Large Work Research Articles

Reaching millennials: changing up benefits communication to meet the largest working generation

Reaching millennials: changing up benefits communication to meet the largest working generation

Automated image processing as an analytical tool in cell cryopreservation for bioprocess development.

The continuous availability of cells with defined cell characteristics represents a crucial issue in the biopharmaceutical and cell therapy industry. Here, development of cell banks with a long-term stability is essential and ensured by a cryopreservation strategy. The strategy needs to be optimized for each cell application individually and usually comprises controlled freezing, storage at ultra-low temperature, and fast thawing of cells. This approach is implemented by the development of master and working cell banks. Currently, empirical cryopreservation strategy development is standard, but a knowledge-based approach would be highly advantageous. In this article, we report the development of a video-based tool for the characterisation of freezing and thawing behaviour in cryopreservation process to enable a more knowledge-based cryopreservation process development. A successful tool validation was performed with a model cryopreservation process for the β-cell line INS-1E. Performance was evaluated for two working volumes (1.0mL and 2.0mL), based on freezing-thawing rates (20°C to - 80°C) and cell recovery and increase of biomass, to determine tool flexibility and practicality. Evaluation confirmed flexibility by correctly identifying a delay in freezing and thawing for the larger working volume. Further more, a decrease in cell recovery from 0.94 (± 0.14) % using 1.0mL working volume to 0.61 (± 0.05) % using a 2.0mL working volume displays tool practicality. The video-based tool proposed in this study presents a powerful tool for cell-specific optimisation of cryopreservation protocols. This can facilitate faster and more knowledge-based cryopreservation process development In this study, a video-based analytical tool was developed for the characterisation of freezing and thawing behaviour in cryopreservation process development. Evaluation of the practicality and flexibility of the developed tool was done based on a scale-up case study with the cell line INS-1E. Here, the influence of sample working volume on process performance was investigated. Increasing the volume from 1to 2mL led to a delay in freezing and thawing behaviour which caused cell recovery loss. We believe that the developed tool will facilitate more directed and systematic cryopreservation process development.

Design principles for establishing a multi-sided open innovationplatform: lessons learned from an action research study in the medical technologyindustry

Innovation in the medical technology (med tech) industry has a majorimpact on well-being in society. Open innovation has the potential to accelerate thedevelopment of new or improved healthcare solutions. Building on work system theory(WST), this paper explores how a multi-sided open innovation platform cansystematically be established in a German med tech industry cluster in situationswhere firms had no prior experience with this approach. We aim to uncover problemsthat may arise and identify opportunities for overcoming them. We performed anaction research study in which we implemented and evaluated a multi-sided web-basedopen innovation platform in four real-world innovation challenges. Analyzing thefour different challenges fostered a deeper understanding of the conceptual andorganizational aspects of establishing the multi-sided open innovation platform aspart of a larger work system. Reflecting on the findings, we developed five designprinciples that shall support the establishment of multi-sided open innovationplatforms in other contexts. Thus, this paper contributes to both theory andpractice.

Desire, Frustration, and Resolution in the Ending(s) of Troilus and Criseyde

This essay analyzes the final stanzas of Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde in order to challenge the critical commonplace that the poem’s ending is fraught, fragmented, unsatisfactory, or ultimately inconclusive. It questions the traditional view that the ending is a conspicuous departure from the poetic mode of the earlier poem, as well as the view that the final stanzas are dominated by an ideological struggle between earthly and divine love. Through a close reading of the final five stanzas of the poem—and with particular attention to their echoes throughout the larger work— the essay seeks to elucidate how Chaucer’s poetics of desire continue to resonate throughout the poem’s close. The result, the essay contends, is an ending of celebration, circumspection, and profound imagination that strives for love both earthly and divine.

On Reliable Task Assignment for Spatial Crowdsourcing

The large quantity of mobile devices equipped with various built-in sensors and the easy access to the high-speed wireless networks have made spatial crowdsourcing receive much attention in the research community recently. Generally, the objective of spatial crowdsourcing is to outsource location-based sensing tasks (e.g., traffic monitoring and pollution monitoring) to ordinary mobile workers (e.g., users carrying smartphones) efficiently. In this paper, we study a reliable task assignment problem for spatial crowdsourcing in a large worker market. Specifically, we use worker confidence to represent the reliability of successfully completing the assigned sensing tasks, and we formulate two optimization problems, maximum reliability assignment (MRA) under a recruitment budget and minimum cost assignment (MCA) under a task reliability requirement. We reveal the special structure properties of these problems, based on which we design effective approaches to assign tasks to the most suitable workers. The performances of the proposed algorithms are verified by theoretic analysis and experimental results on both real and synthetic datasets.

Providers' Perspectives on Palliative Care in a Neuromedicine-Intensive Care Unit: End-of-Life Expertise and Barriers to Referral.

This study identifies health care providers' perspectives on palliative care at end of life (EOL) in a neuromedicine-intensive care unit (Neuro-ICU) and barriers to providing palliative care. Provider's EOL expertise is crucial in making timely referrals to palliative care as expectation of patient death can be high. Barriers to referral need to be clearly identified so as to engage quality initiatives that improve EOL care delivery. The study is a survey design using a mixed-methods approach. Providers at a large academic medical center, including doctors, nurses, and social workers, completed a quality improvement survey. Forty-one providers responded to Likert-type scales assessing their perspectives on palliative care. Their EOL expertise was independently assessed. In addition, barriers to palliative care referral were collected using a checklist and open-ended responses. The latter were reliably content analyzed through a card-sort technique. Three palliative care perspectives were identified: foundational perspective, comfort-care perspective, and holistic perspective. Regression analysis shows that providers' perspectives are differentially related to their EOL expertise. Frequencies of provider-reported barriers to referring patients to palliative care (e.g., lack of care coordination) were determined. Health care providers hold multiple perspectives on what they consider palliative care. Their perspectives are related systematically to different aspects of their EOL expertise. In-house training and quality initiatives could focus on unifying providers' perspectives to create a common language for understanding palliative care. Eliminating individual, intergroup, and organizational barriers is necessary for creating an optimal environment for patients and their families who find themselves, often suddenly, in a Neuro-ICU.

Growth control of leaf lettuce with exposure to underwater ultrasound and dissolved oxygen supersaturation

The growth rate of vegetables in plant factories can be regulated by environmental factors including light, temperature, and chemicals, which might give rise to mutation in leaf health. Here, we aim to devise a new way that allows for controlling the growth rate of plants in hydroponics as well as maintaining the product quality; we apply underwater ultrasound and dissolved oxygen supersaturation as external stimuli to plants. As an example, we examine the growth of leaf lettuce in hydroponics with exposure to 28-kHz ultrasound and dissolved oxygen supersaturation up to 36 mg/L at 20 °C. Our results show that exposure to the ultrasound of peak-to-peak pressure at 20 kPa or larger works as the growth inhibitor of the leaves and the roots, while the oxygen supersaturation as the growth promoter, without any degradation of chlorophyll in the leaves. This suggests that these external stimuli can be used in the growth control system of plant factories.

Individual size as determinant of sugar responsiveness in ants

Social insects commonly exhibit division of labor in non-reproductive tasks. Task allocation may be related to size, form, and ergonomic differences when workers are anatomically variable. Carpenter ants Camponotus mus collecting nectar exhibit a wide forager size variation, thus raising the question of whether large and minor workers differ in their gustatory responsiveness and specialize, therefore, on different nectar sources. To answer this question, we first established the sucrose concentration at which small and large ants in the laboratory respond appetitively to a sugar solution (sucrose acceptance threshold, SAT) after experiencing a high or a low starvation regime (4- or 1-day carbohydrate deprivation, respectively). Under high starvation, no differences in SATs were found between larger and smaller ants. Under low starvation, both sizes increased their SATs but larger ants had a higher SAT, thus preferring more concentrated solutions while smaller ants responded mostly to more diluted sucrose solutions. In a field assay in which the distribution of larger and smaller ants on sugary food sources was analyzed, small and medium ants were found—in different proportions—at all food sources while larger ants were only found at nectar sources with a higher sugar flow rate, i.e., providing more sugar per unit time. Both field and laboratory assays supported that sugar-related parameters act as determinants of the size distribution of ants among food sources. In addition, interindividual differences in alternative non-sugar-related variables may contribute to this distribution, leading thereby to a potential nectar foraging specialization. Task specialization is crucial for the ecological success of social insects. Carpenter ants allocate individuals of variable size to foraging, thus raising the question of whether they differ in their food preferences. We determined the sugar concentration at which an appetitive response occurs in small and large carpenter ants, and analyzed their distribution on natural and artificial nectar sources in a field assay. Under low starvation, larger ants responded more than smaller ants to higher sucrose concentrations. Coincidently, in the field assay, they were mainly present at sources with higher sucrose delivery. This kind of specialization may reflect the fact that larger ants have larger feeding apparatuses, which may confer a better capacity to deal with the higher viscosity of more concentrated nectars and allow collecting more food at nectaries with higher sugar flow rates. Size specialization may thus increase colony success in the exploitation of variable food sources.

Early adhesion of cells to ferromagnetic shape memory alloys functionalized with plasma assembled biomolecules – a single cell force spectroscopy study

Biomaterial performance and integration of prostheses in vivo strongly depend on the ability of cells to adhere. Plasma-assisted functionalization of smart metals with biopolymers, including plasma polymerized l-lysine (PPLL), constitutes a recently-developed promising approach to synthesize highly flexible, yet robust and strongly adherent protein coatings that support cell-biomaterial interaction. In the present study we employ single cell force spectroscopy to demonstrate that PPLL coatings promote early adhesion of fibroblast cells on the ferromagnetic shape memory alloy FePd – a promising magnetically switchable biomaterial. By varying the contact time of a cell with the substrate surface, we show that the forces and work needed to fully detach a cell increase with time and quantify bioactivity of the material. In contrast to glass and PPLL-coated glass, cell detachment from FePd requires much larger work, while a PPLL biofunctionalization further improves cell adhesion and binding affinity by an increased detachment work on short time scales. Together with a time-dependent bond model we postulate a transition from unspecific to specific cell adhesion on FePd and PPLL-coated FePd, while on glass detachment forces are lower and level off to a saturation regime on short times prior to the expected time necessary for specific integrin-based bond formation.

Earnings Losses and Labor Mobility Over the Life Cycle

AbstractLarge and persistent earnings losses following displacement have adverse consequences for the individual worker and the macroeconomy. Leading models cannot explain their size and disagree on their sources. Two mean-reverting forces make earnings losses transitory in these models: search as an upward force allows workers to climb back up the job ladder, and separations as a downward force make nondisplaced workers fall down the job ladder. We show that job stability at the top rather than search frictions at the bottom is the main driver of persistent earnings losses. We provide new empirical evidence on heterogeneity in job stability and develop a life-cycle search model to explain the facts. Our model offers a quantitative reconciliation of key stylized facts about the U.S. labor market: large worker flows, a large share of stable jobs, and persistent earnings shocks. We explain the size of earnings losses by dampening the downward force. Our new explanation highlights the tight link between labor market mobility and earnings dynamics. Regarding the sources, we find that over 85% stem from the loss of a particularly good job at the top of the job ladder. We apply the model to study the effectiveness of two labor market policies, retraining and placement support, from the Dislocated Worker Program. We find that both are ineffective in reducing earnings losses in line with the program evaluation literature.

An integrated community health worker intervention in rural Nepal: a type 2 hybrid effectiveness-implementation study protocol

BackgroundEvidence-based medicines, technologies, and protocols exist to prevent many of the annual 300,000 maternal, 2.7 million neonatal, and 9 million child deaths, but they are not being effectively implemented and utilized in rural areas. Nepal, one of South Asia’s poorest countries with over 80% of its population living in rural areas, exemplifies this challenge. Community health workers are an important cadre in low-income countries where human resources for health and health care infrastructure are limited. As local women, they are uniquely positioned to understand and successfully navigate barriers to health care access. Recent case studies of large community health worker programs have highlighted the importance of training, both initial and ongoing, and accountability through structured management, salaries, and ongoing monitoring and evaluation. A gap in the evidence regarding whether such community health worker systems can change health outcomes, as well as be sustainably adopted at scale, remains. In this study, we plan to evaluate a community health worker system delivering an evidence-based integrated reproductive, maternal, newborn, and child health intervention as it is scaled up in rural Nepal.MethodsWe will conduct a type 2 hybrid effectiveness-implementation study to test both the effect of an integrated reproductive, maternal, newborn, and child health intervention and the implementation process via a professional community health worker system. The intervention integrates five evidence-based approaches: (1) home-based antenatal care and post-natal care counseling and care coordination; (2) continuous surveillance of all reproductive age women, pregnancies, and children under age 2 years via a mobile application; (3) Community-Based Integrated Management of Newborn and Childhood Illness; (4) group antenatal and postnatal care; and 5) the Balanced Counseling Strategy to post-partum contraception. We will evaluate effectiveness using a pre-post quasi-experimental design with stepped implementation and implementation using the RE-AIM framework.DiscussionThis is the first hybrid effectiveness-implementation study of an integrated reproductive, maternal, newborn, and child health intervention in rural Nepal that we are aware of. As Nepal takes steps towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, the data from this three-year study will be useful in the detailed planning of a professionalized community health worker cadre delivering evidence-based reproductive, maternal, newborn, and child health interventions to the country’s rural population.Trial registrationClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT03371186, registered 04 December 2017, retrospectively registered.

Nuclear epidemiologic studies and the estimation of DREF

Purpose: Estimating cancer risks for continuous radiation exposures based upon data from acute exposures has been an important public health problem. A dose and dose rate effectiveness factor (DDREF) is typically used to estimate cancer risks for chronic exposures based upon risk estimates from acute exposures. A value of 2 for a DDREF has most often been used as proposed by the ICRP in ICRP60; however, an influential analysis of several cohorts concluded that there is no risk difference between acute and chronic exposures. It is the purpose of this article to analyze the recent nuclear worker studies and estimate the dose rate effectiveness factor, DREF, for solid cancers.Materials and methods: Twelve mortality studies were identified each with at least 100 cancer deaths and a meta-analysis was then carried out using their individual ratio of low dose rate cancer effect (LDR) to the corresponding high dose rate effect from the A-bomb cohort (LSS). The ratio is denoted by Q and its reciprocal is then an estimate of the DREF.Results: The result was Q= 0.36 (95% CI = 0.11, 0.60) and DREF = 2.63 (95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.61, 7.14). Clearly, this estimate is more consistent with a DREF of 2 than with a DREF of 1. The difficulty with the estimate Q = 0.36 is that it is driven by only two large and dissimilar worker studies, the INWORKS study (q1 = 1.14) and the Mayak worker cohort (q3 = 0.30). The higher exposures for these nuclear workers were often in the early years (e.g. before 1960) with exposures from neutrons and internal emitters that are not included in the risk analyses resulting in likely overestimation of cancer effects per dose which would increase the estimate of the DREF. The Mayak study did, however, adjust for plutonium exposures. Finally, consideration is given to other cohort studies where DREF values may possibly be determined, such as the environmental exposures to the Techa River area residents and the Chernobyl cleanup workers as well as medical X-ray workers. Although dissimilar an overall meta-analysis yielded a Q = 0.45 (95% CI = 0.24, 0.66).Conclusions: It is concluded that the best estimate of a DREF is still about 2. However, because of the various problems with the epidemiology studies, especially their dosimetry, it is concluded that a DREF of about 2 should be accepted with considerable caution since it is driven solely by the Mayak study.

Voir le jour: Breastfeeding and the commons

Watch Voir le jour from Natalie Doonan on Vimeo This research-creation project focuses on breastfeeding in public as an act of claiming space for the common good. Its audio-visual component, “Voir le jour,” is part of a larger work that includes community screenings and locative storytelling. “Voir le jour” consists of recordings of nursing mothers, breastfeeding experts, and activists sharing their stories about the joys and challenges of breastfeeding outside the home. These stories are accompanied by a slideshow of photographs depicting moms nursing in public spaces. “Voir le jour” renders the labour of mothering audible and visible in public spaces, including online. It was created in part for use by the breastfeeding support organization Nourri-Source Montréal. “Voir le jour” contests the notion that “public” and “private” are distinct spatial categories. The fact that breastfeeding is commonly relegated to the sphere of domestic activity is a testament to the tenacious grip of patriarchy in everyday life, and leads to isolation for many new mothers. The discomfort that may be felt in response to seeing intimate experiences between mothers and babies is part of transforming the myth that private and public activities and spaces are discrete and separate spheres.

Analisis Komparatif Komitmen Karyawan pada Tujuan Organisasi di Perusahaan Kecil, Menengah dan Besar di Kota Banjarbaru, Kalimantan Selatan

Highly committed employees give every effort to achieve organizational goals. They always exert their efforts to achieve that goal. In Indonesia, small businesses occupy an important position that makes it big attention from the government. Every organization does not care big or small should emphasize the element of commitment of employees to achieve the goals set. Researchers want to know the comparative level of commitment of employee goals to organizational goals in small, medium and large business workers. This research method using quantitative approach. The data were collected by using psychological measuring instrument. Data analysis was done by One Way Varian Analysis Technique. The results show that there is a difference in goal commitment among small, medium and large enterprise workers. Significant differences occur between middle and large business workers.

Poétique des cycles romanesques de Balzac à Volodine par Thomas Conrad

poésie ainsi qu’aux ‘reliquats’, textes audacieux, souvent fort beaux mais écartés en raison de la censure. Ainsi les textes sur Rabelais et Molière, surplus de William Shakespeare, sont singulièrement pénétrants. Dans la section intitulée ‘Alentours’, mélange de textes de genres divers,Butor inclut des contes que le grand-père improvisait pour ses petits-enfants à Guernesey et cite des passages émouvants de la biographie de Hugo rédigée officiellement par son épouse Adèle mais dont l’écriture porte l’empreinte de “la présence souveraine du patriarche” (131). De même, le style des comptes-rendus de séances des tables tournantes consignés par Charles, le fils de Victor, est singulièrement hugolien. Butor conclut en apothéose avec les dessins, dont une quinzaine sont reproduits. Leur grande variété technique et thématique, leur originalité intrinsèque démontrent qu’ils ont été un laboratoire de l’imaginaire du génial écrivain. Fairfield University (CT) Marie-Agnès Sourieau Conrad, Thomas. Poétique des cycles romanesques de Balzac à Volodine. Paris: Garnier, 2016. ISBN 978-2-8124-3851-6. Pp. 498. Although such well-known authors as Balzac, Zola, Dumas, and Giono expressed the explicit desire to link their novels together, few studies are devoted to their methods of linking. Indeed, due to its paradoxical nature—it is at once singular and multiple, open and closed, and transcendent and immanent—the novel cycle has been largely ignored by critics, appealing neither to champions of intertextuality who appreciate radically open works nor to more traditional experts who favor closed, self-contained texts. Hence, this ambitious volume that examines both mainstream and popular authors (Balzac,Zola,Dumas,Poe,Giono,Gide,Mauriac,Montherlant,Duras,Potocki, Volodine, Asimov) as well as different genres (science-fiction, realism, naturalism, epic) is one of the first to study the cycle in its remarkable diversity. Comprised of an introduction, two large sections on cycle forms and evolutions, and a conclusion, the book seeks to formulate a typological and historical poetics of the cycle during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, treating not only how and why writers tie their works together in vast frescoes, but also how our reading of a novel is transformed when it is part of a cycle. The first and largest section, on cycle forms, examines the three major ways that authors sew texts together: via recurring characters (by far the most widespread method), via what Conrad calls a“plan”(45) and defines as common narrative statements either paradigmatic or syntagmatic in nature, and finally via “enchâssement”(46) or framing, in which two texts are associated through a common narrative situation. While Balzac’s recurring characters make him seminal to the first method, neither Eugénie Grandet nor Le curé de Tours share any characters with the rest of the Comédie humaine. These volumes are thus incorporated into the larger work in other ways, proving that more than one linking method can be employed by the same 196 FRENCH REVIEW 91.3 Reviews 197 author and in the same cycle.As examples of the third method,Conrad offers trenchant insights into The Thousand and One Nights, The Decameron, and the Manuscrit trouvé à Saragosse, among others. The second section traces the complex history of the cycle through Balzac, Zola, Poe, Giono, and Volodine, and establishes an evolution in three major stages. The post-Revolution cycles (1830–90) define an epic moment characterized by the massive use of recurring characters, in contrast to early forms in which framing techniques predominated. After 1890, the epic model fades, even in Zola, creating a crisis in the cycle that mirrors the crisis of the novel itself. Finally, after 1945, the cycle makes a comeback characterized by challenges to the notion of coherence and to the recurring character method, a resurgence of framing techniques, and a proliferation of paraliterary cycles (fantasy, science-fiction, detective fiction, graphic novel). This massive and important volume is highly recommended to all interested in the history of the French novel during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and in the complex inner-workings, epic dimensions, and social impact of the novel cycle. University...

In Memoriam Claribel Alegría: Amor sin fin

In Memoriam Claribel Alegría: Amor sin fin by George Evans & Daisy Zamora C laribel Alegría (1924–2018) was born in Estelí, Nicaragua, and raised in Santa Ana, El Salvador. Her father, Dr. Daniel Alegría Rodríguez, a Nicaraguan medical doctor, was a Las Segovias liberal who fought in Benjamín Zeledón’s army as a boy, detested the US Marine occupation of Nicaragua, criticized the Somocista repression of peasants and dissidents, and voiced support for the revolutionary struggle of Augusto Sandino , which resulted in persecution by the occupying US troops that forced the family into exile while Claribel was still a baby, an exile that would last for her father until his death forty years later. Her mother, Ana Maria Vides Segui, was Salvadoran, so they moved to El Salvador, and Claribel was raised as a native of two countries, though she was always a citizen of the world. She met and married journalist Darwin J. (Bud) Flakoll (1923–1995) in the late 1940s while both were studying at George Washington University in Washington, DC. Beginning in 1951, she traveled extensively with Bud and their four children— Maya, Patricia, Karen, and Erik—living in Mexico, Chile, Uruguay, and Argentina, publishing books of poetry in each country . In 1963 the family moved to Paris for several years, then to Mallorca where she lived with Bud until 1979. That year they traveled to Managua to collaborate on a book about the Sandinista revolution , which had recently overthrown the murderous Somoza dynasty, and remained there permanently. Among her many awards and prizes (including a beloved Neustadt Prize in 2006), her latest honor was the 2017 Queen Sofía Iberoamerican Poetry Prize, which took her to Spain and, among other formalities and events, included to her delight a private audience with Queen Sofía. During their meeting, Claribel explained in an anecdote, she forgot herself and went on with the queen as if with an old friend, being her usual lively, loquacious, affectionate self, using informal language, telling tales and filling the air with laughter. When she suddenly realized she was talking with a queen, she stopped herself and apologized. “Oh, please,” said the queen, “just go on, I’m having a great time—I never get to talk with people this way, and if you lived here in Madrid we would be friends.” So they shared a laugh and went on. She was disarming, vivacious, by turns hilarious and profound, charming, learned, and judicious but never bored by life or people (though certainly anything but a Pollyanna), and ever prepared to expand or adjust her perspective on any subject. Her last major work was the unexpected booklength poem Amor sin fin (Visor, 2016), left Claribel Alegría, 1953. right Flakoll-Alegría family, 1959. Left to right: Patricia, Erik, Claribel, Karen, Maya, Bud. Photos used by permission of Erik Flakoll Alegría. tribute 40 WLT MAY–JUNE 2018 which, with an urgency we didn’t fully grasp at the time, she wanted us to translate into English the moment it was finished, and we did, as Forever Love, a section of which is excerpted here. The larger work is a searching philosophical poem with mythological references , a questioning of God and the self, observing the abyss that seems to await us all. It is a death poem, an incantation, a force not unlike a Navajo Night Chant (a tradition from our hemisphere), and a prayer exploring life beyond life and death. It’s a moment of peering into infinity to consider its potential horror without turning away. It’s not the typical lyric expectation one has from such a vivid, lively poet, but if you look at the expanse of her work from the beginning to the present, it’s not really surprising she would take on topics of such gravity, especially as a nonagenarian facing the ultimate fate, which even in her darkest observations she embraces completely. By turns focused and elusive, in places the sequence brings to mind the understated passions and muted sensuality of certain jazz ballads but mixed with the sharp wit and linguistic beauty reminiscent of, say, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Ezra...

Autos sacramentales completos de Lope de Vega by Lope de Vega

Reviewed by: Autos sacramentales completos de Lope de Vega by Lope de Vega Hilaire Kallendorf Lope de Vega. Autos sacramentales completos de Lope de Vega. Edición crítica de J. Enrique Duarte (vol. 1) y Juan Manuel Escudero Baztán (vol. 2). edition reichenberger, 2017, 2 vols. 282 pp. (vol. 1) y 231 pp. (vol. 2). these are the initial two volumes of a planned six-volume series of critical editions of Lope de Vega's autos sacramentales, or sacramental plays; the other four volumes have already been assigned to specific editors. Perhaps reflective of the amount of work involved in preparing a critical edition, the other four volumes will each contain two plays apiece, as do these volumes; but most of the future plays will be edited by two different scholars. In the case of these first two installments, a single scholar prepared both critical editions within each separate book. Volume 1, edited by J. Enrique Duarte, contains Las bodas entre el Alma y el Amor divino along with El hijo pródigo; volume 2, edited by Juan Manuel Escudero Baztán, contains La Maya and El viaje del alma. Escudero Baztán is also the coordinator for the series, whose chief editor is Ignacio Arellano. These projects have been developed under the auspices of GRISO (Grupo de Investigación Siglo de Oro), based at the University of navarra in Pamplona and funded by a grant from Spain's Ministerio de Economía, Industria y competividad. A presentation note at the outset of the first volume indicates that this is only the first phase of a project that may later double in size to include editions of all twenty-four of Lope de Vega's autos sacramentales that do not pose problems of dubious authorship. This number in itself is astoundingly small, given that at various points through the centuries since [End Page 201] the death of this author, scholars have estimated that Lope de Vega might possibly have written as many as one hundred, two hundred, or even six hundred autos sacramentales (the true number of comedias attributable to him is likewise debated). In modern times, this number has been reduced to a corpus of some forty-four sacramental plays, with only about half of those attributable to Lope with any stable degree of certainty. Presumably, the same research team will solicit another, similar grant from the spanish government to finance the preparation of the next dozen editions. It should be noted that this is the same scholarly network responsible for producing scholarly editions of the complete autos sacramentales of Pedro calderón de la Barca, one of Lope's seventeenth-century literary successors and by far the most famous cultivator of this dramatic genre. The reasons to review these two books together are multiple. Not only were they published in the same year, together forming the first fruits of a multiyear collaborative endeavor, but these four autos sacramentales also appeared together when they were first published in the seventeenth century, namely, as intercalated dramatic pieces appearing at the end of each of the first four books within Lope de Vega's Byzantine novel El peregrino en su patria (Seville, 1604). Given that they were originally incorporated into a larger work, the decision to publish them separately might seem debatable, especially in light of what historians of the book as artifact have taught us about the inseparability of a book's form from its content. However—especially since at least one of the plays, namely, Las bodas entre el Alma y el Amor divino, boasts a documented performance history apart from the novel—the option of lifting them out of their original context to place them alongside Lope de Vega's other, similar autos is at least justifiable. At least two complete editions of this novel have been released by reputable academic university or commercial presses within the past two years: in April of 2016 Cátedra published a version with notes in Spanish edited by Julián González Barrera, while in 2017 there appeared in the north carolina studies in the Romance Languages and Literatures series a new six hundred-page critical annotated edition and...

Emperors and Usurpers in the Later Roman Empire: Civil War, Panegyric, and the Construction of Legitimacy by Adrastos Omissi

BOOK REVIEWS/COMPTES RENDUS 393 The following chapters read more like afterthoughts than as expansions upon this core argument. Chapter Eighteen argues (on the basis of an unconventional reconstruction of the text) that the papyrus fragments traditionally ascribed to a “Ninus Romance” and the Ctesian account of Ninus and Semiramis in Diodorus provide another example of an exogamous match trumping an earlier endogamous match. Chapter Nineteen analyzes similarities between Musaeus’ Hero and Leander and the Greek novel. There are, as Whitmarsh acknowledges, differences from the convention as well, not least the verse form and the story’s tragic ending, and one wonders whether this interesting short essay really belongs in the larger work, but it does nicely round out the survey in a chronological sense. The conclusion (Chapter Twenty) is brief, and deals with three apparently disparate topics: “The Foundation of Marseilles, Some Brooch Pins and the History of the Novel.” What connects these three topics is the argument that a “colonial space offers greater freedom for tactical play” (177), that is, for improvisation. The emphasis, in the end, is upon the creativity, the experimentation, the unpredictability of the novel form. Whitmarsh’s study covers a dizzying range of topics, often devoting only a few pages to each before moving on. Not every analysis achieves the same level of depth or persuasiveness , and scholars coming from different areas may find themselves wishing for more or picking faults at different points. But a book that aims to cast so wide a net cannot always hope to go deep. More important is what the book does achieve: an enormously stimulating journey through a wide range of texts, relative to the environment out of which the Greek novel emerged. The stress laid throughout on the novel’s willingness, even eagerness, to cross cultural boundaries carries conviction regardless of whether the arguments of individual chapters stand or fall. Dirty Love should be required reading for any future course in the Greek novel, and for anyone who wishes to dip further into one of the topics that it touches on, the rich footnotes on every page attest to the depth of scholarship throughout. University of Connecticut Sara R. Johnson Emperors and Usurpers in the Later Roman Empire: Civil War, Panegyric, and the Construction of Legitimacy. By Adrastos Omissi. Oxford: Oxford University Press (Oxford Studies in Byzantium). 2018. Pp. xvii, 348 pages, 1 map, 1 graph, 4 plates. This excellent monograph, a revised version of a 2013 Oxford D.Phil. thesis, investigates how Roman panegyrists describe seizures of imperial power between a.d. 284 and 395. Omissi’s focus is on the numerous surviving prose panegyrics from this period, in both Greek and Latin (forty-eight, according to an appendix, though several of these were speeches written by Libanius but not delivered in front of an emperor). Chapter One provides a rapid run through the ambivalent constitutional nature of the Roman emperor’s position, concluding that there was nothing except the acceptance of an emperor by others to make one. The majority of modern scholars would agree on this, but how one feels about what this meant in terms of being emperor is interesting. For a few scholars, all those who claimed to be emperors were legitimate. For others, only those who did not rebel against an incumbent were legitimate (though even for these scholars, an agnosticism often surrounds Diocletian, Constantine, Julian, and perhaps 394 PHOENIX Theodosius i). There is a political point at stake here too. Just how much tyranny is acceptable in a ruler and are there means short of violence to overturn them? Modern writers living in stable democracies may see this differently from those living in totalitarian states. Omissi is very good on why emperors were needed (no one else could appoint subordinates, strike coins, or issue laws), but less interested in pursuing questions such as why individual Romans would support a challenge to an incumbent. Chapter Two examines the role of the panegyrics in studying challengers to imperial power. There is a deft sketch of the background, with numerous insightful observations. One in particular is worth stressing: “These ideas and messages might often be deeply encoded but we can find them...

Armas de guerra ou de caça? Funcionalidade e proveniência das pontas de seta do Zambujal (Torres Vedras, Portugal)

Esta contribuição insere-se num trabalho mais vasto que temos vindo a desenvolver desde 2014 sobre a pedra lascada do Zambujal, focalizado na caracterização petrográfica, nas estratégias de aquisição e na gestão dos recursos siliciosos.
 O povoado fortificado do Zambujal assume-se como um caso de estudo privilegiado na Estremadura portuguesa, pelo elevado número de artefactos de sílex recuperados associados a um contexto cronoestratigráfico, em particular pela quantidade de pontas de seta proporcionalmente às restantes categorias líticas. Esta questão, juntamente com o facto de terem sido recolhidas naquele local (entre a primeira e a segunda linhas de defesa), reveste-se de grande importância, sugerindo a possibilidade de terem ocorrido conflitos armados entre estas populações ao longo do Calcolítico (3º milénio BCE).
 Neste estudo propomos testar a hipótese da existência de evidências de guerra no Calcolítico com base numa análise funcional (cálculo do índice de penetração - Ipn) e petrográfica (identificação de microfácies, génese e locais de aprovisionamento das litologias) das pontas de seta recolhidas no interior da barbacã da fortificação.
 Em conclusão, estes novos resultados, a partir de “velhos” dados, são o ponto de partida para identificar as estratégias de abastecimento e as fases iniciais das cadeias operatórias das pontas de seta do Zambujal, reconhecendo a existência de complexas redes de circulação de bens no Calcolítico que incluem, provavelmente, estratégias de controlo regional e inter-regional, reflectindo relações de estabilidade ou instabilidade entre as comunidades pré-históricas.

Answer validation for generic crowdsourcing tasks with minimal efforts

Crowdsourcing has been established as an essential means to scale human computation in diverse Web applications, reaching from data integration to information retrieval. Yet, crowd workers have wide-ranging levels of expertise. Large worker populations are heterogeneous and comprise a significant amount of faulty workers. As a consequence, quality insurance for crowd answers is commonly seen as the Achilles heel of crowdsourcing. Although various techniques for quality control have been proposed in recent years, a post-processing phase in which crowd answers are validated is still required. Such validation, however, is typically conducted by experts, whose availability is limited and whose work incurs comparatively high costs. This work aims at guiding an expert in the validation of crowd answers. We present a probabilistic model that helps to identify the most beneficial validation questions in terms of both improvement in result correctness and detection of faulty workers. By seeking expert feedback on the most problematic cases, we are able to obtain a set of high-quality answers, even if the expert does not validate the complete answer set. Our approach is applicable for a broad range of crowdsourcing tasks, including classification and counting. Our comprehensive evaluation using both real-world and synthetic datasets demonstrates that our techniques save up to 60% of expert efforts compared to baseline methods when striving for perfect result correctness. In absolute terms, for most cases, we achieve close to perfect correctness after expert input has been sought for only 15% of the crowdsourcing tasks.