bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
A Brief History of the Light Microscope
Authors: Ruzin Steven E. 
Published: October 2024

Abstract
This chapter covers the historical development of microscopy and the light microscope. It starts with an introduction of very early references to magnification and optics dating from 424 bce, and continues with a detailed description of three authors of historically important works: Antoni van Leeuwenhoek and Jan Swammerdam of Holland, and Robert Hooke of England. Their letters and publications described for the first time all manner of objects and organisms found in the natural world that were previously too small to see. Using a simple magnifying lens Leeuwenhoek discovered bacteria and Swammerdam described the anatomy of insects. Hooke’s Micrographia described in words and detailed drawings a great many objects and organisms that previously were unknown. The chapter continues with the major milestones in the historical development of the “double” or compound light microscope, including a discussion of its most likely inventor (Hans Lipperhey of Holland c. 1600). The chapter continues with an abbreviated discussion of the historical development of mechanical and optical improvements of the transmitted light microscope and their inventors. Finally, I have included a very short discussion describing milestones in the invention and development of the fluorescence microscope, starting with its invention by August Köhler and Rohr (1905) through the invention of epifluorescence techniques, the first use of fluorophores and fluorescinated antibodies, to the invention and commercialization of the first laser scanning confocal microscope.
On the Impossibility of Predicting the Behavior of Rational Agents
Authors: Young H. Peyton , Foster Dean 
P. 
Published: October 2024

Abstract
A foundational assumption in economics is that people are rational: they choose optimal plans of action given their predictions about future states of the world. In a game this means that each player’s strategy should be optimal given his or her prediction about the opponents’ strategies. This chapter demonstrates that there are games in which it is impossible for perfectly rational players to learn to predict the future behavior of their opponents. The reason is that, in trying to predict the next-period behavior of the opponent, a rational player will take an action this period that the opponent can observe. This observation may cause the opponent to alter his next-period behavior, which can invalidate the first player’s prediction. The resulting feedback loop has the property that, a positive fraction of the time, the predicted probability of an opponent’s action will differ from its actual probability. Thus there are games in which it is impossible in principle for perfectly rational agents to learn to predict the behavior of their perfectly rational opponents based solely on their observed actions.
The Dynamics of Social Innovation
Authors: Young H. Peyton 
Published: October 2024

Abstract
Social norms and institutions are mechanisms that facilitate coordination between individuals. A social innovation is a novel mechanism that increases the welfare of the individuals who adopt it compared with the status quo. This chapter analyses the dynamics of social innovation in terms of a coordination game played on a network. Individuals experiment with a novel strategy that would increase their payoffs provided that it is also adopted by their neighbors. The rate at which a social innovation spreads depends on three factors: the topology of the network and in particular the extent to which agents interact in small local clusters, the payoff gain of the innovation relative to the status quo, and the amount of noise in the best response process. The analysis shows that local clustering greatly enhances the speed with which social innovations spread. It also suggests that the welfare gains from innovation are more likely to occur in large jumps than in a series of small incremental improvements.
Belated Avant-Garde
Authors: Grene Nicholas 
Published: October 2024

Abstract
Through much of the twentieth century Irish theatre was dramaturgically conservative, privileging the playwright and the play text over directors and production values. The 1990s saw the establishment of theatre companies who introduced to Ireland avant-garde styles already current in Europe and the US. So, for example, Sligo-based Blue Raincoat, led by Niall Henry, and Barabbas, founded by Raymond Keane, Veronica Coburn, and Mikel Murfi developed forms of physical theatre based on French training. Annie Ryan with TheCorn Exchange pioneered stylized techniques deriving from commedia del’arte which she had learned in Chicago. Gavin Quinn and Aedin Cosgrove in Pan Pan were influenced by European directors in cultivating a postdramatic theatre that fragmented text. This chapter, drawing on interviews with the directors of the companies, shows the impact of individual productions.
After the Troubles
Authors: Grene Nicholas 
Published: October 2024

Abstract
The Good Friday Agreement (1998) brought an end to (most of) the political violence and instituted a new system of power sharing, but it left many problems unsolved. Owen McCafferty in Scenes from the Big Picture (2003) rendered of the demoralized, crime-ridden city of Belfast as metonym for the society at large. David Ireland’s Everything Between Us (2010) and McCafferty’s Quietly (2015) in very different ways highlighted the state failure to provide any sort of truth and reconciliation process. Stacey Gregg’s Shibboleth (2015) used the Belfast peace walls as symbols of sectarian animus, while The Border Game (2021), by Michael Patrick and Oisín Kearney, explored the human costs of the partitioned island. Ireland’s Cypress Avenue (2016) took us inside the head of one deranged Ulster Unionist, expressive of that community’s paranoid beleagurement. Northern Ireland after the Troubles remained a very troubled place.
Strategies of Adaptation
Authors: Grene Nicholas 
Published: October 2024

Abstract
Many poets and playwrights in the later twentieth century adapted Greek tragedies and the plays of Chekhov for the Irish stage. In the later period, Marina Carr has been the most prolific dramatist, initiating a whole series of adaptations with By the Bog of Cats … (1998), a version of Medea set in the Irish Midlands. Hilary Fannin’s Phaedra (2010) was an experimental collaboration with composer Ellen Cranitch, which took off not only from Racine’s play but Jean-Philippe Rameau’s opera Hippolyte et Aricie. Lucy Caldwell set her Three Sisters (2016) in 1990s Belfast against the background of the Troubles, most provocatively reframing the action from the viewpoint of the character of Natasha, played as a Chinese immigrant. Taking these texts together, we can identify the contemporary perspectives three twenty-first-century Irish playwrights have brought to bear on European theatre of the past.
If not Weber, then what?
Authors: Page Edward C. 
Published: October 2024

Abstract
A range of theories tend to fall short when one looks for an account of bureaucratic development. Common problems include the treatment of bureaucratization as a ‘syndrome’, the concentration on one or other period as decisive in its development, and the overestimation of the role of state reforms in creating bureaucracies. Borrowing from Francis Fukuyama’s broad insights, this chapter develops an account of the development of bureaucracy that stresses the role of routinization, institutional integration, and the instrumentalization of law. The approach helps understand what is distinctive about European bureaucracy and what is less so. It concludes with some observations about the persistence of the Weberian ideal type of bureaucracy in some areas of scholarship.
Peering into the Beyond
Authors: Publicover Laurence 
Published: October 2024

Abstract
This chapter begins by examining the confession of Webster’s Cardinal that, when he looks into the fish ponds in his garden, he thinks he sees ‘a thing armed with a rake’. Critics who consider this strange episode tend to assume that the Cardinal is simply seeing his own reflection; and this assumption, I argue, illustrates how recent criticism on The Duchess of Malfi has focused on its social and political interests rather than its cosmological and eschatological concerns. I read the play as one anxious about the boundaries between this world and the next, and one whose horror, like Macbeth’s, derives from radical uncertainty regarding the shape and operations of the cosmos. The chapter concludes with an extended discussion of the Duchess and her restless imagination, querying critical readings which take her stoical death to indicate the security of her faith.
Cognition, Iconography, and Graphic Communication Systems on Portable Objects in the Near Eastern Neolithic
Authors: Cartolano Mattia 
Published: October 2024

Abstract
Neolithic material culture in the Near East is characterized by a wide variety of forms of figurative and non-figurative representations. Depictions of animal and human figures, as well as geometric and schematic illustrations, are portrayed on monumental architecture, vessels, paintings, slabs, and other small portable objects. This chapter aims to investigate the prehistoric forms of graphic communication through the case of mobiliary representations in Pre-Pottery Neolithic sites of south-west Asia. Ongoing research on prehistoric cognition has led some scholars to argue that the production and deployment of figurative symbols and notation systems contributed to the development of communicative strategies in growing complex societies. However, many contributions have focused on the mnemonic, ritual, and artistic value of symbols, ignoring the possibility that prehistoric signs were created to record messages through conventional modes of writing. Indeed, the standardization of some Neolithic representations as well as the repetitions of symbolic forms suggest the deliberate intent not only to remember and to implement cultural conventions but also to communicate and transmit knowledge to a wider range of diverse and distant groups. In this regard, an analysis and discussion from a corpus of Neolithic decorated portable objects (n = 442) is provided. Drawing from neurobiological studies, experimental semiotics, and ethnographic examples, this contribution argues that the invention of writing systems stems from the development of preceding systems of graphic communication, some of which are already clearly visible for the Neolithic period.
The Failure and Success of the Early Alphabet
Authors: Koller Aaron 
Published: October 2024

Abstract
Despite its inherent attractiveness, the alphabet failed to make much of a difference for the first 750 years of its history. This chapter argues that the early alphabet was in fact not invented to be a full script, to convey information to others, but only to be written. For three reasons the early alphabet could not easily be read: (1) characters are not linear; (2) there are no vowels indicated; (3) and it fails to mark word boundaries. The major conclusion is that the alphabet was the easiest system ever designed for writing phonetically, but, for the same reasons, it was not practical to read. Over the following centuries, the alphabet was modified in important ways, and thus the alphabet was adapted in ways that enabled it to become an efficient tool of communication. This is a familiar pattern of innovation, today called a ‘disruptive innovation’. In the case of the alphabet, the realization of the potential took centuries rather than millennia. Eventually the alphabet was ready for prime time, and, in retrospect, those first tentative steps taken around 2000 bce look like a dramatic turn of events.
The Phaistos Disc
Authors: Baldacci Giorgia 
Published: October 2024

Abstract
The Phaistos Disc is at the same time one of the most celebrated and debated Minoan artefacts. Owing to the disc’s uniqueness, many contrasting views and theories on the artefact have developed. Recent research showed that some debated aspects about the disc can be clarified by looking at the archaeological record of Phaistos, the site where the artefact was found. Recent research on the Protopalatial artefacts of the site has shown that within the material culture of the site there do exist some elements that permit a better contextualization of the disc, thus (1) qualifying the item as an authentic Minoan object, and (2) clarifying its chronological context. In this perspective, the concept of complete exceptionality that has been applied to the Phaistos Disc has to be reviewed, as the disc seems to fit well enough into the cultural context of Phaistos, during the passage from the Protopalatial to the Neopalatial period.
Heraldry in Urban Society
Authors: Meer Marcus 
Published: October 2024

Abstract
This book analyses the perceptions and functions of heraldry in medieval urban societies by drawing on both English- and German-language sources from the late fourteenth to the early sixteenth centuries. Despite variations that point to socio-political differences between cities (and their citizens) in the relatively centralized monarchy of medieval England and the more independent-minded urban governments found in the less closely connected Holy Roman Empire, urban heraldry emerges as a versatile and ubiquitous means of multimedia visual communication that spanned medieval Europe. These urban heraldic practices defy assumptions about clearly demarcated social practices that belonged to ‘high’/’noble’ as opposed to ‘low’/’urban’ culture. Townspeople’s perceptions of coats of arms paralleled those of the nobility, as they readily interpreted and carefully curated heraldic signs as visual expressions of identity. These perceptions allowed townspeople of all ranks, as well as noble outsiders, to use heraldry and its display—along with its defacement and destruction—in manuscripts, spaces (such as town houses, public monuments, halls, and churches), and performances (like processions and joyous entries) to address perennial problems of urban society in the Middle Ages. The coats of arms of burgesses, guilds, and cities were communicative means of individual and collective representation, social and political legitimization, conducting and resolving conflicts, and the pursuit of elevated status in the urban hierarchy. Likewise, heraldic communication negotiated the all-important relationship between the city and wider, extramural society—from the commercial interests of citizens to their collective ties to the ruler.
Introduction
Authors: Meer Marcus 
Published: October 2024

Abstract
The introduction sets out the subject, sources, approach, and aims of this book, and contextualizes its interest in the perceptions and functions of heraldic communication in the urban societies of late medieval England and Germany with a survey of the place of heraldry in previous scholarship on medieval and urban history. Recently, a ‘new heraldry’ has emerged which rejects the notion of heraldry as a closed-off system, instead adopting methodologies from cultural history and studies in visual culture to analyse heraldry as a versatile and ubiquitous communicative phenomenon susceptible to diachronic change, synchronic contingency, and historical and cultural variation. This perspective informs the book’s analysis of heraldry’s role in urban society, which has until now remained underexplored.
Performances
Authors: Meer Marcus 
Published: October 2024

Abstract
Rituals staged in the urban space, such as solemn processions and festive celebrations, as well as the everyday performances of urban life related to trade, administration, and warfare, abounded in heraldic communication. Displays of municipal and corporate arms communicated the political ambitions of the urban elite, the social relations and political structures that bound the city’s inhabitants, and the responsibilities imposed on individuals and collectives who were deemed to play an important role in creating a well-ordered whole out of the medieval city’s various parts. The place of this communal whole within society at large also became the subject of heraldic communication on the occasion of joyous entries. While urban governments commissioned and staged heraldic displays that supported their rulers’ territorial, dynastic, and political ambitions, these can also be understood as reminders to stay true to ideals of just (and above all urban-friendly) rule.
Lady Audley’s Secret and the Files of Detection
Authors: Jacob Priyanka Anne 
Published: October 2024

Abstract
This chapter asks: what does the logic of the file—the mandate to save everything—do to the informational economy of detection? Examining the paper clues in a sensation novel by Mary Elizabeth Braddon, it demonstrates how this genre balances the investigative drive of the detection plot against the capaciousness of the novel form. Braddon’s text muddles the distinction between clue and litter, keepsake and junk, and between significant and insignificant narrative information. Drawing on media histories of the file and paperwork and highlighting the many paper objects that appear across Victorian literature, this chapter shows how paper teeters between the ephemeral and the abiding, evoking the cultural confusion over what to save and what to discard. It illustrates how these archival anxieties are similarly expressed in government records, professional manuals, and journalism from the period.
A City of Secrets in Little Dorrit
Authors: Jacob Priyanka Anne 
Published: October 2024

Abstract
This chapter illustrates how the dense urban network of Little Dorrit preserves the secrets not only of London but also of the novel itself. While the secret might seem to be an immaterial unit of knowledge, in this novel it acquires material contours. The obstructive architecture of Dickens’s London secures information and prevents the would-be detective Arthur from making discoveries. Governed by the logic of the hoard, the novel gathers secrets in its endless repositories, yet refuses to turn them to account. A blackmail plot raises the possibility of monetizing and exposing secrets, only for the novel to recommit to the hoarding of information through its two reticent women characters. Likewise, the forward momentum of the plot is subsumed into the murky structure of a novel that keep its secrets, burying them into the walls of houses and the geological formation of the city itself.
George Eliot’s Remnants of the Past
Authors: Jacob Priyanka Anne 
Published: October 2024

Abstract
This chapter explores how material remnants register the claims of the past in the writings of George Eliot. It situates Eliot’s interest in traces of the past alongside Victorian archaeology and geology, establishing the idea that history speaks through material remains. Through the breve or paper amulet, Eliot’s novel Romola asserts the power of historical ties. Yet, as her last novel, Daniel Deronda, makes clear, these messages from the past will not always be heeded. Some remnants are reinvented for the present and even the future, while others are left to linger in the background. Staging debates about how to remake architectural ruins in the modern moment and how to live with the ghosts of the dispossessed, Daniel Deronda raises ethical and aesthetic questions about what gets left behind, unredeemed.
Conclusion
Authors: Jacob Priyanka Anne 
Published: October 2024

Abstract
This Conclusion draws parallels between the informationscapes of the nineteenth and twenty-first centuries, pointing out how our present-day digital information culture also begets clutter and overwhelm, while the fantasy of immaterial, unlimited storage allows us to make promises to a continually deferred future. It then offers a reading of the 2015 dystopian novel Speak by Louisa Hall, showing how that novel uses artificial intelligence to explore the distinction between knowing and holding information. The novel’s closing image of decommissioned robots piled in a hangar reminds us of the familiar problem of discarding media, but it also offers a chilling vision of what storage looks like without a future.
Policing and the police procedural
Authors: Evans Lucy 
Published: October 2024

Abstract
Scholarship in policing studies has drawn attention to a crisis in legitimacy for Caribbean police forces, and has linked this to their origins as colonial constabularies. This chapter explores how contemporary police fiction both reflects on and re-imagines Caribbean policing cultures and practices. It looks at Jacob Ross’s Camaho Quartet, set in a fictional version of Grenada (2016 and 2020), and Paula Lennon’s Raythan Preddy Trilogy, set in present-day Jamaica (2017 and 2018). It compares these to Robert Thorogood’s television series Death in Paradise, which features a British police detective posted to a fictional Caribbean island. The chapter argues that whereas Death in Paradise reinforces the legitimacy of continuing British involvement in policing, Lennon’s and Ross’s fiction emphasizes the need for national sovereignty in Caribbean policing. It considers how Lennon’s and Ross’s police procedural series contribute to the reinvention of a genre historically dominated by white male authors and protagonists.
Conclusion
Authors: Evans Lucy 
Published: October 2024

Abstract
The conclusion makes connections between the texts discussed in each of the chapters, and foregrounds the book’s findings. It reflects on the different ways in which these texts shed light on the colonial histories of Caribbean countries and their relationship to crime and crime control in the present. The conclusion also considers the relevance of this book to ongoing public debate in the region on reparative justice, following the case made by the CARICOM Reparations Commission in 2013. It highlights how the fictional writing analysed in the book works towards the kind of reframing of crime and justice that academics and activists are calling for. Additionally, the conclusion identifies possible future research directions—for example, on other genres of popular fiction that are gaining traction in the Caribbean, and on crime fiction written and set in other countries and regions of the Global South.
Fin-de-siècle Russia and Chinese Aesthetics
Authors: Chu Jinyi 
Published: October 2024

Abstract
This book re-evaluates Russia’s place in global modernism by highlighting the enduring yet understudied impact of China on prerevolutionary Russian literature and art. It moves beyond the idea that Russian literary and artistic representations of China were simply manifestations of Russia’s imperial ideology and Eurasian cultural identity. Instead, this book contends that literature and art actively renegotiated and destabilized the preconceived world order at a time of intensifying geopolitical and cultural transformation, when China shifted from Russia’s rival in Inner Asia to a target in the competition of global imperialist powers. Examining Lev Tolstoy’s translations of the Daoist texts, Aleksei Remizov’s adaptations of Chinese ghost stories, Innokenty Annensky’s encounter with the Tibetan monk in Paris, and many Russian modernist anthologies of Chinese poetry, this book provides a new understanding of modernism’s reception of foreign culture: it is a search for a higher universal in the age of heightened global interconnectedness. The book offers critical insights and tells new stories for scholars of global modernism, Sino-Russian relations, East–West poetics, translation studies, and early-twentieth-century intellectual and cultural history.