Earlier Work Research Articles

Fantasy and Innovation in Deux pièces pour clavecin, h. 244 by Bohuslav Martinů

This article highlights the divergences between the historical and modern style of playing the harpsichord, through a detailed analysis of the album 2 Pièces pour clavecin, H. 244 by Bohuslav Martinů, a leading figure of 20th century cultural life. Given the abundance of baroque compositional means, this album of solo works for harpsichord, composed in 1935, represent the perfect combination between old and new, moreover, between tradition and innovation. The predilection for rediscovering Baroque music in its pure forms began in the 1900s and continues to this day, spreading with great speed thanks to the evolution of technology and numerous historical documents. Historical treatises, writings and numerous criticisms of Baroque performances have led performers towards the closest possible performance of early works, with emphasis on proper articulation type, dynamics, freedom in phrasing, construction and fingering. The harpsichord occupies a unique place in the chronicle of the renaissance of Early music, even if it was by no means the only ancient instrument to arouse new interest in the decades preceding the early 20th century. Looking at all these major changes, modern composers such as Arnold Schoenberg, Arthur Honegger, Darius Milhaud, Igor Stravinsky, Francis Poulenc, Philip Glass, Manuel de Falla and Bohuslav Martinů have revived the effervescent music of the Baroque. Keywords: Bohuslav Martinů, harpsichord, 20th Century, modern playing, analysis

Spiritual Conversation with a Companion Machine

This article explores the prospects for humans having spiritual conversation with a computer. It has long been clear that it is possible for humans to talk about personal issues with a computer, as evident from Weizenbaum’s early work on programming nondirective counseling. There are various ways in which automated spiritual interlocutors could be developed, e.g., using chatbot methodologies, script-based knowledge, machine learning, or some kind of hybrid. Preliminary empirical work suggests that a significant number of people are happy to discuss spiritual issues with a computer, whether the responses are by a human masquerading as a computer using Wizard-of-Oz methodology or GPT. In due course, it may be possible to develop a personalized artificial spiritual companion. The acceptability of spiritual conversation with the computer may depend on various factors such as the personality of the human user, their views on religious issues, and the focus and content of the spiritual conversation.

Comparing the Early Christian missionary work in Kyushu and Kinai

Comparing the Early Christian missionary work in Kyushu and Kinai

The Early Work of Paul Fraisse: The Timing of ‘Spontaneous’ Rhythms

Abstract The article discusses Paul Fraisse’s early study of the timing of what he called ‘spontaneous’ rhythms, where people were required to perform a specified sequence of spaced taps on a response key without the times between the responses being controlled. Results come from his doctoral thesis, carried out under the supervision of Albert Michotte in Louvain/Leuven in Belgium between 1935 and 1937. In spite of the lack of timing instructions, responses were divided into ‘short times’ (around 200 ms), ‘long times’ (usually around 450 ms), and ‘pauses’ (the times between execution of consecutive rhythmic sequences). This division held over changes in the tap sequence, when different patterns of three, four, and five responses were produced. A later experiment varied total sequence duration, including the pauses, and the ratio of long to short times was approximately preserved even with marked changes in sequence duration, except at the slowest speed. Fraisse regarded the pause as having a different function from the short and long times. It changed only slightly when the pattern changed, but marked changes in the duration of the pause did not affect the pattern. Fraisse suggested it was a kind of separator, needed to maintain the rhythmic structure of the patterns, and used the idea of a temporal ‘Gestalt’ where the pause represented the ‘ground’ or ‘framework’ and the rhythmic sequence the ‘Figure ’.

Potential Strategies for Overcoming Barriers to Career Transition among Students with Visual Impairments

The visually impaired group remains among the most unemployed despite laws designed to facilitate employment opportunities for the disabled population. This review article presents potential strategies for overcoming barriers experienced by students with visual impairments (VIs) during their career transition. An integrative literature review was employed by the authors. The integrative literature review allows authors to produce new frameworks and perspectives on a topic from a range of existing research data and ideas in a significant manner. Results of the literature review suggest that public education, adequate transportation and mobility skills, proper assessment of the students' skill development, the acquisition of relevant social and independent-living skills, adequate training for rehabilitation service providers, adequate access to prints, collaboration among professionals, and early career education and work experience are some of the strategies that can be adopted to help students with VIs overcome most of the challenges they experience in their career transition journey. Adopting the strategies discussed in this article may lead to a successful career transition for these students. One of the implications of this paper is that visually impaired students should be able to adapt to the career environment by acquiring relevant skills and being open to opportunities. Also, specialized job training and placement might make it easier for visually impaired students to find competitive work after earning an academic degree and raise their chances of embarking on a successful career path.

“Make way poet, jaywalking”: Play and irony in Arun Kolatkar’s work

ABSTRACT While Arun Kolatkar’s modernist and experimental modes have received critical attention, his application of irony remains under-researched. This article argues that his playful and ironic registers are a form of experimental modernism, employed to address socio-historical phenomena in South Asia. The self-aware irony in Kolatkar’s early work anticipates the use of personae in his later works. His poetry assumes the postcolonial stance of empowering the tyrannized. He ironizes from the perspective of the feminine and non-human to assess foundational myths and 20th-century events in India. As an ironist, Kolatkar acknowledges the speaker’s authoritative position in the text and strives to diminish hierarchies between the ironist and subject. Through textual analysis of the poet’s works, this article demonstrates that the purpose of Kolatkar’s critique and his attention to landscape is to challenge divisive and conservative ideologies that perpetuate conflict and to foreground the resilience of individuals in South Asia.

Explicit solutions in Cartesian coordinates for an elliptic hole in an infinite elastic plate

An explicit analytical solution for an elliptical hole in an infinite elastic plate is derived for uniaxial load from the earliest work on this configuration. This is used along with the biaxial loading case and more recent solutions, available in curvilinear coordinates, to transform the stress fields into Cartesian coordinates along the x and y axes, reducing the curvilinear solutions to simplified short-form expressions of x and y. The present closed-form results are the functions of polynomials of the second and third order of x or y along the x or y axes, respectively, and have the most concise form to the best of the authors’ knowledge. The displacements for plain stress condition are calculated directly from the present stress field expressions, as functions of second-order polynomials of x or y and demonstrate overall consistency. Application of the present stress field and displacements results to special cases, such as a circular hole, a crack, and an elliptical hole in a pressurized cylindrical shell, are shown to agree with published solutions where available.

Redefining Vygotsky’s early works as a theory of aesthetics

The paper critically examines Lev Vygotsky’s art-related texts from 1915 to 1924, challenging interpretations based in Psychology by asserting that his aesthetic framework transcends outdated objectivist references, offering a nuanced philosophical perspective. Situating this within post-1917 Revolutionary Russia, the study explores its alignment with the visions of a ‘Revolutionary’ theatre for the ‘new human being’ in the Russian Futurist movement. It underscores Vygotsky’s pursuit of empirical evidence for understanding theatre’s impact on individuals and society, highlighting Marxist dialectics as the backbone of his aesthetic thought. Moreover, it establishes a connection between Vygotsky’s thought and Formalism, rooted in their shared emphasis on art’s structural features and links his ideas with Futurism, exploring their shared belief in the transformative power of form as a crucial element in provoking social change. The paper defines Vygotsky’s aesthetics, focusing on integral aspects of artistic reception, particularly emotion and imagination. It traces the shifts in Vygotsky’s understanding of these terms from his early reliance on psychoanalysis to the incorporation of dialectic and, later, cultural-historical perspectives, thus integrating Vygotsky’s later theories on human psychology into his aesthetic theory. The paper concludes by exploring the resonance between Vygotsky’s redefined aesthetics and contemporary Cognitive Theatre Studies. It draws attention to methodological convergence and shared insights on the interplay between natural and cultural influences, such as image schemas and conceptual blending, emphasising the enduring relevance of Vygotsky’s perspective on artistic structure and theatre’s transformative socio-political impact.

Study on the Changes in Dostoevsky’s “Thoughts of Loving Others”

As one of the most important Russian writers in the 19th century, Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky often praised pure and selfless love in his early works. In his later works, he focused on describing the complex relationship between human nature and religion, as well as advocating fraternity in religion. Such changes stem from his personal experience and the changing Russian society, which reflects Dostoevsky’s spiritual growth and in-depth thoughts on social reality. This paper probes into the change of Dostoevsky’s thoughts of “loving others” in his early and late periods and the corresponding reasons.

A stochastic production frontier model for evaluating the performance efficiency of artificial intelligence investment worldwide

As artificial intelligence (AI) begins to take center stage in technological innovations, it is essential to understand the business value of AI innovation efforts and investments. While some early work at the firm level exists, there is a shortage of literature that takes a larger country-level perspective. This study investigated the effect of AI innovation efforts on production efficiency across countries using stochastic production frontier approaches. In addition, our model also included the traditional economic inputs of capital and labor. We used both the Cobb–Douglas function and Constant Elastic Substitution model specifications. The significant findings of this study are as follows: Innovation efforts in AI measured by the number of AI-related patents and capital investment in AI have a substantial effect on economic output. The significance of AI investments indicates the need for a robust digital infrastructure as a prerequisite for harnessing AI capabilities. The complementary relationship between labor and AI-related patents implies that high-skilled labor is often necessary to incorporate AI inputs into production. However, as AI capabilities develop, they weaken the effect on labor input. The study also distinguishes between AI innovation (research and development activities indicated by AI patents) and the production efficiency of AI investments (return on every dollar invested), highlighting that more AI innovation does not always translate into better production efficiency. The findings indicate that while the United States leads innovation in AI, the UK has the best production efficiency. China ranked fourth in AI innovation and has the lowest production efficiency among the countries included in the study.

The Obverse and Reverse Side of Jasmine Musabegović’s Essayistic Discourse

The paper analyses the essayistic discourse of Jasmina Musabegović with a focus on her second and last book of such procédé, Naličje historije (The Reverse Side of History) (1999), without neglecting her early essayistic work compiled in her first book of essays, The Secret and the Meaning of a Literary Work (1977). Since the literary criticism and essayistic work of this author, on the one hand, and her literary and artistic work, on the other, are closely related and interwoven with seemingly contradictory but identical ideologemes, for a more complete insight, her micro-essays that make up fabric of her novels are occasionally taken into consideration in the analysis. The conclusion reached shows that the author’s later literary critique essays, i.e. those that the author wrote during and after the recent war, where the intimate intertwines with the universal and meets a multitude of opposing pairs as well as occasional paroxysms conditioned by a change in life experience, represent a specific, fluid essayistic discourse that can be characterized by the newly coined phrase “women’s essay”.

Local versus Global Time in Early Relativity Theory.

In his groundbreaking 1905 paper on special relativity, Einstein distinguished between local and global time in inertial systems, introducing his famous definition of distant simultaneity to give physical content to the notion of global time. Over the following decade, Einstein attempted to generalize this analysis of relativistic time to include accelerated frames of reference, which, according to the principle of equivalence, should also account for time in the presence of gravity. Characteristically, Einstein's methodology during this period focused on simple, intuitively accessible physical situations, exhibiting a high degree of symmetry. However, in the final general theory of relativity, the a priori existence of such global symmetries cannot be assumed. Despite this, Einstein repeated some of his early reasoning patterns even in his 1916 review paper on general relativity and in later writings. Modern commentators have criticized these arguments as confused, invalid, and inconsistent. Here, we defend Einstein in the specific context of his use of global time and his derivations of the gravitational redshift formula. We argue that a detailed examination of Einstein's early work clarifies his later reasoning and demonstrates its consistency and validity.

Understanding the roles of salt-inducible kinases in cardiometabolic disease.

Salt-inducible kinases (SIKs) are serine/threonine kinases of the adenosine monophosphate-activated protein kinase family. Acting as mediators of a broad array of neuronal and hormonal signaling pathways, SIKs play diverse roles in many physiological and pathological processes. Phosphorylation by the upstream kinase liver kinase B1 is required for SIK activation, while phosphorylation by protein kinase A induces the binding of 14-3-3 protein and leads to SIK inhibition. SIKs are subjected to auto-phosphorylation regulation and their activity can also be modulated by Ca2+/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase in response to cellular calcium influx. SIKs regulate the physiological processes through direct phosphorylation on various substrates, which include class IIa histone deacetylases, cAMP-regulated transcriptional coactivators, phosphatase methylesterase-1, among others. Accumulative body of studies have demonstrated that SIKs are important regulators of the cardiovascular system, including early works establishing their roles in sodium sensing and vascular homeostasis and recent progress in pulmonary arterial hypertension and pathological cardiac remodeling. SIKs also regulate inflammation, fibrosis, and metabolic homeostasis, which are essential pathological underpinnings of cardiovascular disease. The development of small molecule SIK inhibitors provides the translational opportunity to explore their potential as therapeutic targets for treating cardiometabolic disease in the future.

„W lesie, w drewnianym domku": o cnocie radości i szczęścia w najnowszym tomie Michaela Krügera

Michael Krüger is one of the most important poets of contemporary Europe, combining in his works many traditions of the old continent’s literature, from ancient Greece to twentieth-century Poland. In addition, strong American influences surface in his verse. While Krüger’s early work was a search for his own mode of expression through more or less faithful imitations of very different Polish and American poets, in his mature poems from the 2021 volume In the Forrest, in the Wooden House the Munich poet finds a highly original solution to the seemingly insoluble dilemma faced by all prominent artists since the beginning of the twentieth century: whether to depict the world realistically or, on the contrary, by means of aporia and abstraction? Krüger skillfully combines the “scenic mode” rhetoric typical of post-symbolic literature and the “poetics of indeterminacy” characteristic of postmodernism to create the autonomous poem. It is a realist work that resists interpretation because it contains elements that cannot be read in the realist plane. This peculiar Krüger’s late style is combined with his ostentatious predilection for Epicureanism, references to the poetry of Hesiod and his resort to a broad phrase, reminiscent of hexameter.

“L’Esprit de Charité”: Imaginative Action and Universal Benevolence in Wollstonecraft’s Of the Importance of Religious Opinions

ABSTRACT This article analyses Mary Wollstonecraft’s Of The Importance of Religious Opinions (1788), a translation of De l’Importance des Opinions Religieuses (1788) by Jacques Necker. I demonstrate that Necker’s text resonates with Wollstonecraft’s early works and those of her mentor, Dissenting theologian Richard Price, both for its Providentialism and for its onus on caritas, or “l’esprit de charité”, a love of God expressed through love of our neighbours. For Wollstonecraft, Christian charity was coextensive with justice and could embrace the entire human family. I argue that Necker’s text initially appealed to her for its representation of religion cultivating this expansive benevolence through sentiment refined by the imagination, depicted as a sacred faculty channelling our errant desires towards the divine. Whereas Necker envisages only celestial rewards in an incurably unjust society, however, Wollstonecraft subtly revises his text to foreground the imagination as the impetus to moral actions that participate in God’s plan for human improvement. She thus imagines political justice in the form of a cosmopolitan ideal of universal benevolence, a heartfelt principle of action equally consonant with Christian charity and the demands of justice.

Wollstonecraft and the Burghs of Newington Green

ABSTRACT This essay investigates the importance of Mr and Mrs James and Hannah Burgh of Newington Green for Mary Wollstonecraft’s life and career during the 1780s. Newington Green was a hugely productive environment for Wollstonecraft, but the Burghs offered a particular combination of support and provocation. Hannah Burgh was Wollstonecraft’s mentor and financial supporter from 1784, during her residence in Newington Green, and until she became the protégée of Joseph Johnson in 1787. Through Hannah Burgh, Wollstonecraft accessed the works of the late James Burgh, who had died in 1775. Burgh’s pedagogical writings were important intertexts for Wollstonecraft’s early works, especially in their account of female education, their “rational” treatments of scripture, and their responses to Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Wollstonecraft builds on Burgh’s writings in her pedagogical works, and he continues to be an important interlocutor even after Wollstonecraft’s departure from Newington Green. Burgh’s anthology The Art of Speaking (1761) is a model and probable source for one of Wollstonecraft’s first publications for Johnson, The Female Reader (1789). In her own anthology, however, Wollstonecraft offers a distinct account of reading as a tool of improvement, and builds a new canon of reading texts for women and girls.

Mary Wollstonecraft and Richard Price: The Theological and Philosophical Foundations of Freedom as Independence

ABSTRACT In Wollstonecraft’s early writings, she articulates the foundational theological and philosophical principles that would underpin her work throughout her career. One difference between her early and later work lies in the way that the values to which she refers are combined. Whereas Wollstonecraft at first appeals to the separate ideals of independence, equality, and virtue, from the 1790s onwards she integrates these into a characteristic republican framework that was in common use amongst dissenting theorists at the time. The set of values on which Wollstonecraft draws, and the version of the republican framework that she develops, closely resemble those of Richard Price with whose work she was familiar. Examining the structural similarities between their respective models, I argue, gives us an insight into the systematic manner of aspects of Wollstonecraft’s own thought. It also allows us to see how Wollstonecraft goes beyond the republicanism of Price and others as she develops her own feminist solutions to the problems of structural domination.

Moral Identity Development Among Emerging Adults in Media: A Longitudinal Analysis

ABSTRACT This longitudinal study examines changes in the moral identity of 48 emerging-adult U.S. college graduates in media-related fields from their first year after college to three years later as they progressed into early work life. Results from four moral psychology survey instruments reflect significant shifts in moral reasoning, relativistic thinking and idealism, coupled with stability in personality traits and character strengths. A fifth instrument found largely positive assessments of workplace ethical climate. The findings suggest that emerging adulthood is an important time for the development of a robust professional moral self that is characterized by growing maturity in moral judgment that intersects with a foundation of character developed through a variety of influences before, during and after college. Findings have significant implications for young practitioners entering the workplace, media managers working with them, and media pedagogy.

John Keats, Jane Taylor, and Poetic Ambition

In an 1817 letter, John Keats mentioned giving a copy of Jane Taylor’s Essays in Rhyme, on Morals and Manners (1816) to his sister Fanny Keats. The reference to Jane Taylor hints at how and why Taylor captured Keats’s interest. Keats acquired Taylor’s book at a moment of peak aspiration when he was struggling to write his long, ambitious poem Endymion, and when he had switched publishers to Taylor and Hessey, the publisher of Jane Taylor and her mother Ann Martin Taylor. With a vision of himself as the publisher of major writers, John Taylor was able to gamble on Keats because the Taylors’ books were steady sellers. This article argues that when Keats read Taylor’s Essays in Rhyme, he read a work that met with a more favourable reception than did his own early work. This article further underscores that the commercial trajectories of the Taylors and Keats were intertwined. The profits from the Taylors’ books served to underwrite the publishing of Keats’s work.

В.Д. Кудрявцев-Платонов о духовных дарованиях в апостольской церкви

The archival text of the Russian religious philosopher, professor of the Moscow Theological Academy Viktor Dmitrievich Kudryavtsev-Platonov (1828–1891) “On extraordinary spiritual gifts in the Apostolic Church” is published; publication is based on a manuscript from the archival collection of Victor Kudryavtsev-Platonov (RSL, F. 823, cardboard 2, storage unit 2). In this early work, Kudryavtsev-Platonov examines and characterizes the “extraordinary gifts of the Holy Spirit” described by the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians, notes their differences from the “ordinary gifts of the Holy Spirit”, arranging this consideration according to their significance: the gift of the word of wisdom and the word of knowledge, the gifts of prophecy, discernment of spirits (the first row of spiritual gifts), the gifts of faith, healing, miracles, tongues, interpreting tongues (the second row of spiritual gifts). Among the essential signs of the true gifts of the Holy Spirit, Kudryavtsev-Platonov considers the preservation of the clarity of human consciousness and freedom (during the action of such gifts). The archival publication is preceded by a brief introduction describing the difference between continuationism and cessationism, referring the position of Kudryavtsev-Platonov to the latter.