Comprehensive Reinterpretation Research Articles

Duskward displacement of plasmoids and reconnection in the near-Earth magnetotail

Magnetic reconnection in the near-Earth magnetotail is responsible for explosive release of energy during substorms and auroral breakups. This near-tail reconnection was previously assumed to occur around the midnight meridian, where earthward flows were typically observed. Based on observations of tailward-moving plasmoids, the Geotail spacecraft mission discovered that the reconnection location was displaced toward dusk. This dusk preference is presumably caused by the Hall electric field, as was suggested later in simulations. However, recent spacecraft observations have indicated that the reconnection was displaced toward dawn, and not dusk, in Mercury’s magnetotail. In response to this controversy, our study aims to clarify the dawn–dusk location of fast plasma flows in the near-Earth magnetotail. Through a comprehensive reinterpretation and integration of previous statistical results, we found that the dusk preference is generally evident for tailward flows but is often absent for earthward flows. These results indicate that the statistical results of earthward flows are sensitive to event selection criteria. We conclude that the dawn–dusk location of earthward flow is statistically unclear at the time of substorm onset. Similarly, in the magnetotail of other planets, the dawn–dusk location of planetward flow may be sensitive to event selection criteria. Hence, reconnection may occur predominantly on the duskside in Mercury’s magnetotail. This hypothesis will be tested using observations of tailward-moving plasmoids by the BepiColombo Mio spacecraft, which will begin orbital observations of Mercury in the year 2026.Graphical

The Transformative Role of Digital Tools in Comic Book Preservation

Traditionally viewed as static repositories, archives are now seen as dynamic entities capable of continuous reconfiguration and reinterpretation. This study examines how digital practices in comic book archiving maintain historical and emotional integrity, while making these artefacts relevant to contemporary audiences. This paper explores the theories of Wolfgang Ernst, Michel Foucault, Lev Manovich, and others in order to explain digital archiving as a dynamic and interpretive act that shapes historical narratives and cultural memory. Digital restoration of comic books focuses on preserving the original aesthetic and historical context, while recoloring revitalizes visual elements to enhance appeal. Reimagining involves comprehensive reinterpretation and aligns with new media theories in order to offer fresh perspectives on historical narratives. The discussion shows how these practices democratize access to cultural heritage, transforming archives into active sites of cultural engagement and potentiality. By balancing technical precision and interpretive insight, digital artists and archivists aim at ensuring that comic books remain vibrant and meaningful cultural treasures for future generations.

Coping With Life during the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648) by Sigrun Haude

Reviewed by: Coping With Life during the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648) by Sigrun Haude Peter Thaler Coping With Life during the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648). By Sigrun Haude. Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, 2021. Pp. xv + 311. Hardback $91.00. ISBN 978-9004466470. Stimulated by pertinent anniversaries, researchers have reexamined the history of the Thirty Years’ War in recent years. A noteworthy aspect has been the widespread focus on individual suffering. Sigrun Haude’s study of personal experiences and coping strategies during the great central European cataclysm of the seventeenth century fits in perfectly with this scholarly reorientation. Having analyzed the confessional era in central Europe in several previous books, Haude came well-prepared for her task. In her current study, she explores how people tried to survive the Thirty Years’ War; on what resources they drew to endure violence, hunger, loss, and disease; and how they tried to make sense of a conflict that appeared ever more meaningless (6). To answer these questions, she primarily turns to well-known contemporary diaries, which she complements with archival sources from southern German archives. Haude centers her investigation on Bavaria and Franconia, which provides for both regional proximity and denominational variation, as Bavaria was strictly Catholic, whereas significant parts of Franconia were Lutheran. The core of the study draws on personal accounts by members of the clergy. These sources might be described as ego-documents, but Haude considers this term insufficient because the texts are strongly colored by their social context and thus reflect more than an individual perspective. Most important for the study are the testimonies provided by the Augustine prioress Clara Staiger, the Benedictine abbots Maurus Friesenegger and Veit Höser, the Dominican nun Maria Anna Junius, and the Lutheran pastor Bartholomäus Dietwar. These personal accounts show a complex web of experiences. Most universally, they express fear. Life had lost all stability—people lived in constant expectation of violence, dislocation, hunger, and poverty. Local governments tried to ameliorate these consequences of war but to little avail. In fact, troops sent to protect the populace were just as likely to commit violence or cause starvation as the invading armies they were supposed to repel. The ravages of war deepened the need for protection not only in military terms but also in spiritual terms. With regard to the latter, the religious remedies offered by the churches frequently proved insufficient, which increased the demand for more unorthodox measures commonly denoted as magic. Another source of resilience was humor, which several protagonists were able to muster even during the most challenging periods. Finally, some of the authors also describe the possibility of respectful interactions and exchanges between supposed enemies. Oftentimes it [End Page 317] was Catholic nuns who successfully appealed to the gallantry of Protestant officers and secured their protection. Coping with Life during the Thirty Years’ War focuses on individuals. In many ways, Sigrun Haude has composed a psychohistory of the wartime experience, with an emphasis on how people felt during this conflict. The Cincinnati historian does not attempt a comprehensive reinterpretation of the Thirty Years’ War and becomes somewhat less sure-footed when she moves beyond her core topic. Her terse summary of the war on pages eight to sixteen leaves no room for discussing alternative understandings. Some of the self-made maps, such as the map of the Holy Roman Empire around 1618 on page eleven that, inter alia, seems to include southern Schleswig in that polity and divide Pomerania in an anachronistic manner, can be slightly misleading. A number of lesser oversights or imprecisions—such as making 1527 the norm year of the Peace of Prague (15) or describing the Habsburgs as a royal dynasty that ruled the Holy Roman Empire from 1440 to the late eighteenth century (237)—could have been caught by more careful external proofreading. Yet, drawing on an abundance of sources, Haude has provided a well-researched study of the human experience of the Thirty Years’ War. She describes this experience in great detail, which at times gives the narration the flavor of a chronicle. In this way, her study reminds of Hans Medick’s 2018 volume Der Dreißigjährige Krieg: Zeugnisse vom...

Resolving the deceptive isoform and complex selectivity of HDAC1/2 inhibitors

The histone deacetylase paralogs HDAC1/2/3 and their corepressor complexes serve as epigenetic master regulators of chromatin function. Over the past decades, HDACs have been widely pursued as pharmacological targets, and considerable efforts have been invested in the development of small molecule drugs. Specifically, ortho-aminoanilide-derived inhibitors, including CI-994 and Cpd-60, stand out with their attractive selectivity profiles and have been used extensively as tools to delineate the biological roles of specific HDAC isoforms and complexes. Here, we apply a suite of activity-independent strategies to investigate how dynamic processes that regulate HDAC complexes govern the isoform and complex selectivity of HDAC inhibitors. Importantly, we find that overreliance on static and simplified biochemical activity assays has confounded the determination of the biological selectivity of these ligands. Our data urge a comprehensive reinterpretation of numerous studies utilizing these tool compounds for the interrogation of epigenetic and other cellular processes.

Villa Nani Mocenigo in Canda. Critical Reinterpretation of the Construction and Trasformation Phases of the Building

Villa Nani Mocenigo in Canda represents one of the most important works of architecture of the alto-Polesine, but, at the same time, one of the least noted historiographically. The villa, in the centre of a large complex comprising a park and service buildings, is distinguished by its exceptional position along the banks of the Canalbianco and by its architecture. From the earliest studies carried out, two important construction phased have come to light: the first, performed in the second half of sixteenth century, and a later expansion, contemporary with the new southern facade, whose features suggest a later period of construction dating to the eighteenth century. Such assessments, pervasively accepted in the subsequent literature, are not fully consistent with the significantly more numerous transformations evidenced by direct analysis. The result of the research presented here aim to offer an historical-critical reading through the vital constant comparison between indirect sources and the direct analysis of the building in its several components. The comprehensive reinterpretation of the construction and transformation phases has widened the field of this research into contextualising historical events, the family who were proprietors, and the craftsmen who laboured there. The result, partly heretofore unpublished, allow the villa to be placed in a wider architectural and historical context than is traditionally presented.

The proton charge radius extracted from the initial-state radiation experiment at MAMI

We report on a comprehensive reinterpretation of the existing cross-section data for elastic electron-proton scattering obtained by the initial-state radiation technique, resulting in a significantly improved accuracy of the extracted proton charge radius. By refining the external energy corrections we have achieved an outstanding description of the radiative tail, essential for a detailed investigation of the proton finite-size effects on the measured cross sections. This development, together with a novel framework for determining the radius, based on a regression analysis of the cross sections employing a polynomial model for the form factor, led us to a new value for the charge radius, which is (0.878 pm 0.011_mathrm {stat.}pm 0.031_mathrm {sys.}pm 0.002_mathrm {mod.}),mathrm {fm}

Resolving the Deceptive Isoform and Complex Selectivity of HDAC1/2 Inhibitors

SummaryThe histone deacetylase paralogs HDAC1/2/3 and their corepressor complexes serve as epigenetic master regulators of chromatin function. Over the past decades, HDACs have been widely pursued as pharmacological targets and considerable efforts have been invested in the development of small molecule drugs. Specifically, ortho-aminoanilide derived inhibitors, including CI-994 and Cpd-60, stand out with their attractive selectivity profiles and have been used extensively as tools to delineate the biological roles of specific HDAC isoforms and complexes. Here, we apply a suite of activity-independent strategies to investigate how dynamic processes that regulate HDAC complexes govern the isoform and complex selectivity of HDAC inhibitors. Importantly, we find that overreliance on static and simplified biochemical activity assays has confounded the determination of the biological selectivity of these inhibitors. Our data urge a comprehensive reinterpretation of numerous studies utilizing these tool compounds for the interrogation of epigenetic and other cellular processes.

Controversial Provision for the Nominative Ending


 
 
 The present joint contribution offers a tentative comprehensive re-interpretation of Pāṇini’s rule A 2.3.46, and shows how that rule teaches the application of the nominative ending without making use of the notion of “subject,” a notion that belongs to other grammatical systems, but not to Pāṇini’s. We discuss the controversial domain of some segments of its wording by attempting to adhere to Pāṇini’s framework and his usus scribendi.
 
 
 
 
 In particular, we read the first constituent of the compound prātipadikārtha­ liṅgaparimāṇavacana­ as a genitive (prātipadikasya) depending on a dvandva made up of three constituents, i.e., artha­, liṅga­, and parimāṇavacana­, and we take parimāṇa­ as denoting a quantity (‘one’, ‘two’, or ‘many’) that, combining with vacana­ (‘signifying’), is substantially equivalent to the concept of grammatical number in modern linguistics.
 
 
 
 
 We finally show that our reading of A 2.3.46 is able to generate the nominative endings affixed to the subject and (nominal) predicate of a nominal sentence: as a consequence, nominal sentences might actually not have been neglected by Pāṇini.
 
 

Opportunistic complexes of E. coli L-asparaginases with citrate anions

Active sites of enzymes are highly optimized for interactions with specific substrates, thus binding of opportunistic ligands is usually observed only in the absence of native substrates or products. However, during growth of crystals required for structure determination enzymes are often exposed to conditions significantly divergent from the native ones, leading to binding of unexpected ligands to active sites even in the presence of substrates. Failing to recognize this possibility may lead to incorrect interpretation of experimental results and to faulty conclusions. Here, we present several examples of binding of a citrate anion to the active sites of E. coli L-asparaginases I and II, even in the presence of the native substrate, L-Asn. A part of this report focuses on a comprehensive re-interpretation of structural results published previously for complexes of type I L-asparaginase (EcAI) from E. coli. In two re-refined structures a citrate anion forms an acyl-enzyme reaction intermediate with the catalytic threonine. These results emphasize the importance of careful and critical analysis during interpretation of crystallographic data.

Milton’s ‘Naturam non pati senium’ and ‘De Idea Platonica’ as Cambridge Act Verses: A Reconsideration in Light of Manuscript Evidence

Abstract This article offers a comprehensive reinterpretation of Milton’s Latin poems ‘Naturam non pati senium’ and ‘De Idea Platonica quemadmodum Aristoteles intellexit’ based upon a reconstruction of their context in the academic institutions of 1620s Cambridge. After framing the poems in the broader context of the fairly large corpus of surviving printed and manuscript carmina comitalia or ‘Act Verses’, the documentary evidence for the Latin disputations which they conventionally preceded, and the surviving evidence for the rôle of such verses in university exercises, the article argues for the importance of Sarah Knight’s 2010 manuscript discovery connecting Milton’s poems to the calendar year 1629, but shows that an alternative reading of the manuscript evidence offers a more convincing and much more illuminating account of the poems’ relation to their context. Finally, the article will argue that such a reconsideration of the poems can elucidate the striking absence of consensus concerning the philosophical positions that they take and the nature of their arguments, while revealing a hitherto unsuspected aspect of the student Milton’s deep involvement in university culture.

Cornering natural SUSY at LHC Run II and beyond

We derive the latest constraints on various simplified models of natural SUSY with light higgsinos, stops and gluinos, using a detailed and comprehensive reinterpretation of the most recent 13 TeV ATLAS and CMS searches with ∼ 15 fb−1 of data. We discuss the implications of these constraints for fine-tuning of the electroweak scale. While the most “vanilla” version of SUSY (the MSSM with R-parity and flavor-degenerate sfermions) with 10% fine-tuning is ruled out by the current constraints, models with decoupled valence squarks or reduced missing energy can still be fully natural. However, in all of these models, the mediation scale must be extremely low (<100 TeV). We conclude by considering the prospects for the high-luminosity LHC era, where we expect the current limits on particle masses to improve by up to ∼ 1 TeV, and discuss further model-building directions for natural SUSY that are motivated by this work.

Foundations of Political Order in Emerging Democracies

Political development and decay is one of the most studied topics in political science. The issue continues to occupy many political scientists and is also highly empirically relevant – not least in light of the recent uprisings in the Middle East. The question is whether democracy can and will make headway in this region, as it has been resistant thus far to the emergence of democracy. These societies are deeply ‘patrimonialised’; that is, the practice of patron–client relationships structures the interaction between state and society. This review essay discusses two recent books that cast new light on how countries can overcome such fundamental obstacles to democratisation as patrimonialism. Most recently, Fukuyama has offered a comprehensive reinterpretation of human history with The Origins of Political Order, but one that is broadly in line with the basic understanding in North, Wallis and Weingast's Violence and Social Orders: A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting Recorded Human History. However, both contributions are difficult to apply to contemporary cases of democratisation. The objective of this review article is to sketch a starting point for such a contemporary analysis, which could also help us understand the prospects for democracy in the Middle East.

Exploring Fragility: Industrial Delocalization, Occupational and Environmental Risks, and Non-Governmental Organizations

What is the role of non-governmental organizations – NGOs – in the process of industrial delocalization and socio-spatial redistribution of occupational and environmental risks? In an attempt to contribute to this debate, this study approaches the issue in a very specific socio-historical context, marked by recent accelerated industrialization in a small town in Northeast Brazil. Based on semi-structured interviews with leaders of four local NGOs, the way they perceive and value the risks introduced into the area and relations between industrialization and local development are analyzed. Findings show a strong adherence to the industrial plan by workers’ trade unions, whilst other NGOs are highly critical with regard thereto, but undertake no social or political activity regarding the issues they identify. This phenomenon is discussed in terms of the modus operandi of ideology and its strategies for symbolic construction, enabling a comprehensive reinterpretation of how capital also benefits, in its mobility, from local society’s fragility in organizing and protecting quality of life and public health.

Preface

Preface Peter L. Rudnytsky Although by no means the exclusive preserve of psycho-analysis, the theme of this issue of American Imago is indubitably central to it. The question at hand is whether, as Edmund Wilson (1941) maintained in his classic exposition of the myth of Philoctetes as a paradigm of creativity, the "wound" of neurosis is inseparable from the "bow" of artistic power, or whether, as Lionel Trilling (1947) rejoined, "there is in fact no causal connection" between art and neurosis (169), and "whatever elements of neurosis" the artist may have "in common with his fellow mortals, the one part of him that is healthy, by any conceivable definition of health, is that which gives him the power to conceive, to plan, to work, and to bring his work to a conclusion" (175). The four essays here assembled are all landmark contributions to the understanding of their respective subjects. The absence of fanfare in George Mandelbaum's title, "On Ben Jonson's Comedies," perhaps belies the dazzling quality of his reconstruction of the lasting reverberations in Jonson's plays of the death of his father before Jonson's birth and his mother's subsequent remarriage to a bricklayer almost certainly before her son had reached the age of three. Donald Capps's "Erik H. Erikson, Norman Rockwell, and the Therapeutic Functions of a Questionable Painting" takes off from the little-known fact that Rockwell was Erikson's patient at the Austen Riggs Center in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, during the 1950s to offer a beautiful and searching exploration, centered on the painting The Art Critic, of the roots of Rockwell's creativity in his relationships with women—above all, his mother but also his first two wives—as well as in his second wife's relationship to their three sons. Janet Hadda's "Ginsberg in Hospital," which has the distinction of garnering a story in the Los Angeles Times(Timberg 2007), draws on unpublished records to argue that Ginsberg's 1949 stay at the Psychiatric Institute of Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, far [End Page 161] from being either irrelevant or harmful to his artistic development—as previous scholars have presumed—in fact furnished an atmosphere of safety that allowed him to come to terms with the chaos arising from his mother's schizophrenia, and thus to find his own voice and become the poet of Howl. Finally, in a comprehensive reinterpretation of the life and work of Harry Stack Sullivan, Carlton Cornett proposes that Sullivan's concept of the malevolent transformation of the personality served as a means of "explaining himself to himself," and ought to be set beside the traditional paradigms of Sullivan's self-avowed schizophrenic illness and homosexuality as a frame of reference for understanding both his greatness as a psychoanalytic theorist and his human limitations. This long-overdue issue is a time for both farewells and new beginnings. It marks the completion of my seventh year as editor of American Imago. With deep regret, I must say goodbye to Kristen Smith, my graduate assistant at the University of Florida for the past four years. Indefatigable and tenacious, Kristen has saved me from incalculable errors and embarrassments. Not only I but all of our authors are lastingly in her debt. Fortunately, we look forward to welcoming on board Matthew Snyder, who shows every promise of living up to the standard set by his two predecessors, Kristen Smith and Sarah Mallonee, and leaving his own distinguished mark on the journal in the years ahead. In addition, thanks to the generosity of The Johns Hopkins University Press, we will from now on be the beneficiaries of the talents of Gina Atkinson, already legendary in psychoanalytic circles as the managing editor of The Psychoanalytic Quarterly, who will serve as the copy editor of our annual guest-edited Fall issue. I am also delighted to welcome Ellen Handler Spitz as our third regular columnist. Inspired by the example of Warren Poland, Spitz will regale our readers "Apropos the Arts," beginning with her meditation on a recent exhibit, "Weaving Women's Words," at the Jewish Museum of Maryland in Baltimore. It suffices to read "When Art Takes Hold" to be persuaded anew that Spitz...

The Last Treatise: Project and Person. (Reflections on Martti Koskenniemi's From Apology to Utopia)

Martti Koskenniemi's From Apology to Utopia is the most significant late 20th century English language monograph in the field of international law, and it is terrific to see it re-issued. The book offers a comprehensive reinterpretation of the doctrinal materials and intellectual history of the discipline. It became an instant classic in the analysis of law's rhetorical structures, and it could well turn out to have been the last great original treatise in the international law field. It both synthesized the materials and demonstrated the impossibility of their being synthesized in a stable and intellectually coherent fashion. The treat in this re-issued edition is Martti's new epilogue. In it, he reflects on what he was seeking to achieve in ways that will open the text to new readings while remaining, I think, true to the spirit of the initial project.

Equality or Liberty?

Equality or Liberty? Jørgen Møller (bio) Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy. By Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson. Cambridge University Press, 2006. 416 pp. The daring ambition of this book is to lay bare the causal mechanisms at work just beneath the surface of the "great game" of democratization. In answering basic but far from simple questions about why some countries become democratic and others do not, and about why some countries are able to consolidate democracy while others lose it, Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson offer nothing less than a comprehensive reinterpretation of the whole history of regime transformation in the modern world. From a starting point that owes much (as their book's title suggests) to Barrington Moore, Jr.'s 1966 classic Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy, the authors go beyond the focus on contingency and uncertainty that has dominated studies of transition since the 1980s. Rightly lamenting the distaste for bold generalizations bred by this approach, Acemoglu and Robinson return to structural analysis of political change—but with a twist. That twist is formal modeling, which is something of a novelty in the study of regime change, but which they use to good effect in order to make a stringently logical case for their preferred mode of explanation. The game-theory model employed in the book rests on three assumptions. The first is that individuals have well-defined preferences, and that most individuals prefer more to less income. The second assumption is that politics is intrinsically conflictual, as policy alternatives compete, elites and citizens contend, and outcomes with distinct winners [End Page 169] and losers ensue. The third premise is that political institutions, whether democratic or not, are not only the arenas in which political battles are fought out, but also make de jure distributions of political power that help to shape the outcome of the battles. Democracy, the authors posit, is a set of institutions that offers de jure political power to the majority. The democratic system rises and falls as a consequence of social battles fought between the elite and the citizens. Democracy favors the citizens since it brings about institutional changes that support political equality in the long as well as the short term. Critically, democracy allows citizens to promote their own economic interests through income redistribution. Nondemocracies, on the other hand, leave de jure political power in the elite's hands, therefore allowing elites to safeguard their own economic interests and decide whether income redistribution should take place at all. Socioeconomic inequality is hence the crux of the matter. The authors point out that democracy often breaks down, as Latin America's turbulent modern political history demonstrates. They explain that breakdown becomes likely when changes in the de jure distribution of power threaten the economic livelihood of the elites. In such cases, elites will contemplate striking back. Democracy only consolidates when elites have strong reasons not to overthrow it; coups are therefore a particular threat in places where democratic policies have become devices used to raid the coffers of the affluent. Hewing to their emphasis on structures and general relationships, Acemoglu and Robinson stress that attempts to explain the differences between contemporary processes of regime change and their nineteenth-century forebears must take into account such factors as broad changes in the character of economic life and the globalization of trade and financial streams. Acemoglu and Robinson should be applauded for the care with which they make their way from micro-level causal mechanisms to macro-level political relationships. Yet their work is not without significant flaws. Even if we accept the authors' claim that political battles are fought between only two groups—itself a thorny issue—we should find it difficult to accept their notion that the battle between the elite and the citizens only concerns economic inequality. By focusing so much on economics, Acemoglu and Robinson disregard the "liberal" version of the democratic tale, which includes the historical struggle for constitutional government and the rule of law. True to the title of the book, they reason that the reaction against the privileges of the few is motivated by economic concerns only—by the desire for "a...

Three‐dimensional structure of the Laguna Salada Basin and its thermal regime

AbstractA comprehensive reinterpretation of the available gravity, magnetic, geothermal, geological and borehole information has been made of the Laguna Salada Basin to establish a 3D model of the basement and sedimentary infill. According to statistical spectral analysis, the residual gravity anomaly is due to sources with a mean regional depth of 2.8 km. The topography of the basement was obtained from a three‐dimensional inversion carried out in the wavenumber domain using an iterative scheme. The maximum density contrast of −300 kg/m3 estimated from previous studies and the mean depth of 2.5 km finally constrained this inversion. The resulting model indicated that the sedimentary infill is up to 4.2 km thick at its deepest point. According to the gravity‐derived basement topography, the basin presents an asymmetry (i.e. it is of the half‐graben type). It is deeper to the east, where it is delimited from the Sierra Cucapah by a step fault. By contrast, the limit with the Sierra de Juarez is a gently sloping fault (i.e. a listric fault). The basement is not even, but it comprises a series of structural highs and lows. N–S to NW–SE and E–W to NE–SW faults delimit these structural units.The magnetic modelling was constrained by (i) the gravity‐derived basement topography; (ii) a Curie isotherm assumed to be between 7 km and 10 km; (iii) assuming induced magnetization only; (iv) the available geological and borehole information. The magnetic anomalies were interpreted successfully using the gravity‐derived basement/sedimentary interface as the top of the magnetic bodies (i.e. the magnetic modelling supports the gravity basement topography). An elongated N–S to NW–SE trending highly magnetized body running from south to north along the basin is observed to the west of the basin. This magnetic anomaly has no gravity signature. Such a feature can be interpreted as an intrusive body emplaced along a fault running through the Laguna Salada Basin. Treatment of the gravity and magnetic information (and of their horizontal gradients) with satellite image processing techniques highlighted lineaments on the basement gravity topography correlating with mapped faults. Based on all this information, we derived detailed geological models along four selected profiles to simulate numerically the heat and fluid flow in the basin. We used a finite‐difference scheme to solve the coupled Darcy and Fourier differential equations. According to our results, we have fluid flow in the sedimentary layers and a redistribution of heat flow from the basin axis toward its rims (Sierra de Juárez and Sierra Cucapah). Our model temperatures agree within an error of 4% with the observed temperature profiles measured at boreholes. Our heat‐flow determinations agree within an error of ±15% with extrapolated observations. The numerical and chemical analyses support the hypothesis of fluid circulation between the clay–lutite layer and the fractured granitic basement. Thermal modelling shows low heat‐flow values along the Laguna Salada Basin. Deep fluid circulation patterns were observed that redistribute such flow at depth. Two patterns were distinguished. One displays the heat flow increasing from the basin axis towards its borders (temperature increase of 20°C). The second pattern shows an increasing heat flow from south to north of the basin. Such behaviour is confirmed by the temperature measurements in the thermometric boreholes.

Empires of the Sand: The Struggle for Mastery in the Middle East, 1789-1923

This volume offers a comprehensive reinterpretation of the struggle for mastery in the Middle East during the long 19th century (1789-1923). This book denies primacy to western imperialism in the restructuring of the region and attributes equal responsibility to regional powers. rejecting the view of modern middle eastern history as an offshoot of global power politics, the authors argue that the main impetus for the developments of this momentous period came from the local actors. Ottoman and western imperial powers alike are implicated in a delicate balancing act of manipulation and intrigue in which they sought to exploit regional and world affairs to their greatest advantage. backed by a wealth of archival sources, the authors refute the standard belief that Europe was responsible for the destruction of the Ottoman Empire and the region's political unity. Instead, they show how the Hashemites played a decisive role in shaping present middle eastern boundaries and in hastening the collapse of Ottoman rule. similarly, local states and regimes had few qualms about seeking support and protection from the "infidel" powers they had vilified whenever their interest so required. This work sees a pattern of pragmatic cooperation and conflict between the Middle East and the West during the past two centuries, rather than a clash of civilizations." Such vision affords new ways of viewing the Middle east's past as well as its volatile present.

Bringing Life to Research: Life History Research and ESL

Despite its potential, life history methodology has seldom been used in TESL research. This article first defines what is meant by life history research methodology, and then examines how it might benefit our research in TESL. Answering the question, What are the benefits of life history research? the author examines how life histories in other fields and in her own research have shifted focus from the extraordinary to the mundane, and from the universal to the singular, while simultaneously adding previously marginalized perspectives, challenging and informing theory, allowing for comprehensive reinterpretation, locating research historically, and encouraging the production of invitational texts. The author further argues that participants in life history research benefit from being listened to and from framing their stories in terms of overcoming adversity, while the researcher benefits from becoming critically involved with her or his participants. The final section of the article addresses some of the potential pitfalls of life history research, including reliability, verifiability, the tendency toward exoticism, difficulties with translation and authorship, and the "afterlife" of research. The article concludes by asserting that life history is one methodology that is powerful enough to begin recording the complexities of race, class, language, history, and cultures in our classrooms.

The Timing of Conscious Experience: A Critical Review and Reinterpretation of Libet's Research

An extended examination of Libet's works led to a comprehensive reinterpretation of his results. According to this reinterpretation, the Minimum Train Duration of electrical brain stimulation should be considered as the time needed to create a brain stimulus efficient for producing conscious sensation and not as a basis for inferring the latency for conscious sensation of peripheral origin. Latency for conscious sensation with brain stimulation may occurafterthe Minimum Train Duration. Backward masking with cortical stimuli suggests a 125–300 ms minimum value for the latency for conscious sensation of threshold skin stimuli. Backward enhancement is not suitable for inferring this latency. For determining temporal relations between stimuli that correspond to subjects' reports, theendof cerebral Minimum Train Duration should be used as reference, rather than its onset. Results of coupling peripheral and cortical stimuli are explained by a latency after the cortical Minimum Train Duration, having roughly the same duration as the latency for supraliminal skin stimuli. Results of coupling peripheral stimuli and stimuli to medial lemniscus (LM) are explained by a shorter LM latency and/or a longer peripheral latency. This interpretation suggests a 230 ms minimum value for the latency for conscious sensation of somatosensory near-threshold stimuli. The backward referral hypothesis, as formulated by Libet, should not be retained. Long readiness potentials preceding spontaneous conscious or nonconscious movements suggest that both kinds of movement are nonconsciously initiated. The validity of Libet's measures of W and M moments (Libet et al., 1983a) is questionable due to problems involving latencies, training, and introspective distinction of W and M. Veto of intended actions may be initially nonconscious but dependent on conscious awareness.