Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-36
Author(s):  
Mark Payne

This chapter focuses on postapocalyptic fiction, which imagine the life that human beings might lead after the apocalyptic event has passed. It references large-scale works of literary fiction that stage how new forms of life emerge from catastrophe, how survivors adapt to the altered conditions of existence, and the various ways in which the past asserts its claims on them. It also elaborates the immediate past of the world that is lost and the deep past of prehistory and the anthropological imagination that returns with this loss. The chapter describes postapocalyptic fiction as political theory and a mode of persuasion in fictional form, which shows what it would be like to live that life. It discusses modern postapocalyptic fiction with Mary Shelley's The Last Man in 1826, which stages the return of small-scale agrarianism in the aftermath of catastrophe.

1973 ◽  
Vol 30 (12) ◽  
pp. 2172-2177
Author(s):  
P. C. George

Small-scale fisheries have traditionally been the backbone of the fishing industry all over the world. Although large-scale mechanized fishing has come into the limelight recently, even such countries as have developed substantial capability in this direction still have a large fleet of small boats in coastal areas. The landings of this sector of the industry are always substantial, and in many countries they still dominate the picture. In India, small-scale fisheries landed almost 1.15 million tons in 1971. This figure has been increasing as motor-powered small craft have increased in numbers, although 70% of marine fish is still caught from nonpowered boats. Measures taken to increase fishing capacity, landings, and net fishermen’s income over the past 10 years include various kinds of loans and subsidies for the purchase of boats, motors, and nets; assistance for the construction of ponds in inland areas; organization of cooperatives; training programs for fishermen and supporting personnel, especially motor repairmen (with the cooperation of Norway); and gear and vessel research including pilot-scale demonstrations with new types of vessels and equipment.


2020 ◽  
pp. 64-127
Author(s):  
Mark Payne

This chapter surveys the return of historical forms of life in postapocalyptic fiction after Mary Shelley's The Last Man. It includes simple agrarianism and foraging and hunting and gathering that require human beings to make use of capabilities that were dormant or occluded in the civilization that disappeared with the apocalyptic event. It also explains how occupation determines mentation in which the survivors fade back into the forms of life of the people who preceded them on their terrain. The chapter reviews the works that restage the Hesiodic vision of a humankind, which remains itself through a succession of local forms as a choice for the most satisfying capabilities of the human animal. It points out how postapocalyptic fictions invite readers to commit to a future that they can only reach if they detach themselves from present forms of care.


2021 ◽  
Vol 49 (3) ◽  
pp. 3-11
Author(s):  
A. V. Sokov

This year in 2021, Shirshov Institute of Oceanology celebrated 75 years old. Shirshov Institute is the largest and oldest research center of seas and oceans in Russia. In the past and present of the Institute, there are many significant discoveries and developments for world oceanology, the most complex expeditions and large-scale international projects. I am sure that our future as a Center for the Study of the World Ocean will be no less rich and bright.


2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 194-207
Author(s):  
PIET GELEYNS

The Hoge Kempen rural industrial transition landscape: a layered landscape of Outstanding Universal Value? Up until the beginning of the 20th century, the eastern part of the Belgian province of Limburg was a sparsely populated and not very productive part of the country. The dominating heathland was maintained with sheep, which were an essential part of a small-scale extensive farming system. This all changed when coal was discovered in 1901. Seven large coalmines were established in a few decades, each one employing thousands of coal-miners. This also meant that entire new garden cities were built, to house the coal-miners and their families. The confrontation between the small-scale traditional land-use and the new large-scale industrial developments defines the landscape up to today. The scale and the force of the turnover are considered unprecedented for Western Europe, which is why it is being presented by Belgium for inclusion in the World Heritage List.


2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 27
Author(s):  
Salvador José Sanchís Gisbert ◽  
Pedro Ponce Gregorio ◽  
Ignacio Peris Blat

Marcel Breuer was in the first year of architectural technicians to graduate from Bauhaus School. The peculiar education he received there allowed him to explore the concept of design in its broadest sense. In his European stage we find, on the most private and small scale, unique solutions for furniture. In his first American stage we see a strong commitment with solutions related to the residential land and, when he earned international recognition, he developed large scale solutions for his public non-residential buildings and urban equipments in locations all over the world. It is strange to see that an architect like him did not have the opportunity to materialize any of his proposals associated with the public space. The 1945 Cambridge Servicemen’s Memorial project, also known as the Memorial War, is the most significant one he developed in his last years in Cambridge. Had it been built, it would have been a valuable example of modernity and contemporary reinterpretation of the monument in the public space.


Author(s):  
Helmuth Plessner ◽  
J. M. Bernstein

“Centric positionality” is a form of organism-environment relation exhibited by animal forms of life. Human life is characterized not only by centric but also by excentric positionality—that is, the ability to take a position beyond the boundary of one’s own body. Excentric positionality is manifest in: the inner, psychological experience of human beings; the outer, physical being of their bodies and behavior; and the shared, intersubjective world that includes other human beings and is the basis of culture. In each of these three worlds, there is a duality symptomatic of excentric positionality. Three laws characterize excentric positionality: natural artificiality, or the natural need of humans for artificial supplements; mediated immediacy, or the way that contact with the world in human activity, experience, and expression is both transcendent and immanent, both putting humans directly in touch with things and keeping them at a distance; and the utopian standpoint, according to which humans can always take a critical or “negative” position regarding the contents of their experience or their life.


Toxics ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 65
Author(s):  
Shimei Pang ◽  
Ziqiu Lin ◽  
Yuming Zhang ◽  
Wenping Zhang ◽  
Nasser Alansary ◽  
...  

Imidacloprid is a neonicotinoid insecticide that has been widely used to control insect pests in agricultural fields for decades. It shows insecticidal activity mainly by blocking the normal conduction of the central nervous system in insects. However, in recent years, imidacloprid has been reported to be an emerging contaminant in all parts of the world, and has different toxic effects on a variety of non-target organisms, including human beings, due to its large-scale use. Hence, the removal of imidacloprid from the ecosystem has received widespread attention. Different remediation approaches have been studied to eliminate imidacloprid residues from the environment, such as oxidation, hydrolysis, adsorption, ultrasound, illumination, and biodegradation. In nature, microbial degradation is one of the most important processes controlling the fate of and transformation from imidacloprid use, and from an environmental point of view, it is the most promising means, as it is the most effective, least hazardous, and most environmentally friendly. To date, several imidacloprid-degrading microbes, including Bacillus, Pseudoxanthomonas, Mycobacterium, Rhizobium, Rhodococcus, and Stenotrophomonas, have been characterized for biodegradation. In addition, previous studies have found that many insects and microorganisms have developed resistance genes to and degradation enzymes of imidacloprid. Furthermore, the metabolites and degradation pathways of imidacloprid have been reported. However, reviews of the toxicity and degradation mechanisms of imidacloprid are rare. In this review, the toxicity and degradation mechanisms of imidacloprid are summarized in order to provide a theoretical and practical basis for the remediation of imidacloprid-contaminated environments.


Author(s):  
Serguei Kaniovski

Within the past seventy years, citizens have cast some twenty-seven billion votes in national elections across the world. This impressive figure would likely double if votes cast in local elections and referenda were included. Electoral participation is a mass phenomenon. However, what exactly motivates people to vote? The question of why people vote has been at the center of positivist political theory. Political scientists and economists have devised numerous theories for why people may or may not vote, in addition to gathering an impressive amount of empirical evidence on the determinants of electoral participation. This chapter offers a bird’s-eye view of historical trends in voter turnout, theories of rational voting motivation, and the role of embedding political or socioeconomic environments, as exposed by empirical research.


2008 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 64-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barry Harvey

AbstractThe practices, habits and convictions that once allowed the inhabitants of Christendom to determine what they could reasonably do and say together to foster a just and equitable common life have slowly been displaced over the past few centuries by new configurations which have sought to maintain an inherited faith in an underlying purpose to human life while disassociating themselves from the God who had been the beginning and end of that faith. In the end, however, these new configurations are incapable of sustained deliberations about the basic conditions of our humanity. Dietrich Bonhoeffer's theology provides important clues into what it takes to make and keep human life human in such a world. The first part of this essay examines Bonhoeffer's conception of the last things, the things before the last, and what binds them together. He argues that the things before the last do not possess a separate, autonomous existence, and that the positing of such a breach has had disastrous effects on human beings and the world they inhabit. The second part looks at Bonhoeffer's account of the divine mandates as the conceptual basis for coping with a world that has taken leave of God. Though this account of the mandates has much to commend it, it is hindered by problematic habits of interpretation that leave it vacillating between incommensurable positions. Bonhoeffer's incomplete insights are thus subsumed within Augustine's understanding of the two orders of human society set forth in City of God.


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