Effects of Different Plastic Mulching Film on Soil Hydrothermal Status and Water Utilization by Spring Maize in Northwest China

The problem of residual film pollution in farmland caused by polyethylene mulching films is serious. The application effects of different mulching films combined with drip irrigation on maize planting in the Ili area, Xinjiang, China, were explored. In this study, four types of mulching films and non-mulching treatment were used to study the degradation properties of different plastic mulching and their effects on the dynamic changes of soil moisture, heat, and crop yields of maize under drip irrigation. The results showed that after 160 days of mulching film, only small cracks appeared in polyethylene mulching films. The degradation performance of white oxo-biodegradable film treatment was optimal than the black oxo-biodegradable film treatment. The quality loss rate of the two biodegradable films were 52.26 and 48.48%, respectively. Various mulching film treatments could increase soil moisture in the early stage of maize growth. At the 0–60 cm soil layer, the soil moisture under the white oxo-biodegradable mulching film and black oxo-biodegradable mulching film treatments were lower by 2.75 and 2.66% (p < 0.05) than the white polyethylene mulching film and black polyethylene mulching film treatments. The soil water consumption was highest in the non-mulching treatment, followed by biodegradable film, and the small least value was observed in the polyethylene film treatment. The average soil temperature at depth of 0–15 cm in white polyethylene mulching film, black polyethylene mulching film, white oxo-biodegradable mulching film, and black oxo-biodegradable mulching film treatments were 1.43, 1.16, 0.72 and 0.64°C higher than the non-mulching treatment, respectively. Mulching films treatment played a critical role in increasing production and improving water use efficiency. The black polyethylene mulching film treatment had the highest yield and the best water use efficiency. The black oxo-biodegradable mulching film treatment only reduces the yield by 0.33% compared to the black polyethylene mulching film treatment, and the water use efficiency was only reduced by 0.90% (p > 0.05). Comprehensive analysis showed that black oxo-biodegradable mulching film could be used as a substitute for polyethylene mulching film and can be applied to the production practice of drip irrigation maize in the Ili area.

The Treatment of Microbubble Disease of 20th Century Cellulose Acetate Microfilm: Application of Ethyecellulose and Microrepair Method

The microbubble disease of cellulose acetate microfilm is accompanied by the production of acetic acid syndrome, which has a negative influence on the integrity of image information. In the present study, cellulose acetate microfilm produced microbubble disease from the Republic of China (AD 1912-1949) collected in the Second Historical Archives of China is chosen as a prototype to study its treatment methods.A combination of optical microscopic and needle is carried out to remove plasticizer in microbubble for the first time. The plasticizer can be effectively removed by infiltrating n-butanol into the microbubble from a small hole broken by the needle. Owing to the unclear image information after plasticizer removed, the SEM and laser confocal microscopeare used to study the morphology and roughness of the inner surface of microbubble. It can be found that the unclear image informationis attributed to the light scattering from rough interface. Based on the advantages of ethyl cellulose in file protection, the optimal concentration of ethyl cellulose is selected and used to fill the interior of the microbubble to obtain clearer image information. To determine the protective potential of thisfilling materials,the chemical and mechanical properties of coated film after dry heat, hygrothermal andUVaccelerated aging are measured.Based on theabove-mentioned results, it is encouraging that a new microrepair method and its corresponding method are offered in film treatment work.

Soviet Film

Dos Passos’s adaptation of cinematic methods to literary style beginning in the mid-1920s emerged further in his work after he visited Russia in 1928. Tepid public and critical response to New Playwrights dramas motivated Dos Passos to explore how the revolutionary state-supported Russian theater and film productions had engaged the masses, united them politically, and produced groundbreaking artists. In dramatist Meyerhold’s avant-garde theater, Constructivist industrial sets and “biomechanical” acting techniques created successful dramas about and for workers. Dos Passos observed that cinematic innovations emerged from the Soviet-controlled studios despite the state’s use of film as its primary tool of mass ideological education. Though Lenin, then Stalin increasingly controlled film productions and artists, Soviet filmmakers nonetheless evolved theories of montage that became foundational in filmmaking and informed Dos Passos’s modernist novels and his 1936 independent film treatment “Dreamfactory,” with its meta-filmic exposé of the Hollywood film industry. In particular, these works registered the formal and conceptual innovations of two directors: Eisenstein, whose films combined fiction and history to effect political action through art; and Vertov, whose films acknowledged the artist’s vision as controlling the camera “eye” and who embedded in one short film an auto-critique of movie-making.

Film Writing

In 1936, his politics still leftist but increasingly apprehensive about Communism, Dos Passos used his exposure to the Hollywood film industry to create his only independent film treatment, “Dreamfactory.” This manuscript, though never produced as a film, is the only film project he undertook consisting entirely of his own concepts and his own writing. “Dreamfactory” imagines visually what The Big Money communicates by adapting montage to the page: the complicit relationship between film and the creation of material desire that fuels capitalism. Using the techniques of montage Dos Passos had absorbed from early U.S. and Soviet film, the treatment employs the tools of its own making to critique itself as a product. This innovative work presaged the political and professional crisis that would emerge from Dos Passos’s next film project, the documentary The Spanish Earth (1937): though Dos Passos wrote the “Dreamfactory” treatment, its ideological direction was the subject of correspondence between him and the Dutch Communist filmmaker, Joris Ivens, who would direct the Spanish film. Ivens’ conception of his art as a vehicle to be shaped by the ideological demands of the Party would conflict with Dos Passos’s belief that art should evoke creative engagement and individual choice.

The Miraculous Virgin: Journey from Novella to Shooting Script

Dominik Tatarka’s novella The Miraculous Virgin was first published in 1944. Twenty years later a second edition (revised by the author) was published and at approximately the same time Tatarka wrote a literary script for an intended film based on his novella. Director Štefan Uher (who had previously directed three feature films – Class Nine A, The Sun in a Net and The Organ) undertook the film adaptation. He wrote the shooting script based on Tatarka’s literary script and in 1966 he directed the movie The Miraculous Virgin. In the present study the author analyses the evolution of the text from one version to another. Tatarka’s modifications to the text and Uher’s subsequent changes are being analysed. The readers – and future audience of the film – had at their disposal four literary versions of The Miraculous Virgin: two editions of the novella, a film treatment by Tatarka (published in two issues of the Slovenské pohľady magazine in 1964) and a so-called literary script (published in 1966). Therefore we can talk about a complex consisting of various components and we can analyse in detail the relationship between them.

Influence of a Dissection Video Clip on Anxiety, Affect, and Self-Efficacy in Educational Dissection: A Treatment Study

In science education, dissections of animals are an integral part of teaching, but they often evoke negative emotions. We aimed at reducing negative emotions (anxiety, negative affect [NA]) and increasing positive affect (PA) and self-efficacy by an experimental intervention using a predissection video to instruct students about fish dissection. We compared this treatment with another group that watched a life history video about the fish. The participants were 135 students studying to become biology teachers. Seventy received the treatment with the dissection video, and 65 viewed the life history video. We applied a pre/posttest treatment-comparison design and used the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS), the State–Trait–Anxiety Inventory for State (STAI-S), and a self-efficacy measure three times: before the lesson (pretest), after the film treatment (posttest 1), and after the dissection (posttest 2). The dissection film group scored higher in PA, NA, and state anxiety (STAI-S) after the dissection video treatment and higher in self-efficacy after the dissection. The life history group showed no differences between the pretest and posttest 1. The dissection film has clear benefits—increasing PA and self-efficacy—that come at the cost of higher NA and higher STAI-S.