bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Assessment of digital maturity of enterprises
Authors: Levaniuk D.A. , Bolsunovskaya M V , Shirokova S V , Gintciak A M
Published: December 2020

The project management methodology is an approach to the formation of a set of methods that structures the project management system and is reflected in the manuals. The aim of the article is to increase the efficiency of IT project management by adapting existing management methodologies considering the characteristics of projects implemented in the company. Performing the following tasks allows to achieve the goal: - review of existing methodologies; - description of the object of study; - identification of key features of IT project management in the company OOO «ITSK»; - IT project management guidelines; - application of a corporate standard as part of an IT project in the oil and gas industry. The relevance of the article is explained by the wide distribution of IT projects of various fields of application, including projects to automate the activities of an oil and gas industry company that require management throughout the entire life cycle. The application of the project management methodology allows you to record the goals and results of the project, give them quantitative characteristics, determine the time, cost and quality parameters of the project, create a realistic plan for the project, identify, assess risks and prevent possible negative consequences during the implementation of the project. In the course of the work, a brief analysis of the existing project management methodologies was carried out, the specifics of IT project management described, the adaptation of the methodology in the oil and gas industry and the description of the standard used within the company are reflected. Using an example of a project to automate monitoring of KPIs, the application of a corporate methodology based on best practices was demonstrated.
A study of the ice-resistant protective coatings effect on the deterioration of the outdoor covering of ice vessels and icebreakers
Authors: Kitaev M V , Pastukhov P O , Surov V A
Published: December 2020

The study examines the regularities of the outer coatings deterioration of ice class vessels and icebreakers, as well as the effect of ice-resistant protective coatings on deterioration rates. As the initial data, the results of measurements of residual thicknesses from the DEFHULL computer database were used. A comparison of the normative values of the outer coatings deterioration rates for ice class vessels presented in the current version of the RMRS Rules and the values obtained as a result of processing the DEFHULL database data was carried out. The results and conclusions were used in developing the proposals for amending and supplementing the RMRS Rules regarding the purpose of corrosion and abrasion surcharges when determining the thickness of the outer coatings of ice class vessels.
The effect of ozonation on the wettability of wood
Authors: Safiullina A Kh , Mukhametzyanov Sh R , Shaikhutdinova A R , Zhmaylo M A
Published: December 2020

Ozone can be used to break down lignin and hemicellulose in many lignocellulosic materials. Ozone pre-treatment has the following advantages: it effectively removes lignin; as a result of such pre-treatment, toxic products are not formed for the subsequent process; the reaction is carried out at room temperature and atmospheric pressure. The purpose of this work is to study the effects of ozone on the surface of natural and thermally modified wood. Thermal treatment is an environmentally friendly method that allows you to change the color and performance properties of wood. This article analyses the effect of ozonation of the surface of natural and thermally modified wood in order to increase the adhesive properties during bonding. Thus, a more economical consumption of glue and a reduction in the emission of harmful volatile substances into the environment are possible.
Characterization of a 17-4 PH stainless steel obtained through metal powder Hot Isostatic Pressing process for automotive application
Authors: Dabala M , Polyakova M
Published: December 2020

Steels of the family 17-4 Precipitation Hardening stainless steels are often considered as potential candidates for applications requiring high levels of strength (typically above 600 MPa in tensile strength) and a moderate ductility. The aim of this work is the characterization of a 17-4 precipitation hardening stainless steel obtained through metal powder Hot Isostatic Pressing process. The main purposes of using Hot Isostatic Pressing process are the better chemical composition and microstructure homogeneity, the finer grain size (allowing to higher mechanical properties), and the possibility to obtain net shape products, avoiding subsequent finishing operations. The Hot Isostatic Pressing process temperature does not seem to significantly influence the tensile properties, while, the aging temperature is a key factor: lower aging temperature brings to higher strength and lower ductility. However, a higher influence of the Hot Isostatic Pressing process temperature was detected on the toughness. Improved toughness both at room and at low temperature was obtained by optimizing the aging treatments. An improvement of 32 % in impact energy was obtained by the optimization of the aging process thanks to a higher austenite content, which has shown a nanosized shape between the martensite platelets, in the steel structure.
Electric Resistance Welding of Dissimilar Pipes
Authors: Davydov A D , Evstratikova Ya I , Shaposhnikov N O , Klimov G G
Published: December 2020

Numerous studies have shown that corrosion of the casing outer side is one of the factors that has a negative impact on the accident rate of the casing string and is the reason of loss of tightness and various failures and complications in the well. The article describes a method of electric resistance welding of dissimilar steel bonding, which allows to increase the corrosion resistance of casing strings in elevator sections with an increased exterior aggressiveness. The developed technology solutions for welding conditions are presented. Metallographic studies of welded joints and recommendations for technological welding conditions are given.
Determination of the velocity coefficient of a turbine nozzle diaphragm with partial blading of the runner
Authors: Kryukov A. A. , Rakov G. L. , Chekhranov S. V. , Simashov R.R.
Published: December 2020

A method for determining the velocity coefficient of a nozzle diaphragm for a turbine with partial blading of the runner using the ANSYS software package is presented in the paper. The velocity coefficient of the nozzle diaphragm along the active arc length is distributed and plotted. The averaged values of the velocity coefficient of the nozzle diaphragm of the turbine with partial blading of the runner are determined. The dependences of the speed coefficients of the turbine nozzle diaphragm with partial blading of the runner in the range of πt 1,5÷2,5 and the degree of partiality in the range of 0,059÷1 are presented. The approximation resulted in an empirical dependence that takes into account the influence of the degree of partiality and the Mach number on velocity coefficients of the nozzle diaphragm with partial blading of the runner. The empirical dependence φ=f(M1t; ε ) obtained in this work is essential for modeling variable modes and multi-mode optimization of low-flow turbines.
Research of New Cars Quality
Authors: Kozlovsky V. N. , Aydarov D. V. , Novikova A. P. , Cvetkov P.S.
Published: December 2020

The article deals with the study results of the quality of new cars in the production control process in the delivery condition to the consumer. The research was conducted on the basis of resource tests and using information-statistical analysis. The quality assessment of new cars and their role in customer satisfaction is given.
Actualization of the problem of developing an electronic control system for the oxygen sensor heater of an automobile internal combustion engine
Authors: Debelov V V , Kozlovsky V N , Aydarov D V , Cvetkov P.S
Published: December 2020

The presented work is devoted to the problem of developing an electronic control system for the oxygen sensor heater of an automobile internal combustion engine.
Improve the integrity testing process based on QFD, FMEA and TRIZ
Authors: Vysotskaya Maria V
Published: December 2020

In today’s aircraft industry – competitiveness in the domestic and foreign markets, is the main criterion for the development of quality, a high level of which is achieved through methods and approaches: QFD, FMEA, TRIZ. There is a possibility of application of these methods at tests of production, for the purpose to meet expectations of consumers with the most optimum combination of characteristics of production.

The design process is often associated with a compromise of conflicting parameters, which means increased costs and loss of quality. Innovation in the production process can create great value. The rapid development of modern technologies and the commercial environment suggests that the design of production processes requires the application of a systematic method of improvement. The proposed method combines a number of quality tools to support the process of modern development of aviation. In order to implement the acceptance improvement, it is necessary, first, to analyze the product testing process in accordance with the influencing parameters and use QFD (quality function deployment) to obtain the basic requirements for the testing process. Secondly, to find the contradictions of the testing process and analyze them comprehensively. To creatively solve the revealed contradictions, apply the Russian theory of inventive problem solving (TRIZ). When using this technique increases both the efficiency and maneuverability of the use of quality tools to solve technological problems. The effectiveness of the proposed method of improvement is illustrated and confirmed by the example of the process of testing the tightness of the hose of the life support system of the product “Bion - M”.
On shale shaker’s structural optimization and performance improvement
Authors: Korostelkin A A , Filintsev A A , Novokshonov V V , Nikitin A V
Published: December 2020

Recent trends, predictions [1] and overall assessments [2] in extractive industries show there will be changes in many aspects of business, varying from geopolitical issues up to the optimization of working processes and machines. In severe conditions of drilling stations usually based quite a way off to cities and are difficult to access, it is important for all the equipment and machines to operate without failure and provide forecasted level of durability, because unexpected shutdown may lead to halting of production and economic losses. This article is focused on investigation of shale shaker primary characteristics and its behavior during operational loads. In the result of the work an optimization has been performed on the basis of kinematic, strength and NVH performance. Special emphasis was put on the value of vibrational acceleration which reflects an overall possibility of a shale shaker to sift drilling mud. It is a widespread practice to implement optimization tools into different fields. The methods of usage topology optimization can follow the same ideas as it is done in automotive [3] or agricultural industries [4]. Advantage of this paper based on intense cooperation between manufacturing department of the customer and CAE engineers which is the basis of a good design process [5] and overall approach to successful development [6], that includes manufacturing restrictions and that allowed to prove sustainability of the models through validation phases, in the beginning of the project for the initial structure and in the middle of the project for several newly assembled prototypes. So the results of the work have been confirmed by real experiments. Another strong point was a possibility to obtain a feedback right from drilling stations about the condition of optimized shale shaker after it started to work under common operational loads. Constant monitoring, predicting systems and other methods to evaluate overall condition of the machines under operational loads or drilling fluids [7] during the extraction process are important measures in order to prevent unexpected failures. Process and result of this work can be assembled in a step-by-step method for simplified evaluation of shale shakers with vibrators of different amounts and powers. Such method allowed to obtain an overall glimpse on main characteristics, performance, to locate durability weak zones and shows potential for possible structural optimization. The new approach has been used in this research by using the CML-Bench platform, which is a system for managing the simulation driven design projects field of digital design and modeling [8]. This system allows tracking and observing all necessary variables, simulation history and mutual influence of different parameters on different structural changes. Such a method for design engineering allows easily carrying out multidisciplinary optimization of the objects and always being aware of the performance state of the whole system [9].
Methods for identifying risks and opportunities in industrial organizations
Authors: Kozlova A T , Stepanova D A , Klyavin O I
Published: December 2020

Many factors negatively influence the Russian economy in modern conditions. They are the instability of industrial relations, the growth of inflation, the rise in the cost of loans, a significant decrease in the state support for the sectors of the economy and the functioning of the organization, a decrease in real incomes of the population, and many others. The chosen topic is relevant because many enterprises and organizations are unable to adapt to market conditions and make informed decisions under uncertainty. This is one of the reasons for the decline in their activities. This article is devoted to modern methods of managing the efficiency of an organization, proves the importance of considering the risks of the external and internal environment, as well as a methodology for determining the risks and opportunities for organizing the real sector of the economy is presented.
Effect of styrene content on mechanical and rheological behavior of styrene butadiene rubber
Authors: Wang Li’e , Luo Zhu , Yang Le , Wang Hai , Zhong Jincheng
Published: December 2020

Styrene butadiene rubber(SBR) consists of two random polymerization units, styrene and butadiene. As a rigid segment, styrene chain provides strength and rigidity to the rubber. The content of styrene in SBR directly affects its strength and stiffness. In this paper, the effect of styrene content on the fatigue characteristics and rheological properties of SBR have been investigated. The stress relaxation of SBR was reduced and the cross-linking density of butadiene was increased with the increasing styrene content. Especially the dynamic fatigue life of precracked SBR samples was obviously prolonged via slow down crack growth rate when the styrene content increased, which was accompanied by an augment in the value of J-integral and tearing energy in the case of a same gap extension length. At the initial stage of crack growth, the growth of secondary crack played an important role in the growth of main crack, and when the main crack accelerates, the growth of main crack itself dominated. On the other hand, the glass transition temperature obviously increased with the increase of styrene content.
The effect of magnetic field on Linac based Stereotactic Radiosurgery dosimetric parameters
Authors: Nedaie H Ali , Gholami Somayeh , Longo Francesco , Banaee Nooshin , Hassani Mohssen , Sarfehnia Arman , Pang G
Published: December 2020

Objective: MR-linac machines are being developed for image-guided radiation therapy but the magnetic field of such machines could affect dose distributions. The purpose of this work was to evaluate the effect of a magnetic field on linac beam dosimetric parameters including penumbra for circular cones used in radiosurgery. Methods: Monte Carlo simulation was conducted for a linac machine with circular cones at 6 MV beam. A homogenous magnetic field of 1.5 T was applied transversely and parallel to the radiation beam. Percentage depth dose (PDD) and beam profiles in a water phantom with and without the magnetic field were calculated. Results: The results have shown that when the magnetic field is applied transversely, the PDDs in the water phantom differ in the buildup region and distant part of PDD curves. The beam profiles at three different depths are all significantly different from those without the magnetic field. The penumbra is greater when a magnetic field has been applied. Conclusion: Linear accelerator-based SRT and SRS use small circular cones. The beam penumbra for these cones can change in the presence of a magnetic field. The perturbation of dose distribution has been also observed in a patient plan due to the presence of a magnetic field. The results of this study show that dose distributions in the presence of a magnetic field must be considered for MR-guided radiotherapy treatments.
Comparative study on application of 177Lu-labeled rituximab, tetulomab, cetuximab and huA33 monoclonal antibodies to targeted radionuclide therapy
Authors: Zakaly Hesham MH , Mostafa Mostafa Y A , Dzholumbetov Sergey , Issa Shams A M , Tekin H O , Erdemir R Uslu , Zhukovsky M
Published: December 2020

Purpose Dose coefficients from rituximab, tetulomab, cetuximab, and huA33 monoclonal antibodies labelled with the radionuclide 177Lu were estimated for human organs and tumours via a theoretical simulation based on experimental results. Methods The real experimental results were obtained from radiopharmaceutical distribution in hairless mice. Using the Sparks and Aydogan method, the cumulated activity for humans was recalculated. The simulation was used to assess the behaviour of MAbs labelled with 177Lu after injection into the human body. The average absorbed doses were calculated for the most exposed organs and tissues. Results The huA33 monoclonal antibodies (MAbs) labelled with 177Lu (Lu-rituximab, Lu-tetulomab, Lu-cetuximab, and Lu-huA33), presented the maximum nuclear transformation per Bq intake for the main organs (blood, kidneys, liver, lung, and spleen, as well as for a tumour) The absorbed dose in the liver is three times lower for Lu-huA33 compared to the other drugs. In the case of cetuximab, the spleen received the lowest dose compared to the other drugs. The dependencies on absorbed dose for the alveolar, bronchioles, bone surface, heart wall, kidneys, liver, lung, lymphatic nodes, and spleen, are presented. For tumours, the absorbed dose for each drug is calculated separately for a sphere of unit volume by using the information on the injected dose. Conclusion, The ratios of the dose coefficient for the tumour to each organ, indicate that lutetium-177 can be recommended for targeted radionuclide therapy since the dose per tumour is much greater than the dose per organ.
Romance
Authors: Mulready Cyrus
Published: December 2020

“Romance” is a term that has been variously applied to long-form verse narratives, episodic prose narratives, drama, stories from late Greek antiquity, and a popular subgenre of contemporary mass market fiction. In the 18th and 19th centuries it vied with “novel” as the standard term for the genre (before the latter won out to become part of our common vocabulary). Romance has also become a standard division of Shakespeare’s works, a dramatic genre that, beginning in the 19th century, stood alongside comedy, tragedy, and history as one of the cornerstones of the canon. Indeed, readers and scholars use “romance” so promiscuously as to suggest the near impossibility of drawing its definition with any clarity or meaning. Is the word merely an empty signifier for an incoherent concept? A vague label that is “generic” in the most unhelpful sense?

Perhaps, contrarily, “romance” has power as a label because of its variability and range. On a practical level, understanding the pliant ways that readers, publishers, and writers have used this term provides insight to one of the richest (and perhaps oldest) veins of storytelling. Romance also gives us a view of how those same traditions ultimately derive from more ancient and esoteric forms. As it relates to a theory of genre, too, romance has been indispensable. Two of the most important treatments of genre theory, by Northrop Frye and Fredric Jameson, center on romance as a literary and historical practice. To study romance is therefore to study the shapes and traditions of genre itself; to theorize romance is to provide a history and conceptual framework for how genres have worked and continue to work within storytelling practices.
Race and Ethnicity
Authors: Singh Amritjit , Babcock Aaron
Published: December 2020

Racial patterns at any given time have been intertwined with local contexts, economic and political conditions, technological change, and a growing awareness of the socially constructed nature of race and gender. Race in the modern sense of the term emerged first in the 18th century amid the transformative changes of the industrial revolution, a growing slave trade, and the spread of European settler colonialism and imperialism in Asia, Africa, and the Western hemisphere. As a means of categorizing populations, race was a useful tool in justifying both slavery and imperialism. A further solidification of racial taxonomy developed over the course of the 19th century in which peoples and nations were grouped as genetically distinct. Race was thus essentialized and difference became widely accepted as biological and measurable. In the early decades of the 20th century, the view of race as biologically determined and immutable gradually gave way to sociological and anthropological reconsiderations of previously held assumptions. Contemporaneous to this reorientation of thinking on race was the growth of ethnicity as a related but distinct form of grouping populations that reframed identity as rooted in a shared national and sociopolitical history. In the 20th century, race across scholarly disciplines began to be divested gradually of its biological and genetic aspects and a recognition of race as a legal and social construction had emerged, especially in Postcolonial Theory and Critical Race Theory (CRT). In fact, what was viewed as “race” around 1900 (e.g., the Irish race, the Jewish race) came to be defined as “ethnicity” in the 20th century. For centuries, however, race has been used as a means for exercising power and control and as a defense of a racial caste system that privileges select groups. Through their many creative uses of memory and history, writers and artists in the United States and elsewhere have long responded in multiple genres by offering their own versions and visions of individual and community, complicating in the process our understandings of race, ethnicity, gender, nation, majoritarianism, and citizenship—the tangled issues that continue to haunt Americans and many others around the globe. Historians, literary scholars, and theorists have also played an active role in challenging old orthodoxies on race and ethnicity through multiple overlapping approaches, including African American Studies, Ethnic American Studies, Black Feminism, Postcolonial Studies, and Critical Race Theory (CRT).
Victorianism and Contemporary Literature
Authors: Clark Hillard Molly
Published: December 2020

Victorianism refers to contemporary texts that cede time and space to Victorian ideologies, modes, plots, and problems. In its broadest and most contemporary definition, Victorianism describes any literary, filmic, or cultural text that signals contemporary investment in Victorian literature and culture. Such works can be loosely grouped into three categories: original plots set in the 19th century; retellings of canonical 19th-century texts; and “hybrid” texts—those that oscillate between contemporary and Victorian time frames, for instance, or those that create a new story peopled with characters from Victorian media and/or history, including narrativized stories of authors’ lives. There are persistent modes and themes across these forms, including the networking of science and technology with the human; the detective or mystery story; and the connection between the contemporary Victorian and the gothic mode. While in the 20th century the primary archive was largely white and male, the 21st century has seen the advent of a more intersectional archive and authorship. The topic is often consolidated under the term “neo-Victorian” but is also sometimes referred to as “Victoriana,” “strategic presentism,” and other designations. Specifically under the rubric of “neo-Victorian” the study is sometimes associated with postmodernism itself. Other critical interpretations hold that its organizing principle is neoliberalism and its social corollary, liberal individualism. Yet others connect the subject with cultural studies and its corollaries gender studies, queer studies, and—much more recently—postcolonial or imperial studies. Underlying all of these critical interventions is the notion that the primary affective/aesthetic register of neo-Victorian media is nostalgia and/or belatedness. Nevertheless, critical trends of the 2010s and onward theorize not the continuity but the simultaneity of the 19th and 21st centuries. This suggests exciting implications and directions in contemporary Victorianism, including responses to empire, examinations of global crises, and an expansion of the canon to include media not usually included in considerations of Victorianism.
Immigrant Entrepreneurship: A Typology Based on Historical and Contemporary Evidence
Authors: Berghoff Hartmut
Published: December 2020

Immigrant entrepreneurs are different, and they are everywhere. They can be unambiguously distinguished from entrepreneurs without a migration background. They operate under distinct conditions and respond to unique opportunities and challenges. They have specific motivational, economic, and social resources at their disposal, for example, ethnic solidarity and international networks. Their knowledge of languages and cultures, as well as the high pressure to integrate themselves into a new society, can be factors that stimulate entrepreneurship and innovation. It is hard to find countries with no immigrant entrepreneurs. In many places like the United States, Canada, or South East Asia, they play a substantial economic role.

The ubiquity, dynamism, and significance of immigrant entrepreneurs has led to a spate of research projects since the 1990s, especially by economic sociologists and ethnologists, but also by management scholars and historians. On the basis of their work, the article distinguishes six different ideal types of immigrant entrepreneurs, even though these categories are neither clear-cut nor mutually exclusive.

Necessity entrepreneurs react to blocked careers in other areas and often set up small, precarious businesses, out of which in exceptional cases more viable companies emerge. Diaspora merchants are part of commercial networks of people with the same ethnic background who live in foreign countries and trade with each other. Transnational entrepreneurs are not necessarily part of networks and do not always engage in mercantile activities. This category also encompasses individual actors and industrial activities. They are characterized by the ability to mobilize resources in several countries and facilitate activities between different countries. Middleman minorities stand between the majority society and third parties, often minorities. They fill niches that are left by indigenous businesses, which consider these areas as unattractive. Entrepreneurs in ethnic enclave economies live and work with their co-ethnics in neighborhoods defined by their group. Their main function is to cater to their own communities, often with ethnic products such as food or publications from their countries of origin. Refugee entrepreneurs leave their home country involuntarily, often driven out by violence and expropriation. In most cases their emigration is unprepared. Starting conditions in the country of destination are unfavorable. Conversely, the pressure for social integration is pronounced and can act as an impulse for self-employment. There are, however, cases in which refugees are consciously patronized or even summoned by the governments of the receiving countries, turning them into a highly privileged group.
Public Service Motivation in Public Administration
Authors: Vandenabeele Wouter , Schott Carina
Published: December 2020

Public service motivation (PSM) refers to an individual’s motivation to contribute to society. It relates to ideas about society, and about what public servants are and how they should behave, that have persisted for more than 2,500 years. Despite this heritage, PSM was only formally conceptualized in the 1990s. The concept of PSM has traditionally been linked to several beneficial outcomes, such as public performance and public servants’ satisfaction, but recently also to negative outcomes, such as burnout and rule-breaking.

While PSM is an individual-level concept, the role of the social environment is crucial to understanding PSM. On the one hand, social institutions play an important role in creating individual-level PSM through socializing mechanisms. Institutions such as the family and workplace, and other structured value-based interaction patterns, correlate with the prevalence of individual PSM. On the other hand, to render outcomes, interaction with the environment—in terms of fit—is necessary, because PSM cannot exert influence outside a context where public values are prominent. As most research focuses on public servants in their work environment, this fit mostly entails a match of the individual public servant with the organization or the job. If this fit is lacking, little or no PSM occurs.

Although PSM research was initially a theoretical and psychometric exercise, it is increasingly put to practical use.
African Attitudes Toward Same-Sex Relationships, 1982–2018
Authors: Dionne Kim Yi , Dulani Boniface
Published: December 2020

One significant barrier to sexual minority rights in Africa is the generally negative attitudes ordinary Africans have toward same-sex relationships. Yet since 1998, there has been notable progress in terms of legalizing same-sex relationships on the continent, with Botswana the most recent African country to do so, in 2019. Botswana joins Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea Bissau, Lesotho, Mozambique, São Tomé and Príncipe, Seychelles, and South Africa, among countries that have decriminalized same-sex relationships. Publicly available cross-national survey data measuring citizen’s attitudes toward homosexuality in 41 African countries from 1982 to 2018 shows that, on average, Africans hold negative attitudes toward same-sex relationships, which is consistent with previous reports. However, there is variation in these attitudes, suggesting greater tolerance of sexual minorities among women, people who use the Internet more frequently, and urban residents. One key finding is that homophobia is not universal in Africa. In light of recent policy and legal developments advancing sexual minority rights, and given findings in existing scholarship highlighting the influence politicians have in politicizing homophobia, the literature questioning the generalized notion of a “homophobic Africa” is growing, and there are calls for more research on the factors influencing decriminalization.
Documentary Filmmaking as Curriculum Inquiry and Film as a Means to Broaden Portrayal of Curricular Phenomena
Authors: Chapman Daniel
Published: December 2020

There are three areas where the Documentary Studies’ and Curriculum Studies’ literature overlap. Firstly, both literatures concern themselves with the social construction of reality in opposition to scientism and objective truth. Secondly, both literatures speak to the ethical implications of representing other people, particularly when the one doing the representing has more social capital than the represented. Lastly, both traditions speak to how the authors should account for their own biases. A case is made for Curriculum Studies scholars to use documentary filmmaking, in addition to writing, as a means for communicating the ideas, commitments, and critiques that Curriculum Studies offers.
The Indonesian Equivalency Program for Out-of-School Youth
Authors: Rosmilawati Ila , Reid Carol
Published: December 2020

The global educational landscape is now focused on educational provision for all. Many countries in the Asia Pacific, including Indonesia, have moved outside the “box” of traditional schooling. In Indonesia, equivalency programs have been set up to accommodate children and youth who have previously been pushed out by the traditional system. The Indonesian Equivalency Program gives young people, especially those who are from disadvantaged backgrounds, the opportunity to reengage with schooling through an alternative pathway. Attending alternative schooling provides a “second chance” at education for these young people and flexible learning strategies. The Indonesia’s Equivalency Program includes Package A (primary school equivalent), Package B (junior secondary school equivalent), and Package C (senior secondary school equivalent). Flexible learning strategies are the foundation of the equivalency program to bring education to excluded children and youth. Many disadvantaged Indonesian youth discover their own authentic learning in this program. This educational program has made a difference by empowering young people and creating the opportunity for them to graduate from high school and achieve long-term economic benefits.
Women in Nigeria
Authors: Ukpokolo Chinyere
Published: December 2020

Writing on women in Nigeria is an ambitious venture, considering the multiplicity of ethnic groups that make up Nigeria, and the historical antecedents and cultural particularities of the various ethnic groupings. Women in Nigeria can, therefore, be studied more appropriately within the historical trajectory of the continent of Africa, by examining the different nationalities that constituted “Nigeria” in the early 20th century, and finally through the dissection of identities, power, and the experiences of diverse categories of women in postcolonial Nigeria. There is a need to avoid undue generalizations about women in Nigeria. In postcolonial Nigeria, women’s experiences are differentiated based on the extent to which the superimposition or assimilation of external cultural traits—which manifest along class lines, the rural-urban divide, ethnicity, and religion—have altered indigenous lifeways. Africa’s contact with the Arabian world in the 7th century impacted on women’s experiences in areas where the Islamic religion was introduced. Prior to the contact of Africa with the European world in the 15th century and the subsequent imposition of British rule, what became “Nigeria” in the early 20th century were disparate groups with different cultural, political, and historical configurations. The amalgamation of the northern and southern protectorates in 1914 gave birth to “Nigeria.” These historical events redefined and reshaped the place and participation of women in society. In precolonial Nigeria, women enjoyed certain privileges, prestige, and recognition, which colonialism and emerging Western economic rationality later undermined. Women-led protests against the colonial administration were prevalent and led to policy changes intended to take women into account in government policies. In postcolonial Nigeria, women confront the forces of tradition, modernity, and the neo-patriarchy, forces that contend with their drive for self-definition, while they struggle, against all odds, to remain afloat.
Teaching Genocide
Authors: Bachman Jeffrey S.
Published: December 2020

Teaching genocide is a complex endeavor. The field of genocide studies is unique in the scale of its interdisciplinarity. Indeed, genocide studies lacks a disciplinary home, meaning those who teach genocide approach the subject from incredibly diverse disciplines, fields, and subfields. Yet, despite the pedagogical activity on genocide education, including the proliferation of undergraduate and graduate courses, many students will only take one course on genocide before they graduate. When designing a course on genocide, teachers must decide what to include in such a course.

Teaching genocide is further complicated by ongoing debates and contestation in the field. Though the Genocide Convention legally defines genocide, this definition has been endlessly scrutinized, with scholars identifying numerous deficiencies and developing alternative definitions. Which definition of genocide employed is also a determining factor in which cases are recognized as genocide. When certain definitions are used, in particular those that limit genocide to mass killing, and a limited number of applicable cases are studied, a hegemonic understanding of genocide may emerge. Therefore, the definitional debates have implications for genocide recognition, response, and historical memory.

Contestation and debate in genocide studies, however, also provides teachers with space for creativity and innovation. Students can join their teachers as genocide scholars. Together, teachers and students can participate in the definitional debates and analyze cases. They can approach questions such as how did mass killing come to be synonymous with genocide? And why are some cases of genocide studied disproportionately compared with others? The answers to these and associated questions have real consequences for affected peoples and historical memory.

Importantly, teaching genocide can be an act of critical exploration, or what Dirk Moses and Alex Hinton refer to as “critical genocide studies.” Teachers need guidance for designing a course that encourages critical engagement through direct participation in the field’s many debates.
Slavery, Race, and the Construction of the Imperial Order
Authors: Mattos Hebe
Published: December 2020

Despite moral criticism of the institution of slavery from the second half of the 18th century, slavery, racism, and liberalism would be mutually defined throughout the 19th century. The slave economy in the Americas grew in the 19th century as a result of the expansion of the world market, sustained by constitutional states, including two national ones: the Brazilian Empire, a constitutional monarchy, and the United States, a republic. In these national states, representative systems would shape the legitimacy of the institution of slavery, relating the adoption of citizenship rights to processes of racialization.

In Brazil’s late colonial period, more than one-half of the free population was defined as “black” or “brown,” and manumission rates were as high as 1 percent per year. Under Portuguese colonial rule, this population of color was denied access to public offices and ecclesiastical positions, but allowed to own slaves. The rallying cry of “equality for people of all colors” served as a cornerstone of popular nationalism in the liberal uprisings of the late Brazilian colonial period. Popular liberalism also called for the passage of laws that would recognize the Brazilian-born sons and daughters of enslaved people as free persons.

After independence, the Brazilian Empire experienced more than twenty years of political struggles and localized civil wars around the construction of representative political institutions. The Brazilian coffee production boom inaugurated in 1830, allowed the consolidation of the monarchical order in Brazil with the rise to power of a conservative party, the Party of Order, in 1837. From 1837 to 1853, this conservative party consolidated a slave-based national identity. During these years of conservative pro-slavery leadership, political strategies to legitimate the continuation of the Atlantic slave trade were developed and illegal enslavement was tolerated and even encouraged.

Liberalism, race, and slavery shaped the history of the Atlantic world in a very interconnected way. Despite the non-race-based legitimation of slavery in a Catholic and constitutional monarchy, race was a central issue in 19th-century monarchical Brazil. Slavery was legitimated as a historical institution in the Brazilian Constitution of 1824 in the right to own property. The same constitution guaranteed civil rights to the freedmen born in the country and their descendants, denying, however, Brazilian citizenship for free Africans and political citizenship to former slaves born in Brazil. Eventually, after the end of the transatlantic slave trade in 1850, the state bureaucracy adopted a norm of racial silence for the free population, racializing slave experience and reinforcing the precariousness of freedom of the Brazilian citizens of African descent. These practices shaped crucial aspects of structural racism still present in 21st-century Brazilian society.
Race and Cultural Politics in Bahia
Authors: Pinho Osmundo
Published: December 2020

The state of Bahia and its capital, Salvador, are the original loci of European colonization in the territory that later became Brazil. Together with other cities in the Northeast and along the Brazilian coast, they witnessed the imposition of mercantile capitalism and slave labor as forms of production of a new state and society. In the 21st century, Bahia is a state marked by racial inequality, the poverty of a large part of the population, and state violence, paradoxically associated with the strong presence of traditions of African origin and a rich and dense popular cultural life, as in other parts of the African diaspora. This combination implies certain contradictions experienced in different fields, in the present social structure and in the cultural and political history of the region. This can be seen in the trajectory of carnival, the most important popular festival in the city, and in its successive moments of identity reinvention as well as in the constitution of the city’s landscape, marked by black and African presence in symbolic and material ways. It can also be seen in the historical formation of candomblé, the cult of Yoruban gods in Bahia, developed amid persecutions and disputes. All these dimensions are structured in the expressive cultural forms of a black culture, which has been made and remade by generations of Afro-descendants in this environment marked by inequality, but also by creativity, joy, and aesthetic power.
Tongue Muscle Anatomy: Architecture and Function
Authors: Stone Maureen
Published: December 2020

The tongue is composed entirely of soft tissue: muscle, fat, and connective tissue. This unusual composition and the tongue’s 3D muscle fiber orientation result in many degrees of freedom. The lack of bones and cartilage means that muscle shortening creates deformations, particularly local deformations, as the tongue moves into and out of speech gestures. The tongue is also surrounded by the hard structures of the oral cavity, which both constrain its motion and support the rapid small deformations that create speech sounds. Anatomical descriptors and categories of tongue muscles do not correlate with tongue function as speech movements use finely controlled co-contractions of antagonist muscles to move the oral structures during speech. Tongue muscle volume indicates that four muscles, the genioglossus, verticalis, transversus, and superior longitudinal, occupy the bulk of the tongue. They also comprise a functional muscle grouping that can shorten the tongue in the x, y, and z directions. Various 3D muscle shortening patterns produce large- or small-scale deformations in all directions of motion. The interdigitation of the tongue’s muscles is advantageous in allowing co-contraction of antagonist muscles and providing nimble deformational changes to move the tongue toward and away from any position.
Can Biological Control Overcome the Threat From Newly Invasive Coconut Rhinoceros Beetle Populations (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae)? A Review
Authors: Paudel Sulav , Mansfield Sarah , Villamizar Laura F , Jackson Trevor A , Marshall Sean D G
Published: December 2020

The coconut rhinoceros beetle (CRB: Oryctes rhinoceros Linnaeus) is one of the most damaging pests to coconut and oil palms in Asia and the Pacific Islands. Adults bore into the crown and damage developing fronds, which affects tree development and yield. The insect is native to South and Southeast Asia and was inadvertently introduced into the Pacific in 1909. It has since spread to several Pacific island nations and territories, causing significant economic impact on these important coconut and palm-growing regions. In the 1950s and 1960s, an international biological control effort was initiated to search for and release natural enemy species. Release of the Oryctes rhinoceros nudivirus Huger (OrNV) and the species complex of Metarhizium Sorokin (Hypocreales: Clavicipitaceae) was successful in controlling CRB in its invaded range. Recently a new biotype of the beetle, known as CRB-G, has spread into the Pacific Islands causing unprecedented levels of damage due to the failure of previously successful biological control agents (BCAs) to suppress this biotype. The re-emergence of CRB as a serious pest warrants a rigorous re-evaluation of potential BCAs and a new search for effective natural enemies if necessary. In this article, we review literature on CRB to 1) analyze past introductions of BCAs and their effectiveness; 2) identify potentially important natural enemies and their geographical origins; and 3) assess possible approaches for utilization of BCAs against the new wave of CRB invasion. Research gaps and directions deserving future attention are highlighted and a strategy for renovation of biological controls for CRB suggested.
Trusting in Somalia’s stateless money: The persistence of the Somali shilling
Authors: Little Peter D
Published: December 2020

In 2016, the Federal Government of Somalia (FGS) announced plans to re-launch the Somali shilling (SoSh), which had its last official printing before the state collapsed in 1991. The article takes this pivotal moment to address the following three questions: (i) Why has the stateless SoSh persisted? (ii) Why is Somalia considering re-introducing an official currency at this point? (iii) What do Somalia’s monetary experiences tell us about relationships among ordinary citizens, elites, and the state in Africa? The article offers an explanation based on a theory of social trust to account for the persistence of the SoSh. Unlike other studies that mainly emphasize a risk aversion attribute to explain the reliance on the trusted and familiar under conditions of precarity, this approach shows how trust can be scaled to explain important macro-level phenomena, such as export trade and nationalism. It proposes that the Somalia story is relevant to other African cases where public trust, state sovereignty, and monetary systems are weak and contested. Finally, the paper concludes that a lack of trust in the FGS and its ability to ensure the value of a new SoSh means that many Somalis are better off with their fragmented currency system rather than a monetary experiment likely to further destabilize an already volatile environment.