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Seen from across the sea: India in the Byzantine worldview
No full textBook synopsis: Global Byzantium is, in part, a recasting and expansion of the old ‘Byzantium and its neighbours’ theme with, however, a methodological twist away from the resolutely political and toward the cultural and economic. A second thing that Global Byzantium – as a concept – explicitly endorses is comparative methodology. Global Byzantium needs also to address three further issues: cultural capital, the importance of the local, and the Empire’s strategic geographical location. Cultural capital: in past decades it was fashionable to define Byzantium as culturally superior to western Christian Europe, and Byzantine influence was a key concept, especially in art historical circles. This concept has been increasingly criticised, and what we now see emerging is a comparative methodology that relies on the concept of ‘competitive sharing’, not blind copying but rather competitive appropriation. The importance of the local is equally critical. We need to talk more about what the Byzantines saw when they ‘looked out’, and what others saw in Byzantium when they ‘looked in’ and to think about how that impacted on our, very post-modern, concepts of globalism. Finally, we need to think about the Empire’s strategic geographical position: between the 4th and the 13th centuries, if anyone was travelling internationally they had to travel across (or along the coasts of) the Byzantine Empire. Byzantium was thus a crucial intermediary, for good or for ill, between Europe, Africa and Asia – effectively, the glue that held the Christian world together, and it was also a critical transit point between the various Islamic polities and the Christian world
Mycobactin analogues with excellent pharmacokinetic profile demonstrate potent antitubercular specific activity and exceptional efflux pump inhibition
Get PDFIn this study, we have designed and synthesized pyrazoline analogues that partially mimic the structure of mycobactin, to address the requirement of novel therapeutics to tackle the emerging global challenge of antimicrobial resistance (AMR). Our investigation resulted in the identification of novel lead compounds 44 and 49 as potential mycobactin biosynthesis inhibitors against mycobacteria. Moreover, candidates efficiently eradicated intracellularly surviving mycobacteria. Thermofluorimetric analysis and molecular dynamics simulations suggested that compounds 44 and 49 bind to salicyl-AMP ligase (MbtA), a key enzyme in the mycobactin biosynthetic pathway. To the best of our knowledge, these are the first rationally designed mycobactin inhibitors to demonstrate an excellent in vivo pharmacokinetic profile. In addition, these compounds also exhibited more potent whole-cell efflux pump inhibition than known efflux pump inhibitors verapamil and chlorpromazine. Results from this study pave the way for the development of 3-(2-hydroxyphenyl)-5-(aryl)-pyrazolines as a new weapon against superbug-associated AMR challenges
The Ghost Club 1882-1936: strong bonds, weak connections
No full textThe Ghost Club was founded to discuss matters spiritual, psychic and occult in 1882 by Spiritualist William Stainton Moses and mystic Alfred Alaric Watts. It was intended as a club ruled by a gentleman’s code of honour—with all matters discussed kept strictly confidential. While maintaining secrecy, it also obsessively minuted and documented its discussions, leaving behind thousands of pages of records that have yet to be properly investigated, owing to conditions around their use. This essay is an attempt to examine the importance of the Club, and how it might readjust our understanding of the networks of the London occult in the late-Victorian and Edwardian eras
Lead users as idea supplier in online community platform: How to choose the right ideas to implement?
No full textCrowdsourcing ideas from users in online communities are becoming common practice in the development of high-tech products. While most studies focus on sourcing ideas from ordinary users (i.e., non-experts), high-tech firms commonly rely more on ‘lead users’. Despite the importance of lead users' peer-evaluation activities on a firm's user community platform, research on the relationship between these activities and a firm's actual implementation decision is scarce. We draw on lead user theory and a large dataset from a high-tech firm's platform to examine whether an idea's popularity, the comments it receives and sentiment are good predictors of a firm's consideration and implementation decisions. We find that in addition to the number of votes and comments, sentiment is a predictor of an idea's further development and implementation. Furthermore, implementing a lead user's ideas decreases the user's motivation marginally to contribute continuously to the platform. These findings have implications for the design and operations management of user community platforms
The material basis of modern technologies. A case study on rare metals
Get PDFThe unique properties of a wide range of Rare Metals (RMs) are crucial to achieve the functionality of modern technologies. By text mining 5,146,615 USPTO patents during the period 1976-2015, this paper systematically studies the technological dependence of new inventions on 13 key RMs, with the aim of exploring the link between critical raw materials and frontier technological innovation. We find that RMs play an increasing role as the material basis for modern technologies: the dependence varies significantly across technological areas and metal types, and it is particularly high for some emerging technologies such as semiconductors, nanotechnology, and green energy technologies. Further, we use a panel of technology-RM pairs over four decades to assess the impact of RM supply on innovation dynamics. The results show that increases in the supply of an RM significantly improve the patent output of technology areas based on it, contributing to the understanding of how innovation dynamics are shaped by the availability of natural resources with technological criticality
Bayesian semiparametric modelling of covariance matrices for multivariate longitudinal data
Get PDFThe article develops marginal models for multivariate longitudinal responses. Overall, the model consists of five regression submodels, one for the mean and four for the covariance matrix, with the latter resulting by considering various matrix decompositions. The decompositions that we employ are intuitive, easy to understand, and they do not rely on any assumptions such as the presence of an ordering among the multivariate responses. The regression submodels are semiparametric, with unknown functions represented by basis function expansions. We use spike-slap priors for the regression coefficients to achieve variable selection and function regularization, and to obtain parameter estimates that account for model uncertainty. An efficient Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithm for posterior sampling is developed. The simulation study presented investigates the the gains that one may have when considering multivariate longitudinal analyses instead of univariate ones, and whether these gains can counteract the negative effects of missing data.
We apply the methods on a highly unbalanced longitudinal dataset with four responses observed over a period of 20 years
Sepur Zarco, Guatemala: ‘bodying forth’ and forensic aesthetics of witnessing in the courtroom and beyond
Get PDFDrawing on long-term anthropological research in Guatemala, the article examines the case of sexual and labor slavery in armed conflict known as ‘Sepur Zarco’. Focusing on the scene of selected court hearings related to events that took place in a military base near the village of Sepur Zarco, Izabal, between 1982 and 1986, the analysis focuses on ‘bodying forth’ (Das 2007), as a process of witnessing, materialisation and subjectification that emerges in the declarations of the different parties, as they conjure up Dominga Cuc Coc, a local Maya Q’eqchi’ woman, on the riverbank washing army uniforms under duress, or as the body of the forensic exhumation. ‘Bodying forth’ is tied to performative forensic imaginaries and aesthetics in the courtroom, the broader Guatemalan body politic, and beyond; it challenges the epistemologies underpinning law and science to re-centre the necessary differential and differentiated accounts of the witnesses and their appeals to justice
Leaving Egypt: rethinking 1956 through Italian departures
Get PDFEvents surrounding the Suez conflict are often portrayed as causally linked to the displacement of Italian and other foreign residents from Egypt. While 1956 was not among the primary causes for the departure of over 40,000 Italian residents from Egypt after the Second World War, the conjunctures to which it points evoke changing geopolitical constellations that challenge and expand our understanding of Mediterranean decolonisation. This chapter argues that ‘uncertainty’ characterised the post-war period for Italian residents in Egypt and reveals multiple continuities and discontinuities often concealed by the conventional periodisation of Mediterranean history. It shows that ‘repatriate’ and ‘refugee’ – categories frequently linked to 1956 -- are part of a longer genealogies of relations between Italy and Egypt. That they acquired meaning as Italians left Egypt reconfigures narratives of modern Mediterranean history. Italian residents belonged to a community whose political structure in Egypt had been erected at the height of fascist imperialism and, after 1946 often looked back to its past to measure its present and speculate on its future. Italian repatriates from Egypt were temporarily housed in refugee camps and converted ‘emigration centers’ in Italian cities, while the state turned towards intergovernmental institutions in effort to internationalise the resolution to departures and arrivals. This chapter draws upon consular, institutional and municipal archives to show how Italian residents between Italy and Egypt encountered and experienced these regional transformations, and how their displacements contoured relations between Italy and Egypt, between Europe and the Middle East, and within a global framework at a pivotal moment. In this way, the eventfulness of 1956 is inscribed within a broader history of Mediterranean imperialism and decolonisation
The temporality of collective memory and the authority of the European Court of Human Rights
Get PDFBook synopsis: This collection brings together a range of international contributors to stimulate discussions on time and international human rights law, a topic that has been given little attention to date. The book explores how time and its diverse forms can be understood to operate on, and in, this area of law; how time manifests in the theory and practice of human rights law internationally; and how specific areas of human rights can be understood via temporal analyses.
A range of temporal ideas and their connection to this area of law are investigated. These include collective memory, ideas of past, present and future, emergency time, the times of environmental change, linearity and non-linearity, multiplicitous time, and the connections between time and space or materiality. Rather than a purely abstract or theoretical endeavour, this dedicated attention to the times and temporalities of international human rights law will assist in better understanding this law, its development, and its operation in the present. What emerges from the collection is a future – or, more precisely, futures – for time as a vehicle of analysis for those working within human rights law internationally
Investigating the role of health factors and psychological wellbeing in Gaming Disorder
Get PDFThe recent recognition of Gaming Disorder (GD) as a mental health issue has provided a unique opportunity for researchers to advance our current understanding of the intricate relationships between GD and specific health-related factors and well-being. The present study sought to investigate the role of key physical and psychological health and well-being factors in GD. To achieve this, the three goals were explored. First, we tested whether GD can be predicted by health and well-being factors such as depression, anxiety, loneliness, attention problems, physical health problems (PHP), and psychological well-being (PWB). Second, we assessed the role of distress tolerance (DT) as a moderator in the relationship between PWB and GD. Third, we examined whether PWB would mediate the relationship between PHP and GD. A sample of 474 participants (Meanage = 28.86 years; SD = 9.23; range: 18-66 years; 47% female) was recruited. The results of the multiple linear regression analysis indicated that age, attention problems, and PHP significantly predicted GD (R2 = .15). Additionally, the mediation findings uncovered an important direct association between PHP and GD despite the lack of mediation effects through PWB and the absence of moderating effects from distress tolerance. The present findings signify important health-related implications related to GD that are further discussed here in terms diagnosis, treatment, and prevention efforts
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