Classical History Research Articles

Nonparametric double additive cure survival models: An application to the estimation of the non-linear effect of age at first parenthood on fertility progression

This article introduces double additive models to describe the effect of continuous covariates in cure survival models, thereby relaxing the traditional linearity assumption in the two regression parts. This class of models extends the classical event history models when an unknown proportion of the population under study will never experience the event of interest. They are used on data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP) to examine how age at first birth relates to the timing and quantum of fertility for given education levels of the respondents. It is shown that the conditional probability of having further children decreases with the mother's age at first birth. While the effect of age at first birth in the third birth's probability model is fairly linear, this is not the case for the second child with an accelerating decline detected for women that had their first kid beyond age 30.

Scottish-Polish Cooperation on Plato at the Turn of the Twentieth Century

This paper discusses an example of Scottish-Polish cooperation on research, undertaken at the turn of the twentieth century, into the dialogues and philosophy of Plato. Two scholars were involved in this research: the Scottish classical scholar and historian of ancient philosophy, Lewis Campbell (1830–1908), and the Polish Plato scholar and philosopher, Wincenty Lutosławski (1863–1954). Their research on the chronology of Plato's dialogues is analysed and the reception of their works discussed. The paper is enriched with some excerpts from their correspondence.

Greek History

Political and military history used to be the main staple of ancient Greek history. This review includes a number of volumes devoted to the subject. Matteo Zaccarini's book focuses on Cimon and the period between 478 and 450 bce. Sandwiched between Herodotus’ Persian Wars and Thucydides’ Peloponnesian War, the Pentekontaetia (478–431) is the most problematic period of classical Greek history, primarily because of the lack of a continuous narrative and our reliance on much later and fragmentary sources. Zaccarini has divided his work into two sections: the first studies the development of narrative traditions concerning Cimon and his age, from the fifth century to the Second Sophistic, and presents a context for interpreting the shaping of the information provided in these traditions. This is undoubtedly the most profitable part of the work, and a good model that others could imitate. The second part attempts to present a historical reconstruction of the period 478–450 on the basis of the conclusions of the first part. Many of Zaccarini's arguments are, in my view, correct: he shows the need to emancipate our narratives from models based on competition between aristocratic/popular or pro- and anti-Spartan leaders and programmes; he argues that the late 460s–450s is the crucial period of change in the balance of internal and external forces; and he minimizes the actual significance of Cimon's role. These sensible conclusions could have been strengthened by engaging with the rethinking of the nature of early Athenian imperialism by scholars such as Lisa Kallet and John Davies. But the volume is still a worthy contribution towards reassessing this crucial period.

Unstable angina in the era of high-sensitivity troponin testing: a genuine entity and a cautionary tale

High-sensitivity cardiac troponin assays have emerged as a powerful tool in the management of patients presenting acutely to hospital with suspected cardiac chest pain. Recent guidelines emphasize the reassurance offered by low troponin concentrations early after admission. We describe a patient with known coronary artery disease, who presented with a classical history of recurrent myocardial ischaemia. High-sensitivity cardiac Troponin-I concentrations remained in the low-normal sex-specific reference range, despite serial testing on the day of admission, and despite recurrent pain with dynamic ECG changes. Urgent coronary angiography confirmed severe multi-vessel disease. He required an intra-aortic balloon pump within 24 h due to clinical instability, and had urgent coronary artery bypass surgery a few days later. This case confirms that "unstable angina" remains a genuine entity. It highlights the hazards of over-reliance on any single test and serves as a reminder of the importance of integrating tests with clinical assessment.

Resonance in Dhvani Aesthetics and the Deleuzian Logic of Sensation

This paper undertakes an intersectional reading of visual art through theories of literary interpretation in Sanskrit poetics in close reading with Deleuze's notions of sensation. The concept of Dhvani – the Indian theory of suggestion which can be translated as resonance, as explored in the Rasa – Dhvani aesthetics offers key insights into understanding the mode in which sensation as discussed by Deleuze operates throughout his reflections on Francis Bacon's and Cézanne's works. The paper constructs a comparative framework to review modern and classical art history, mainly in the medium of painting, through an understanding of the concept of Dhvani, and charts a course of reinterpreting and examining possible points of concurrence and departure with respect to the Deleuzian logic of sensation and his notions of time-image and perception. The author thereby aims to move art interpretation's paradigm towards a non-linguistic sensory paradigm of experience. The focus of the paper is to break the moulds of normative theory-making which guide ideal conditions of ‘understanding art’ and look into alternative modes of experiencing the ‘vocabulary’ of art through trans-disciplinary intersections, in this case the disciplines being those of visual art, literature and phenomenology.

Lesson of the month 1: Lemierre’s syndrome: a reminder of the ‘forgotten disease’

Lemierre's syndrome is a condition characterised by suppurative thrombophlebitis of the internal jugular (IJ) vein following a recent oropharyngeal infection, with resulting septicaemia and metastatic lesions. It is strongly associated with Fusobacterium necrophorum, a Gram-negative bacilli. Key to early diagnosis is awareness of the classical history and course of this illness, and therefore to ask about a history of recent oropharyngeal infections when a young patient presents with fever and rigors. Diagnosis can be confirmed by showing thrombophlebitis of the IJ vein, culturing F necrophorum from normally sterile sites or demonstrating metastatic lesions in this clinical setting. The cornerstone of management is draining of purulent collection where possible and prolonged courses of appropriate antibiotics. In this article, we review a case study of a young man with Lemierre's syndrome and discuss the condition in more detail.

What Can We Learn from Political History? Leo Strauss and Raymond Aron, Readers of Thucydides

AbstractThrough a comparison of Leo Strauss's and Raymond Aron's interpretations of Thucydides's history, this paper sheds light on the relationship between political history and political philosophy. In continuing the dialogue between the two thinkers, I demonstrate that in spite of their opposed views on modern historical consciousness, they converge in a defense of the object and method of classical political history. However, there is a deeper disagreement regarding the relationship between philosophy and politics. While Strauss makes the case for the compatibility of classical political history and classical political philosophy on the grounds that Thucydides is a “philosophic historian,” Aron argues that it is precisely because Thucydides is not a philosopher that he succeeds in understanding an essential feature of political things, namely, contingency in history.

Symphilologie. Formen der Kooperation in den Geisteswissenschaften eds. by Stefani Stockhorst, Marcel Lepper, and Vinzenz Hoppe

Reviewed by: Symphilologie. Formen der Kooperation in den Geisteswissenschaften eds. by Stefani Stockhorst, Marcel Lepper, and Vinzenz Hoppe Jakob Norberg Symphilologie. Formen der Kooperation in den Geisteswissenschaften. Edited by Stefani Stockhorst, Marcel Lepper, and Vinzenz Hoppe. Göttingen: V & R, 2016. Pp. 325. Cloth €45.00. ISBN 978-3847105671. As Marcel Lepper points out in his contribution to this timely and helpful anthology about cooperation in the humanities and specifically in literary studies, we tend to imagine the student of literature as a solitary figure. The learned reader sits alone among books and studies the pages silently, with a pen in hand. Monks, Lepper adds, used to work in carrels at the monasteries, so that they could concentrate deeply on the texts before them. Another contributor, Constanze Güthenke, states that the humanities have never really been able to integrate cooperative work into its disciplinary identities: the norm has been the individual scholar who writes monographs and articles—and reviews of other monographs. In recent years, however, humanists have begun to cluster. There are interdisciplinary workshops, research networks, humanities labs, Graduiertenkollege, GSA seminars, and a host of other formats meant to facilitate and capitalize on cooperation. Mimicking the collaborative conventions of the social and natural sciences, as well as the teamwork habits of corporate culture, people in the humanities have wanted to assemble more and take on projects that demand manifold perspectives and skills and a division of labor. Symphilologie. Formen der Kooperation in den Geisteswissenschaften does what good humanistic work so often does: it reconstructs a rich context for current trends by reconstructing a long but partially neglected history of cooperation in philology and the human sciences. The overall conclusion one can glean from the fifteen or so contributions is quite revealing of the culture of the research-oriented humanities. As Hans-Harald Müller shows in his contribution on "Großforschung," large-scale projects involving many researchers are not a novelty within the humanities. At the head of the Berlin Academy of Sciences, the classical historian Theodor Mommsen announced that the institution, the academy, must, above all, organize and promote ambitious research projects that cannot be completed by one scholar alone, although such projects must still be conceived and led by an outstanding researcher and science manager. Steffen Martus's article on cooperative practices in literary studies reminds us that the humanities are in fact always communal enterprises, despite the dominant image of the isolated reader. Leaning on the work of another contributor, Ralf Klausnitzer, he discusses how students of literature are typically socialized in particular research communities, where they can observe what counts as an [End Page 665] interesting comment, a relevant problem, a valid argument, and learn how to avoid both overly simplistic and overly complicated interpretations. Such enculturation of novices ensures the continued existence of widely shared tacit disciplinary knowledge. Even when the lonely scholar writes a paper in the carrel, he or she remains in an imagined dialogue with disciplinary peers who share a similar sense of what counts as a legitimate undertaking in the field. Yet the anthology's title and central concept, "Symphilologie," refers neither to nineteenth-century industrial-scale projects nor to the socialization of future academics within a research paradigm, but to the transient romanticist marriage of philosophy and sociability, Friedrich Schlegel's "Symphilosophie." As the editors Stockhorst, Lepper, and Hoppe write, Schlegel envisaged the collaborative, fully social creation of philosophy by diverse souls so finely and intimately connected to one another that they might have been torn halves at last reunited. The anthology makes clear, perhaps against its own initial intention, that no such vision was ever carried over into philology. Güthenke formulates the tension explicitly in her paper on the classicist August Boekh, who became a professor in Berlin 1811 and founded an influential seminar, a sort of graduate program. The cooperative practices in the knowledge communities of increasingly institutionalized and specialized philological disciplines—mentoring, networking, information exchange, peer review and so on—do not instantiate the romantic ideal of complementary creative being. According to an article by Vinzenz Hoppe and Kaspar Renner that Güthenke cites, one can even discern a break between the vocabulary of...

Analysis of BRCA1 gene exon 2 mutation in breast cancer patients in a South Indian population

Hormone related cancer breast cancer has been caused by defects in cell cycle control genes BRCA1 and BRCA2 which also plays a vital role in tumour suppression and DNA repair. To determine the frequency of occurrence of 185delAG mutation of BRCA1 in exon 2 regions which has been previously reported in Ashkenazi Jewish families and also in Indian population. 200 breast cancer affected and 200 healthy age matched control samples were screened for 185delAG mutation by taqman allelic discrimination assay. Among the 200 breast cancer affected cases 29 had family history of cancer and 5 out of the 29 family history group had classic history of multiple members being affected across generations. The study demonstrates though in low frequency the definite strong involvement of 185delAG mutation in familial cases and absence of this mutation in non familial cases. The association of the mutation with breast cancer patients imposes genetic testing in familial cases, making way for targeted therapy and precision medicine. The identification of this mutation as a causal factor for breast cancer will be of value to researchers, patient care, clinicians, for family members and individuals with early onset of cancer.

Constructal Law of Institutions within Social Organizations

This work looked for a unifying theory between physical-biological domain and social sciences. Constructal law unified physical and biological domain by telling the general sense in which flow systems tend to evolve. Management theory looks for relations between institutions and human agency. Although being state of mind entities, institutions follow constructal law. This work proposed the main organization flows are information and credit. Biologic instincts derived from Darwinian natural selection are the driving or blocking forces of such flows. Once biologic instincts systematically block information and credit flows in large numbers, this work proposed every human organization must have institutions to inhibit some behaviors. Those institutions need to be present, at least partially, in formal rules of social groups. This way it is possible to predict expansion or downfall of human groups using objective and quantifiable data. Therefore, further studies may employ classical history to confirm this theory. This work analyzed some case studies to show qualitatively the application of proposed theory. Concluding, this work gave physically-biologically grounded guidance for institutional changes.

Актуализация классики vs научная история философии (по поводу статьи диакона М. Е. Буланенко)

Актуализация классики vs научная история философии (по поводу статьи диакона М. Е. Буланенко)

O discurso paulino e as representações da escravidão romana no século I e.c.: um estudo de caso sobre a 'Epístola a Filemon'

O presente artigo tem como principal objetivo apresentar os resultados obtidos com a pesquisa desenvolvida junto ao Grupo de Estudos em História Clássica e Ensino de História (GEHCEH) do curso de Licenciatura da Universidade Federal do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (UNIRIO). Nele, analisaremos o discurso paulino e as representações da escravidão romana no século I e.c. por meio do estudo da Epístola a Filemon. Para tanto, investigaremos as tramas do texto atribuído a Paulo e a temática da escravidão no âmbito das ekklesíai a partir do personagem chave do texto epistolar, a saber, o escravo Onésimo.

The Imitation Game: Interstate Alliances and the Failure of Theban Hegemony in Greece

AbstractSoon after their victory over the Spartans at the Battle of Leuctra in 371 BCE, the Thebans asserted their claim to Panhellenic leadership, but that hegemonic experiment turned out to be a brief affair in classical Greek history. It is the purpose of this paper to explain this failure by comparing the Theban approach to interstate relations with that of the earlier and more successful Athenian and Spartan models. The first section reexamines those hegemonic precedents and their supporting alliances (συμμαχίαι) which served both military and social functions. The next section looks closely at the attempt of the Thebans, under the leadership of Epaminondas and Pelopidas, to extend their own political and military power through the construction of seven alliances or groups of alliances from 370 to 364 BCE. Although the Thebans’ alliance treaties were designed according to conventional principles and provisions, their alliance network proved incapable of sustaining their Panhellenic aspirations. The final section seeks out answers to why the Thebans failed where others had previously succeeded. Whereas modern scholarship points to institutional and structural deficiencies or personal hatreds, this paper adds a further reason: that the Thebans neglected to cultivate interpersonal ties with their new allies that could transcend the temporary objectives and inspire the parties to continue their relationship in the long term. Consequently, the alliances, and thus the whole Theban hegemonic experiment, collapsed within only a short time of their inception.

Mutual point-winning probabilities (MPW): a new performance measure for table tennis

ABSTRACTWe propose a new performance measure for table tennis players: the mutual point-winning probabilities (MPW) as server and receiver. The MPWs quantify a player’s chances to win a point against a given opponent, and hence nicely complement the classical match statistics history between two players. These new quantities are based on a Bradley-Terry-type statistical model taking into account the importance of individual points, since a rally at 8–2 in the first set is less crucial than a rally at the score of 9–9 in the final set. The MPWs hence reveal a player’s strength on his/her service against a given opponent as well as his/her capacity of scoring crucial points. We estimate the MPWs by means of maximum likelihood estimation and show via a Monte Carlo simulation study that our estimation procedure works well. In order to illustrate the MPWs’ versatile use, we have organized two round-robin tournaments of ten respectively eleven table tennis players from the Belgian table tennis federation. We compare the classical final ranking to the ranking based on MPWs, and we highlight how the MPWs shed new light on strengths and weaknesses of the players.

Metodología Crítica del Diseño y 'Empowerment' Identitario. Aprendiendo de una Perspectiva Feminista

El rigor de la investigación sobre el diseño y en su misma actividad proyectual no conlleva necesariamente el requerimiento para la obtención de un 'empowerment' de las teorías de diseño. También los titubeos, los debates indefinidos, la inconsistencia de las reflexiones en las propuestas proyectuales, lo otro que no acaba de definirse, poseen su dignidad intelectual y cultural; quizás representan mejor tanto eso que llamamos' diseño' como eso que llamamos 'investigación en el diseño'. El presente trabajo expone parte de una investigación sobre la teoría del diseño, especialmente en referencia a la participación privada de dos mujeres de la historia del diseño clásico; Friedl Dicker-Brandeis; Marianne Liebe Brandt. Su finalidad es la de establecer el escenario básico en el que reconstruir posteriormente el aprendizaje que el diseño podría obtener de la filosofía feminista.

The Concept of Historical Landscape Design at Watugong Archaeological Site Area in Malang City

Malang city has the high historical value. It showed by many archaeological situses found, such as: The Dutch Colonial Building until kingdom era on classical history period. Generally, it could be seen at urban affairs like government building even the ancient house. But the last kingdom archaeological site only found at the village. The oldest archaeological site in Malang city was found on Kanjuruhan Kingdom, which is concentrated in Tlogomas. The Watu Gong Hamlet that was located in Tlogomas Political District had an archaeological site. It was a big stone in which the stone looked like a traditional music instrument, it was called Gong. As the archaeological site in megalithicum, before the Hindu and Budha came in from India, that stone was predicted as the foundation structure of the big building. The Watu Gong Hamlet was located in Tlogomas archeological site area, also Merjosari and Karang Besuki. Three of them are the archeological sites for Kanjuruhan Kingdom at eigth century, until Kahuripan Kingdom around the eleventh century, as the heir of the Ancient Mataram Kingdom. The urban government has a program to improve the village required to their region potential and it was possible to revitalize the Tlogomas village, so that the historical character can be seen well. The modernity of a hamlet has impact on the local identity blured. In which, they did not think about economic only and it can be minimized, also the hamlet will be a characterized tourism object. The revitalization purposed to continuing the past, then it’s connected to present. It’s performed as corridored garden planning. The landscape development appropriated to promote about the characters of Kacapiring flower, Rose, Jasmine and Puring. They are the special plants from Kanjuruhan Kingdom, beside the other furniture street model. This research was descriptive explorative and discussed about the concept with architecture design approach, started from data collecting, precedent study, programming until the developing concept of the historical landscape. The historical landscape concept for Tlogomas at present is recommended to Watu Gong as the village tourism object.

History as a Piece of Art

The purpose of this article is to analyze the situation that developed in the modern philosophy of history and historiography. An attempt was made to overcome the so-called "end of history" crisis. The main argument of thinkers who adhere to the position of history impossibility was the comparison or even the identification of the historical text with works of art. In the authors' opinion, such a problematization, although quite serious and appropriate, does not so much hamper the possibility of history and historical research as it gives new opportunities in understanding the problem of history. The main conclusion of this article is to recognize the crisis of the form of history or historical research characteristic of the classical history philosophy applied in the XIXth and partly, albeit with varying success, in the XXth century. The narrative-artistic form is a symptom of the end of history (neither as a real historical process, nor as the way of its description), but as a turn and an event in the development of the history paradigm and the principle of historicism. An event that, like other events, has its own historical boundaries and limits.

Names and Numbers: “Data” in Classical Natural History, 1758–1859

AbstractThe late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries saw the transition from natural history to the history of nature. This essay analyzes institutional, social, and technological changes in ...

A general spectral difference method for calculating the minimum safety distance to avoid the pounding of adjacent structures during earthquakes

With the development of cities, buildings have become increasingly concentrated. Therefore, there are serious potential collision dangers between the adjacent buildings or the building partitions under earthquakes, hence buildings need to set the appropriate safety distance to avoid pounding. However, the calculation of the minimum safety distances (MSD) of the adjacent buildings in Chinese Code is rough and arbitrary, while the traditional response spectrum method is derived based on the assumption of proportional damping and it is difficult to consider the non-proportional damping characteristics for large and complex building systems. Based on the above, this paper proposes a new general spectral difference method(gSDM) to calculate the MSD. First, the pseudo-excitation method is used to derive the relative displacement random expression of adjacent buildings during earthquakes. Then, combined with the response spectrum method, the gSDM formula is established, in addition, the explicit expressions of combination coefficient in the gSDM formula are given. Finally, the examples of two adjacent multi-storey shear-buildings are used to illustrate the accuracy and wide adaptability of the gSDM during the El-Centro earthquake. The results compared and discussed in detail with the classical spectral difference method (cSDM), SRSS method and time history analysis.

Michelson, Patrick Lally and Kornblatt, Judith Deutsch (eds.) Thinking Orthodox in Modern Russia: Culture, History, Context (review)

SEER, 95, 3, JULY 2017 554 On one level, Stone’s history of the western Slavic minorities reads like a classic nation-building history. Yet viewed through a different prism, it uncovers an intriguing archaeology of European history. From attempts to assemble a usable grand narrative from scraps of history, Wendish, Sorb and Kashubian history runs through to a recognizable late-modern experience of claims to self-determination, oppression and selfhood in a post-1989 Europe. Department of History James Koranyi Durham University Michelson, Patrick Lally and Kornblatt, Judith Deutsch (eds.) Thinking Orthodox in Modern Russia: Culture, History, Context. University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, WI, 2014. xii + 303 pp. Notes. Index. $29.95 (paperback). This collection misses the most interesting question about ‘thinking Orthodox in modern Russia’, that is, why and how such thinking continued during the Soviet period and survived the onslaught of atheist propaganda and the many punitive measures applied to religious believers by those wielding political power. The periods examined include the eighteenth century until the early years of the twentieth century with scant mention of the post-1917 period, apart from an interesting examination of Pasternak’s view of beauty and art and some of the ideas of the Orthodox priest Pavel Florenskii who died in a Soviet labour camp. Paul Valliere in his ‘Afterword’ bemoans US academics’ lack of knowledge about Orthodoxy in the USSR until the 1970s when they ‘discovered something they had not known before or had greatly underestimated; that a significant revival of religious faith was taking place in Russia, especially in the intelligentsia’ (p. 277). This book unfortunately appears to be a continuation of this past academic failure. The revival of interest in religion in the USSR was, however, well-known to many in Europe from the early 1960s, and especially to those who founded Keston College in 1969. No mention is made in these essays of some of the intelligenty luminaries who continued to ‘think Orthodox’ despite the dangers which faced those who rejected Marxism-Leninism — for example, Anatoli Levitin, Boris Talantov, Alexander Ogorodnikov and his Christian Seminar, Fr Alexander Men, the poet Irina Ratushinskaya, the writer Andrei Sinyavskii and the remarkable medievalist, Dimitrii Likhachev, who kept his mouth shut literally during the 1930s when he worked as a proofreader and editor. And there is no mention either of Russian Orthodoxy in contemporary Russia, where, to quote Paul Valliere again, ‘the rebuilding of the Russian Church ranks as one of the most remarkable religious developments in modern times’ (p. 278). REVIEWS 555 Yet many of the themes discussed in this collection are relevant to these later historical periods. Dmitrii Bogoliubov’s work as a missionary from 1894–1913 (‘Theology on the Ground’, pp. 64–84) confronted problems which are often those of today’s missionary departments in Moscow Patriarchate dioceses: he understood that he needed to educate Orthodox believers rather than debate with dissenters, that by creating lively brotherhoods he could revive parish life. He altered his romantic view of the Russian narod when he learned about the realities of village life, came to support freedom of conscience and even learned to respect Shtundists. The conflict between grass-roots piety, the veneration for miracle-working icons and the authority of startsy or elders (possessing charismatic gifts) on the one hand, and central church authority on the other, is explored in ‘The Struggle for the Sacred: Russian Orthodox Thinking about Miracles in a Modern Age’ (pp. 131–50): this too is a theme which continues to be relevant for the contemporary church whose leader, Patriarch Kirill, puts enormous energy into creating an administratively efficient church based on centralized control. Pavel Florenskii, one of the most interesting Orthodox minds of the twentieth century, is discussed in a number of these essays. Particularly noteworthy is the examination of his commentary — only published in 1995 — on the imyaslavtsy (the Name-Glorifiers) controversy, a conflict between charismatic direct experience of God and academic theology (‘Archbishop Nikon and Pavel Florenskii on Spiritual Experience, Theology and the Name-Glorifiers Dispute’, pp. 85–107). How fascinating to discover that Sergii (Stragorodskii), later famous for his 1927 compromise between church and state, had written one of the three reports...