scholarly journals The MOSE Machine: An anthropological approach to the building of a flood safeguard project in the Venetian Lagoon

Author(s):  
Rita Vianello

This article reconstructs and analyses the reactions and perceptions of fishers and inhabitants of the Venetian Lagoon regarding flood events, ecosystem fragility and the safeguard project named MOSE, which seems to be perceived by residents as a greater risk than floods. Throughout the complex development of the MOSE project, which has involved protracted legislative and technical phases, public opinion has been largely ignored, local knowledge neglected in favour of technical agendas and environmental impact has been largely overlooked. Fishers have begun to describe the Lagoon as a ‘sick’ and rapidly changing organism. These reports will be the starting point for investigating the fishers’ interpretations of the environmental changes they observe during their daily fishing trips. The cause of these changes is mostly attributed to the MOSE’S invasive anthropogenic intervention. The lack of ethical, affective and environmental considerations in the long history of the project has also led to opposition that has involved a conflict between local and technical knowledge.

2019 ◽  
Vol 72 (3) ◽  
pp. 719-779
Author(s):  
David Gutkin

H. Lawrence Freeman's “Negro Jazz Grand Opera,” Voodoo, was premiered in 1928 in Manhattan's Broadway district. Its reception bespoke competing, racially charged values that underpinned the idea of the “modern” in the 1920s. The white press critiqued the opera for its allegedly anxiety-ridden indebtedness to nineteenth-century European conventions, while the black press hailed it as the pathbreaking work of a “pioneer composer.” Taking the reception history of Voodoo as a starting point, this article shows how Freeman's lifelong project, the creation of what he would call “Negro Grand Opera,” mediated between disparate and sometimes apparently irreconcilable figurations of the modern that spanned the late nineteenth century through the interwar years: Wagnerism, uplift ideology, primitivism, and popular music (including, but not limited to, jazz). I focus on Freeman's inheritance of a worldview that could be called progressivist, evolutionist, or, to borrow a term from Wilson Moses, civilizationist. I then trace the complex relationship between this mode of imagining modernity and subsequent versions of modernism that Freeman engaged with during the first decades of the twentieth century. Through readings of Freeman's aesthetic manifestos and his stylistically syncretic musical corpus I show how ideas about race inflected the process by which the qualitatively modern slips out of joint with temporal modernity. The most substantial musical analysis examines leitmotivic transformations that play out across Freeman's jazz opera American Romance (1924–29): lions become subways; Mississippi becomes New York; and jazz, like modernity itself, keeps metamorphosing. A concluding section considers a broader set of questions concerning the historiography of modernism and modernity.


Author(s):  
Irving R. Epstein ◽  
John A. Pojman

Just a few decades ago, chemical oscillations were thought to be exotic reactions of only theoretical interest. Now known to govern an array of physical and biological processes, including the regulation of the heart, these oscillations are being studied by a diverse group across the sciences. This book is the first introduction to nonlinear chemical dynamics written specifically for chemists. It covers oscillating reactions, chaos, and chemical pattern formation, and includes numerous practical suggestions on reactor design, data analysis, and computer simulations. Assuming only an undergraduate knowledge of chemistry, the book is an ideal starting point for research in the field. The book begins with a brief history of nonlinear chemical dynamics and a review of the basic mathematics and chemistry. The authors then provide an extensive overview of nonlinear dynamics, starting with the flow reactor and moving on to a detailed discussion of chemical oscillators. Throughout the authors emphasize the chemical mechanistic basis for self-organization. The overview is followed by a series of chapters on more advanced topics, including complex oscillations, biological systems, polymers, interactions between fields and waves, and Turing patterns. Underscoring the hands-on nature of the material, the book concludes with a series of classroom-tested demonstrations and experiments appropriate for an undergraduate laboratory.


Author(s):  
Mark Douglas

The history of ethics in the Presbyterian Church has been shaped by the theological commitments of Reformed theology, the church’s ecumenical and interreligious encounters, its interactions with the wider cultures in which it functions, and its global scope. Consequently, Presbyterian ethics have become increasingly diverse, culturally diffused, ecumenically directed, and frequently divisive. That said, its history can helpfully be divided into three lengthy periods. In the first (roughly from the church’s origins in 1559 to the Second Great Awakening in the early nineteenth century), theology, ethics, and politics are so interwound that distinguishing one from the others is difficult. In the second (roughly from the Second Great Awakening to the end of World War II), moral concerns emerge as forces that drive the church’s theology and polity. And in the third (for which proclamation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 might be a heuristically helpful starting point), ethics increasingly functions in ways that are only loosely tethered to either Reformed theology or polity. The strength of the church’s social witness, the consistency of its global engagements, and the failings of its internecine strife are all evident during its five-hundred-year history.


PalZ ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xingliang Zhang ◽  
Degan Shu

AbstractThe Cambrian Explosion by nature is a three-phased explosion of animal body plans alongside episodic biomineralization, pulsed change of generic diversity, body size variation, and progressive increase of ecosystem complexity. The Cambrian was a time of crown groups nested by numbers of stem groups with a high-rank taxonomy of Linnaean system (classes and above). Some stem groups temporarily succeeded while others were ephemeral and underrepresented by few taxa. The high number of stem groups in the early history of animals is a major reason for morphological gaps across phyla that we see today. Most phylum-level clades achieved their maximal disparity (or morphological breadth) during the time interval close to their first appearance in the fossil record during the early Cambrian, whereas others, principally arthropods and chordates, exhibit a progressive exploration of morphospace in subsequent Phanerozoic. The overall envelope of metazoan morphospace occupation was already broad in the early Cambrian though it did not reach maximal disparity nor has diminished significantly as a consequence of extinction since the Cambrian. Intrinsic and extrinsic causes were extensively discussed but they are merely prerequisites for the Cambrian Explosion. Without the molecular evolution, there could be no Cambrian Explosion. However, the developmental system is alone insufficient to explain Cambrian Explosion. Time-equivalent environmental changes were often considered as extrinsic causes, but the time coincidence is also insufficient to establish causality. Like any other evolutionary event, it is the ecology that make the Cambrian Explosion possible though ecological processes failed to cause a burst of new body plans in the subsequent evolutionary radiations. The Cambrian Explosion is a polythetic event in natural history and manifested in many aspects. No simple, single cause can explain the entire phenomenon.


2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (S1) ◽  
pp. 94-94
Author(s):  
A.M. Carvalheiro ◽  
A.R. Fonseca ◽  
J. Maia

ObjectivesUsing as a starting point a clinical case, the authors performed a literature review to clarify the relationship between Behçet disease and acute psychosis.MethodsAnalysis of the patient's clinical process and brief review of the latest available literature on the subject, published in PubMed/Medline databases.ResultsMale patient, 55 years old, brought to the emergency room by fever, headache, hetero-aggressive behavior, disinhibited behavior, mood swings, euphoria, persecutory delusions and insomnia, in the last 4 days. He had no insight into his illness. There was no personal or family history of psychiatric illness and toxicological habits were irrelevant. Due to the personal history of posterior uveitis with bilateral macular edema, retinal vasculitis, genital aphthosis, papulo-vesicular lesions and recurrent bipolar aphthosis, the hypothesis of neuro-behçet was raised.ConclusionsBehçet's disease can present with neurological involvement - neuro -behçet - and can manifest itself with several psychiatric symptoms (euphoria, lack of insight, disinhibited behavior, agitation or psychomotor retardation, persecutory delusions, obsessive thoughts, anxiety, depression, insomnia or memory changes). Fever and headache usually appear in the prodromal stage and can be signs of onset or recurrence of the disease. The prevalence of neuro-behçet ranges from 2 to 50% and usually occurs 1 to 10 years after the first symptoms of the disease. Since it appears as the first manifestation of the disease in only 3% of cases, it is difficult to diagnose. The literature suggests that symptoms are generally resistant to treatment with conventional psychotropic drugs and so it is an important cause of morbidity and mortality.”


2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mario Vallejo-Marín ◽  
Jannice Friedman ◽  
Alex D. Twyford ◽  
Olivier Lepais ◽  
Stefanie M. Ickert-Bond ◽  
...  

AbstractImperfect historical records and complex demographic histories present challenges for reconstructing the history of biological invasions. Here, we combine historical records, extensive worldwide and genome-wide sampling, and demographic analyses to investigate the global invasion of Mimulus guttatus from North America to Europe and the Southwest Pacific. By sampling 521 plants from 158 native and introduced populations genotyped at >44,000 loci, we determined that invasive M. guttatus was first likely introduced to the British Isles from the Aleutian Islands (Alaska), followed by admixture from multiple parts of the native range. We hypothesise that populations in the British Isles then served as a bridgehead for vanguard invasions worldwide. Our results emphasise the highly admixed nature of introduced M. guttatus and demonstrate the potential of introduced populations to serve as sources of secondary admixture, producing novel hybrids. Unravelling the history of biological invasions provides a starting point to understand how invasive populations adapt to novel environments.


Medicina ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 57 (2) ◽  
pp. 187
Author(s):  
Dorothee Boehm ◽  
Henrik Menke

Fluid management is a cornerstone in the treatment of burns and, thus, many different formulas were tested for their ability to match the fluid requirements for an adequate resuscitation. Thereof, the Parkland-Baxter formula, first introduced in 1968, is still widely used since then. Though using nearly the same formula to start off, the definition of normovolemia and how to determine the volume status of burn patients has changed dramatically over years. In first instance, the invention of the transpulmonary thermodilution (TTD) enabled an early goal directed fluid therapy with acceptable invasiveness. Furthermore, the introduction of point of care ultrasound (POCUS) has triggered more individualized schemes of fluid therapy. This article explores the historical developments in the field of burn resuscitation, presenting different options to determine the fluid requirements without missing the red flags for hyper- or hypovolemia. Furthermore, the increasing rate of co-morbidities in burn patients calls for a more sophisticated fluid management adjusting the fluid therapy to the actual necessities very closely. Therefore, formulas might be used as a starting point, but further fluid therapy should be adjusted to the actual need of every single patient. Taking the developments in the field of individualized therapies in intensive care in general into account, fluid management in burn resuscitation will also be individualized in the near future.


The Holocene ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 095968362110032
Author(s):  
Halinka Di Lorenzo ◽  
Pietro Aucelli ◽  
Giuseppe Corrado ◽  
Mario De Iorio ◽  
Marcello Schiattarella ◽  
...  

The Garigliano alluvial-coastal plain, at the Latium-Campania border (Italy), witnessed a long-lasting history of human-environment interactions, as demonstrated by the rich archaeological knowledge. With the aim of reconstructing the evolution of the landscape and its interaction with human activity during the last millennia, new pollen results from the coastal sector of the Garigliano Plain were compared with the available pollen data from other nearby sites. The use of pollen data from both the coastal and marine environment allowed integrating the local vegetation dynamics within a wider regional context spanning the last 8000 years. The new pollen data presented in this study derive from the analysis of a core, drilled in the coastal sector, which intercepted the lagoon-marshy environments that occurred in the plain as a response to the Holocene transgression and subsequent coastal progradation. Three radiocarbon ages indicate that the chronology of the analyzed core interval ranges from c. 7200 to c. 2000 cal yr BP. The whole data indicate that a dense forest cover characterized the landscape all along the Prehistoric period, when a few signs of human activity are recorded in the spectra, such as cereal crops, pasture activity and fires. The main environmental changes, forced by natural processes (coastal progradation) but probably enhanced by reclamation works, started from the Graeco-Roman period and led to the reduction of swampy areas that favoured the colonisation of the outer plain.


2001 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 94-98
Author(s):  
Marc Brodsky

The Kabuki Actors Study set out to explore the health status of Kabuki actors, their performance-related medical problems, and the nature and extent of their health care. Two hundred sixteen Kabuki performers voluntarily completed an anonymous three-page survey addressing their health issues. Thirty-eight percent of the actors reported a history of at least one significant medical condition, and 88% of them identified at least one musculoskeletal or nonmusculoskeletal problem associated with performance. Sixty-nine percent of the performers had visited a physician over the preceding year, and 30% of them had consulted nonphysician medical practitioners. Kabuki actors, the Kabuki management, and physicians can use the findings of this study as a starting point to investigate why these injuries occur and how to prevent and treat them. Pain severity scales or other measurable outcomes of therapy can be used to compare the efficacies of physician and nonphysician treatments.


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