159 research outputs found

    Combustion and Society: A Fire-Centred History of Energy Use

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    Fire is a force that links everyday human activities to some of the most powerful energetic movements of the Earth. Drawing together the energy-centred social theory of Georges Bataille, the fire-centred environmental history of Stephen Pyne, and the work of a number of ‘pyrotechnology’ scholars, the paper proposes that the generalized study of combustion is a key to contextualizing human energetic practices within a broader ‘economy’ of terrestrial and cosmic energy flows. We examine the relatively recent turn towards fossil-fuelled ‘internal combustion’ in the light of a much longer human history of ‘broadcast’ burning of vegetation and of artisanal pyrotechnologies – the use of heat to transform diverse materials. A combustion-centred analysis, it is argued, brings human collective life into closer contact with the geochemical and geologic conditions of earthly existence, while also pointing to the significance of explorative, experimental and even playful dispositions towards energy and matter. © 2014, SAGE Publications. All rights reserved

    East of the Wind and West of the Rain

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    abstract: There are places that rest tangibly on the Earth's surface, and places that flourish only in the imagination, and places that site their existence within a moral geography, and a few places, not many, Bor Island among them, that manage to fuse all these settings together. In truth, Bor belongs with that long tradition of island Arcadias that have attracted Western thinkers since well before Thomas More in 1516 gave them the name they now have: Utopia. What makes Bor Island unique is that its informing theme is fire.This is a pre-copy-editing, author-produced PDF of an article accepted for publication in ISLE-INTERDISCIPLINARY STUDIES IN LITERATURE AND ENVIRONMENT following peer review. The definitive publisher-authenticated version & Pyne, Stephen J. (2015). East of the Wind and West of the Rain. ISLE-INTERDISCIPLINARY STUDIES IN LITERATURE AND ENVIRONMENT, 22(1), 155-163. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/isle/isv001 is available online at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/isle/isv00

    Group of officers at Vernon Army Cadet Camp, Camp Vernon

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    Back row: Pyne?, Lawrence Wildcat, ?, P.J. Regester. Front row: ?, Lt Alex Hrycyna (2)nd, Major Mike Kartusch (3rd), Lt. A.C. Flegel, Lt . Jake Rudelsheim

    Preparing a High-Quality and Impactful Sport Science Manuscript

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    Research impact can be defined in the context of sports performance and physiology as the contribution to both the research/academic (knowledge discovery) and sporting (real-world application) communities. Practical application has always been a hallmark of the International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance (IJSPP), with articles that clearly identify how and why study outcomes can be implemented in training and competition to enhance performance. Some outcomes apply to a broad range of sports, while others are more specific to a sporting discipline, such as aquatic sports, court or field sports, individual time-based sports, or otherwise just meet the requirements of a single sport, discipline, or event. Strengthening the practice and reporting of sport and exercise science research is the responsibility of every author.1 Three key areas in ensuring a high-quality manuscript are project formulation and design; methodology and analytical issues; and style, clarity, and quality of the written presentation

    Bibliometric analysis of a controversial paper on predatory publishing

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    Purpose – In 2017, one study (Derek Pyne; Journal of Scholarly Publishing; DOI: 10.3138/jsp.48.3.137; University of Toronto Press) in the “predatory” publishing literature attracted global media attention. Now, over three years, according to adjusted Google Scholar data, with 53 citations (34 in Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science), that paper became that author’s most cited paper, accounting for one-third of his Google Scholar citations. Design/methodology/approach – In this paper, the authors conducted a bibliometric analysis of the authors who cited that paper. Findings – We found that out of the 39 English peer-reviewed journal papers, 11 papers (28%) critically assessed Pyne’s findings, some of which even refuted those findings. The 2019 citations of the Pyne (2017) paper caused a 43% increase in the Journal of Scholarly Publishing 2019 Journal Impact Factor, which was 0.956, and a 7.7% increase in the 2019 CiteScore. Originality/value – The authors are of the opinion that scholars and numerous media that cited the Pyne (2017) paper were unaware of its flawed findings.Peer reviewedarticlefinal article publishedbibliometricscitationsJournal Impact Factorpopularitypredatory publishin

    Identity and dislocation in Caribbean women's literature: a study of the writings of Velma Pollard

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    Jamaican-born Velma Pollard has been publishing poetry and short stories for nearly thirty years. Her first poems appeared in the 1970s, her first volume of short stories in 1989, and her first novel in 1994. Despite this considerable literary output, in the evergrowing critical literature on Caribbean women's writing Pollard's work has not attracted any of the scholarly treatment accorded to other writers. Given this lack of critical attention to Pollard's considerable body of work, this thesis aims to provide the first detailed and contextualised study of her writings (excluding the majority of her poetry and of her writings on linguistics), and to accord Pollard the recognition her work deserves. Chapter 1 of this thesis situates Pollard's writings in the context of Caribbean (women's) literature, and writings on identity, dislocations and (Caribbean) migration. I argue that Pollard's principal contribution to Caribbean literature is found in her engagement with two main subjects, return migration and relationships (male-female and female-female), within a wider context of debates on identity and dislocation. Chapter 2 introduces Pollard's work by way of a general discussion of her novella Karl, which won the Casa de las Americas literary award in 1992. I consider Karl to be central to Pollard's work, not least because it features many of the themes explored by her later writings, including her novel, Homestretch, which is the subject of Chapter 3. Pollard's first novel, Homestretch, which was published in 1994, explores the themes of identity and dislocation through the experiences of 'return migrants' and 'repeat migrants' and their comparison of life in England, the United States and Jamaica. The novel chronicles how these migrants come to reconnect with and accept their cultural heritage. In chapters 4 and 5 I discuss selected stories taken from Pollard's two collections of short stories, Considering Woman ('Cages', 'My Sisters', 'My Mother', and 'Gran') and from Karl and Other Stories ('A Night's Tale', 'Miss Chandra', 'Betsy Hyde', and 'Altamont Jones'). In these stories Pollard explores male-female relationships and the lives of several generations and a wide range of Caribbean women and men. Pollard utilises the West Indian setting, speech, situations and conflicts in these stories to graphically describe familiar Caribbean role models and to provide a narrative and literary examination of the frustrations and conflicting desires of women in the region. In my conclusion, I address the ethnographic quality and significance of her work, and its contribution to an understanding of the Caribbean

    Contributors

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    Flora Kimmich translates from French and German. Her translation of Gustav Droysen’s monumental nineteenth-century classic History of Alexander the Great [Geschichte Alexanders des Grossen]—the first into English—was published in 2012 by the American Philosophical Society. Lionel Gossman, M. Taylor Pyne Professor emeritus of Romance Languages at Princeton University, is the author of books on Edward Gibbon, Augustin Thierry, Jacob Burckhardt, J.J. Bachofen, and the eighteenth-century French m..

    Evaluating task design for skill development in an amateur female cricket team

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    Background: Motor control and skill acquisition research have contributed greatly to understanding the learning process in sport, but very little of this knowledge has been applied in practice over the past fifty years. The characteristics of expertise in the two major cricket skills, batting and bowling, are well established but the training environments used to develop them are yet to be characterised. Recommendations on the how the ball is delivered (feed), decision making, task variability and information sources for skill development in cricket have been made previously in research. To promote skills which transfer between the training and performance environments, tasks should maintain the connection between the person, their task and the environment. Coaches have found it difficult to apply complex learning designs to their practice because the underpinning concepts remain unclear. Demystifying evidence-based practice for skill development in cricket is needed to make research knowledge more accessible for coaches. Purpose: Given club level cricket (amateur) is the stepping-stone of the talent development pathway for junior representative players pursuing elite status, it is important to evaluate the effectiveness of skill development practices at this level and identify means of improvement. Methods: A categorical assessment tool was developed to assess 21 training sessions performed during an amateur women’s cricket team throughout the 2018/19 season. We assessed how the ball was delivered (feed), decision making elements, variability and sources of information available to ascertain the representativeness of each training session according to published research on skill development and expertise. The tool featured a scoring range (0–3) with maximum scores per discipline of 12 for bowling and 15 for batting. Key performance indicators (KPI), outlined by the head coach, were also collected during the season to assess game performance and explore any connections with training design. Results: A lack of variability in training design between the 21 sessions performed (<0.5 units on 0–3 scale) did not allow for a correlational analysis with game performance. In contrast, game KPIs were achieved sporadically throughout the season. The most representative training elements were provided for bowling feed (target), decision making and variability, while batting feed (type) and variability also scored well on the assessment tool. The maximum score for representativeness for bowling or batting was not reached, and training design remained largely unchanged throughout the season despite changes in match type, competition phase and consistent low scores in some elements.Conclusions: Some elements of representative learning design were apparent in this amateur cricket setting but only in discrete areas of training. Despite changes in the competition phase and match type, there was a lack of adaptation in training design. Future research is needed to evaluate the principles of representative training design and their effect on cricket skill development and match performance. A more sensitive categorical assessment tool may also be necessary to detect subtle changes in training design
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