Serological testing for antibodies against canine parvovirus in a population of adult dogs in eastern Poland

The aim of the study was to determine the titre of antibodies against canine parvovirus in groups of adult dogs from eastern Poland with a varied history of vaccination against parvovirus. 200 dogs divided into three groups were included in the study. The first group (n = 59) consisted of subjects regularly vaccinated against the disease according to WSAVA guidelines. The second group (n = 77) consisted of animals that completed the full course of CPV immunisation as puppies but had not received a booster dose in the past three years. The third group (n = 64) consisted of animals that had not received even a single vaccination against parvovirus. Blood was collected from all dogs to determine the titres of antibodies against canine parvovirus using a Bionote V200 analyser (VetExpert). In group I, antibody titres equal to or higher than HI = 80, thought of as ensuring resistance to infection were observed in 86% of dogs, while 14% of the tested animals had HI <80. In groups II and III, high anti-CPV antibody titres of HI > 80 were found in 73% and 72% dogs, respectively. The large number of positive seroreactants with high titres of antibodies indicates the high immunogenicity of vaccine and field strains of canine parvovirus and common occurrence of canine parvovirus in the environment.

Honey drinks

Honey as a multi-component substance made by honey bees is a carbohydrate source and contains flavonoid compounds that act as antioxidants and may have ergogenic properties. As an ancient activity in Ukraine, using honey in the production of honey drinks has a long and varied history. Despite its very long tradition, only a few honey drink recipes have been preserved, so this study aims at valorizing honey-based beverages from Ukraine. Honey use in the nonalcoholic and alcoholic beverage category is diverse, performing flavor, functional, and wellness roles. Moreover, some of the accessed physicochemical parameters of elderberry (Sambucus nigra L.) tea with honey including pH, total dissolved solids, and antioxidant activity were measured in the study and the results showed increased acidity, electrical conductivity, and total mineralization of tea with honey that may indicate an improvement in the biological value of beverages when using honey.

Translating the Buddha: Edwin Arnold’s Light of Asia and Its Indian Publics

In this article, I examine the popular Victorian poem The Light of Asia (1879) and its reception and adaptation in late nineteenth and early twentieth century colonial India. Authored by the popular writer, Sir Edwin Arnold, The Light of Asia is typically regarded as one of the foundational texts of modern Buddhism in the western world. Yet significantly less has been said about its influence in Asia and especially in India, where it has as an equally rich and varied history. While most scholarship has focused on its connections to the Sinhalese Buddhist leader Anagarika Dharmapala and his popular campaigns to ‘liberate’ the MahaBodhi Temple in Bodh Gaya, the singular focus on Dharmapala has obscured the poem’s much more expansive and enduring impact on a wide array of colonial Indian publics, regardless of caste, region, religion, ethnicity or language. The article explores the early history of its numerous adaptations, dramatizations, and translations in various regional languages. In providing an analysis of the poem’s Indian publics, the article shows how regional, political, and cultural idioms formed in multilingual contexts enable different readings and how literary and performative cultures interacted with colonial conceptions of religion, nation, and caste.

Athens After Empire

When we think of ancient Athens, the image invariably coming to mind is of the Classical city, with monuments beautifying everywhere; the Agora swarming with people conducting business and discussing political affairs; and a flourishing intellectual, artistic, and literary life, with life anchored in the ideals of freedom, autonomy, and democracy. But in 338 that forever changed when Philip II of Macedonia defeated a Greek army at Chaeronea to impose Macedonian hegemony over Greece. The Greeks then remained under Macedonian rule until the new power of the Mediterranean world, Rome, annexed Macedonia and Greece into its empire. How did Athens fare in the Hellenistic and Roman periods? What was going on in the city, and how different was it from its Classical predecessor? There is a tendency to think of Athens remaining in decline in these eras, as its democracy was curtailed, the people were forced to suffer periods of autocratic rule, and especially under the Romans enforced building activity turned the city into a provincial one than the “School of Hellas” that Pericles had proudly proclaimed it to be, and the Athenians were forced to adopt the imperial cult and watch Athena share her home, the sacred Acropolis, with the goddess Roma. But this dreary picture of decline and fall belies reality, as my book argues. It helps us appreciate Hellenistic and Roman Athens and to show it was still a vibrant and influential city. A lot was still happening in the city, and its people were always resilient: they fought their Macedonian masters when they could, and later sided with foreign kings against Rome, always in the hope of regaining that most cherished ideal, freedom. Hellenistic Athens is far from being a postscript to its Classical predecessor, as is usually thought. It was simply different. Its rich and varied history continued, albeit in an altered political and military form, and its Classical self-lived on in literature and thought. In fact, it was its status as a cultural and intellectual juggernaut that enticed Romans to the city, some to visit, others to study. The Romans might have been the ones doing the conquering, but in adapting aspects of Hellenism for their own cultural and political needs, they were the ones, as the poet Horace claimed, who ended up being captured.

Deleuze and Absolute Immanence: Achieving Fully Immanent Inquiry

The concepts of immanence and transcendence have a long and varied history in philosophy. In an ontology of absolute immanence, immanence is not dependent on something else. Immanence is immanent only to itself, with the result that all transcendence is eliminated. Deleuze, like Derrida and Foucault, has an unwavering commitment to absolute immanence, which he conceives of in different ways during his career. There is both a logical and an ethical problem with any ontology of transcendence, and an ontology of absolute immanence addresses both these problems. Fully immanent inquiry rejects all forms of methodological transcendence. It avoids relying on the authority of any existing qualitative (or other) methodological structures such as paradigms, methodologies, methodological concepts, methodological techniques, and methodological practices. It also avoids all binary opposites and universals and fosters experimentation and creation of the new. An example of fully immanent research is also discussed.

Dependent Deviance

Castration has a long and varied history across the Old World, as many different cultures created and used castrates for multiple reasons. Castrates’ physical state gave them liminal status in their societies, which made them ideal candidates for abnormal burial rites and methods, and a lack of direct heirs made it especially necessary for castrates to plan their burials before death. This often required them to join burial clubs or attempt to ensure that the executor of their will or adopted heirs would carry out the appropriate rituals. Comparing and contrasting what is known about normative and castrate burial rituals in two cultures: China and Early Modern to Modern Europe, this chapter will assess any prescribed burial rituals for castrates. It will then determine whether castrates were buried in a deviant manner for their culture, whether they actually had control over their method of burial, and whether a violation of prescribed rituals could be considered deviant burial.

Sprachplurizentrismus in der Romania in Geschichte und Gegenwart: das Beispiel Rumänisch

The paper looks into the question of whether Romanian is a mono- or a pluricentric language and investigates its relation to so-called Moldovan. The first part outlines the formation of the Romanian Academy as a standardizing authority. It was founded in the second half of the 19th century when the territory of today’s Republic of Moldova did not belong to Romania but to Russia. The second part therefore casts an eye over the linguistic situation in this region which has gone through a varied history during the last 200 years. As a result, it appears that the efforts to establish Moldovan as a separate language were politically motivated. The question – if we have to deal with two languages (Romanian, Moldovan), one (Romanian) with two centres (Bucharest, Chişinău), or one language with only one centre (Bucharest) – is therefore also a political question which creates different answers depending on political constellations.

Going Digital? New Media and Digital Art at the Stedelijk

The Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, has an extensive collection of time-based media art from the 1960s onwards, which has been expanded into the digital field in recent decades. The Stedelijk makes an interesting case study for this special issue on “Art Curation: Challenges in the Digital Age,” because it has had a reputable history of dealing with time-based art since the mid-1970s but presently faces the same challenges with regard to curating and collecting digital art as other museums of modern art. The Stedelijk’s history began in 1974, when the first curator for time-based art was hired, Dorine Mignot, a pioneer in this field. After Mignot’s retirement in 2006, the museum was closed for almost a decade, but under the leadership of Beatrix Ruf (2014–2017), an innovative agenda was set again for new media and digital art. In this paper, Sjoukje van der Meulen mobilizes the museum’s rich and varied history of new media and digital art to think through some of the issues, challenges and concerns raised by guest editor Francesca Franco for this special issue such as “What are the issues involved in re-contextualizing and exhibiting artworks made in the 1960s and the 1970s?” and “What are [adequate] curatorial approaches regarding digital art?”

Pornography addiction: The fabrication of a transient sexual disease

While pornography addiction currently circulates as a comprehensible, diagnosable, and describable way to make sense of some people’s ostensibly problematic relationship with pornography, such a comprehensive description of this relationship has only recently been made possible. The current analysis makes visible pornography addiction as situated within a varied history of concerns about pornography, masturbation, fantasy, and technology in an effort to bring to bear a conceptual critique of the modern concept of pornography addiction. Such a critique in turn works to offer an alternative to treating the study of pornography addiction as the discovery of a new disease, instead conceiving it as the propagation of old forms of knowledge under a new moniker.

Christianity in South and Central Asia

Christianity has had a long, varied history in South and Central Asia. Today, it faces challenges old and new in a rapidly changing and diverse population. Socio-religious crosswinds involving Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, and Islam, along with Communism and Radical Fundamentalism have left lasting impacts upon the region’s societies today. Christianity faces immense struggles, including navigating ingrained social stratification, culturally-accepted discrimination, as well as state-sponsored persecution. Despite the challenges, the gospel of kingdom moves forward through a resilient minority, an opportunistic diaspora, and the rise of indigenous theologies that provide a fresh witness of Christ in revolutionary ways. The future of Christianity in the region is expected to yield new insights into the global impact of the message of Christ.