Large Work Research Articles

Occupational Safety and Work-Related Injury Control Efforts in Qatar: Lessons Learned from a Rapidly Developing Economy.

Work-related injury (WRI) control is an integral part of occupational safety. In rapidly developing Gulf countries such as Qatar with a predominantly expatriate workforce, WRI control is a complex issue often seen in conjunction with the implementation of labour laws and labour rights. We aimed to implement a public health approach to facilitate efforts to achieve long-term WRI control in Qatar. A range of initiatives helped to gain visibility and momentum for this important public health problem, including identifying and engaging with key stakeholders, workers’ surveys, steps to establish a unified injury database, and the implementation of a WRI identification tool in the electronic medical records. A contemporaneous improved enforcement of existent occupational safety regulations through heightened worksite inspections and efforts to improve living conditions for migrant workers also took place. WRIs are not only a Qatar-specific problem; the same issues are faced by neighbouring Gulf countries and other rapidly developing economies with large expatriate worker populations. These strategies are also useful starting points for similar countries interested in nurturing a safe, healthy and productive workforce.

Body Size Differences between Foraging and Intranidal Workers of the Monomorphic Ant Lasius niger.

The association between the division of labour and worker body size of ants is typical for species that maintain physical castes. Some studies showed that this phenomenon can be also observed in the absence of distinct morphological subcastes among workers. However, the general and consistent patterns in the size-based division of labour in monomorphic ants are largely unidentified. In this study, we performed a field experiment to investigate the link between worker body size and the division of labour of the ant Lasius niger (Linnaeus, 1758), which displays limited worker size variation. We demonstrated that the body size of workers exploring tuna baits is slightly but significantly smaller than the size of workers located in the upper parts of the nest. Comparing the present results with existing studies, large workers do not seem to be dedicated to work outside the nest. We suggest that monomorphic workers of certain body sizes are flexible in the choice of task they perform, and food type may be the important determinant of this choice.

Nutritional regulation influencing colony dynamics and task allocations in social insect colonies

In this paper, we use an adaptive modeling framework to model and study how nutritional status (measured by the protein to carbohydrate ratio) may regulate population dynamics and foraging task allocation of social insect colonies. Mathematical analysis of our model shows that both investment to brood rearing and brood nutrition are important for colony survival and dynamics. When division of labour and/or nutrition are in an intermediate value range, the model undergoes a backward bifurcation and creates multiple attractors due to bistability. This bistability implies that there is a threshold population size required for colony survival. When the investment in brood is large enough or nutritional requirements are less strict, the colony tends to survive, otherwise the colony faces collapse. Our model suggests that the needs of colony survival are shaped by the brood survival probability, which requires good nutritional status. As a consequence, better nutritional status can lead to a better survival rate of larvae and thus a larger worker population.

Worker dominance and reproduction in the bumblebee Bombus terrestris: when does it pay to bare one's mandibles?

In bumblebees, dominance behaviour contributes to the regulation of the reproductive division of labour between queens and workers. Towards the end of the colony cycle, at the onset of the competition phase, reproductive workers will establish a dominance hierarchy and challenge the reproductive monopoly of the queen by laying unfertilized, male-destined eggs. However, it has been suggested that the dominance and reproductive hierarchies in bumblebee workers are not completely aligned. By performing manipulative experiments and observing both aggressive behaviour and ovarian activation in Bombus terrestris workers, we aimed to elucidate how these two hierarchies interact and are modulated by the presence of the queen and other reproductive workers. We found that the reintroduction of a queen in a queenless colony not only caused worker ovary regression, but also decreased aggressive interactions between workers, thereby restoring the harmony in the colony. Furthermore, transplanting dominant reproductive workers from queenless colonies into queenright colonies induced the resident workers to activate their ovaries and aggressively compete over reproduction, thereby implying that positive feedback drives the onset of the competition phase. However, we did not see this result when subordinate reproductive workers from queenless colonies were added to queenright colonies, suggesting that ovary activation is mainly initiated in reaction to displays of dominance. Additionally, we observed that workers were attacked irrespective of their reproductive state, questioning the importance of signals that advertise either fertility or sterility in bumblebees. Finally, larger workers were significantly more aggressive and significantly more likely to be attacked, even though smaller workers were equally likely to have activated ovaries. This suggests that large workers resort to aggression to increase their chances of successfully reproducing due to their inherent fighting advantage, whereas small cheater workers could possibly reproduce by staying under the radar to evade nestmate aggression.

Does social thermal regulation constrain individual thermal tolerance in an ant species?

In ants, social thermal regulation is the collective maintenance of a nest temperature that is optimal for individual colony members. In the thermophilic ant Aphaenogaster iberica, two key behaviours regulate nest temperature: seasonal nest relocation and variable nest depth. Outside the nest, foragers must adapt their activity to avoid temperatures that exceed their thermal limits. It has been suggested that social thermal regulation constrains physiological and morphological thermal adaptations at the individual level. We tested this hypothesis by examining the foraging rhythms of six populations of A. iberica, which were found at different elevations (from 100 to 2,000m) in the Sierra Nevada mountain range of southern Spain. We tested the thermal resistance of individuals from these populations under controlled conditions. Janzen's climatic variability hypothesis (CVH) states that greater climatic variability should select for organisms with broader temperature tolerances. We found that the A. iberica population at 1,300m experienced the most extreme temperatures and that ants from this population had the highest heat tolerance (LT50=57.55°C). These results support CVH's validity at microclimatic scales, such as the one represented by the elevational gradient in this study. Aphaenogaster iberica maintains colony food intake levels across different elevations and mean daily temperatures by shifting its rhythm of activity. This efficient colony-level thermal regulation and the significant differences in individual heat tolerance that we observed among the populations suggest that behaviourally controlled thermal regulation does not constrain individual physiological adaptations for coping with extreme temperatures.

The neuroplasticity of division of labor: worker polymorphism, compound eye structure and brain organization in the leafcutter ant Atta cephalotes.

Our understanding of how sensory structure design is coupled with neural processing capacity to adaptively support division of labor is limited. Workers of the remarkably polymorphic fungus-growing ant Atta cephalotes are behaviorally specialized by size: the smallest workers (minims) tend fungi in dark subterranean chambers while larger workers perform tasks outside the nest. Strong differences in worksite light conditions are predicted to influence sensory and processing requirements for vision. Analyzing confocal scans of worker eyes and brains, we found that eye structure and visual neuropils appear to have been selected to maximize task performance according to light availability. Minim eyes had few ommatidia, large interommatidial angles and eye parameter values, suggesting selection for visual sensitivity over acuity. Large workers had larger eyes with disproportionally more and larger ommatidia, and smaller interommatidial angles and eye parameter values, indicating peripheral sensory adaptation to ambient rainforest light. Optic lobes and mushroom body collars were disproportionately small in minims. Within the optic lobe, lamina and lobula relative volumes increased with worker size whereas medulla volume decreased. Visual system phenotypes thus correspond to task specializations in dark or light environments and illustrate a functional neuroplasticity underpinning division of labor in this socially complex agricultural ant.

Single-step fabrication and work function engineering of Langmuir-Blodgett assembled few-layer graphene films with Li and Au salts

To implement large-area solution-processed graphene films in low-cost transparent conductor applications, it is necessary to have the control over the work function (WF) of the film. In this study we demonstrate a straightforward single-step chemical approach for modulating the work function of graphene films. In our approach, chemical doping of the film is introduced at the moment of its formation. The films are self-assembled from liquid-phase exfoliated few-layer graphene sheet dispersions by Langmuir-Blodgett technique at the water-air interfaces. To achieve a single-step chemical doping, metal standard solutions are introduced instead of water. Li standard solutions (LiCl, LiNO3, Li2CO3) were used as n-dopant, and gold standard solution, H(AuCl4), as p-dopant. Li based salts decrease the work function, while Au based salts increase the work function of the entire film. The maximal doping in both directions yields a significant range of around 0.7 eV for the work function modulation. In all cases when Li-based salts are introduced, electrical properties of the film deteriorate. Further, lithium nitrate (LiNO3) was selected as the best choice for n-type doping since it provides the largest work function modulation (by 400 meV), and the least influence on the electrical properties of the film.

Andrei Platonov’s Revolution: The Logic in Overturning the World (A Look at His Early Stories)

ABSTRACT Andrei Platonov is known mainly for his larger works, often perceived as a surrealistic critic of revolutionary utopia and the building of communism. This makes it all the more interesting to consider his smaller works, particularly the stories in which he shared in the revolutionary and utopian sentiments of his time, even exceeding them to some extent and presenting them in his own original and distinct way.

The results of Soviet urbanization of Chita Oblast: structure, count and functional significance of urban settlements

  The article is dedicated to the results of urbanization of Chita Oblast in the late Soviet period. The author examines the established structure of urban settlements, count of cities and industrial townships, as well as their functional designation in the late 1980s. A brief characteristic of production base formed in the Soviet period (organizations, enterprises, etc.) is given by each city and large worker’s settlement. Calculation is conducted on separate demographic parameters of urbanization of the region: share of the urban population, share of the population of cities and industrial townships in the urban population, etc. The research leans on the official results of the All-Union Census of 1989, as well as the data from the official websites of urban settlements in Zabaykalsky Krai. It is underlined that by the end of the 1980s, on the territory of Chita Oblast was formed a broad and dispersed network of urban settlements, which for the most part scattered along Trans-Siberian Railway and southward towards the border with China. Trans-Baikal Railway and mining industry played the leading role in formation of majority of cities and workers’ settlements. The structure of urban settlements highlighted the capita of the region – Chita by demographical and functional aspects. However, nine more cities and five large townships with over 12,000 population and developed infrastructure, smoothed out the territorial imbalances in urbanization of the region.  

Lions and foxes: revisiting Pareto’s bestiary for the age of late pluto-democracy

ABSTRACT Vilfredo Pareto’s legacy is uncertain; while his reputation in economics is secure, references to Pareto in contemporary sociology are few and fleeting. Sociologists and members of the public who are aware of Pareto’s non-economic work likely associate the Italian polymath with a single zoological image: the lions and the foxes. This phrase has found some currency in political sociology but has also recently been employed in the popular press to explain contemporary social and political change. Yet such references are often only vaguely connected to Pareto’s larger intellectual project. This article situates Pareto’s imagery of lions and foxes in relationship to his larger work in order to transform this popular-but-vague image into useable sociological concepts. These concepts are then used to interpret contemporary political changes. Several arguments about Pareto’s work are made in the course of this discussion: that Pareto was a cultural sociologist, that a culturalist understanding of religion played a central part in his explanations of social change, and that his theory of elites should supplement existing elite theory.

Investigation on Mg3Sb2/Mg2Si Heterogeneous Nucleation Interface Using Density Functional Theory.

In this study, the cohesive energy, interfacial energy, electronic structure, and bonding of Mg2Si (111)/Mg3Sb2 (0001) were investigated by using the first-principles method based on density functional theory. Meanwhile, the mechanism of the Mg3Sb2 heterogeneous nucleation potency on Mg2Si grains was revealed. The results indicated that the Mg3Sb2 (0001) slab and the Mg2Si (111) slab achieved bulk-like characteristics when the atomic layers N ≥ 11, and the work of adhesion of the hollow-site (HCP) stacking structure (the interfacial Sb atom located on top of the Si atom in the second layer of Mg2Si) was larger than that of the other stacking structures. For the four HCP stacking structures, the Sb-terminated Mg3Sb2/Si-terminated Mg2Si interface with a hollow site showed the largest work of adhesion and the smallest interfacial energy, which implied the strongest stability among 12 different interface models. In addition, the difference in the charge density and the partial density of states indicated that the electronic structure of the Si-HCP-Sb interface presented a strong covalent, and the bonding of the Si-HCP-Mg interface and the Mg-HCP-Sb interface was a mixture of a covalent bond and a metallic bond, while the Mg-HCP-Mg interfacial bonding corresponded to metallicity. As a result, the Mg2Si was conducive to form a nucleus on the Sb-terminated-hollow-site Mg3Sb2 (0001) surface, and the Mg3Sb2 particles promoted the Mg2Si heterogeneous nucleation, which was consistent with the experimental expectations.

Analysis of Remittances by Internal Migrants in Urban Informal Sector in Punjab

ABSTRACT The results revealed that as the duration of the migration period increased, the level of remittances decreased because these migrants permanently settled in Punjab. The remittances were mainly used by the family for purchasing food, repayment of debts, medical treatment, marriages, children’s education, purchasing agricultural inputs, construction of houses, etc. The results of the Logistic Regression and Probit Regression Analysis showed that Migrant workers living alone and unmarried migrant workers showed a positive and significant relationship with the decision to remit in both the model. The decision to send money back home was strongly related to the fact of whether migrant workers had migrated alone or with their families. Family size had a significant positive effect on the decision to remit. The income variable had a positive sign, and its coefficient is significant in the probit model whereas in the logit model showed a positive and non-significant relationship with the decision to remit. The results of the Tobit Model showed that migrant workers living alone, unmarried workers, large family size migrant workers were more likely to remit than their counterparts, ceteris paribus. The incidence of remitting and the size of remitted are increased with the income in Punjab and decrease with the duration of migration.

Fashioning Fabulation: Dress, Gesture and the Queer Aesthetics of Mumbai Pride

India’s ongoing legal movement to decriminalise ‘gay sex’ has been witness to the simultaneous sanitisation of queer spaces. From Pride parades declaring ‘no nanga naach, no flamboyance’ to quotidian policing of excessive dress and gestures, there is a growing emphasis on respectability that stages queerness in the private rather than the public domain. The good homosexual subject is increasingly at odds with public gestures, performances and dresses that might seem too excessive, too flamboyant, perhaps too queer. But what might it mean to sit with the bawdy gestures enacted by kothi, hijra and MSM persons in Prides, in offices, in public spaces and in daily life? This essay makes a case for theorising the fabulousness of gender and sexual minorities in India, pushing homosexuality beyond the registers of legality and epidemiology. By examining the political implications of excessive and risky aesthetic practices, it argues that what is at stake is not only a centring of aesthetics in larger considerations of queer politics, but also the larger work of fabulation: the reinvention of what meanings queer subjectivity can take on in public spaces in India.

Diane Di Prima: Visionary Poetics and the Hidden Religions by David Stephen Calonne

 Reviews (p. ). Having married and moved permanently to England, Eliot is reborn as the satirical and apocalyptic prophet of the Sweeney poems, e Waste Land, and finally ‘e Hollow Men’, which he told his brother was his only ‘blasphemous poem’ (p. ), since its subject is despair. is central period is treated in Chapters –, from which one comes with a fresh appreciation of the difficult ‘Sweeney among the Nightingales’ and of the ‘in-betweenness’ of ‘e Hollow Men’ (p. ). roughout her study, Brooker quotes from the Eliot texts recovered by recent editorial projects , which have been less studied because of their previous unavailability but also because Eliot’s major work is now nearly a century old, just as Don Juan was to the author of e Waste Land, and therefore much criticism has pursued other, more fashionable courses. Brooker’s book, on the other hand, is likely to be permanently useful. e Clark Lectures have been available for years, but it is again a shock to find Eliot telling his audience how spurious is John Donne’s ‘e Ecstasy’ (p. )—the term of comparison being inevitably Dante. is new asceticism is a prelude to Eliot’s second ‘conversion’, to Anglo-Catholicism, which Brooker considers in the light of his return to the USA in  and consequent disillusion and discovery of the impossibility of returning. is is shown to be the point of the opening passage of ‘Burnt Norton’ about ‘what might have been and what has been’ (Collected Poems – (London: Faber, ), p. ). Illusion and negation are present dialectically in the hesitant yet affirmative war Quartets (Chapters –), where no statement is final and yet Eliot is able, with the help of Dante, Augustine, and the quasi-heretical Julian of Norwich, to offer a glimpse of an ultimately satisfying theodicy. U  S  G M B Diane Di Prima: Visionary Poetics and the Hidden Religions. By D S C. London: Bloomsbury. . ix+ pp. £. ISBN –– ––. What to do with the uncategorizable? In an increasingly tagable, cell-filling, algorithm-based world, the question poses problems not just for the librarian, the teacher, the publisher, and other canon-makers, but also for the reader whose mind may not be readily apt to a constantly unfolding, barely graspable, holistic appreciation of a person—let alone that person’s life work. David Stephen Calonne addresses the complexity of such a pursuit as a sort of side project to this monograph ’s larger work: that of sharing the ‘hidden religions’ of Diane Di Prima’s ‘visionary poetics’, attributing it oen to a truly ‘creative’ sensibility (p. ). is is an in-depth study of an explicitly, intentionally untraceable poetics; it challenges its readers further by offering encyclopedic glosses of difficult, complex thoughtsystems . Calonne has made a career of single-author studies, and in this new contribution to his analysis of Beat poets, he does not offer the whole, finished picture which a novice reader might require; rather, he embarks on an intense MLR, .,   and sometimes hurried journey through systems of thought, religions, figures, life choices, and politics. At times, Calonne rattles through series of punctuationless lines, because a sort of magic is at stake in the discussion. However, there is a risk that the poetry itself gets le behind. Like many studies with ‘poetics’ in their title, this work on Di Prima focuses on the unfolding of a philosophy rather than a poetry. Close readings oen yield to narratives, timelines, and diary entries. is is especially true in Chapters  and , but the whole book showcases excerpts of Di Prima’s prose, perhaps even more than her poetry. Di Prima was in conversation with so many various forms of art and artists, yet consistently chose poetry as her medium. Chapter , for example, situates her physically within a New York scene, drawing connections both professional and situational between her and the poets, artists, musicians, and dancers she associated with on various levels, but it does not necessarily read the forms or implications of their aesthetics into hers. Rather, what this book does is show an arc of personal and philosophical growth, recording the power—dense, layered, rich, suggestive—of the various fields of resonance in...

Embroidered Icons by V. B. Kazarina: Feat of Faith and Labor

Vera Borisovna Kazarina is the head of Pokrov, a workshop of the Ancient Russian Church Embroidery of the Constantino-Eleninsky Convent, Candidate in History of Arts, and a member of the Union of Artists of Russia. The article examines her active creativity, research and educational work in modern Church art, in particular, icon embroidery. As a researcher, she collects ancient samples of church embroidery, masters the ancient iconography, reveals the symbolism of Orthodox ornaments, studies the origin, history, and features of ancient gold embroidery workshops, as well as reconstructs traditional embroidery techniques. She collected, classified and described different types of pictorial and gold embroidery. V. B. Kazarina defended her Candidate of Art History dissertation and used it as a basis for her monograph “Old Russian Ornamentation on Hanging Shrouds of the 16th Century” (2014). As a high-profile embroiderer, Vera Borisovna creates her unique embroidered icons with images of ancient and newly appeared saints, artistically embroidered clothing for the liturgy. Kazarina creates most of her works independently. The largest works are performed together with other embroiderers from Pokrov workshop, which she established and oversees. Her customers are numerous monasteries and churches of different dioceses. As an educator, Vera Kazarina works to popularize the history, spiritual foundations, and culture of Russia. Researchers, curators of museum collections, and practicing embroiderers come together to share their knowledge. Vera Borisovna writes research and popular articles, hosts TV programs, and runs virtual distance courses on church embroidery. With her enthusiasm, creative, practical, and educational activities, Kazarina contributes to the development of the modern Saint Petersburg school of icon embroidery with its own artistic style. Her life and her creative path is an example of spiritual and creative service to people, and her works are a valuable contribution to the modern development of Russian art.

Moving Forward by Moving Back: On Some Recent Works by Giorgio Agamben

Moving Forward by Moving BackOn Some Recent Works by Giorgio Agamben Adam Kotsko (bio) GIORGIO AGAMBEN, KARMAN: A BRIEF TREATISE ON ACTION, GUILT, AND GESTURE TRANS. ADAM KOTSKO Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2017 GIORGIO AGAMBEN, TASTE TRANS. COOPER FRANCIS New York: Seagull Books, 2017 GIORGIO AGAMBEN, WHAT IS PHILOSOPHY? TRANS. LORENZO CHIESA Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2018 The books under review here represent only a portion of Agamben’s output in recent years. While Agamben has been an increasingly prolific author over the course of his career, there has been a veritable explosion of new material since the conclusion—or, as he puts it, “abandonment”—oftheHomo Sacer project with the publication of The Use of Bodies (2014/2016).1 This “abandonment” was in no sense a conclusion, as he clarifies in the preface to The Use of Bodies, but it is in some sense an act of closure, even if it is the paradoxical closure of leaving the project definitively unfinished and open-ended. The Use of Bodies—which, far from answering all the questions raised by the earlier volume, piles on even more of its own—is a massive work by Agamben’s standards, matched only by The Kingdom and the Glory: For a Theological Genealogy of Economy and Glory (2007/2011). Hence it is perhaps understandable that many of the works that have appeared in its wake (including Stasis: Civil War as a Political Paradigm [2015/2015], which was [End Page 141] belatedly inserted into the architectonic of the series after the publication of The Use of Bodies) are shorter—in the case of Taste (2015/2017), very short indeed. In a way, publishing such a short essay, which originally appeared as an entry in an Italian philosophical reference work, is no departure for Agamben. He has always been attracted to publishing very short texts as stand-alone books. Many of the pieces later collected in Profanations, for instance, initially appeared in small chapbooks consisting of two short essays. Several of his other short works have been published in English (also by Seagull Press) in attractive hardcover editions with supplemental essays and artworks, and other chapbook-length texts have periodically been gathered together into slightly larger collections (like What Is an Apparatus? And Other Essays [2006/2009]) that still manage to preserve the small scale Agamben aimed at with the original publications. Even in his larger works, one can see a preference for the fragmentary and suggestive. Many individual chapters could just as easily have been published as stand-alone pieces, and the overall argumentative flow of his longer texts is often unclear. He seems to work by accumulation and iteration, whether within a “single” book or a sequence of shorter “independent” pieces. Thus the length alone does not make Taste an outlier in his cor-pus. (Even so, one could justifiably ask about the ethics of publishing such a short text—my first reading took approximately an hour—as a stand-alone, full-price hardcover book with no supplemental materials whatsoever.) What is surprising is the original date of the text’s publication: 1979. At that point, Agamben was the author of a few relatively brief books on aesthetics, which certainly made him an appropriate candidate to supply the entry on “taste” in a philosophical dictionary. And in fact, many of the distinctive features of this text—the unexpected reference to political economy and the surprisingly appreciative engagement with psychoanalysis—are shared with such early works as The Man without Content (1970/1999) and Stanzas: Word and Phantasm in Western Culture (1977/1992). In retrospect, however, the text appears to be a backward-looking one. In only a few short years, Agamben would publish Language and Death: A Seminar on the Place of Negativity (1982/1991), whose conclusion would evoke the figure of the sacred man or homo sacer that would come to define his life’s work. It would still be nearly a decade until [End Page 142] Agamben announced something like a “political turn” with The Coming Community (1990/1993). Five years after that, Agamben would definitively launch his political theoretical project with Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (1995...

Vállalkozók, vállalkozások és innovációk Pécsett a dualizmus korában

THE AIMS OF THE PAPER To examine how the 19th century economic modernisation (Western type of industrialisation, technological transformation and the birth of the manufacturing industry) unfolded in Central Europe; and more importantly in Hungary, in Pecs, and what technological innovations were created by local entrepreneurs. METHODOLOGY Literature review including the history of the manufacturing industry. We involved sources from monographies, employment and census records, reminiscences and our own data from researches of archives. The research framework is the history of distinct businesses. We introduced five businesses whose economic effects influenced the operations of Pecs in the long run. We made a structural analysis examining the entrepreneur and its business together. MOST IMPORTANT RESULTS The Austrian First-Danube-Steamboat-Shipping Company (DDSG) became the largest works in the city by starting the intensive coal mining and creating modern technological background since 1852. It employed four thousand souls in the beginning of the 20th century and the city profited a lot from its developments (railway construction and electric power plant). The Zsolnay Porcelain Manufactory has quickly become the synonym of Pecs. Vilmos Zsolnay ended up being a world famous entrepreneur because of his technological innovations (eosin, pyrogranite, etc…) and products. The term „Glove of Pecs” came alive in the ages of the dual monarchy. Janos Hamerli founded the first glove manufacturing plant in the country. The Angster Organs have being played for hundred and fifty years. The company founded by Jozsef Angster emerged at the end of the 19th century and represented state of art technology. The multitalented Adolf Engel’s businesses aided the spa culture (Balokany), the wood industry, the construction industry and the coal mining at Komlo. ECONOMIC POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS The innovations and the economic development were promoted by the dominant policy of the era, the economic liberalism; the liberal entrepreneur environment, the huge market of the Dual Monarchy, the technological creativity and the increase in the populations’ needs. Acknowledgements: This publication/research has been supported by the European Union and Hungary and co-financed by the European Social Fund through the project EFOP-3.6.2-16-2017-00017, titled Sustainable, intelligent and inclusive regional and city models.

Routledge Handbook to Luigi Nono and Musical Thought by Jonathan Impett

Reviewed by: Routledge Handbook to Luigi Nono and Musical Thought by Jonathan Impett Robert Adlington Routledge Handbook to Luigi Nono and Musical Thought. By Jonathan Impett. Abingdon: Routledge, 2019. (Routledge handbooks.) [xxii, 9 unnumbered pages of plates, 527 p. ISBN 978-1-4094-5597-4 (hardcover) £190 (e-book) £114] The annoying stuff first. It would be irresponsible to review this book without commenting on the eye-watering price, which will challenge many hard-pressed academic libraries, let alone individual readers. And what makes this volume—which is monographic in content and authorship—a 'Routledge Handbook'? If both price and titular branding simply reflect the exigencies of British academic publishing, they [End Page 375] nonetheless seem especially incongruous in the context of a composer so suspicious of profit-oriented commerce and so concerned to engage with wider social inequalities. Some measure of justification for each of these aspects of this publication can nonetheless be found. It is a truly monumental publication, comprising 500 pages of close-set type; it would be nearer 1,000 in a more standard font. There is certainly bang for your library's buck. And the 'handbook' moniker does at least correspond to a central claim for this book's significance, namely, as the first study in any language to offer detailed examination of the entirety of Nono's compositional output. From this perspective alone, Impett's is an essential contribution. It joins a recent, sudden flourishing of English-language publications on Nono, a very welcome complement to Carola Nielinger-Vakil's elegant monograph Luigi Nono: A Composer in Context (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), which is more selective in its coverage, and the English edition of Nono's writings Nostalgia for the Future(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2018). Proceeding strictly chronologically through Nono's career, Impett addresses each work in turn, the shorter works being grouped under shared concerns ('Song'; 'New spaces'; etc.), the larger works (Il canto sospeso; Intolleranza 1960; Al gran sole carico d'amore; Prometeo) given chapters of their own. Lightly-sketched biographical details are offered throughout, but the focus is unashamedly on compositional process and structure. Impett is fearless in his engagement with the inner workings of each score, offering accounts that reconstruct in detail the processes documented in Nono's sketches. The book is unusually generous in its reproductions and transcriptions of the sketches themselves, even if sometimes one wishes for more in order to follow the fine detail of Impett's account. A question about readership immediately springs to mind, as one immerses oneself in Impett's discussion. At one level, the approach is introductory. Impett's notes and bibliography are testament to his comprehensive grasp of the existing Nono literature, which is particularly extensive in Italian and German. However, this learning is worn lightly: Impett is not pursuing a grand thesis or revisionary perspective, and largely refrains from extended debate with the arguments of other writers, preferring instead passing references to their key findings. Nor is there any real engagement with the preoccupations of contemporary musicology. His preference is always to reach first for the primary materials. This works best for the music that, in the U.K. at least, is least well known. How wonderful, for instance, to have, finally, detailed accounts of the militant works from the 1960s and early 1970s, which up to now have been almost entirely neglected in English-language publications, and little studied in other literatures. The richly textured accounts of Nono's last works, which are not considered by Nielinger-Vakil, are also greatly welcome. Impett's nuts-and-bolts approach is a little less compelling for works that have enjoyed a long history of close scholarly attention. The chapters on Il canto sospesoand Intolleranza are disproportionately short, given these works' iconic significance, as if in acknowledgement that the fundamental ground has already been thoroughly trodden. In the chapter on Prometeo, although Impett's discussion of the work's philosophical background is substantial—demonstrating once again the remarkable spell that this piece tends to cast over its exegetes—there is a good deal of duplication with Nielinger-Vakil's discussion, and hers proves the more satisfyinglydetailed when it comes...

Field Evaluation of Targeted Shake-and-Catch Harvesting Technologies for Fresh Market Apple

HighlightsThree shaking methods and vibratory harvesting systems were evaluated and compared.Multi-year field evaluations were performed with up to six cultivars trained to formal architectures.The updated semi-automated system achieved the highest fruit removal efficiency and the best fruit quality.Abstract. Apple is the most economically important agricultural crop in Washington State. In 2018, Washington State produced ~3.3 billion kg of apple, accounting for approximately 63% of U.S. production. Fresh-market apple is currently harvested manually, requiring large numbers seasonal semi-skilled workers for a small harvest window. To overcome the increasing challenges of uncertain labor availability and raising labor costs, a promising mechanical harvesting system, using a targeted shake-and-catch approach, is under development at Washington State University. This study evaluated the system by analyzing its fruit harvest efficiency and fruit quality with three shaking methods, i.e., continuous non-linear, continuous linear, and intermittent linear shaking, on up to six apple cultivars trained to formal tree architectures. Results showed that intermittent linear shaking achieved 90% fruit removal efficiency for ‘Scifresh’ cultivar, while continuous linear shaking achieved only 63% removal efficiency for ‘Gala’. This study also compared three vibratory systems: a hand-held system, a hydraulically driven system, and a semi-automated hydraulic system. The semi-automated system achieved the highest fruit removal efficiency (90%), followed by the hand-held (87%) and hydraulic (84%) systems, mainly due to the different shaking methods employed. However, the differences were statistically insignificant. Fruit catching efficiency varied among the harvesting systems, with the hand-held system achieving the highest efficiency (97%), followed by the hydraulic (91%) and semi-automated (88%) systems. Among the three tested technologies, the prototype semi-automated system achieved the highest level of mechanization, as well as high fruit removal efficiency and the best fruit quality. Because the semi-automated system did not include an auto-positioning function, positioning its shaker head took about eight times longer (~103 s) than the actual shaking time (~13 s), which suggests that a fully automated system is desirable to further increase productivity. This study showed that the shake-and-catch approach has great potential for practical adoption in harvesting of fresh-market apple and therefore can have a positive economic impact on the U.S. apple industry. Keywords: Automation in apple production, Bulk mechanical harvest, Semi-automated system, Shaking method, Time efficiency.

Creating a Heroine: the Labor Record of Dusya Vinogradova

The objective of this article is to study the social and economic mechanisms that enabled the emergence of a female heroism at the beginning of the Second Five-Year Plan. The article analyzes its realization of the Soviet gender project at the local level. This approach allows to investigate the relations of the authorities and workers at a particular factory and show the interdependence of their interests. The article’s primary sources include periodicals, documentation of central and local authorities, as well as the works of a journalist and historian T. Leshukov. Intensification of production at the beginning of the First Five-Year Plan required mobilization of labor forces, stimulation of workers’ enthusiasm and modernization of factories’ looms. Professional competitions, designed to increase productivity while controlling product quality, became part of the campaign for increased output. However, the material and technical crisis did not allow the textile industry to fulfill the planned targets prescribed from above and coincided with the food crisis, which led to the largest workers’ protests in the Ivanovo Industrial region in 1932. By the beginning of the Second Five-Year Plan, the textile industry was lagging far behind the planned indicators for production automatization, while the factory staff opposed increasing productivity with the help of a “seal” which meant working with more looms per weaver. The article about the record of the female weaver Vinogradova published in the Light Industry promoted new professional standards, according to which a young girl could be a technical expert, and an increase in labor productivity was possible with the help of the “seal”. In addition, the young female shock worker was a response to experienced workers who participated in the protests of 1932, therefore it signified the superiority of the Soviet education system and the new organization of labor. Biographical data of those involved in the organization of the record shows that they were representatives of the first Soviet generation, whose interests were closely intertwined with those of the party.