou Eleni , Harvati Katerina , Nicoud Elisa , Beyries Sylvie
Published: February 2023

Small flake industries are a commonly identified component of Lower Paleolithic archaeological assemblages in Eurasia. Utilized as blanks for tools, at many sites, their functions are often poorly understood. Here we present a preliminary traceological analysis of lithics from Marathousa 1 (MAR-1; Megalopolis, Greece). MAR-1 dates to ca. 400-500 ka BP and is one of the oldest open-air sites in South-Eastern Europe. It has yielded a lithic assemblage made almost exclusively of small-sized flakes found in direct association with diverse megafauna including elephants, hippo and deer.

For this preliminary study, a total of 223 artifacts were sampled for a taphonomical analysis and 13 for a functional analysis. The lithic artifacts from MAR-1 are exceptionally well-preserved and are only slightly affected by chemical alterations. They are therefore ideal for a techno-morpho-functional analysis. Use-wear traces confirm on-site butchery. Our results also confirm that plants were worked at the site, whereas technological traces, rarely observed on lithics from this age, can also be seen on a number of specimens. Whereas both retouched and unretouched tools contribute significantly to the MAR-1 toolkit, shapes are varied, and at this phase of the study do not appear morphologically or technologically standardized. However, backing (natural or retouched) opposite to a sharp edge can be observed on numerous specimens. When compared to the sparse functional data available on small tools from Lower Paleolithic Europe and the Levant, small flake tools include a wide variety of techno-functional types. To fully begin to understand this diversity, lithic toolkits must be considered in relation to the rest of the assemblage and the accompanying contextual data, including information from technological, archaeozoological, and palaeoenvironmental datasets.
Ciudades: los ecosistemas humanos
Authors: Terrazas Esparza Diana Laura
Published: February 2023

Quizá te has preguntado: ¿las ciudades son parte de la naturaleza? Después de todo, los seres humanos parecemos muy ajenos al resto de los seres vivos. Vivimos en casas construidas por nosotros mismos, nos desplazamos en autos y nos protegemos del clima en nuestros hogares de resistentes materiales. Las ciudades lucen muy distintas del resto de los ambientes no urbanos, están casi completamente desprovistas de vegetación, sus estructuras son grandes y están regidas por la geometría. El sistema eléctrico alimenta máquinas con funciones específicas, sistemas de enfriamiento y calefacción. Sin embargo, las ciudades también son un ecosistema, cuentan con una entrada y salida de materia y energía, están pobladas por una comunidad de seres vivos, humanos incluidos, quienes interactúan con el medio. Además, las ciudades presentan propiedades climatológicas bien definidas, así como otras características particulares.
La nuez maya: una propuesta de alimento funcional en México
Authors: Trujillo Nava Itzel Judith , Negrete Hernández José , García Arrazola Roeb , Dávila Úrsula , Gimeno Seco Miquel
Published: February 2023

La semilla del árbol de capomo o de ramón, que se apoda como nuez maya, tiene una capacidad antioxidante comparable con la quinoa y el amaranto, además de contar con otras cualidades nutritivas y aplicaciones que se describen en este artículo. La hoja proveniente del mismo árbol es aun más antioxidante que la semilla, por lo que una taza de té podría aportar importantes beneficios a la salud. En este artículo se describe el origen de este árbol y las propiedades y características de los componentes de la nuez maya, asimismo se proponen nuevos productos de consumo basados en esta semilla mexicana.
Benthic macroinvertebrate communities and water quality assessment in high Andean Wetlands Callali-Oscollo, Arequipa-Cusco, Peru
Authors: Coayla-Peñaloza Pastor , Chenaux-Díaz André Alexander , Moreno-Salazar Claudia Viviana , Cruz-Remache Cynthia Elizabeth , Colque-Rondón Eusebio Walter , Damborenea Cristina
Published: February 2023

High Andean wetlands are fragile systems, vulnerable to human activity and climate change. In the Arequipa region (Peru), there are high Andean lotic and lentic systems currently affected by livestock raising, fish farming, and dams. The aim of the study was to evaluate the aquatic invertebrate community in the Callalli-Oscollo wetlands and the possible impact of human activities. Samples were taken from November 2017 to October 2018 at 4 sampling stations in lotic environments and 2 in lentic environments. Macroinvertebrates were identified to the family level. The following were determined to evaluate community structure: richness, relative abundance, Shannon-Wiener diversity, Simpson dominance, Pielou evenness, and true diversity. The indices ABI, BMWP/Bol and nPeBMWP were applied to evaluate the ecological quality of the environments sampled. Thirty families were recorded in lotic environments, the most abundant being Chironomidae, Naididae, Limnesiidae, Elmidae, Baetidae and Lumbriculidae. The ecological quality was good, except at the station associated to the dam, where it was doubtful. Twenty-six families were recorded in lentic environments, the most abundant being Cyprididae, Naididae and Corixidae. The macroinvertebrate communities in high Andean environments reflect ecosystem conditions. Environments associated to human activity have lower ecological quality.
Tus mejores amigos pueden ser tus peores enemigos: impactos de los gatos y perros domésticos en países megadiversos
Authors: Orduña-Villaseñor Mónica , Valenzuela-Galván David , Schondube Jorge E.
Published: February 2023

Los gatos y perros domésticos son las mascotas preferidas del hombre, por lo que se han convertido en especies invasoras y los carnívoros más abundantes del planeta. A pesar de su buena relación con nuestra especie, tienen un impacto ecológico negativo con consecuencias para las políticas de conservación. Los efectos que estos animales tienen sobre la fauna silvestre han sido estudiados principalmente en países con baja biodiversidad de vertebrados (EUA, Nueva Zelanda y Europa), y salvo por algunos trabajos realizados en Australia, Brasil, y México, no contamos con información sobre sus efectos en países con alta biodiversidad. Los efectos negativos que ambas especies tienen sobre la biodiversidad incluyen la depredación y competencia con fauna nativa, su hibridación con especies filogenéticamente cercanas o poblaciones silvestres de su propia especie, y la transmisión de enfermedades a la fauna silvestre y a los humanos. La falta de información sobre los efectos de depredadores introducidos a nivel continental y la falsa idea de que los gatos y perros son ambientalmente inocuos, vuelve crucial aumentar la investigación sobre estas especies en países megadiversos para proponer estrategias de manejo que fomenten la conservación de fauna nativa.
Determinan Dari Niat Investasi Saham Syariah: Perspektif Toleransi Maghrib
Authors: Ustman Ustman , Subhan Subhan , Rohmaniyah Rohmaniyah
Published: February 2023

Islamic finance is a sharia-compliant business sector. The factor of religion or sharia compliance is very important to encourage the intention of Muslims to use Islamic financial products. The failure of Islamic financial products to comply with sharia principles has become a major barrier for investors. This leads to the purpose of this paper to reveal the determinants of investment intentions in Islamic stocks with the perspective of MAGHRIB tolerance regulated by the OJK. Sample data from 200 respondents were collected from students of the Economics and Business Faculty at Wiraraja University, Madura University, and Trunojoyo University using purposive sampling method and the data were analyzed using multiple linear regression techniques. The Theory of Planned Behavior is used as the basic framework in which the MAGHRIB tolerance becomes a consensus to test attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control on Islamic stock investment intentions. The results showed that MAGHRIB tolerance had a significant relationship consisting of attitudes, subjective norms, perceived behavioral control on Islamic stock investment intentions. The findings of this study can be useful for increasing investment in Indonesia, especially for students to start investing in Islamic stocks.
The Covid-19, Policy And Capital Market: Empirical Evidence From Indonesia
Authors: Retnoningsih Sri , Naufa Ahmad Maulin
Published: February 2023

This paper aims to examine the impact of Covid-19 on the Indonesian capital market. Second, we test whether any policy from regulators could mitigate its effects. By using daily time-series data from January to July, we propose the simplest regression model (ordinary least squares) to test its effect. We also conducted some robustness with various sectors and splitting samples to make sure that our findings are robust and consistent. We find that Covid-19 (proxied by new cases, cumulative cases, new deaths, and cumulative deaths) has a negative effect on stock price in all indexes, i.e., composite, Islamic, and all sectors (the worst in the financial sector). In other words, a higher number of Covid-19 leads to a lower stock price in Indonesia. Second, the regulations from the government (the President, Financial Service Authority, Central Bank of Indonesia, and Indonesian Stock Exchange) could reduce its negative impact. It means that the negative effect of Covid-10 on the Indonesian stock market is becoming lower after including policies from all regulators. Hence, measuring Covid-19’s drawbacks on the capital market by relevant policies in Indonesia. It is also quite pivotal to explore which one policy either effective or ineffective to mitigate Covid-19.
The Optimization Of Employee Stock Option Plan In Achieving Financial Performance
Authors: Asyik Nur Fadjrih
Published: February 2023

This study aimed to examine the effects of Intellectual Capital proxied by Human Capital (HC), Structural Capital (SC), and Customer Capital (CC) on the company's financial performance. It also investigated stock-based compensation's impact through employees' stock options programs and Intellectual Capital on the company's economic performance. The research samples were 36 companies that implemented the Employee Stock Option Plans as a compensation scheme during the 2016-2019 period. There were 144 observations. The partial test used multiple regression, while the moderating variable test applied residual analysis by examining the effect of deviation from a model. As a result, this study indicated that Human Capital partially influenced its financial performance. Stock-based compensation impacts the effect of Human Capital on financial performance. The shares ownership of employees with competencies, knowledge, skills, and behavior will support organizational structures' optimization in achieving work performance. Human capital is the source of innovation and knowledge that can solve a company’s problems. The implication of this research is that information about intellectual capital (Human Capital, Structural Capital, and Employee Capital) is needed by the company to determine the effectiveness of implementing the employee stock option plan in achieving better wealth in the future.
¿Debemos manejar la hiperuricemia asintomática para proteger al riñón?
Authors: Rubio-Guerra Alberto Francisco , Guerrero García Carolina
Published: February 2023

Contexto: el ácido úrico es el producto final de la degradación de las purinas en los primates, en condiciones normales es un agente antioxidante endógeno y participa en varias vías fisiológicas, sin embargo, cuando los niveles séricos de urato se incrementan, estos participan en el desarrollo de diversas enfermedades.
Desde el siglo XIX se conoce de la asociación entre hiperuricemia y daño renal, aunque ninguna guía de manejo recomienda el uso de fármacos hipouricemiantes en pacientes asintomáticos, en algunos casos especiales, el manejo farmacológico beneficiará a pacientes con hiperuricemia, brindando protección al riñón y disminuyendo el riesgo de desarrollar enfermedad renal terminal.
Objetivo: describir la relación entre hiperuricemia y daño renal, y analizar los casos en los que el manejo de esta condición con medicamentos resultará en un beneficio para el riñón de los pacientes.
Metodología: revisión de la literatura sobre la participación de la hiperuricemia en el daño renal y análisis de los artículos revisados.
Resultados: el manejo de la hiperuricemia asintomática puede proteger el riñón en algunas situaciones específicas.
Conclusiones: hay situaciones específicas para la disminución de los niveles séricos de ácido úrico.
Sensitivity Analysis and Small-Signal Stability of Grid Following Converters
Authors: Sepúlveda García Simón , Garcés Alejandro
Published: February 2023

This article presents a small-signal study, based on a sensitivity analysis, of a voltage source converter (VSC) operating as a grid-following device. This type of operation is standard for integrating distributed energy resources directly into a primary grid without considering the control over specific variables (e.g., voltage and frequency), thus maximizing the amount of injected active power. The present study adopted the classical vector-oriented control based on the linearization method of the averaged model; hence, this analysis is limited to linear controls. The main objective of this study is to evaluate how each controller parameter influences the system’s stability. To conduct the sensitivity analysis, an averaged model in the dq reference frame of the VSC was employed to describe the system dynamics in the equivalent state-space model. Afterward, the stability was analyzed through a sensitivity analysis of the eigenvalues of the corresponding state matrix. The numerical results demonstrate that the main problems for the stability of VSCs operating as grid-following converters are threefold: a high value of the filter inductance, a non-ideal impedance that appears depending on the connection point, and poor coordination of the parameters of the Kp controllers. These results are compared to a simple bifurcation analysis of the state matrix, which consists of a diagram that describes the variation in eigenvalues when a parameter changes, thus proving their validity.
Propiedades hidrofísicas de suelos de la zona cafetera colombiana y su relación con el material parental
Authors: Lince Salazar Luz Adriana , Khalajabadi Siavosh Sadeghian
Published: February 2023

Las propiedades hidrofísicas del suelo desempeñan un papel relevante en la producción agrícola y los servicios ecosistémicos, y se relacionan tanto con el material parental como con las condiciones bioclimáticas y el uso del suelo. Dada la importancia del tema, se llevó a cabo una investigación cuyo objetivo fue conocer la relación entre las propiedades hidrofísicas y el material parental. Para cumplir con este propósito se seleccionaron 72 fincas cafeteras en Colombia con suelos pertenecientes a cinco materiales parentales (ceniza volcánica, rocas ígneas intrusivas y extrusivas, esquistos y sedimentarias) y 22 unidades cartográficas, establecidas por la Federación Nacional de Cafeteros de Colombia. En las fincas se tomaron muestras de suelo entre 10 y 30 cm de profundidad del perfil y se determinaron la distribución de tamaño de partículas, densidades aparente y real (Da y Dr), contenido de materia orgánica (MO), retenciones gravimétricas de humedad a 0.33 y 15 bar (RH 0.33 y RH 15), conductividad hidráulica saturada, porosidad total (Pt) y capacidad de almacenamiento de agua. Los suelos provenientes de ceniza volcánica presentaron menor Dr, Da y arcilla, y mayor MO, mientras que los derivados de ígneas intrusivas exhibieron mayor Dr, Da y arena, y menor MO, limo, RH a 0.33 y 15 bar y Ch. La MO tuvo influencia sobre Dr y Da, y se correlacionó con Pt y las RH. Para la mayoría de las propiedades hidrofísicas, se encontraron diferencias significativas entre los materiales parentales. El análisis de funciones discriminantes canónicas, aplicado a todos los materiales parentales, consiguió identificarlos en 65% de los casos. Cuando se excluyeron de este análisis los suelos provenientes de esquistos y rocas sedimentarias, se logró un 91% de aciertos; al respecto las variables con mayor peso fueron MO, Da, RH, A, Ar.