bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Performance of the resurfaced hip. Part 2: The influence of prosthesis stem design on remodelling and fracture of the femoral neck
Authors: Dickinson A S , Taylor A C , Jeffers J R T , Browne M
Published: December 2009

Hip resurfacing is a popular treatment for osteoarthritis in young, active patients. Previous studies have shown that occasional failures — femoral neck fracture and implant loosening, possibly associated with bone adaptation — are affected by prosthesis sizing and positioning, in addition to patient and surgical factors. With the aim of improving tolerance to surgical variation, finite element modelling was used to indicate the effects of prosthesis metaphyseal stem design on bone remodelling and femoral neck fracture, with a range of implant orientations. The analysis suggested that the intact femoral neck strength in trauma could be maintained across a wider range of varus—valgus orientations for short-stemmed and stemless prostheses. Furthermore, the extent of periprosthetic bone remodelling was lower for the short-stemmed implant, with slightly reduced stress shielding and considerably reduced densification around the stem, potentially preventing further progressive proximal stress shielding. The study suggests that a short-stemmed resurfacing head offers improved tolerance to misalignment and remodelling stimulus over traditional designs. While femoral neck fracture and implant loosening are multifactorial, biomechanical factors are of clear importance to the clinical outcome, so this may reduce the risk for patients at the edge of the indications for hip resurfacing, or shorten the surgical learning curve.
Radial fluid migration and endwall blockage in axial flow rotors
Authors: Vad J
Published: December 2009

The article presents an analytical model for systematic investigation of the effects stimulating or retarding radial outward migration of fluid in the suction side (SS) boundary layer of the blades of axial flow rotors, contributing to increased near-tip loss and promoting tip stalling. With application of the model to an experimental case study, coupled with evaluation of detailed flow measurement data, it has been pointed out that the outward migration and near-tip accumulation of high-loss fluid are intensified by the controlled vortex design (CVD) style. This phenomenon is related to the SS outward flow associated with the vortices shed from the blade of spanwise changing circulation. It has been found that the outward migration, and consequently, the endwall blockage at the casing, becomes more pronounced as the intensity of shed vortices due to CVD increases. Based on experimental data, it has been pointed out that the increase in axial displacement thickness is approximately proportional to the radial gradient of blade circulation. Based on the purposeful use of the analytical model, forward blade sweep was found to be especially beneficial for the rotors of CVD, as a means for moderating outward migration along the suction surface.
A new iterative approach to the optimization of thermal energy systems: Application to the regenerative Brayton cycle
Authors: Seyyedi S M , Ajam H , Farahat S
Published: December 2009

Optimization is one of the most interesting and essential subjects in the design of energy systems. In the present work, a new iterative approach for the optimization of complex thermal power plants based on the exergoeconomic analysis and the structural optimization method is proposed. Exergoeconomic analysis is used to determine the sum of the investment and exergy destruction cost flowrates for each component. A numerical sensitivity analysis is performed in order to determine the importance of each decision variable, and by using the structural optimization method, the total cost flowrate is minimized. The advantages of this new iterative methodology are: (a) it can be applied to the large real complex thermal systems, (b) the procedure of optimization is performed without user interface, and (c) since a numerical sensitivity analysis is used, convergency is improved. A simple regenerative Brayton cycle was used as an example to demonstrate how this proposed methodology minimizes the system's total cost flowrate. For comparison of results, a real coding evolutionary algorithm was developed in MATLAB and the optimum solution was obtained.
The detection and prevention of errors in laboratory medicine
Authors: Plebani Mario
Published: December 2009

The last few decades have seen a significant decrease in the rates of analytical errors in clinical laboratories. Evidence demonstrates that pre- and post-analytical steps of the total testing process (TTP) are more error-prone than the analytical phase. Most errors are identified in pre-pre-analytic and post-post-analytic steps outside of the laboratory. In a patient-centred approach to the delivery of health-care services, there is the need to investigate, in the TTP, any possible defect that may have a negative impact on the patient. In the interests of patients, any direct or indirect negative consequence related to a laboratory test must be considered, irrespective of which step is involved and whether the error depends on a laboratory professional (e.g. calibration/testing error) or non-laboratory operator (e.g. inappropriate test request, error in patient identification and/or blood collection). Patient misidentification and problems communicating results, which affect the delivery of diagnostic services, are recognized as the main goals for quality improvement. International initiatives aim at improving these aspects. Grading laboratory errors on the basis of their seriousness should help identify priorities for quality improvement and encourage a focus on corrective/preventive actions. It is important to consider not only the actual patient harm sustained but also the potential worst-case outcome if such an error were to reoccur. The most important lessons we have learned are that system theory also applies to laboratory testing and that errors and injuries can be prevented by redesigning systems that render it difficult for all health-care professionals to make mistakes.
Liquid versus foam sclerotherapy
Authors: Hamel-Desnos C , Allaert F-A
Published: December 2009

Objectives

A systematic review to compare efficacy and safety of foam (F) sclerotherapy versus liquid (L) sclerotherapy for primary varicose veins of the lower limbs.

Methods

Systematic searches of electronic databases were conducted in April 2009 to identify relevant published studies. Database searches were augmented with abstracts from conference proceedings and electronic and hand searching of journals not consistently indexed in the major databases.

Results

For treatment of saphenous veins, six trials (four randomized controlled trials) were considered. Despite containing much less sclerosing agent, F was markedly more effective compared with L, the difference being put at between 20% and 50%. Four studies were included in a meta-analysis showing efficacy of F at 76.8% (95% confidence interval [CI] 71–82) versus L at 39.5% (95% CI 33–46), χ2 = 60.9740; P ≤ 0.0001. For reticular veins and telangiectases, only two comparative trials were found and do not at present provide any conclusive evidence to support the superiority of efficacy of one form over the other. Statistically, the side-effects reported in all the available comparative trials do not differ between F and L forms, even if visual disturbances seem to be more common with F.

Conclusion

In the treatment of varices of the lower limbs, F shows much greater efficacy compared to L. Concerning the side effects, no statistical significant differences were found between L and F.
Evaluation of published reports of foam sclerotherapy: what do we know conclusively?
Authors: Myers K A , Roberts S
Published: December 2009

Objectives

The aim was to evaluate the published literature to assess what is conclusively known about optimal technique and outcome for foam sclerotherapy.

Methods

A literature search was performed for randomised controlled trials, meta-analyses and observational studies using appropriate statistical techniques with survival analysis for long-term outcome.

Results

Foam is more effective than liquid for ultrasound-guided sclerotherapy. Both sclerosants commonly used are equally effective for sclerotherapy for small veins. Ultrasound signals appear in the systemic circulation in most patients after foam sclerotherapy but do not appear to be associated with serious complications.

Conclusion

Little else is known about the optimal preparation of foamed sclerosants and the best technique for administering foam for sclerotherapy. Long-term studies are required to determine outcome for various techniques. There is an opportunity for many controlled trials to assess results.
Sclerotherapy and foam sclerotherapy for varicose veins
Authors: Coleridge Smith P
Published: December 2009

Objectives

To review published evidence concerning treatment of varicose veins using ultrasound-guided foam sclerotherapy (UGFS) to assess the safety and efficacy of this treatment.

Methods

Medical literature databases including MedLine, Embase and DH-DATA were searched for recent literature concerning UGFS. Papers describing the early results and later outcome have been assessed and their main findings were included in this summary.

Results

Few randomized studies have been published in this field and much of the available data come from clinical series reported by individual clinicians. It is clear that foam sclerotherapy is far more effective than liquid sclerotherapy and that ultrasound imaging allows the treatment to be delivered accurately to affected veins. There is evidence that 3% polidocanol foam is no more effective than 1% polidocanol foam. The optimum ratio of gas to liquid is 4:1, although a range of ratios is reported in the published work. There is a wide variation in the volume used as well as the method by which it is injected. The use of carbon dioxide foam reduces the systemic complications, particularly visual disturbance, as compared with air foams. Very few serious adverse events have been reported in the literature despite the widespread use of this method. Rates of recanalization of saphenous trunks following UGFS are similar to those observed after endovenous laser and endovenous RF ablation of veins, as well as the residual incompetence after surgical treatment.

Conclusion

UGFS is a safe and effective method of treating varicose veins. The relative advantages or disadvantages of this treatment in the longer term have yet to be published.
Foam sclerotherapy: cardiac and cerebral monitoring
Authors: Morrison N , Neuhardt D L
Published: December 2009

Objectives

To investigate and review collected and reported transcutaneous ultrasound, transthoracic echocardiography (TTE) and transcranial Doppler (TCD) data obtained during ultrasound-guided foam sclerotherapy (USGFS) of incompetent saphenous, tributary and perforating veins of the lower extremities.

Methods

TTE and/or middle cerebral artery TCD were performed during USGFS. Ultrasound (US) findings and adverse events were recorded. Existing literature was reviewed.

Results

Ultrasound detected emboli circulating in superficial, perforating, communicating and deep veins and into the central circulation. TTE detected bright echoes in the right heart after every injection and in the left heart in up to 65% of selected patients. TCD high-intensity transient signals (HITS) were detected in 14–42% of the patients. Incidence of HITS was higher than patient reports of adverse events. Incidence of HITS was independent of foam volumes injected.

Conclusion

Echogenic signals were detected in non-treated veins, in heart chambers and in the cerebral circulation by transcutaneous US, TTE and TCD. Pathological consequences of such findings remain to be investigated.
Minimal-length short hairpin RNAs: The relationship of structure and RNAi activity
Authors: Ge Qing , Ilves Heini , Dallas Anne , Kumar Pavan , Shorenstein Joshua , Kazakov Sergei A. , Johnston Brian H.
Published: December 2009

Small hairpin RNAs (shRNAs) are widely used in RNAi studies and typically consist of a stem of 19–29 base pairs (bp), a loop of at least 4 nucleotides (nt), and a dinucleotide overhang at the 3′ end. Compared with shRNAs with 21–29 bp stems, we have found that shRNAs with 19-bp or shorter stems (sshRNAs) possess some unique structure–activity features that depend on whether the antisense strand is positioned 5′ or 3′ to the loop (L- or R-type sshRNAs, respectively). L sshRNAs can have IC50s in the very low picomolar range, and sshRNAs with nominal loop sizes of 1 or 4 nt were at least as active as those with longer loops. L sshRNAs remained highly potent even when the 3′ end of the antisense strand was directly linked with the 5′ end of the sense strand. In this case, the sense strand can be shorter than the antisense strand, and the loop can be formed entirely by the 3′ end of the antisense strand. Monomer sshRNAs are not processed by recombinant Dicers in vitro. Although they can form dimers that are sometimes Dicer substrates, their RNAi activity is not dependent on the formation of such structures. Our findings have implications for the mechanism of action of sshRNAs, and the ability to design highly potent shRNAs with minimal length is encouraging for the prospects of the therapeutic use of direct-delivered shRNAs.
Brookite titania photocatalytic nanomaterials: Synthesis, properties, and applications
Authors: Xie Jimin , Lü Xiaomeng , Liu Jun , Shu Huoming
Published: November 2009

Phase-pure brookite TiO2 and its activity has been obscured for its difficulty of synthesis. Hence, we introduced the method of preparation and property of phase-pure brookite TiO2 and prepared phase-pure brookite TiO2 by hydrothermal method using Ti(SO4)2 as precursor. Phase formation was achieved by hydrothermal treatment at 180 °C after different synthesis time. The physical and photophysical properties of samples were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), UV–vis diffraction (UV–vis/DRS), and Raman spectroscopy. The dependence of the photocatalytic activities on synthesis time and correlations with the physical properties of brookite samples was examined in detail. In the case of mineralization of rhodamine B (Rh B), the sample with the narrowest bandgap and the lowest photoluminescence (PL) intensity (at hydrothermal synthesis time 36 h) showed the best photodecolorization activity. Proposed decolorization mechanism was elucidated in the light of the UV–vis spectra of the analyzed degradation products and frontier electron density (FED) theory. The results indicated that photocatalytic decolorization by brookite TiO2 is a highly effective way to remove Rh B under near-visible light irradiation.
Study of the sulfonation of expanded polystyrene waste and of properties of the products obtained
Authors: Sułkowski Wieslaw W. , Nowak Krzysztof , Sułkowska Anna , Wolińska Agnieszka , Bajdur Wioletta M. , Pentak Danuta , Mikuła Barbara
Published: November 2009

Waste-expanded polystyrene (EPS) and virgin polystyrene (VPS) were converted into ion exchangers by chemical modification. For this purpose, we used silica sulfuric acid as the sulfonating agent and conducted sulfonation under heterogeneous conditions. For VPS, the influence of the quantity of the sulfonating agent, the temperature, and the reaction time on the product properties were studied. As it appeared, silica sulfuric acid simplifies the reaction in comparison with the conventional sulfonation methods. Fourier transform-infrared (FT-IR) spectra and elemental analysis revealed that products were cross-linked and the content of sulfonate groups in a polymer chain varied. Some of the yielded polymers exhibited good water absorption and cation-exchange properties. The ion-exchange capacity (IEC) for chosen products was also determined, and it turned out to be similar to the commercial resin. The batch method was used to study the purification of solutions of Zn2+ and Cu2+ by the obtained resins. The performed study proved the usefulness of waste PS derivatives for the water treatment process.
Controlled growth of BaMoO4 hierarchical superstructures in functionalized ionic liquids
Authors: Luo Zhijun , Li Huaming , Yin Sheng , Zhang Jingtong , Wang Kun , Wang Leigang , Guan Qingfeng
Published: November 2009

Dual-functionalized ionic liquids (ILs) containing both functionalized cation and anion offer scope for tuning of nucleation and growth steps to achieve crystallographic control. BaMoO4 crystals synthesized in alkyl methylimidazolium trifluoroacetate ([C
n
mim]TA, n = 4, 8, 16) aqueous solution display the similar shuttle-like shape. The size of building blocks assembling into the hierarchical architectures has been influenced by the inhibiting effect of the imidazolium substituent alkyl chain. With the increase of imidazolium substituent alkyl chain length, the building blocks change from the truncated octahedron to the nanosheet. The single-crystalline BaMoO4 dendrites were prepared under the direction of [Omim]TA via the oriented attachment mechanism. BaMoO4 porous structures have been successfully synthesized in the [Omim]TA aqueous solution via the manipulation of the growth kinetics. Whether the resultant holes in the BaMoO4 structure are open or clogged depends upon variations in the molar ratio [Ba2+]/[Mo7O24
6–]. Shuttle-like BaMoO4 crystals made of nanosheets with the helical growth features have been successfully synthesized in the presence of [C16mim]TA. In addition, the amount of [C16mim]TA in the solution profoundly influences the morphology and size of the as-obtained products.
Hierarchical design of nanostructured materials based on polyoxometalates
Authors: Mizuno Noritaka , Uchida Sayaka , Uehara Kazuhiro
Published: November 2009

The construction of nanostructured materials with advanced functions by the self-organization of molecular building blocks is one of the key topics in modern materials chemistry. This review describes our concept of the hierarchical design of polyoxometalate (POM)-based compounds with nanosized spaces: (1) syntheses of building blocks (POMs and counter cations), (2) directing the self-organization of building blocks to form crystalline materials with nanosized spaces, and (3) kinetic control of the self-organization process to introduce nanosized space into the dense nonporous crystal, with emphasis on (2). Our recent results on the construction of nanosized spaces within the POM-based compounds with controlled size, volume, shape, and affinity, and their functions are presented.
Hierarchically structured functional materials: Synthesis strategies for multimodal porous networks
Authors: Yang Xiao-Yu , Li Yu , Lemaire Arnaud , Yu Jia-Guo , Su Bao-Lian
Published: November 2009

Hierarchically porous materials displaying multimodal pore sizes are desirable for their improved flow performance coupled with high surface areas. In the last five years, a tremendous amount of research has focused upon the synthesis and applications of hierarchically porous materials. This review aims to open up a new avenue of research in this exciting field. At first, recent progress in the synthesis of hierarchically porous materials, targeted through templating methods, is reviewed. These synthesis methods involve a supermolecular assembly of amphiphilic polymers or surfactants combined with second surfactant systems or with macrotemplates such as solid particles, liquid drops, and air bubbles. The preparation procedures using surfactants combined with other chemical or physical methods, controlled phase-separation, or template replication will also be discussed. Subsequently, an innovative procedure concerning the self-formation of hierarchically porous materials is thoroughly examined. This self-formation procedure is based on a self-generated porogen mechanism. Porogens such as alcohol molecules can be precisely controlled at the molecular level to design new hierarchically porous materials. Most of these synthesis methods allow an easy and independent adjustment to the multiporosity of a material, i.e., its micro-, meso-, and macroporosity.
Unmourned Dead, Filtered History, and the Screening of Anti-Semitism in Kieślowski's A Short Film About Killing
Authors: Rashkin Esther
Published: November 2009

A searing indictment of the death penalty, Krzysztof Kieślowski's A Short Film About Killing derives its power in large part from its stark juxtaposition of Jacek Lazar's brutal murder of a taxi driver with the Polish State's execution of Jacek for his crime—an act critics have consistently described as unmotivated and inexplicable. This essay explores how the film invites us to view it psychoanalytically, cinematographically, and historically as a multilayered narrative about personal and collective traumas that can be neither buried nor mourned. It begins by showing that Jacek's murderous act is motivated by an unutterable personal secret and an intrapsychic structure that prevents his grieving a lost love. The essay then reveals how the film embeds within this private tale the national trauma of Poland's oppression by the Nazis and Soviets during and after the Second World War. It concludes by elaborating the subtle ways in which the film reflects on Poland's still unsettled history of anti-Semitism. Opposition to capital punishment thus emerges as a screen for personal and public sagas involving pathological mourning and the murderous power of political and religious ideology.
The Poetics of Loss: Erotic Melancholia in Agamben and Dickinson
Authors: Diehl Joanne Feit
Published: November 2009

Remarking upon "Mourning and Melancholia," Giorgio Agamben notes that Freud writes with "a certain discomfort" of melancholia "'that a loss has indeed occurred, without it being known what has been lost.'" Agamben's elaboration of how a fictive introjection of absence allows melancholy to "open . . . a space for the existence of the unreal" leads to a psychodynamic picture that fuses the mortuary with the erotic. I argue that this psychodynamic observation offers a means for understanding Emily Dickinson's highly erotized, death-driven work. The Dickinsonian "I" gains poetic power to the extent that she simultaneously "buries" the absent other and claims amorous possession as he departs. Through close syntactic and rhetorical readings of canonical poems, I demonstrate that Agamben's psychosexual speculations on melancholia can provide a conceptual frame for a psychoanalytically informed interpretation of this enigmatic, impassioned poet's work.
A Catullan Allusion in Strindberg
Authors: Boughner Robert
Published: November 2009

This note argues that August Strindberg's Le Plaidoyer d'un fou (A Madman's Defense) alludes at its core to Catullus 85, Odi et amo . Strindberg's novel tells the tale of a man who hated the woman he loved and loved the woman he hated. In exploiting Catullus's epigram, Strindberg illustrates well the power and universality of Catullus's verse.
Teaching Cicero's Laelius de Amicitia
Authors: de Luce Judith
Published: November 2009

In terms of content Cicero's Laelius de Amicitia recommends itself for the classroom and can ease the transition from artificial to original Latin. Organizing such a course around the contextualization of friendship challenges students to define friendship both for themselves and for the Romans across the lifespan. Contemporary research into the nature and function of friendship underscores the complexity of the relationship. In addition, applying Robert Butler's theory of the life review to this essay illuminates Cicero's composing this discussion of friendship within the context of his own old age.
Can Girls Be Friends?: Talking about Gender in Cicero's de Amicitia
Authors: Fogel Jerise
Published: November 2009

One of the most prominent, although often overlooked, features of Cicero's de Amicitia is that it talks exclusively about men's relationships with other men. Similarly to the pederastic system and the sexual and political assumptions of Plato and his contemporaries, the idealized Roman male affective relationships called amicitia present us with a crucial and intense form of social attachment. This essay offers strategies for encouraging students to analyze the role of gender in the theory and practice of Roman and Hellenistic amicitia , as well as in their own real-life relationships, beginning from Cicero's text.
Maior et clarior victoria : Hannibal and Tarentum in Livy
Authors: Chlup James T.
Published: November 2009

Livy's narrative of events at Tarentum during the Second Punic War reveals additional complexities to the historian's presentation of Hannibal, who emerges as an adept politician through his establishment of a positive working relationship with the city. Hannibal captures the city and endeavors to win the hearts and minds of his new allies. Hannibal thus emerges as an enemy who can defeat Rome in battle and undermine her political hegemony in the Italian peninsula. Roman recapture of the city under Fabius Maximus prophesies Rome's eventual victory in the war.
Words and Silence: Atticus as the Dedicatee of de Amicitia
Authors: Marchetti Sandra Citroni
Published: November 2009

Cicero and Atticus, the author and the dedicatee of de Amicitia, have always been considered, in ancient and modern tradition, as an example of ideal friendship. But this model should not be accepted unquestioningly. Is it really possible to consider a friend "as a second self" and to let him know all our thoughts? And is it always right to love the friends of our friend and to hate his enemies? We should not search for models of ideal behavior in the ancients, but rather interpret their experience critically, comparing it with our own.
Originalism in a Digital Age: An Inquiry into the Right to Bear Arms
Authors: Kozuskanich Nathan
Published: November 2009

The recent Washington, D.C., gun case, District of Columbia v. Heller, brought the question of the meaning of the Second Amendment before the U.S. Supreme Court for the first time in almost 70 years. Both the majority and minority opinions attempt to lay claim to original intent, with history playing a leading role. Both opinions, and particularly Scalia's majority opinion, lack a coherent historical methodology. This article explores a new avenue of research: comprehensive digital archives with keyword search capabilities. Such archives introduce thousands of new documents to the debate and help scholars to recover the usage and meaning of key constitutional phrases like "bear arms." These digital databases reveal the limitations of the individual and collective rights paradigms that have dominated debate over the Second Amendment, because both are unable to account for the civic responsibility of owning and bearing arms that is evident in the documents. Understanding that "bearing arms" meant fulfilling one's duty as a citizen to the common defense can account for personal firearm ownership while realizing that those arms were subject to robust regulation. Although digital research cannot be a substitute for traditional historical methods, it can give legal scholars access to a wealth of resources that have been relatively unused in constitutional research. Indeed, an historical focus on context and change over time can complement the legal focus on structure and precedent. Rather than move away from context, as the Heller decision encourages, digital research can restore originalist scholarship to its historical roots.
Saving the Lives of Strangers: Humane Societies and the Cosmopolitan Provision of Charitable Aid
Authors: Moniz Amanda Bowie
Published: November 2009

This article explores the contribution of humane societies – organizations that promoted the rescue and resuscitation of victims of drowning and certain other accidents – to Americans' and Britons' mastery of aid to strangers in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. By 1800, these little-known groups were among the most cosmopolitan philanthropies in the Anglophone world. The humane societies founded in the 1770s and the first half of the 1780s had not started out with catholic outlooks. Indeed, their founders wondered how many people the charities would help, raising questions about the relationship between social ills and eleemosynary projects. Philadelphia burial records as well as newspaper accounts from several cities indicate that the actual incidence of drowning did not lead to the formation of humane societies; rather, the perceived danger united people across regions and backgrounds. Although their claims were exaggerated, humane societies in London, Massachusetts and Philadelphia engaged in beneficence without regard to the ethnic, religious, occupational, or personal ties that had structured access to charitable relief for much of the eighteenth century, and American humane societies even recognized the role of African Americans as lifesavers. These groups belonged to a larger shift among American and British philanthropists towards helping people, either locally or at a distance, for whom earlier activists would have felt no charitable obligation. Although not unique, humane societies fostered great confidence about the possibilities of moral responsibility to all humankind because of the tightly focused, yet potentially universal, nature of their programs.
The Suffering Saints: Thomas L. Kane, Democratic Reform, and the Mormon Question in Antebellum America
Authors: Grow Matthew J.
Published: November 2009

In the late 1840s and early 1850s, Thomas L. Kane, a Philadelphia social reformer, became the Mormons' self-appointed advocate to the nation and embarked on a wide-ranging publicity campaign to transform the image of the Latter-day Saints in the American mind. While most Americans considered Mormonism fraudulent and fanatical, Kane depicted the Saints as a persecuted minority driven from their homes in search of religious liberty. His descriptions of the suffering Saints, conducted through the popular press and pamphlets, resonated with deeply held ideals of religious tolerance and changing ideas about the nature of pain. As a result, sympathizing with the Saints became temporarily fashionable. Kane's effort abruptly ended, however, when Mormons publicly acknowledged their practice of polygamy in 1852, thus ceding their role as noble victims in a narrative of suffering. Kane's campaign to shape perceptions of Mormonism illuminates the connections between social reform, print culture, and minority religions in nineteenth-century America. While antebellum reform is typically described as emerging from evangelical religion and Whig Party politics, Kane represents social reformers allied with the Democratic Party, anti-evangelicalism, and romanticism. Mormonism's shifting image also reveals the struggles of nineteenth-century Americans to define the boundaries of religious freedom and practice. Marginal religious groups and their defenders used claims of victimhood to move to the rhetorical center of the nation's concerns. However, while Kane's emphasis on suffering briefly improved the Mormon image, it ironically reinforced the Latter-day Saints' drive for separatism that helped fuel the Mormon controversy for the rest of the century.
“Remarkable Rather for Its Eloquence than Its Truth”: Modern Travelers Encounter the Holy Land—and Each Other’s Accounts Thereof
Authors: Horowitz Elliott
Published: November 2009

This article examines the responses of modern western travelers - Jewish, Catholic, and Protestant - to three major sites (and sights) of Palestine pilgrimage - the Jordan river, the approach to Jerusalem, and Jewish prayer at the Western Wall. Particular attention is paid to the tensions between prior expectations and sometimes harsh realities, as well as to the ways in which travel writers responded both explicitly and implictly to previous accounts of the places they were describing. Among the visitors treated are F. R. Chateaubriand, J. S. Buckingham, Judith Montefiore, Mark Twain, and Theodor Herzl.
Jews as Postcards, or Postcards as Jews: Mobility in a Modern Genre
Authors: Hasan-Rokem Galit
Published: November 2009

The picture postcard is a concrete expression of mobility in modern times. Their illustrations include many themes explicitly referring to travel, emigration and uprooting that will be highlighted in the article. As a cultural practice postcards in general may also serve as concrete indexes of the mobility of their documented senders and receivers. Postcards became very early objects of systematic collecting. Most of the Jewish postcards to be discussed in this study belong to the Joseph and Margit Hoffman Collection of the Folklore Research Center at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, over seven thousand picture post cards, stemming predominantly from the period before the Shoah. The postcards discussed in the article encompass large parts of the Jewish world of the period including East, Central and West Europe, Palestine, the United States, and North Africa. Based on a semiotic explication of the illustrations of the postcards, as well as in a number of cases the personal texts on their verso side, they are here discussed as part of an attempt to interpret figures of mobility in and with regard to Jewish culture. A major European tradition shared by Christians and Jews, the Wandering Jew, is presented as a possible interpretative key for the postcards. In their particular combination of the visual and the verbal as well as of individual art and folk and popular culture, postcards are shown to present a rich source for illuminating the cultural interactions between Jews and their neighbors
The Contested Boundaries of "Magic" and "Religion" in Late Pagan Monotheism
Authors: Fraser Kyle A.
Published: November 2009

The Western concept of "magic" as the demonized other of religion is usually held to originate within early Christian representations of pagan idoloty. This article argues instead that the magic-religion dichotomy was first shaped within pagan monotheistic dicourse. Late pagan thinkers were deeply preoccupied with the reconciliation of theology and cult. They questioned whether the older traditions of cult sacrifice were compatible with the worship of one supreme God. The most prevalent way of addressing this tension was to argue that rituals were address to daimons. Ritual actions that fell outside the bounds of monotheistic piety were illegitimate and magical. The category "magic" as religion's oppositve thus evolved out of tensions between pagan monotheism and daimonology.
Bears, Boars, and Other Socially Constructed Bodies in Hrólfs saga kraka
Authors: McGlynn Michael P.
Published: November 2009

This article analyzes one motif related to the Old Norse-Icelandic character Bodvar Bjarki. The motif of the body double is analyzed in four extant witnesses to the Bjarki tradition. The motif is then compared to so-called out-of-body experience, as fomulated in parapsychological studies, to provide new insights into this fascinating motif, which has been otherwise ignored or dismissed by literary scholars. The concept of "body" is then historicized to widen the interpretive gamut for the body double motif. Finally, Oriential traditions of multiple bodies and growingly popular and scientific concepts of multiple bodies and energy bodies are briefly considered as one possible way to update the context of literary science. While making this analysis of the body double motif, the paper advocates for a new sense of the literary, more consciously in dialogue with vanguard thought of other disciplines.
Magicians of the Twenty-First Century: An Attempt at Dimensioning the Magician's Personality
Authors: Mayer Gerhard
Published: November 2009

This article presents findings of a field study of comtemporary magicians representing a large spectrum of magical disciplines. Eleven interviews were conducted in German-speaking countries, focusing on biographical embedding, experiential aspects, and world views. From this data, an attempt is made to describe the magician's personality. Five approaches and motivational structures guiding magical practice are identified, and five typified aspects of the magician are distinguished: the magician as artist, the magician as social utopian, the magician as scientist, the magician as "fully functioning person," and the magician as seeker of wisdom.
A Grand End for a Grand Narrative: Lodovico Lazzarelli, Giovanni Mercurio da Correggio and Renaissance Hermetica
Authors: Copenhaver Brian P.
Published: November 2009

This long review essay addresses Wouter Hanegraaff and Ruud Bouthoorn's new book on Lodovico Lazzarelli. It examines the fundamental point of how completely Renaissance magical thought should be considered "hermetic." Franics Yates' notion of Renaissance Hermeticism still holds great sway, but in the introduction to this book, Hanegraaff challenges it substantially.
Embracing Urbanism: The City as Archive
Authors: Rao Vyjayanthi
Published: November 2009

This article explores notions of archive and infrastructure in the construction of metropolitan urbanism in the West. Building on this exploration, the author proposes the concept of “city-as-archive” as a tool for studying contemporary urbanism and for moving beyond the political geography of disciplinary epistemology in the social sciences. The notion of “city-as-archive” elaborates a new way of understanding archives—as principles of ordering stimuli upon which future transactions are based, rather than as sites for the preservation of a past that has been deemed to be of collective significance. This understanding builds analogically upon theories about urban space, life, and experience. By deploying this concept of “city-as-archive,” the author suggests that we are in a better position to understand the city space of mediation between modern India and the modern West rather than as yet another site of Indian exceptionalism.
Changing India-West Cultural Dialectics
Authors: Khare R. S.
Published: November 2009

The changing profiles of the India-West cultural dialogue are pursued over the last sixty years. After discussing French anthropologist Louis Dumont’s mid-twentieth century “binary opposition” between India and the West as the starting anthropological point of departure, I turn to Wilhelm Halbfass, a German comparative philosopher, for a better differentiated treatment of the changing India-West cultural dialogues and dialectics. During the last decade, the topic has received a distinctly conceptually open and inclusive treatment at the hands of two Noble Laureates: Octavio Paz, a Mexican poet, thinker and diplomat, and Amartya Sen, an Indian economist and social philosopher. Both demonstrate convincingly how India-West cultural dialectics has long been historically and culturally significant, especially once it is viewed interdependently from both directions in relation to the ongoing major global historical-cultural-political changes. Lately, this has included, for example, the growing technological-cultural interdependence between “globalizing India,” unifying Europe (as the European Union), and the post 9/11 U.S.
Rushdie-Wushdie: Salman Rushdie’s Hobson-Jobson
Authors: Mishra Vijay
Published: November 2009

Claims made on Salman Rushdie’s behalf about his use of language are commonplace, and often occur as variations on a standard refrain: Rushdie gives a new voice to India; he creates a language which captures in a dramatic fashion the semiological complexities of Indian vernaculars; his “bilingualism is different from that of all his predecessors”; his use of texts ranging from the Qur’an,

The Thousand Nights and A Night

, and Attar’s

The Conference of the Birds

to the

Mahābhārata

and

The Ocean of the Rivers of Story

, creates an insider’s world view not available, say, to a Forster or a Kipling, and so on. What has not been discussed at all seriously are the links between Rushdie and colonial discourses as well as his use of numerology. In locating one of the sources of Rushdie’s linguistic creativity in a colonial hobson-jobson, this essay suggests ways in which what has been referred to as Rushdie’s compact with the Western reader may be critically examined.
Intellectual India: Reason, Identity, Dissent
Authors: Ganeri Jonardon
Published: November 2009

The “idea of India” is indeed an open, assimilative, and spacious one, sustaining a plurality of voices, orthodox and dissenting, of many ages, regions, and affiliations. Modern Indian identities in the global diaspora, as much as in India itself, can call upon all these voices and traditions, rethink them, adapt and modify them, use the resources of reason they make available in deliberation about who to be, how to behave, and on what to agree. Amartya Sen argues the case with great force in his recent book,

The Argumentative Indian

. In the first part of my paper, I examine his argument in some detail and comment on what I perceive to be a serious omission in the book—the lack of any real engagement with India’s intellectual traditions, with roots in one or another of its religious systems. The background worry is that in developing the resources of reason within Hinduism, Islam, or Buddhism, we are in some way making reason subordinate to tradition and religious command. Sen reads Akbar as resisting that threat with a strong insistence on the autonomy of reason. My argument is that we can respect the need for autonomy without restricting reason’s resources to those merely of allegedly value-free disciplines such as rational choice theory. My claim will be that the appeal to India’s traditions of argumentation and public reasoning is hollow if it does not engage with the detail of those traditions, for only in this way does the full panoply that a well-informed “argumentative Indian” has available to himself or herself come to the fore, in contrast with the restricted vision of a sectarian approach. Pointing to the brute existence of skeptical voices like that of Jāvāli is only the beginning of the story. What we really need to know is how a skeptic like Jāvāli adapted and manipulated the tools of justification and argument at his disposal so as to make possible his dissent. If nothing else, that would be a step towards understanding how heterodox voices might similarly empower themselves in global public discourse today. It is important to understand how the resources of reason can make internal dissent possible. In the second section, I document some of the evidence and begin to make good the lacuna I perceive in Sen’s work. In the third part of the essay, I show how “spacious” intellectual India really was in the seventeenth century, a period of increasing globalization, and one in which there was a rapid circulation of ideas between India and Europe.
The Mutiny to Come
Authors: Devji Faisal
Published: November 2009

The Indian Mutiny of 1857 was by far the most serious anticolonial insurrection of the nineteenth century and is generally held to constitute the last great act of traditional resistance to British rule. This essay is concerned with delineating another vision of the mutiny’s modernity than the one retailed by colonial and nationalist writers. It was neither the unity of India in any political sense, nor its division in any religious one, that the revolt brought to light, but rather an empire of distinctions where the native was not set against the alien but existed alongside it within a moral compact. And if much of this moral compact was drawn from tradition, its hesitant achievement during the rebellion of 1857 had unexpected consequences for India’s modernity. These became evident in the next period of anti-British mobilization across northern India, Gandhi’s movement of noncooperation that began with his defense of the caliphate in 1919. The extraordinary similarity of themes and arguments between these two events must give us pause for thought, even if we do not link them in any causal fashion. Whether it is the sacrifices made by one religious group for another or the practice of noncooperation itself, such elements appear to have been reincarnated from one historical moment to the next. For it was in the mutiny that these factors were transformed out of traditional recognition and made into the stuff of Indian modernity, destabilizing nationalist verities even as they made the nation itself possible in Gandhi’s spiritualization of politics.
Gandhi’s West, the West’s Gandhi
Authors: Lal Vinay
Published: November 2009

Gandhi had a life-long engagement with “the West.” He was educated in Britain, had close Jewish friends in South Africa, and engaged in discussions with Christian clergymen for much of his life. In the midst of struggles against racism and colonialism, Gandhi never lacked friends and admirers in Britain, Europe, and the U.S. Thoreau, Tolstoy, and Ruskin—the “Holy Trinity”—are widely believed to have influenced him, but the idea of “influence” has less analytical purchase than is commonly believed. Taking Thoreau as an illustration, this paper suggests that a different hermeneutics of reading is required to understand the structures of feeling shared between Gandhi and his many interlocutors in the West. Wedded to the idea that freedom is indivisible, Gandhi constructed a West with which he could strike common ground, and his sojourns in the Other West form an astounding chapter in interculturality. The West’s Gandhi, on the other hand, is arguably a sanitized figure, the apostle of nonviolence and the prophet of peace. True, two generations of African-American leaders and intellectuals wrestled with Gandhi’s ideas before they appeared to be embodied in the person of Martin Luther King. Gandhi is acknowledged in the West as a supremely world historical figure, but this Gandhi is not easily reconciled with the emphatic critic of nearly all the critical categories of modern political thought. This paper concludes with an assessment of Gandhi’s challenge to the idea of “global history,” pointing to Gandhi’s suspicion of the view that all our universalisms are to be derived from the West, and it places for consideration the idea that his most enduring contribution may be his relentless questioning of the presuppositions of modern knowledge systems.
News from the Crypt: India, Modernity, and the West
Authors: Mishra Sudesh
Published: November 2009

Since at least 1947, India’s history has been shaped by its encounter with the twin forces of modernity and the West, and popular Hindi cinema has tried to tell the story of this complex history. There are two distinct stages, Nehruvian and post-Nehruvian, to this “culturalist” representation of India’s encounter with the West and modernity. Characterized by an alignment with a mixed form of socialist modernity and a rejection of market capital, the Nehruvian stage is best caught in the black and white films of the fifties, affectionately known as the Golden Era. Raj Kapoor’s

Jagte Raho

(1956), Guru Dutt’s

Pyasa

(1957) and B. R. Chopra’s

Naya Daur

(1957) exemplify this period. Marked by a dramatic shift away from socialist modernity and an active espousal of market principles, the post-Nehruvian stage is perhaps most ably captured in a range of NRI (Non Resident Indian) films, including

Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge

(1995),

Pardes

(1997) and

Hum Tum

(2004). My paper provides a critical account of the dynamics of this history as captured on celluloid.