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Crossing boundaries with pilgrim badges
Get PDFBook synopsis: During the period 1000-1700 major transformations took place in material culture. Quite simply, more objects were manufactured and used than ever before and many objects travelled across geographic, political, religious, linguistic, class and cultural boundaries. By starting with a focus on past objects, this volume brings together essays from art historians, historians, archaeologists, literary scholars and museum curators to reveal the different disciplinary approaches and methods taken to the study of objects and what this can reveal about transformations in material culture 1000-1700
Non-elite networks and women
No full textBook synopsis: The Oxford Handbook of Early Modern Women's Writing in English, 1540-1700 brings together new work by scholars across the globe, from some of the founding figures in early modern women's writing to those early in their careers and defining the field now. It investigates how and where women gained access to education, how they developed their literary voice through varied genres including poetry, drama, and letters, and how women cultivated domestic and technical forms of knowledge from recipes and needlework to medicines and secret codes. Chapters investigate the ways in which women's writing was an integral part of the intellectual culture of the period, engaging with male writers and traditions, while also revealing the ways in which women's lives and writings were often distinctly different, from women prophetesses to queens, widows, and servants.
It explores the intersections of women writing in English with those writing in French, Spanish, Latin, and Greek, in Europe and in New England, and argues for an archipelagic understanding of women's writing in Scotland, Wales, Ireland, and England. Finally, it reflects on--and challenges--the methodologies which have developed in, and with, the field: book and manuscript history, editing, digital analysis, premodern critical race studies, network theory, queer theory, and feminist theory. The Oxford Handbook of Early Modern Women's Writing in English, 1540-1700 captures the most innovative work on early modern women's writing in English at present
Dynamic Spanning Trees for connectivity queries on fully-dynamic undirected graphs
Get PDFAnswering connectivity queries is fundamental to fully dynamic
graphs where edges and vertices are inserted and deleted frequently.
Existing work proposes data structures and algorithms with worst
case guarantees. We propose a new data structure, the dynamic
tree (D-tree), together with algorithms to construct and maintain it.
The D-tree is the first data structure that scales to fully dynamic
graphs with millions of vertices and edges and, on average, answers
connectivity queries much faster than data structures with worst
case guarantees
Nietzsche, nihilism, and the paradox of affirmation
No full textThis paper argues that Nietzsche’s central concern is the diagnosing and overcoming of nihilism. It traces the development of Nietzsche’s thought in order to expose how nihilism came to be Nietzsche’s central concern. Then it examines the vexing question of what exactly Nietzsche takes to be the core of nihilism. Sometimes Nietzsche treats nihilism as a belief; at other times he seems to treat it as an affective disorder. Similarly, regarding Nietzsche’s notion of the affirmation of life, his antidote to nihilism. It remains unclear whether this is a matter of adopting some cognitive attitude, for instance affirming the eternal recurrence of life, or, of adopting a form of life that does not involve the repression of our fundamental drives. Throughout the paper the question of Nietzsche’s attitude to the relation between myth, nihilism and affirmation is examined. This sheds light on both his relationship to Wagner and the ambition behind his Thus spoke Zarathustra, the work he took to be his most important.
Book synopsis: At the core of Nietzsche's famous critique of 'morality' lies the sweeping claim that morality is the primary source of a stance of 'life-denial,' and hence an obstacle to the possibility of an affirmative stance toward life. Moral values, Nietzsche argues, are inimical to the affirmation of life, since they typically denigrate certain ineliminable features of the world and human existence (suffering, loss, impermanence, the body, instinctual desire). Other values, allegedly, are life-affirming because they cultivate or augment a life-affirming tendency. Nietzsche's pervasive concern with undermining morality and fostering an affirmative attitude towards life are thus closely intertwined: he attacks morality because it underwrites a condemnation of life and seeks to supplant morality with an alternative, life-enhancing ethics of affirmation. This volume brings together a number of new essays by leading Nietzsche scholars to examine these centrally important and overlapping themes in Nietzsche's philosophical enterprise
A decision theory perspective on wicked problems, SDGs and stakeholders: the case of deforestation
Get PDFThe Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are an opportunity to address major social and environmental challenges. As a widely agreed framework, they offer a potential way to mobilise stakeholders on a global scale. The manner in which the goals, with time-based targets and specific metrics, are set out within a voluntary reporting process adopted by both governments and business, provides a fascinating and important case for organisational studies. It is both about advancing performance measurement and evidence-based policy-making for sustainable development, and also participation and consultation at a wider, more global scale, than has ever been possible before.
This paper contributes to the notion of SDGs as a wicked problem, answering calls for deeper theorisation, via synthesis with core ideas in the management field of decision theory. A case study on the wicked problem of deforestation and its links to supply chains, multi-stakeholder initiatives and SDG reporting, provides an illustration of the relevance of the application of decision theory to wicked problems, presented using a novel conceptual framework. This helps to illustrate new avenues for research and practical application regarding the balance of technocratic and participative approaches for sustainable development
‘What about the coffee break?’: Designing virtual conference spaces for conviviality
Get PDFGeography, like many other disciplines, is reckoning with the carbon intensity of its
practices and rethinking how activities such as annual meetings are held. The
Climate Action Task Force of the American Association of Geographers (AAG), for
example, was set up in 2019 and seeks to transform the annual conference in light of
environmental justice concerns. Mirroring shifts it geographic practice across the
globe, these efforts point to a need to understand how new opportunities for
knowledge production such as online events can operate effectively. In this article,
we offer suggestions for best practice in virtual spaces arising from our Material Life
of Time conference held in March 2021, a two day global event that ran
synchronously across 15 time zones. Given concerns about lack of opportunities for
informal exchanges at virtual conferences, or the “coffee break problem”, we
designed the event to focus particularly on opportunities for conviviality. This was
accomplished through a focus on three key design issues: the spatial, the temporal
and the social. We review previous work on the benefits and drawbacks of
synchronous and asynchronous online conference methods and the kinds of
geographic communities they might support. We then describe our design approach
and reflect on its effectiveness via a variety of feedback materials. We show that our
design enabled high delegate satisfaction, a sense of conviviality, and strong
connections with new colleagues. However we also discuss the problems with
attendance levels and external commitments which hampered shared time together.
We thus call for collective efforts to support the ‘event time’ of online meetings,
rather than expectations to fit them around everyday tasks. Even so, our results
suggest that synchronous online events need not result in geographical exclusions
linked to time zone differences, and we outline further recommendations for
reworking the spacetimes of the conference
Explaining the influence of nonshared environment (NSE) on symptoms of behaviour problems from preschool to adulthood: mind the missing NSE gap
Get PDFBackground: Individual differences in symptoms of behaviour problems in childhood and adolescence are not primarily due to nature or nurture—another substantial source of variance is nonshared environment (NSE). However, few specific environmental factors have been found to account for these NSE estimates. This creates a ‘missing NSE’ gap analogous to the ‘missing heritability’ gap, which refers to the shortfall in identifying DNA differences responsible for heritability. We assessed the extent to which variance in behaviour problem symptoms during the first two decades of life can be accounted for by measured NSE effects after controlling for genetics and shared environment.
Methods: The sample included 4,039 pairs of twins in the Twins Early Development Study whose environments and symptoms of behaviour problems were assessed in preschool, childhood, adolescence and early adulthood via parent, teacher, and self-reports. Twin-specific environments were assessed via parent-reports, including early life adversity, parental feelings, parental discipline and classroom environment. Multivariate longitudinal twin model-fitting was employed to estimate the variance in behaviour problem symptoms at each age that could be predicted by environmental measures at the previous age.
Results: On average across childhood, adolescence and adulthood, parent-rated NSE composite measures accounted for 3.4% of the reliable NSE variance (1.0% of the total variance) in parent-rated, symptoms of behaviour problems, 0.5% (0.1%) in teacher-rated symptoms and 0.9% (0.5%) in self-rated symptoms after controlling for genetics, shared environment and error of measurement. Cumulatively across development, our parent-rated NSE measures in preschool, childhood and adolescence predicted 4.7% of the NSE variance (2.0% of the total variance) in parent-rated and 0.3% (0.2%) in self-rated behaviour problem symptoms in adulthood.
Conclusions: The missing NSE gap between variance explained by measured environments and total NSE variance is large. Home and classroom environments are more likely to influence behaviour problem symptoms via genetics than via NSE
Representing Catholic medical missions in the English Press. Education, professionalism and internationality (1950-1970)
No full textPhotographed hard at work in her laboratory at Holy Family Hospital in Mandar, Jharkhand, India, Sister M. Vianney, Medical Mission Sister, represented the modern face of religious life. She was a local girl from Sutton Coldfield, educated at nearby Acocks Green, just outside of Birmingham, England. Her education and professional accomplishments, applauded in the Catholic Pictorial article of 1961, were impressive: she studied physiology, chemistry, and mathematics at Birmingham College of Technology later graduating from Birmingham University with a B.Sc (honours) in physiology. After gaining medical experience in laboratories at the Birmingham Skin Hospital, Charing Cross Hospital (London), and Rochdale General Hospital, Inglis, age 30, entered the international Society of the Catholic Medical Missionaries, known as the Medical Mission Sisters. Two years later, after a rigorous religious formation in the English convents in Osterley, outside London and in South Shields, County Durham, she was sent to Mandar to manage the laboratory where her biochemical knowledge was in great demand. The article in the Catholic Pictorial touted the Medical Mission Sisters as ‘the first religious community of Sisters to dedicate themselves exclusively to the scientific care of the sick in the missions’ thus resolutely asserting their credentials first as Catholic religious sisters and second as scientifically trained, professional, medical and paramedical experts. Sister Vianney was represented as operating beyond the strictly religious framework of the evangelizing mission; she was also a sister educated to the highest standard, carrying out important medical work in the overseas mission field.
This chapter analyses this and similar representations of medical missionary sisters in the English press in the 1950s and 1960s. It considers how press reporting and published photographs further our understanding of how female medical missionaries were depicted as workers in the mission field. First, it examines the promotion tactics of one congregation, the Medical Mission Sisters, arguing that they strategically used the media to shape their public identity. Next, in scrutinising the representations of female medical missionaries found in the weekly Catholic Pictorial, it argues that photographic images of medical mission sisters were distinctive in their composition and message from those of more traditional teaching and nursing sisters. As a cohort, medical missionary congregations, many of whom were founded in the first half of the twentieth century, initiated a public-facing promotion strategy that emphasised a discourse of modernity emphasising education, professionalisation, and internationality
Matches, mismatches, and the experience of supernumerary body parts: Comment on “Left and right temporal-parietal junctions (TPJs) as “match/mismatch” hedonic machines: A unifying account of TPJ function”, by Doricchi et al.
Get PDFAnimation without animators: from motion capture to MetaHumans
Get PDFThe digital humans are among us. In February of 2021, Epic Games, developers of the Unreal Engine, a leading video game software engine, announced the impending launch of its MetaHuman Creator application. “Creating truly convincing digital humans is hard,” acknowledged Epic’s press release (Unreal 2021), while claiming that the MetaHuman Creator could provide real-time generation of high-fidelity digital characters within minutes, drawing from an available library of pre-set faces, 30 available hairstyles, 18 body types, and with the ability to further custom sculpt the avatars. By April an early access version of the creator app was available and seemed to deliver on Epic’s early promises – near photo-realistic digital characters created with adjustable facial features, skin complexion, make-up, teeth, and hair (see Figure 1). A legion of MetaHumans ready to populate a developing Metaverse – free to travel across gaming environments, VR experiences, and animated films, but decisively tethered to the Unreal platform. Perhaps most significant in terms of their actual use, MetaHumans emerge fully “rigged” for animation (embedded with a series of manipulation control points) and available for live linking to a number of performance capture applications
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