History Series Research Articles

Brian Black, In Dialogue with the Mahābhārata. Dialogues in South Asian Traditions: Religion, Philosophy, Literature and History series.

Brian Black, In Dialogue with the Mahābhārata. Dialogues in South Asian Traditions: Religion, Philosophy, Literature and History series.

A Kind of Chemistry

The author explains that 'A kind of chemistry' was the way the authors of The Gifts of Comus (1739) described the new cookery of the European courts, a cookery that had begun to take shape a century earlier with Pierre de la Varenne's Le Cuisinier François (1651). This essay takes their metaphor at face value. It was indeed chemistry, a chemical cookery inspired by a radical group of chemical physicians who treated and advised the aristocracies of northern Europe. The author thanks Alan Davidson who accepted a preliminary sketch of this essay for 'A Mini-Symposium on New Publications' PPC 53 (1996); 47-50, and the organizers and audiences of the Horning Lecture Series in History of Science at Oregon State University and Dibner Lectures in History of Science and Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology who bore with successive versions. The present version won the Sophie Coe Prize 1998.

Forty-Year Fire History Reconstruction from Landsat Data in Mediterranean Ecosystems of Algeria following International Standards

Algeria, the main fire hotspot on the southern rim of the Mediterranean Basin, lacks a complete fire dataset with official fire perimeters, and the existing one contains inconsistencies. Preprocessed global and regional burned area (BA) products provide valuable insights into fire patterns, characteristics, and dynamics over time and space, and into their impact on climate change. Nevertheless, they exhibit certain limitations linked with their inherent spatio-temporal resolutions as well as temporal and geographical coverage. To address the need for reliable BA information in Algeria, we systematically reconstructed, validated, and analyzed a 40-year (1984–2023) BA product (NEALGEBA; North Eastern ALGeria Burned Area) at 30 m spatial resolution in the typical Mediterranean ecosystems of this region, following international standards. We used Landsat data and the BA Mapping Tools (BAMTs) in the Google Earth Engine (GEE) to map BAs. The spatial validation of NEALGEBA, performed for 2017 and 2021 using independent 10 m spatial resolution Sentinel-2 reference data, showed overall accuracies > 98.10%; commission and omission errors < 8.20%; Dice coefficients > 91.90%; and relative biases < 3.44%. The temporal validation, however, using MODIS and VIIRS active fire hotspots, emphasized the limitation of Landsat-based BA products in temporal fire reporting accuracy terms. The intercomparison with five readily available BA products for 2017, by using the same validation process, demonstrated the overall outperformance of NEALGEBA. Furthermore, our BA product exhibited the highest correspondence with the ground-based BA estimates. NEALGEBA currently represents the most continuous and reliable time series of BA history at fine spatial resolution for NE Algeria, offering a significant contribution to further national and international fire hazard and impact assessments and acts as a reference dataset for contextualizing future weather extremes, such as the 2023 exceptional heat wave, which we show not to have led to the most extreme fire year over the last four decades.

A - 52 Post-Pandemic Mental Health Symptom Presentations In Canadian Varsity Athletes

Abstract Purpose Mental health (MH) symptoms are often intertwined with concussion symptoms and affect recovery trajectories. Recent studies indicate that the COVID-19 pandemic had a negative impact on athletes’MH, further highlighting the need to understand pre-season baseline MH. This study’s objective was to compare MH symptom frequency and profiles of symptomatology between cohorts of athletes captured pre and post COVID-19. Method Pre-season baseline data from varsity athletes at a Canadian university was collected in 2019, 2022, and 2023 (n = 444) aged 17–25 years (49.8% female). Athletes completed a series of demographic, concussion history, and psychological questionnaires [i.e., Post-Concussion Symptom Scale (PCSS), Generalized Anxiety Disorder Index-7 (GAD-7), and Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9)]. Results The post-pandemic cohort reported greater numbers of symptoms on the PCSS (M = 4.36, SD = 5.41) compared to the pre-pandemic cohort (M = 2.55, SD = 3.74; p = <0.001); as well as greater symptom severity (M = 7.75 SD = 11.45) compared to the pre-pandemic cohort (M = 4.34, SD = 7.9; p = <0.001). Greatest endorsement differences were observed in anxiety, depression, cognitive, nausea, and “don‚Äôt feel right”symptoms (ps < 0.001). However, frequency of mild to severe symptom reporting was similar on the PHQ-9 (pre-pandemic: 23.6%, post-pandemic: 20.3%) and GAD-7 (pre-pandemic: 20.9%, post-pandemic: 21.6%; ps >0.05). Conclusions Post-pandemic athletes appear to endorse greater baseline symptoms of anxiety and depression, as well as cognitive and physical symptoms, though these do not appear to meet clinical levels. The study demonstrates a need to improve surveillance in varsity athletes’MH that may help identify athletes at risk of MH illness.

Secondary diabetes due to different etiologies: Four case reports

BACKGROUND As research on diabetes continues to advance, more complex classifications of this disease have emerged, revealing the existence of special types of diabetes, and many of these patients are prone to misdiagnosis and underdiagnosis, leading to treatment delays and increased health care costs. The purpose of this study was to identify four causes of secondary diabetes. CASE SUMMARY Secondary diabetes can be caused by various factors, some of which are often overlooked. These factors include genetic defects, autoimmune disorders, and diabetes induced by tumours. This paper describes four types of secondary diabetes caused by Williams–Beuren syndrome, Prader–Willi syndrome, pituitary adenoma, and IgG4-related diseases. These cases deviate significantly from the typical progression of the disease due to their low incidence and rarity, often leading to their neglect in clinical practice. In comparison to regular diabetes patients, the four individuals described here exhibited distinct characteristics. Standard hypoglycaemic treatments failed to effectively control the disease. Subsequently, a series of examinations and follow-up history confirmed the diagnosis and underlying cause of diabetes. Upon addressing the primary condition, such as excising a pituitary adenoma, providing glucocorticoid supplementation, and implementing symptomatic treatments, all patients experienced a considerable decrease in blood glucose levels, which were subsequently maintained within a stable range. Furthermore, other accompanying symptoms improved. CONCLUSION Rare diseases causing secondary diabetes are often not considered in the diagnosis of diabetes. Therefore, it is crucial to conduct genetic tests, antibody detection and other appropriate diagnostic measures when necessary to facilitate early diagnosis and intervention through proactive and efficient management of the underlying condition, ultimately improving patient outcomes.

Historiographic Comics and Abina and the Important Men

ABSTRACT: Comics have long been praised as a medium ideal for nonfiction, and especially for memoirs of experiences in historic events such as war and persecution. I analyze Liz Clarke and Trevor R. Getz’s Abina and the Important Men: A Graphic History (first edition 2012), the first and most successful of Oxford University Press’s Graphic History Series. This series of collaborations between historians and artists exemplifies comics’ capability for nuanced historical representation. OUP’s Graphic History Series are graphic and prose textbooks aimed at high-school and college-level readers, the goal of which is not merely to relay historical facts, but rather to invite readers into historical inquiry, investigating how history becomes knowable as well as the material factors that limit and distort historical knowledge. Abina illuminates one woman’s quest to claim agency for her own life against the entangled forces of slavery, British colonialism, and West African patriarchy. Like the other titles that follow it in the series, Abina and the Important Men is composed of several parts, parts which combine to articulate “History” as a process rather than a simple object of knowledge. The comics portion of the textbook makes strategic use of the medium’s formal potential to complicate notions of time and space, and to exploit dissonances between individuals’ speeches, as well as between verbal and visual representation. These formal manipulations support Abina and the Important Men ’s interrogation of historical practices and invite inquiry into disciplinary history.

A single amino acid polymorphism in natural Metchnikowin alleles of Drosophila results in systemic immunity and life history tradeoffs.

Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) are at the interface of interactions between hosts and microbes and are therefore expected to be rapidly evolving in a coevolutionary arms race with pathogens. In contrast, previous work demonstrated that insect AMPs tend to evolve more slowly than the genome average. Metchikowin (Mtk) is a Drosophila AMP that has a single amino acid residue that segregates as either proline (P) or arginine (R) in populations of four different species, some of which diverged more than 10 million years ago. These results suggest that there is a distinct functional importance to each allele. The most likely hypotheses are driven by two main questions: does each allele have a different efficacy against different specific pathogens (specificity hypothesis)? Or, is one allele a more potent antimicrobial, but with a host fitness cost (autoimmune hypothesis)? To assess their functional differences, we created D. melanogaster lines with the P allele, R allele, or Mtk null mutation using CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing and performed a series of life history and infection assays to assess them. In males, testing of systemic immune responses to a repertoire of bacteria and fungi demonstrated that the R allele performs as well or better than the P and null alleles with most infections. Females show some results that contrast with males, with Mtk alleles either not contributing to survival or with the P allele outperforming the R allele. In addition, measurements of life history traits demonstrate that the R allele is more costly in the absence of infection for both sexes. These results are consistent with both the specificity hypothesis (either allele can perform better against certain pathogens depending on context), and the autoimmune hypothesis (the R allele is generally the more potent antimicrobial in males, and carries a fitness cost). These results provide strong in vivo evidence that differential fitness with or without infection and sex-based functional differences in alleles may be adaptive mechanisms of maintaining immune gene polymorphisms in contrast with expectations of rapid evolution. Therefore, a complex interplay of forces including pathogen species and host sex may lead to balancing selection for immune genotypes. Strikingly, this selection may act on even a single amino acid polymorphism in an AMP.

Temporal-aware structure-semantic-coupled graph network for traffic forecasting

The spatial–temporal graph neural networks have been a critical approach to capturing the complicated spatial–temporal dependencies inherent in traffic series for more accurate forecasting. However, the issue of graph indistinguishability demands further attention, as graphs learned by existing methods tend to converge to implicit and indistinguishable representations, deviating from the genuine distribution. This issue can be attributed to the lack of three primary factors within graphs: the intrinsic graph features, the temporal-distinct features, and the node-distinct features. Aiming to address this problem, we propose a Temporal-Aware Structure-Semantic-Coupled Graph Network (TASSGN) in this paper. Firstly, we design a novel graph learning block to simultaneously learn the structural and semantic aspects of graphs, thereby capturing inherent graph features. Secondly, we propose an innovative Self-Sampling method to sample the relevant history series and present a Temporal-Aware Graphs Encoder to explicitly incorporate temporal information into graph learning and capture temporal-distinct features. Thirdly, sparse graphs are intentionally generated to capture node-distinct features. By combining these three key components together, our method is capable of overcoming the problem of graph indistinguishability and achieving state-of-the-art performances in traffic forecasting.

Genomic basis of melanin-associated phenotypes suggests colour-specific environmental adaptations in tawny owls.

Feathers comprise a series of evolutionary innovations but also harbour colour, a key biological trait known to co-vary with life history or complex traits. Those relationships are particularly true in melanin-based pigmentation species due to known pleiotropic effects of the melanocortin pathway - originating from melanin-associated phenotypes. Here, we explore the molecular basis of melanin colouration and expected co-variation at the molecular level in the melanin-based, colour polymorphic system of the tawny owl (Strix aluco). An extensive body of literature has revealed that grey and brown tawny owl colour morphs differ in a series of life history and behavioural traits. Thus, it is plausible to expect co-variation also at molecular level between colour morphs. To investigate this possibility, we assembled the first draft genome of the species against which we mapped ddRADseq reads from 220 grey and 150 brown morphs - representing 10 years of pedigree data from a population in Southern Finland - and explored genome-wide associations with colour phenotype. Our results revealed putative molecular signatures of cold adaptation strongly associated with the grey phenotype, namely, a non-synonymous substitution in MCHR1, plus 2 substitutions in non-coding regions of FTCD and FAM135A whose genotype combinations obtained a predictive power of up to 100% (predicting grey colour). These suggest a molecular basis of cold environment adaptations predicted to be grey-morph specific. Our results potentially reveal part of the molecular machinery of melanin-associated phenotypes and provide novel insights towards understanding the functional genomics of colour polymorphism in melanin-based pigmented species.

A time-series analysis of the evolution of scientific and technological concepts in the change of social thinking in modern China

Abstract Exploring the evolutionary process of the concept of science and technology in modern Chinese society is conducive to the innovation of the current path of science education popularization and scientific and technological literacy enhancement. In this paper, we construct a sampling selection algorithm using Bayesian and MCMC and then design a parameter derivation model. Assuming the model prior distribution hyperparameters and using the likelihood function to derive the specific form of the posterior probability distribution, an approximate integral calculation is carried out in order to directly derive the parameters to be estimated, and the BVAR-MCMC model is constructed. Using the model to analyze the temporal changes in the evolution of scientific and technological concepts in modern China, it is finally found that the changes in social and technological concepts during the Republican period were even stronger than those in the late Qing period. Influenced by the increasing scale of cross-cultural exchanges due to the gradual opening up of the gateway, cross-cultural open exchanges have the highest impulse value and the longest duration on the evolution of scientific and technological concepts, with the impulse of the Late Qing and the Republic of China phases above 1, and the duration of the positive influence covers the whole time series. The impulse values of the late Qing and the Republic of China are 2.68 and 3.59, respectively, and the education popularization rate, economic development level, the speed of technological life progress, and the degree of civilization and freedom of the social atmosphere have different degrees of influence on the evolution of scientific and technological concepts in the time series of modern history. This study innovates the statistical research method for modern history and conducts a pioneering exploratory study on the evolutionary process of modern social ideas change.

Complicating Narratives of Contemporary Chinese Art as Global Art through the Lens of Exhibition Histories

Abstract This essay reviews two publications on Chinese contemporary art and its relation to the global through the lens of exhibition histories. The monograph Die chinesische Avantgarde und das Dispositiv der Ausstellung. Konstruktionen chinesischer Gegenwartskunst im Spannungsfeld der Globalisierung (The ‘Chinese avant-garde’ and the exhibition as dispositive. Constructing contemporary Chinese art in the global context) authored by Franziska Koch (2016), and the edited volume Uncooperative Contemporaries: Art Exhibitions in Shanghai in 2000, (2020) published in the Exhibition Histories series by Afterall Books. The former seeks to re-write the history of contemporary Chinese art exhibitions from a transcultural perspective with a particular focus on group exhibitions of contemporary Chinese art in the West. The latter focuses on exhibitions that took place in the wake of China's “global turn in the year 2000. It examines the first international Shanghai biennial and so called “satellite shows,” unofficial exhibitions that took place concurrently with the biennial. Both books examine how Chinese contemporary art's relation to the global has been conceptualized and operated differently at different times, in different yet often transculturally/transnationally entangled locales, socio-political contexts, power structures and geopolitical currents, in different discursive contexts, according to specific political and discursive conditions and agendas, and through various agents and institutions. This essay argue that by shedding light on specific locales, and their transnational and transcultural entanglements, and the various agents involved in the formation of global contemporary Chinese art both publications critically intervene into top-down universalist discourses of the “global contemporary.” Speaking from different positionalities, they seek to complicate narratives and understandings of contemporary global and Chinese art from the bottom-up. Informed by the post-colonial critique of historicism a bottom-up perspective they conceive of global art not as a universalistic concept, but as plural articulations of global contemporaneity conceived as “disjunctive unity,” a shared yet heterogenous present constituted by multiple contemporaneities.

Synthetic Aperture Passive Localization Method Based on Slant Range Orthogonal Expansion

The synthetic aperture passive localization system generally compensates for the second-order phase term of the received signal with the Taylor series of the range history and then uses the focusing result of the compensated signal to obtain the position of the emitter. However, the existence of a higher-order residual phase causes the mismatch of reference function, leading to the bias of localization results. To solve the problem, this paper proposes a slant range expansion method based on an orthogonal basis. The optimal expansion of the range history is obtained by constructing a set of orthogonal bases in the space composed of quadratic polynomials so that the residual phase after integration is minimized. The proposed method can effectively mitigate the localization bias caused by the model approximation of a synthetic aperture localization system. Simulations and Monte Carlo tests show that the proposed method outperforms the traditional synthetic aperture localization method.

Antonio Carbone, Epidemic Cities

After years of experiencing the realities of pandemic disease, much of the globe is apparently eager to forget and return to the ‘new normal’ as quickly as possible. Antonio Carbone’s slim volume is a bet against this trend. Published in the Global Urban History series in the new Elements format, its stated goal is to complement the current debates on COVID-19 with a historical perspective. For that purpose, he provides a selective view on the history of three infectious diseases in five different cities on four continents as a starting point for further study. Carbone is intent to not only tease out the drama, conflicts and political changes caused by the outbreaks, but also the connections between them by juxtaposing the effect of each disease on two cities. After a short introduction explaining his approach, the author uses the first chapter to establish a framework that holds together the disparate diseases and cities: Western medical thought. A quick tour of the most important developments from Hippocratic antiquity to bacteriology lays the foundation for the following chapters. The dominance of Western medical concepts in the age of colonialism and imperialism informed measures against epidemics across the globe and provides Carbone with a frame of reference to draw those connections between the cities.

Introduction

Abstract This special section of Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East ties together a series of modern histories and contemporary ethnographies of Buddhist spaces spread across the Indian subcontinent. Underlining each of the four essays is a concern for the modern fashioning and reimagining of India as a Buddhist “homeland.” In the past century and a half, Buddhist homeland discourses in South Asia have fostered heightened contact between national leaders, Buddhist royalty, entrepreneurs, artists, monastics, and pilgrim-travelers in ways that build upon historical and ritual precedents while simultaneously crafting new paradigms within a transnational, postcolonial arena. Taking inspiration from this translocative orientation, the contributors explore precolonial histories of Buddhist movement alongside more recent networks of Buddhist restoration in the subcontinent, with particular focus on the role of social memory and material culture in shaping the modern episteme. The essays gathered here further these inquiries by exploring how these connections have changed in the context of modern India and how the textures of these encounters cut across national, ethnic, religious, linguistic, and doctrinal lines.

SSFH Society News

The Society for the Study of French History (SSFH) supports postgraduate research by funding students to carry out archival research as well as helping them to attend and/or present work at conferences. These awards are open to all postgraduate students registered at a UK university who are carrying out research on an aspect of French history, and reports from successful applicants clearly indicate the tremendous range of research interests supported by the Society. The Society also supports conferences on French history as well as Visiting Scholars to UK and Irish Universities. In this edition we present reports from recipients of Postgraduate Research Grants and Covid Support Grants for Early Career Researchers. The edition further includes details on recent and forthcoming books in the Studies in Modern French and Francophone History series with MUP, for which members of the SSFH are entitled to a 35% discount. More information on the postgraduate awards (and on the full range of bursaries and prizes offered by the SSFH) is available from the Society’s website: www.frenchhistorysociety.ac.uk.

The history of education in Britain and Ireland: changing perspectives and continuing themes

ABSTRACT Reviewing the historiography of education provides insights into both the past and present of this growing area of research across the UK and Ireland. In the nineteenth century research reveals a close association with national identities. These were often Whig histories that celebrated the present and emphasised the progressive nature of educational development, sometimes characterised by an ‘acts and facts’ approach. From the 1960s, it is possible to identify a series of revisionist histories, which diversified further in the coming decades and morphed into the familiar patterns that we can identify today: theoretical and conceptual complexity; a concern with inequalities; an eclectic and widening interest in primary sources; a focus on schooling but moving beyond it, for instance to childhood, welfare and literacy; and a (re)discovery of new topics such as the emotions, senses and identities.

'People who get up early in the morning': Irish political capital and the resonances of Iarnród Enda (2021)

ABSTRACT This article considers, contrasts and compares the images of three of Ireland’s Taoisigh – Brian Cowen, Enda Kenny, and Leo Varadkar – by situating each Taoiseach along an axis of consumption, stretching from austerity on one hand, to overconsumption on the other. In particular, the popular image of Varadkar is carefully explored, charting how artefacts such as Instagram photos of carefully prepared lunches and birthday celebrations, form a key part of Varadkar’s efforts to position himself as the ardent champion of neoliberalism. Despite such efforts, I argue that it is Kenny who emerges as a paragon of neoliberal citizenship, and thus is an ideal host for 2021 travel history series Iarnród Enda. The article then explores the ideological resonances of the series and its role in rehabilitating the somewhat damaged image of its host, as well as the symbiotic relationship Kenny enjoys with the rural landscape through which he travels, illuminating the function of the series in presenting a consummately neoliberal vision of rural Ireland. Iarnród Enda, I argue, further acts as an extension of existing State campaigns advocating for a relocation from overcrowded, expensive cities into rural hinterlands conceptualised as an entrepreneurial nirvana.

Frank Klaassen and Sharon Hubbs Wright. The Magic of Rogues: Necromancers in Early Tudor England. Magic in History Series. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2021. Pp. 161. $22.95 (paper).

Frank Klaassen and Sharon Hubbs Wright. The Magic of Rogues: Necromancers in Early Tudor England. Magic in History Series. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2021. Pp. 161. $22.95 (paper). - Volume 62 Issue 2

First Trial of a Mechanical System for Experimental Shake Table Dynamic Tests on Real Scale Structures

ABSTRACT A dynamic testing system consisting of a totally independent mechanical laboratory has been designed and constructed at the EUCENTRE Foundation. The results of a first experimental trial with the aim of checking the reliability of the system apparatus when stressed by imposing a series of dynamic loading histories on a real-scale two-storey tridimensional frame are presented. Particular care was devoted to equipment and its functioning, reliability of the digital controller, actuator response, and matching between reference input and feedback signal. Furthermore, a brief description regarding the behavior of the tridimensional frame and the experimental results is added.

Cultures and Practices of Coexistence from the Thirteenth through the Seventeenth Centuries: Multi-Ethnic Cities in the Mediterranean World, Volume 1. Marco Folin and Antonio Musarra, eds. Routledge Series in Cultural History. Abingdon: Routledge, 2021. xi + 264 pp. $160.

Cultures and Practices of Coexistence from the Thirteenth through the Seventeenth Centuries: Multi-Ethnic Cities in the Mediterranean World, Volume 1. Marco Folin and Antonio Musarra, eds. Routledge Series in Cultural History. Abingdon: Routledge, 2021. xi + 264 pp. $160. - Volume 76 Issue 1