scholarly journals ERMi esemekogud ja -analüüs

2019 ◽  
Vol 62 (1) ◽  
pp. 123-143
Author(s):  
Liisi Jääts

Human artifacts are part of a culture. Whatever aspect we consider—their material, manufacture, ritual use or meaning—the world of human-made objects is closely intertwined with technological, social, economic, religious and other fields. An artifact can be a valuable source of study for a scholar delving into either the past or contemporary culture. Insofar as objects from past cultures are concentrated in museum collections, several questions arise in the mind of a researcher regarding the object as a source material: both at the level of describing and analysing an individual item and more broadly, at the level of the museum collection. A museum’s collection of artifacts is not a neutral and objective representation of real life. Nor is any other ethnographic source preserved in our museum’s collections a neutral and objective representation of life. Field diaries, reports, photographs, descriptions of objects and collections reflect the theoretical views of the times, or the understanding of the mission of ethnography/ethnology and the Estonian National Museum. Source criticism must always take into account the background, which in the case of object research will also involve the museum context.

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. e26278
Author(s):  
Judith Streat

Many museums have an eclectic mix of skeletons in their collections. These curiosities from across the globe were processed from the carcass using a variety of techniques with varying degrees of success. The details of how these animals have journeyed from death to collection item are scarce. The old techniques and skill involved in constructing skeletons, from large down to the most delicate and tiny, can still be marveled at today. However some skeletons were poorly articulated, others incomplete or put together borrowing bones from another animal or bird. In the case of animals not known as live specimines ignorance may have been a factor in achieving an incorrect stance while other specimines were intentionally exaggerated to impress rather than appear true to nature. A selection of methods for the preparation of skeletons have been used, such as carcinogenic chemicals, bleaches, detergents and solvents, fresh and seawater maceration, flesh-eating dermestid beetles, boiling bones to remove the oils and flesh, and composting. Skeletons were articulated for display by drilling and pinning the bones, sometimes using irreversible glues or ferrous wire that rusted over time. Over the past 18 years I have prepared and articulated native bird and marine mammal skeletons for the Otago Museum collection. To ensure the bones are not contaminated by chemicals or physically damaged, methods and requirements have evolved over a relatively short time, as conservation has become an integral part of museum practice. This presentation will provide an overview of the fresh water maceration process, some lessons learnt, the articulation method developed using an external stainless steel wire armature to hold each bone in position, and organizing bones with safety, articulation and transportation in mind. I will share the journey from corpse to collection item of Autahi the leopard seal and other skeletons I have worked with.


Author(s):  
Anshu Sharma ◽  
Sunny Kumar

India faces a very broad range of hazards due to its wide geoclimatic spread. This, combined with deep-rooted social, economic, physical, and institutional vulnerabilities, makes India one of the highest disaster-affected countries in the world. Natural hazards have gained higher visibility due to an increasing frequency and magnitude of their impact in recent decades, and efforts to manage disasters have been largely unable to keep pace with the growing incidences, scale, and complexities of disaster events. A number of mega events between 1990 and 2005, including earthquakes, cyclones, floods, and a tsunami, created momentum in decision making to look at disasters critically and to push for a shift from response to mitigation and preparedness. While efforts were put in place for appropriate legislation, institution building, and planning, these processes were long drawn out and time and resource intensive. It has taken years for the governance systems to begin showing results on the ground. While these efforts were being formulated, the changing face of disasters began to present new challenges. Between 2005 and 2015, a number of unprecedented events shook the system, underscoring the increasing variability and thus unpredictability of natural hazards as a new normal. Events in this period included cloudbursts and flash floods in the deserts, droughts in areas that are normally flood prone, abnormal hail and storm events, and floods of rare fury. To augment the shifting natural hazard landscape, urbanization and changing lifestyles have made facing disasters more challenging. For example, having entire cities run out of water is a situation that response systems are not geared to address. The future will be nothing like the past, with climate change adding to natural hazard complexities. Yet, the tools to manage hazards and reduce vulnerabilities are also evolving to unprecedented levels of sophistication. Science, people, and innovations will be valuable instruments for addressing the challenges of natural hazards in the times ahead.


2011 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 201-171
Author(s):  
Nāṣir Al-Dīn Abū Khaḍīr

The ʿUthmānic way of writing (al-rasm al-ʿUthmānī) is a science that specialises in the writing of Qur'anic words in accordance with a specific ‘pattern’. It follows the writing style of the Companions at the time of the third caliph, ʿUthmān b. ʿAffān, and was attributed to ʿUthmān on the basis that he was the one who ordered the collection and copying of the Qur'an into the actual muṣḥaf. This article aims to expound on the two fundamental functions of al-rasm al-ʿUthmānī: that of paying regard to the ‘correct’ pronunciation of the words in the muṣḥaf, and the pursuit of the preclusion of ambiguity which may arise in the mind of the reader and his auditor. There is a further practical aim for this study: to show the connection between modern orthography and the ʿUthmānic rasm in order that we, nowadays, are thereby able to overcome the problems faced by calligraphers and writers of the past in their different ages and cultures.


Author(s):  
Anurag Asija

In modern life, people generally try to accomplish too much in too little time, consequently they accumulate a lot of stress in their lives. In that time, yoga plays an important role to alleviate the stress and rejuvenate the body. In the times, yoga was a form of Bhakti. Rishi Patanjali, rightly called the father of yoga, who around 200 b.c. gave us the present literary form of yoga doctrine in his famous treaties Yoga Sutra. In modern times, the value of yoga is being increasingly recognized for general and it’s preventive and curative effects. Yoga does not conceive man having a physical body but on the contrary, it emphasizes the greater values of the mind which characterizes his personality, Thus, yoga leads to ultimate physical health and happiness together with the achieve of mental and patience.


Author(s):  
Michael Germana

Chapter 5 treats Ellison’s music criticism as an expression of his commitment to durational time and a critique of cultural forms like bebop that, in Ellison’s estimation, lend form to a discontinuous present. Rather than suggest, as many critics have, that Ellison was simply nostalgic for danceable swing music or hostile toward emerging musical forms, this chapter shows that Ellison’s primary criticism of bebop is that it formalizes a discontinuous sense of time and thereby affirms an historical view of the past structured by an analogous, sequentially static sense of time. Ellison’s problem with bebop, in other words, is neither musicological nor sociological, but temporal. Folk jazz and the blues, by contrast, affirm a durational view of time in the form of a “pocket” or groove entirely unlike the spatialized groove of history described in Invisible Man. In short, Ellison finds in musical grooves antidotes to the groove of history.


Author(s):  
Vito Tanzi

This book deals with practical or real life aspects of public finance. It focuses on the growth in the activities of governments, in a world that expects more than in the past from governments. The book focuses on the growing complexity in both the work of the private market and that of the public sector. It stresses that part of the growing complexity is due to the more ambitious role that governments tried to play today, while part is due to choices made by governments, so that complexity may be partly avoidable. This was important in the different pursuit of social welfare by different countries. Complexity has increased opportunities for abuses, for rent seeking, and for mistakes in policies. It may also have increased the attraction of populist policies that claim to offer magical or easy solutions to problems. A major conclusion of the book is that the objective of simplicity in laws and in policies should be given more importance by both economists and governments.


2013 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 172-188
Author(s):  
Ahmad Kamal Abou Al-Majd

This article attempts to attenuate the exaggerated polarization in contemporary religious discourse in Egyptian society emanating from two flawed positions: a wrong conception of ‘applying Shari'a‘; and a wrong intention whereby deliberate cultural exclusion is practised to eradicate any religious orientation. The main subject of this article are manifestations of deviation of this discourse from the orientation of the original frame of reference of religion: (1) The call for Islam through scaring and intimidation; (2) the tendency to be tough on people, thus increasing obligatory duties and decreasing what is permissible; (3) inattention to the objectives of Shari'a and focusing on its literal aspect; (4) inattention to priorities; (5) belittling the role of the mind in Islamic conceptualization; (6) immersion in the past; and (7) Muslims' relationship with others. Nevertheless, rationalizing ‘religious discourse’ and working out a kind of consensus seems to be of utmost importance.


2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Weikang Xu ◽  
Zhentao Zhang ◽  
Xiaomei Cai ◽  
Yazhen Hong ◽  
Tianliang Lin ◽  
...  

AbstractEffective treatment of frequent oil spills and endless discharged oily wastewater is crucial for the ecosystem and human health. In the past two decades, the collection of oil from water surface has been widely studied through the simple fabrication of superhydrophobic meshes with various coating materials, but little attention is paid to the design aspects of the meshes based oil-collecting device and practical oil collection. Here, 3D-printing devices with different configurations of (super)hydrophobic meshes, circular truncated cone (CTC), cylinder and inverted CTC, and the same inverted cone-shaped structure (below the meshes for temporary oil storage) are investigated. Results demonstrate that the CTC meshes based device especially for an oblate one not only shows higher stability and discharge of the collected oils than previous reports, but also allows floating oils to enter the (super)hydrophobic mesh faster. We anticipate that future success in developing high-performance (super)hydrophobic meshes and the further optimization of the CTC mesh-based device parameters will make our proposed device more practical for the treatment of real-life oil spills.


2015 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francesco Spampinato

During the past few years, New York has seen the restaging of two groundbreaking underground art exhibitions, originally organized in 1980 by Lower East Side-based collective Colab: The Real Estate Show and The Times Square Show. The former, which took place illegally on New Year’s Eve in a vacant, city-owned building at 125 Delancey Street—and was shut down by the police after few hours—was restaged in Spring 2014 at four Downtown venues: James Fuentes Gallery, Cuchifritos, The Lodge Gallery, and ABC No Rio. The latter was organized in a disused Times Square massage parlor and restaged in Fall 2012 at Hunter College’s Bertha and Karl Leubsdorf Art Gallery.


2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 127
Author(s):  
Nayanananda Nilwala ◽  
Kennedy Gunawardana ◽  
R. S. Lalitha Fernando

A vast array of knowledge has been accumulated on the effect of service quality on customer satisfaction, particularly with a large number of studies over the past few years. However, the effect of service quality on satisfaction of service recipients in Divisional Secretariats in the Public Sector is relatively an unattended area by researchers. Hence, this study was carried out to evaluate the effect of service quality on satisfaction of service recipients of divisional secretariats. This particular organization was selected for the study as it is considered to be the most significant service provider in terms of statutory, social, economic and development in the country. A questionnaire survey and personal interviews were conducted to collect data by using the purposive sampling method. A modified questionnaire was prepared based on SERVQUAL instruments with two additional questions. A sample of 520 service recipients from 13 Divisional Secretariats in Colombo was drawn and it was represented by 40 from each division. Correlation analysis and multiple regression analysis were used to examine the relative impact of the service quality on satisfaction of service recipients. The study revealed that all the service quality attributes positively related to satisfaction of the service recipients. The findings of the study show that satisfaction of service recipients in terms of service quality has not met the expected level, which a divisional secretariat is deemed to provide for. 


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