Early Literature Research Articles

Objects, affordances, and material histories in Roman Palestine: a case study on Northern Collar-Neck Lamps and their uses in early Jewish Sources

Abstract This article seeks to contribute to the growing scholarship on object-focused Roman histories by expanding the conversation to previously overlooked archaeological finds from Roman Palestine. This case study focuses on “Northern Collar-Neck Lamps,” which have been found throughout Roman Galilee and date to the first two centuries CE. I argue that their distinctive high collar, perhaps designed to reduce spillage, also served as an affordance that invited additional modes of interaction, namely placing a supplemental reservoir for oil – such as a pierced eggshell – over the filling hole. Once set up, this would allow for a slow drip of oil to prolong illumination time without human intervention. This usage is suggested from chronologically and geographically proximate sources, namely early rabbinic literature: Hebrew and Aramaic writings from the first centuries that reference physical details and uses of hundreds of objects and could prove helpful for future material histories of the Roman era.

Reassessing Early Childhood Literature for Quality Education and Gender Equality in the Context Of SDGs

Objective: The objective is to study the gender stereotypes learnt knowingly or unknowingly by children through nursery rhymes and to highlight the problematic areas to revamp for providing quality education which focuses on a more gender equal society considering the Sustainable Development Goals. Theoratical Framework: We engage in the theory of social construction by Butler and the developmental theory of Vygotsky to propose that if the literature taught in childhood is rich and diverse the chances of developing gender sterotypes by individuals reduces to a great extent. Method: The focus of the study is the nursery rhymes taught at pre-schools and primary schools. Data was collected through interviews and questionnaire with teachers at various schools in Ahmedabad (a city in the state of Gujarat, India). The method of critical discourse analysis is used to analyse the rhymes and bring forth the implicit gender hegemony. Results & Discussion: The analysis underscores the subtle yet potent role of language, especially nursery rhymes, in reinforcing traditional gender norms and expectations, thus influencing children's understanding of appropriate behaviours based on gender. The study highlights gender stereotypes, particularly about the interaction of one gender with the other, focusing on the depiction of dependency and power dynamics in relationships. It depicts women as dependent and men as dominant reflecting societal gender inequalities. Research implications: This study calls for a reassessment of nursery rhymes to promote diversity and positive values through quality education, urging educators to update content to align with modern views on gender equality. Originality/ Value: There has not been sufficient research done on nursery rhymes taught in schools with the aim of reducing/removing gender stereotypes aiming for quality education with the goal of achieving a gender fair society in the context of Sustainable Development Goals.

Another ‘I Have Come’ Saying from Ancient Judaism: A Note on De Sampsone 13

This article adds a further, early example of the ‘I have come’ + purpose formula, as used frequently in early Jewish literature by angelic visitors to earth. This case and other instances already known are relevant to the question of whether pre-existence christology is implied in the parallel statements of Jesus in the Synoptic Gospels.

Science and Medicine

Abstract The works reviewed here explore a broad range of topics within the field of science, medicine, and technology studies. We have divided the chapter into three sections organized around a conceptual link. In the first section, Anna K. Sagal reviews two monographs that employ oceanic studies to explore novel forms of community and connection: Michele Currie Navakas’s Coral Lives: Literature, Labor, and the Making of America, and Hannah Freed-Thall’s Modernism at the Beach: Queer Ecologies and the Coastal Commons. In the second section, William J. Ryan examines two monographs that forcefully interrogate Western definitions of cognition and intellect: Sara E. Johnson’s Encyclopédie Noire: The Making of Moreau de Saint Méry’s Intellectual World and Abigail Williams’s Reading It Wrong: An Alternative History of Early Eighteenth-Century Literature. In the final section, Leah Benedict reviews an edited anthology that explores numerous exchanges between technology and culture: Kristen M. Girten and Aaron R. Hanlon’s British Literature and Technology, 1600–1830.

Sustainability of Digital Friendship: Insights from Early Buddhist Mettā

One of the significant effects of technology on human relations is visible in friendship. Positively technology through its digital spaces is facilitating friendship that is instant and beyond the limitations of time and space. However, such digital friendships that operate through social media often suffer from issues of trust and sustainability. To resolve this predicament, we need to pause and reflect on how digital friendship can be reframed to improve its sustainability in a practical manner. The primary purpose of this article is to examine how helpful the early Buddhist concept of mittatā (friendship) is in sustaining friendship in the digital age. The article begins by eliciting the moral challenges people encounter in online friendships. The objective is to highlight the need for a more vital concept of friendship, such as the early Buddhist concept of mittatā, that can mitigate the moral concerns in digitized friendship, making it genuine and sustainable. The subsequent part of the article offers an overview of some of the significant theories of friendship upheld in the West and examines whether they can support the sustainability of a digitized friendship. The objective is to reflect upon the lacuna in the practice of such ideas of friendship in the contemporary digital age. To replenish the lacuna, the following section articulates the early Buddhist concept of mittatā as a noble concept of friendship that can be morally relevant and sustainable in this digital world. Based on the philosophical study of the early Buddhist literature, the present article investigates how helpful mettā (loving kindness) in this society to sustain a trustworthy friendship. It proposes an ethical and noble way to nurture and savour an honourable friendship relevant to the digital era by inculcating specific virtues advocated by the Buddha.

Averting the gaze in Eliyahu de Vidas’ Reshit Hokhmah

This article explores the Kabbalistic framework enhancing the sanctity of guarding the eyes ( shemirat ha-eynayim ), a key theme in early modern moralistic literature, particularly in Reshit Hokhmah . De Vidas cautions against severe consequences for transgressors and the personal impairments linked to forbidden gazing, while also promoting the ideal of the prophetic holy gaze at the divine chariot and preparation for the eternal gaze at the divine objects of paradise. He integrates the quasi-scientific extramission theory of visual perception into his theurgical framework, creating a concept of mental–spiritual wasting of seed akin to actual wasting of seed. Analysing de Vidas’ treatment of gazing prohibitions, the study highlights his use of rabbinical sources and the Zohar to enhance the authority of his warnings. This integration of eye-guarding principles within a framework of fear and aspiration significantly shapes the Kabbalistic ethos of sexual sanctity and influences contemporary practices of averting one’s eyes.

Transmission, Imitation and the Question of Early American Literary Nationalism

Transmission, Imitation and the Question of Early American Literary Nationalism. This article seeks to revalue early American literature and concurrently to clarify to what extent one can talk about American literary nationalism during the formative post-revolutionary years. Although many anthologies of American literature as well as critical studies devoted to American literary historiography have underlined the national unity of American literature as a whole, they have consistently ignored this particular period in which the transmission and imitation of English models and their alteration or transformation by American booksellers and publishers, corroborated with generic instability and the absence of central publishing hubs, fail to attest to a homogenous—and, implicitly, wholly national—development of literature. In doing so, special attention will be paid to the early American novel as a site for probing the ideals of the early Republic, for appraising its historical accomplishments, and, ultimately, for lambasting its democratic failure. At the same time, despite the misleading name of “novel” attributed to various literary genres, and its hybrid form, the early American novel was instrumental in reflecting transnational concerns and cultural exchanges that were highly suggestive of the unstable cultural identity of America at the time. Keywords: the early American Republic, transatlantic exchanges, English imitations, generic instability, common property, the early American novel

Low-lying [formula omitted] electronic states of BiF: Perturbative versus variational approaches of spin–orbit coupling

The low-lying Ω states of bismuth monofluoride (BiF) below 50000 cm−1 have been theoretically studied using the multi-reference configuration interaction and the equation-of-motion coupled-cluster methods, where the spin–orbit coupling (SOC) effects are respectively considered perturbatively or variationally. Since the perturbative treatment of SOC is not a good approximation for the heavy atom Bi, the latter method exhibits higher accuracy and better agreements with the experimental spectroscopic constants. Our results show that the second 3Π state of BiF is due to the occupation on the Rydberg 7s-shell of Bi, which gives rise to the so-called “triplet C” state and its sub-states reported in the early literatures. With the help of our theoretical results, some experimentally assigned spectral bands with considerable confusion have also been clarified and reassigned.

The Kabbalistic Sefirot: Terminological and Structural Anticipations in Early Jewish and Christian Literature

Abstract Lists of personified virtues in ancient Jewish and Christian texts offer remote intellectual anticipations of names and structural configurations of later kabbalistic sefirot. These parallels indicate that various Jewish-oriented Christian sources preserved and mediated some traditions that later came to circulate in Jewish kabbalistic circles.

Exploring the Different Interpretations of Shijing in Kongzi Shilun and Mao Poetry from Foucaults Notion of the Author Function

Foucault's notion of "Author Theory" was proposed after Barthes shouted that "the author is dead". Foucault believed that we should not only focus on the problem of the disappearance of the empty author, but also pay attention to the formal functions released with the disappearance of the author of the text, that is, the functional meaning of the author. Foucault's theory of "author function" has profound significance for modern literature, and also provides enlightenment for human research on early Chinese literature. Over the years, scholars have interpreted Shijing in many different ways. As one of the most respected interpretations of Shijing for more than 2,000 years, Mao Poetry represents the mainstream view of the academic community to a certain extent, and its historicized interpretation of poetry has a decisive influence in the literary world. Although Kongzi shilun has not been circulated in the world and was unearthed relatively late, its interpretation focusing on moral aspects has provided a new perspective for the academic community to understand poems. This article compares the interpretations of Shijing in Mao Poetry and Kongzi shilun, and explores the reasons for the different interpretations, namely the lack of the writing environment of Shijing, and combines with the two main ideological characteristics of the theory of "author function" to study the fluidity characteristics reflected in different interpretations of Shijing and the problem of "breaking a stanza off [from its context] to generate meaning" in the application of Shijing.

Starting with the self: Conceptualizing an anti-racist early childhood pedagogy by critiquing white educators’ social-emotional competencies

While much research attention has focused on young children's social-emotional (SE) competencies, an increasing body of evidence points to the importance of educators’ SE skills. Indeed, scholars have suggested that such skills support educators’ emotional well-being which, in turn, prevents burnout and facilitates a positive learning environment for young learners. Although the preceding benefits are well recognized, scholars have yet to fully explore how the interconnected domains of SE competence are linked to and support anti-racist pedagogy in early years classrooms. Drawing on systemic racism theory, this paper builds on and broadens the scope of the extant anti-racism in early childhood literature by focusing on (i) the positionality of white educators as it pertains to anti-racist pedagogy; (ii) conceptual and practical connections between anti-racist pedagogy and white educators’ SE competencies; and (iii) identifying how educators can evaluate and improve their pedagogies in a play-based early years classroom.

From Mater Dolorosa to Mater Degenerata: Sacrifice and Subversion in Deledda’s Cenere and Duse’s Film

ABSTRACT In this article, I explore the presence of positivist and proto-Eugenic discourses in Grazia Deledda’s novel Cenere (1904) and the eponymous film adaptation by Febo Mari and Eleonora Duse, Cenere (1916). I introduce the term ‘mater degenerata’ as a trope that shows a direct influence of Lombrosian ideas on Italian literature and early Italian cinema. I argue that both authors are obsessed with the mother’s body, and their work reflects a diffused anxiety in Italian culture regarding unfit mothers. The essay has two main parts. In the first part, I introduce the ‘mater degenerata’ trope. In the second part, I offer a comparative analysis of Grazia Deledda’s novel and Febo Mari and Eleonora Duse’s film and highlight how Lombrosian positivist imageries were used in early twentieth-century Italian literature and cinema to depict the degenerate mother and to express social concerns regarding motherhood, reproduction, and national identity in liberal Italy.

Some Comments on Early Arab "Wonders and Marvels" Literature

This study discusses copious early Arab literature of "wonders and marvels". The authors of such books found their materials in the Muslim religion, in the ancient Arab heritage and in strange facts about other cultures. The study examines the themes addressed by these works, including magic, fantasy, strange customs, curiosities, humor, the absurd, mockery, nightly chats, puzzles, riddles, rebuke, satire, defamation, battles, animals, angels, demons, etc. Composers of "wonders and marvels" books chose rhyming names for their works in order to attract the reader. The study found that the popularity of such books was due to the fact that certain phenomena and customs were perceived as incomprehensible by Arabs, who therefore sought transcendental or supernatural explanations, giving free rein to their imagination. Some books of this genre were apt to arouse fear in the reader and the oft-repeated stories in them were eventually believed by many and became means for realizing Arabs' desires and dreams. The study found that at first such books were perceived with scorn, as collections of superstitions and myths, and were therefore popular mainly among the lower classes. Because the genre did not attract the interest of the more educated, its scholarly study was neglected for a long time.

Construction and application of “organ-system-centered” undergraduate nursing professional training model

ObjectiveThe purpose of this study is to construct an organ system-centered undergraduate nursing professional training model and explore its application effect.MethodsThis study is divided into two steps. In the early stage, literature review and expert consultation were used to establish the training mode (curriculum and assessment standard) of nursing undergraduate specialty based on organ system reform. Secondly, a cross-sectional survey method was used to investigate the training quality of nursing students who graduated from Jinzhou Medical University from 2007 to 2017 under this model.ResultsA five-module curriculum system was established, including general courses, public basic courses, professional education courses, expanding elective courses and concentrated practical teaching. Under the teaching reform of organ system, the nursing graduates of Jinzhou Medical University, who are mainly employed in public hospitals, are generally not satisfied with their jobs, salaries, contents and prospects. Their overall satisfaction with their alma mater is very high; Graduates have certain independent core competence; Employers are basically satisfied with graduates.ConclusionThe training mode of undergraduate nursing specialty based on organ system reform basically meets the training requirements and objectives.

The Information Isolation Trope: Isolation, Infection, and Information Silos in Early American Literature

Many early American novels feature at least one character who becomes physically isolated, is restricted access to communication, becomes ill, spreads their sickness, and then either dies or becomes permanently disabled. This repeated pattern of isolation, infection, information, and death/disability underscores just how concerned early Americans were with the potentially harmful effects of information silos. The concern with information siloing, at first glance, seems anachronistic to early America. Eli Pariser popularized the concept of a “filter bubble” in 2011 when lamenting the many ways that algorithms create echo chambers and political fragmentation. While this essay concurs that content-recommendation bubbles are exacerbated by new media technologies, early American novels suggest that people have been worrying about the regulation and isolation of information since the dawn of the new republic. Early American novels—particularly those published between 1789 and 1815—are often read as seduction narratives, didactic narratives, or both; this article argues that attending to this pattern offers a new way of reading early American fiction that underscores just how concerned readers and writers were with the potentially harmful effects of information silos and the regulation of information on the body, the body politic, and public health.

Spatial Violence of the “Halls” in Old English and Old Norse Poetry

In the recent years, the scholarship of Urban Space has primarily focussed on the postmodernist discourse, but this essay, by connecting the Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse culture, takes up the subject of early mediaeval literature and the narrative of violence in urban spatial discourse. A leitmotif that keeps on figuring in Old English and Old Norse poetry is that of the ‘hall’ - a transcultural conjunctive space for transaction or exchange of both material goods such as fighting men, treasure and the like, and the non-material items such as martial honour, power, comradeship and the like. Though such a space easily seems to be a dispositif heterotopia, this essay explores how its (non-crisis) heterotopic motif, with the true manifestation of the ‘hetero’- an encapsulation of the ‘diversity of an emplacement of a cityscape’, is ruptured by an unmasking of violence that is ironically disrupting this trans-culturalism yet uniting the heteroglossic discourses by dominating this space. The space of Gunnarr and Högni’s hall and Heorot are both equally stained with the blood of the unjustly slaughtered victims: the murder of Gunnarr and Högni by Atli in the former case, and the murder Hrothgar’s men by Grendel’s mother in the latter case. Murder and bloodlust, the polarised ‘evil’ or ‘othered’ character(s) not only unite the literary space of these two tales but also unite the cultural space of the Danes and the Anglo-Saxons, through the metaphor of the ‘hall’. This is reinforced by the fact that the disruptive force of revenge in both cases takes place ‘outside’ the halls, ‘the area of unity’: in the former case, Guðrún does not burn Atli in the hall but kills him outside and buries him, and in the latter case, in the ‘den’ where Beowulf ventures to battle and kill the monster. Therefore, this paper attempts to explore how the othered discourse of violence actually assumes the central role and problematizes the narrative of dispositif heterotopia through the spatial metaphor of ‘hall’, a miniature cityscape, by acting as a both uniting and disrupting force.

Accurate machine-learning-based prediction of aerodynamic and heat transfer coefficients for cylindrical biomass particles

Cylindrical biomass (straw) particles play a crucial role in the numerical simulations of biomass co-firing in coal-fired boilers, wherein the aerodynamic and heat transfer coefficients of these particles are particularly important. Despite the existence of models proposed thus far for various specific conditions, developing a universal model for cylindrical particles remains challenging in multiphase flow systems. In this paper, a total of 1092 validated computational fluid dynamics (CFD) datasets of cylindrical drag, lift, torque coefficients and average Nusselt number are acquired based on direct numerical simulations of OpenFOAM body-fitted meshes, and a hybrid algorithmic framework of N+1 convolutional neural network (CNN) machine learning optimality is established. where multiple single-tree models (referred to as N models) are combined with an additional CNN layer (referred to as +1 model).The framework inherits the advantages of a single-tree models while significantly improving the overall algorithmic generalisation performance, with the aim of allowing efficient use of time and minimal expertise in the fluid modelling process. The mean relative absolute errors for drag, lift, torque coefficient, and the average Nusselt number was evaluated, and the results demonstrated a reduction of 75.19 %, 89.48 %, 89.53 %, and 85.70 %, respectively, in the mean relative absolute errors compared to the extremely randomised tree single-tree model. We extended the model scope to different aspect ratios (1 ≤ Ar ≤ 30), angles of incidence (0° ≤ θ ≤ 90°), and Reynolds numbers (1 ≤ Re ≤ 4000), and conducted random predictions. Compared with traditional mathematical relationships, the proposed framework reduced the average relative error to 0.99 %. The simultaneous application of models for the prediction of unknown parameters was validated against relevant early literature, which demonstrated that the average relative error of drag coefficients for the predicted values remained within 2.07 %. The N+1 (CNN) hybrid algorithm framework exhibited high accuracy and excellent adaptability, furnishing a substantial quantity of data to support the Euler–Lagrange model of non-spherical biomass particle multiphase flow in industrial applications.

Description of Bacterial RNA Transcripts Detected in Mycobacterium tuberculosis - Infected Cells from Peripheral Human Granulomas using Single Cell RNA Sequencing.

Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) remains a global human health threat and a significant cause of human morbidity and mortality. We document here the capture of Mtb transcripts in libraries designed to amplify eukaryotic mRNA. These reads are often considered spurious or nuisance and are rarely investigated. Because of early literature suggesting the possible presence of polyadenylated transcripts in Mtb RNA, we included the H37Rv Mtb reference genome when assembling scRNA seq libraries from fine needle aspirate samples from patients presenting at the TB clinic, Port Moresby General Hospital, Papua New Guinea. We used 10X Genomics single-cell RNA sequencing transcriptomics pipeline, which initiates mRNA amplification with poly-T primers on ~30-micron beads designed to capture, in this case, human mRNA associated with individual cells in the clinical samples. Utilizing the 10X Genomics Cell Ranger tool to align sequencing reads, we consistently detected bacterial small and large ribosomal subunit RNA sequences (rrs and rrl, respectively) and other bacterial gene transcripts in the cell culture and patient samples. We interpret Mtb reads associated with the host cell's unique molecular identifier (UMI) and transcriptome to indicate infection of that individual host cell. The Mtb transcripts detected showed frequent sequence variation from the reference genome, with greater than 90% of the rrs or rrl reads from many clinical samples having at least 1 sequence difference compared to the H37Rv reference genome. The data presented includes only bacterial sequences from patients with TB infections that were confirmed by the hospital pathology lab using acid-fast microscopy and/or GeneXpert analysis. The repeated, non-random nature of the sequence variations detected in Mtb rrs and rrl transcripts from multiple patients, suggests that, even though this appears to be a stochastic process, there is possibly some selective pressure that limits the types and locations of sequence variation allowed. The variation does not appear to be entirely artefactual, and it is hypothesized that it could represent an additional mechanism of adaptation to enhance bacterial fitness against host defenses or chemotherapy.

Evolution of Reverse Shoulder Arthroplasty Design Rationales and Where We Are Now.

Reverse shoulder arthroplasty (RSA) will soon reach its 20-year anniversary in the United States and has now become the most performed shoulder arthroplasty in the United States. The evolution from Grammont style implants to lateralized designs continues to generate debate as comparable outcomes have been reported with both types of systems. While early literature focused on fixation and expanded indications, recent studies have evaluated component design and position and their effect on functional outcomes and complications. The purpose of this article was to provide a synopsis of design rationales of current RSA prostheses and review outcomes related to RSA design and position.

Deserts of the Real: Paris and the Algerian Sahara as Postmodern Simulacra in Malek Haddad’s Je t’offrirai une gazelle

This article revisits an overlooked foundational text of early Algerian Francophone literature: Je t’offrirai une gazelle by Malek Haddad (1959). Reading Haddad’s novel through postcolonial and postmodern lenses, I rely on Baudrillard’s Simulacra and Simulation theory to explain the psychological exiles suffered by Haddad’s characters. The novel tells the story of an unnamed Algerian writer during the war of independence attempting to publish an exotic fable he wrote taking place in the Sahara, also titled “Je t’offrirai une gazelle.” Analyzing this metatextual interplay and the search for an Algerian collective consciousness, I argue that Haddad’s novel is postcolonial and postmodern in two ways: in the Parisian frame of the story by criticizing the moral wasteland of the city as a Baudrillardian desert of the real, and in the Saharan frame by responding to colonial and Orientalist literature through the construction of “Arabs” and Tuaregs as a single, noble people. Although Haddad tells stories of failures and shortcomings, his Sahara as a site of culture, fertility, and industry foreshadows his political commitment to a pan-African Arabic-speaking Algeria a decade later under the Boumédiène administration.