Materiality, Oral Incantations and Supernatural Agency in Ancient Healing Magic

In the Ancient World illness was thought to be the effect not of accidental or natural causes, but rather the result of a negative agency, an external attack on the victim’s body. This paper focuses on the diverse strategies used in healing magic attested in the material and textual records from the ancient Near East to Late Antiquity, with special attention paid to how the cultural status of objects and substances was changed through ritual, a process that, along with the invocations of demons and gods, allowed objects to acquire agency to counterattack the harm inflicted on the victim’s body.

Fail-Stop Group Signature Scheme

In this study, a fail-stop group signature scheme (FSGSS) that combines the features of group and fail-stop signatures to enhance the security level of the original group signature is proposed. Assuming that FSGSS encounters an attack by a hacker armed with a supercomputer, this scheme can prove that the digital signature is forged. Based on the aforementioned objectives, this study proposes three lemmas and proves that they are indeed feasible. First, how does a recipient of a digitally signed document verify the authenticity of the signature? Second, when a digitally signed document is under dispute, how can the group’s manager determine the identity of the original group member who signed the document, if necessary, for an investigation? Third, how can one prove that the signature is indeed forged following an external attack from a supercomputer? Following an attack, the signature could be proved to be forged without exposing the key. In addition, the ultimate goal of the group fail-stop signature scheme is to stop using the same key immediately after the discovery of a forgery attack; this would prevent the attack from being repeated.

Morphometric traits of shells determine external attack and internal utilization marks in the Roman snail in eastern Germany

Overexploitation, habitat destruction and a changing climate threaten populations of the Roman snail (Helix pomatia Linnaeus, 1758), which has led to a high protection status in Germany. Vertebrate and invertebrate predators, including parasites and facultative parasitoids, further cause pressure on populations. Given the conservation concern for H. pomatia and its rarity in the study region (Cottbus, Germany), we studied how predators and facultative parasitoids utilize H. pomatia shells with a focus on non-invasive field methods. As previous studies indicated that shell size may affect prey selection by predators, morphometric traits were measured in eight subpopulations. We identified the total number and percentage of H. pomatia shells that showed external attack marks by predators and internal utilization marks by Diptera pupae and related those utilization patterns to the morphometric traits of shells. A large proportion of the shells in local subpopulations showed signs of external attack and internal utilization, and both utilization forms were positively correlated. External attacks by predators were more frequent in larger shells and internal utilization by Diptera was more common in shells with higher body density. These results suggest a considerable pressure by predators and potential facultative parasitoids on H. pomatia populations in the study area. Future research should focus on the relationship between snails from the family Helicidae and flies from the genus Discomyza. Conservation programmes should consider abiotic habitat conditions together with potential trophic interactions to maximize the success of conservation strategies.

Gascony and the International Context 1243–1252

This chapter describes how, before his departure from Gascony in the autumn of 1243, Henry III had worked hard to set the province to rights. He had toured the duchy, reconciled competing factions, maintained his rights, and bolstered the defences against external attack, or at least tried to do so. But, as a would-be conqueror of Gascony had once said, it was like trying to plough the seashore. For the next ten years, Henry was never free from Gascon worries. They led him in 1248 to place the duchy under Simon de Montfort and, when that ended in disaster, they forced him in 1253 to go there himself, despite being now pledged to go on crusade. Henry's concentration on Gascony and commitment to the crusade reflected the more general international situation, which left him with little else to do. There was no chance of attempting to recover the lost continental empire. Indeed, the ten years between Henry's two sojourns in Gascony in 1243 and 1253 saw a significant shift in the European balance of power towards the Capetian kings of France.

“If You Lack Men”: Shajar al-Durr’s Abdication and Tomb

Because the censure of other rulers once again made Egypt vulnerable to an external attack, Shajar al-Durr was forced to abdicate the throne after less than three months and to marry a high-ranking military leader, Aybak, who replaced her on the throne. When Aybak began courting a second wife seven years later, Shajar al-Durr had him killed, whereupon she was herself murdered a few days later. She was the first sultan in Cairo to have built her own tomb, perhaps because there were no surviving children to build one for her. The tomb is architecturally significant for its golden mosaics and extensive program of wall paintings, the recent cleaning of which have made them visible again.

Conclusion

The Conclusion considers the significance of the decline of the Company of Merchant Adventurers in light of the broader structural changes that English overseas commerce underwent in the early modern period. It argues that, although the Company of Merchant Adventurers can not straightforwardly be associated with a precapitalist commercial order rendered irrelevant by the emergence of capitalism, the story of the Company’s decline does cast light on a process of commercial restructuring which involved the breakdown of certain boundaries, geographical and occupational, and the possibility of new synergies. These changes had implications for the role and career of the overseas merchant, and the place of merchant companies in structuring access to foreign trade. Survival for merchant companies depended on their ability to attract and accommodate new members and retain their loyalty, as well as to survive external attack. Changes within the Merchant Adventurers’ ranks made this increasingly difficult, and the Company’s failure to maintain its privileges was in part a consequence of the dissolution of the social system of its trade.

Empire of the Danube

This chapter describes the Habsburg Monarchy’s physical environment, how it influenced Habsburg perceptions of space, and the vulnerabilities and advantages that it created in competition with other major powers. Like all states, the Habsburg Monarchy depended for its survival on the ability to exercise undisputed control over a clearly defined territorial space. This in turn involved two tasks: building a sound political and economic base, and providing security against internal or external attack. In the first task, the Habsburgs enjoyed the advantage of a compact, riparian heartland bounded on most sides by mountains. The second task was made difficult in the extreme by the empire’s wider east-central European security environment. This combination of defensible local terrain and geopolitical vulnerability influenced how Habsburg leaders thought about and conducted strategy by encouraging the development of strategic forms of knowledge to conceptualize space for defensive purposes, and pulling attention outward to the frontiers, while demanding the maintenance of a “big picture” capable of taking in the security position of the Habsburg Empire as a whole.

Evasion Attack on Text Classified Training Datasets

Machine learning algorithms are widespread used in real world training data classification and detection malware. The learning algorithms to detect malware adversarial manipulated training datasets in evasion. The evasion attacker has certain knowledge on training datasets either internal in deploying time attack or external attack do based on adversarial knowledge. Evasion attack targeted document properties features malware. To present this paper, to do an evasion attack on collected text documents using extraction keyword and find mean words using Naive Bayes models . Also to analyses different machine learning algorithms classification on evasion attacked training datasets and discussed defense methods to prevent training dataset from evasion attack

Identity Work, Loss and Preferred Identities: A Study of UK Business School Deans

This paper investigates how leaders construct ‘loss’ identity narratives which defuse the scope for external attack and sustain self-meanings. We draw on a sample of 31 United Kingdom business school deans, who although often depicted as multi-talented, high-status achievers, are also targets for criticism and have high rates of turnover. Our study makes two principal contributions. First, we argue that leaders may employ a specific pattern of identity work involving talk about loss to construct identities that bolster their leadership by presenting them as making sacrifices for their institutions. Losses are ubiquitous and malleable discursive resources that constitute both identity threats and opportunities for constructing preferred identities. Second, we deepen understanding of ‘preferred identities’, i.e. normative self-narratives that specify who people want to be, and to be seen to be, and which serve self-meaning and impression management functions. Preferred identities, though, do not necessarily serve people’s interests, and deans tied themselves to demanding requirements by authoring themselves as research credible, scrupulously moral, hard-working professionals.