Large Point Research Articles

Hypopressive abdominal gymnastics protocol in postpartum women after cesarean section in the remote period: Preliminary case series

Background: The postpartum period is pronounced by important changes to return to the pre-pregnancy situation. During pregnancy, the recumbent muscles of the abdomen suffer withdrawal, characterizing diastasis of the rectus abdominis muscles (DRAM), and this condition may remain pathological postpartum. Hypopressive abdominal gymnastics (HAG) has a beneficial role in activating the abdominal muscles, presenting positive results in reducing DRAM. Objective: To describe the effect of a HAG protocol in postpartum women undergoing cesarean section in the remote period, comparing the inter-rectum distance (IRD) and abdominal circumference before and after applying the protocol. Methods: Case series quasi-experimental character involving participants had their IRD assessed using a portable ultrasound machine with a linear transducer and abdominal circumference measured using a flexible measuring tape. They received a HAG protocol, with nine postures, for three weeks, twice a week, totaling six sessions lasting 45 to 60 minutes each. After intervention, all participants were reevaluated using the same methods. Results: Four postpartum women participated. The largest point before intervention was the umbilical at rest. Both supraumbilical points analyzed obtained greater results in reducing IRD. Participant 001 achieved the greatest reduction in IRD after the protocol, as she had higher IRD values ​​during evaluation, in addition to a high body mass index (BMI) and a largest measurement of abdominal circumference. The measurement of abdominal circumference showed a change after HAG, reaching a reduction of 10 cm in one of the participants. Conclusion: This case series demonstrated positive results from the practice of HAG in reducing RAD, mainly supra-umbilical, and also in reducing abdominal circumference. Participants with higher BMI and waist circumference showed greater reductions in IRD.

Optimal pricing and capacity management in service systems with delay-sensitive mixed-risk customers

In service systems with delay-sensitive customers, customer decisions to join the queue or balk influence demand, impacting service provider profits. Studies show that customers can be risk-seeking for short waits and risk-averse when waits exceed expectations. Prior research on this mixed-risk attitude is limited, focussing on optimal pricing policies from a social welfare perspective. This study fills this gap by investigating the impact of this behaviour on customer joining strategies and the provider's pricing and capacity policies. We analyse a profit-maximising firm managing an unobservable queue where customers display mixed-risk behaviour towards delay parameterised by a risk-switching point and a degree of risk propensity. Customers join or balk based on expected utility, while the firm determines the service price and rate to maximise expected profit. We derive optimal strategies for both customers and the firm under scenarios with concave or convex capacity costs. Computational experiments show that optimal pricing, capacity, and profit peak at intermediate risk-switching points. For smaller points, optimal price and capacity rise with the customers' degree of risk propensity, while larger points have minimal impact. Numerical exploration emphasises the significance of capacity cost and the effectiveness of leveraging price over controlling capacity for maximising firm profitability.

Juvenile Justice in Victorian Scotland by Christine Kelly

Reviewed by: Juvenile Justice in Victorian Scotland by Christine Kelly William S. Bush Juvenile Justice in Victorian Scotland. By Christine Kelly. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2019. viii + 246 pp. Scotland is one of only a handful of countries today that maintains a largely decriminalized, welfare-driven approach to juvenile justice. In place of juvenile courts and secure detention facilities, Scotland utilizes children's hearings and community-based interventions for all but the most serious cases of youth offending. Many observers trace this system to a "revolution" fifty years ago, promulgated by Scottish judge Lord James Kilbrandon. In 1964, the Kilbrandon report decried Scotland's overuse of prison-like residential reformatories and industrial schools. As a result, Scotland abandoned its existing system for a community-based justice model that remains distinctive, both within and beyond the United Kingdom.1 Juvenile Justice in Victorian Scotland argues that the Kilbrandon reforms represented a culmination of, rather than a radical departure from, the previous century. Compassion fueled the Victorian-era reformers who founded Scotland's first juvenile justice programs in response to rampant child poverty in its industrializing cities (43–8). In the "pre-statutory" first half of the nineteenth century, explains author Christine Kelly, city governments developed policing practices that ensnared growing numbers of children and youth. The problem of children jailed with adults quickly elicited a humanitarian response from a generation of reformers in the 1840s, led by Sheriff William Watson of Aberdeen, "the most eminent reformer of juvenile justice in Victorian Scotland" (65). Watson invented and popularized the industrial day school, which fed and cared for neglected, destitute, and nonserious youth offenders. Funded locally, these schools offered academic and vocational training but, importantly for its leaders, also sought to inculcate middle-class habits of "respectability" (66). Unlike the influential reformatory in Mettray, France, emulated across England, the Scottish industrial day schools not only allowed their charges to return to their families each evening but also sought to uplift the family unit through its children. By the 1850s, other towns and cities were launching industrial day schools with Watson's guidance. This generation of reformers embraced an emergent notion of protected childhood that called for a shared social responsibility to [End Page 307] care for rather than punish impoverished and delinquent youth. "If society leaves them knowingly in the state of utter degradation," asserted Watson's contemporary, English reformer Mary Carpenter, "I think it absolutely owes them reparation, far more than they can be said to owe reparation to it" (74). This philosophy soon gave way to more punitive and carceral approaches, largely imported from England. Kelly guides us through complex legislative developments in Scotland and the United Kingdom that by the 1870s resulted in the expanded use of secure, residential training schools for youth increasingly viewed as "the dangerous classes" (80). The growth of imprisonment departed from Watson's approach, separating children from their families while billing parents for the expense of their children's incarceration (87–88). Between 1864 and 1884, the number of children held in industrial schools throughout the United Kingdom exploded from 1,668 to 18,780 (188), while the daily regime of those schools shifted from education to prison-style labor. Kelly intersperses her policy discussions with brief case studies of individual children that illustrate her larger points. She also recounts struggles into the twentieth century to restore the original humanitarian vision of Scotland's early reformers, with some local judges resisting pressure to abandon an individualized approach to juvenile cases. By the passage of the Children's Act of 1908, which established Scotland's first separate juvenile courts and removed most children from prisons, Scottish children were being "criminalized" on "an immense scale" through extended incarceration for nonserious offenses (166). This law ended widespread use of imprisonment, introduced juvenile probation, and acknowledged the special place of children within the criminal justice system. However, it did not significantly alter the individualized approach first introduced by the Victorian-era reformers. Moreover, overincarceration and neglect persisted, culminating with the Kilbrandon inquiry and report in the 1960s. The twentieth century receives much less attention here, as it falls beyond the scope of this study; however, non-experts on this...

Raindrop animation: Visualizing change in longitudinal biomarker data

AbstractBackgroundThe Knight ADRC has collected fluid biomarker data from some participants over more than >15 years, affording a unique opportunity to explore trends in the progression of Alzheimer disease biomarkers. Evaluation of intra‐individual change provides a uniquely powerful approach to understanding the development of Alzheimer disease pathophysiology, notably non‐linear changes in biomarkers. To facilitate understanding of longitudinal analyses, an approach was developed to visualize longitudinal change in biomarkers.MethodSamples from ADRC participants enrolled in studies of memory and aging were analyzed for CSF Aβ40, Aβ42, total tau, and phospho‐tau181 using the fully automated LUMIPULSE assay platform (Fujirebio). Plasma Aβ40 and Aβ42 were measured via a high‐precision immunoprecipitation‐mass spectrometry assay (C2N Diagnostics). Brain amyloid burden was measured within two years of fluid collection via amyloid PET. Biomarker values between measurements were estimated by linear regression. A Shiny application was written in R to visualize estimated longitudinal biomarker values on a granular time scale.ResultThe R Shiny and ggplot2 packages were used to create interactive animated plots of biomarker changes over time. This application utilizes CSF, plasma, and amyloid PET data to display within‐participant longitudinal change of the selected biomarkers as a function of other baseline biomarker measurements. The estimated biomarker value at a timepoint after the baseline is shown as a larger point, and the estimated values from the previous year are shown as smaller points, giving the visual appearance of one raindrop for each individual. The interface allows for users to select the biomarkers represented on each axis, color coding by longitudinal or baseline biomarker values, and biomarker cut‐offs. The user can animate the customized graph to show changes over >15 years of accumulated longitudinal data.ConclusionOur web‐based application allows for visualization of biomarker changes over time. This tool allows for comparison of CSF, plasma, and imaging markers in an interactive format, facilitating the creation of novel hypotheses by observation of longitudinal trends.

Burkert, Mattie. Speculative Enterprise: Public Theaters and Financial Markets in London: 1688–1763

Burkert, Mattie. <i>Speculative Enterprise: Public Theaters and Financial Markets in London: 1688–1763</i>

A Human Rights Catalyst

In 2004, the historian Kenneth Cmiel surveyed the then-infant field of human rights history for the American Historical Review.1 Cmiel described the pioneering work of historians, political scientists, legal scholars, and journalists. He explained that much of the field focused on historicizing human rights language or uncovering the activism of key actors and organizations. Cmiel highlighted a number of turning points—in the 1940s, the 1970s, and the 1990s—in the twentieth-century history of human rights. His largest point was simple, though: much work remained to be done. Vanessa Walker was at the beginning of her graduate training in 2004. Her superb new book, Principles in Power: Latin America and the Politics of U.S. Human Rights Diplomacy, exemplifies the evolution of human rights history. Cmiel dedicated only a few paragraphs to the 1970s in his essay, Latin America, Chile, and Argentina received scant mention, and U.S. President Jimmy Carter did not make an appearance. Cmiel was not at fault; his essay reflected the state of the field. But now, fifteen years on, Walker, and others, have greatly expanded our understanding of human rights in all of these areas.2

A or I‐A? Unifying the computational structures of process‐ and IO‐based LCA for clarity and consistency

AbstractWhy are both and used in life cycle assessment (LCA) matrix computations? This is a question that, in our experience of teaching LCA, students often wonder about and struggle with. A brief survey of the literature suggests that the question can also confuse experienced LCA practitioners. Here, we seek to unify the computational structures of the two LCA approaches to achieve greater clarity and consistency, especially to make them easier to teach. We first show how small but crucial differences in the set‐up of the two approaches lead to the use of versus . Then, we discuss the options to unify the presentations in a coherent way. We do not prescribe one way or the other. A larger point we hope to stress is the importance of unification, which may have both pedagogical and methodological benefits.

On Second Thought

On Second Thought

The Witch of Edmonton

Reviewed by: The Witch of Edmonton Amy Scott The Witch of Edmonton Presented by Creation Theatre, live online via Auditorium, 5–20 March 2022. Directed and adapted by Laura Jayne Wright. Creative Producer Lucy Askew. Assistant Producer Luwa Adebanjo. Production Manager Giles Stoakley. Stage Manager Conal Walsh. Assistant Stage Manager Michael Deacon. Video Design by Stuart Read. With Lola Boulter (Winnifride), Guy Clark (Frank), Leda Douglas (Kate Carter), Ryan Duncan (Dog), Chloe Lemonius (Susan Carter), Graeme Rose (Old Carter), Giles Stoakley (Old Thorney), P. K. Taylor (Old Ratcliffe), Anna Tolputt (Elizabeth Sawyer), and Amelia Fewtrill (Anne Ratcliffe). When theaters closed in 2020 due to COVID-19, Creation Theatre began blending live performance with a digital platform to produce a unique playgoing experience. Their March 2022 production of William Rowley, Thomas Dekker, and John Ford’s The Witch of Edmonton effectively demonstrated the possibilities for this kind of format, and reflected the company’s ongoing efforts to develop the audiovisual effects used in their productions of The Duchess of Malfi (March 2021, reviewed in SB 39.3) and The Tempest (April/May 2020, reviewed in SB 38.3). The title page for the 1658 The Witch of Edmonton categorizes it as a “tragicomedy,” and Creation Theatre’s format heightened the play’s weirdness, generic indeterminacy, and nightmarish atmosphere. This well-acted production thoughtfully explored the perspectives and beliefs about witchcraft that the play not only dramatizes and questions but also reinforces. Wright began with the question of how the audience was to judge Elizabeth Sawyer, with actor Ryan Duncan opening the play by reading the indictment of Elizabeth Sawyer directly to the audience and then exhorting the audience to “see for yourself, judge for yourself.” While viewers did not know it yet, Duncan was cast in the role of the dog and was therefore revealed later as the play’s central malevolent force. In this extratextual introductory frame, Duncan had not yet donned the sharp teeth that he would later wear to signify his canine role; however, with his derisive delivery of the indictment, he was clearly already “in character.” For instance, when he read that Sawyer was accused of having a dog familiar, Duncan rushed over that detail, trying to hide, as it were, his own complicity. Duncan’s encouragement to the audience to “see for yourself, judge for yourself ” was quickly complicated by the fact that, when the dog spoke his first lines in the play proper, the viewer slipped into the dog’s point of [End Page 460] view. Looking at Sawyer from a position below her through a red filter, the audience saw her as a dog might see a human. The viewers were not “seeing for themselves” in this instance, in other words, but rather seeing with the dog’s eyes. The larger point that Wright made here and throughout the production with shifts in point of view was that there is no one authentic point of view through which to see and judge. Indeed, when the dog finally became visible to the viewer, only his sharp teeth differentiated him from the other characters and his image was transparent, layered over Sawyer’s own face, making him seem less like an otherworldly fiend than an embodiment of Sawyer’s interiority. Throughout the production, between scenes, women read the indictments of historical women who were, like Sawyer, accused of and executed for witchcraft. Wright’s decision to weave these histories into this production summoned the specter of the real Elizabeth Sawyer, in contrast to the play’s version of her. It reminded the audience that if they were to judge Elizabeth Sawyer as they had been encouraged to do by the play, The Witch of Edmonton was just one text in a much larger history. The simple black and white backgrounds for scenes in Edmonton (forests, a church, a row of houses, a library) matched the bleakness of a play in which there is very little hope that a better society will emerge after the punishment of Sawyer and Frank Thorney. The backgrounds also stylistically matched the black and white filter used when the indictments against other historical women were read. The production in those moments resembled...

Research on Point Cloud Registration Algorithm Based on Boundary Harris-3D Points and 4PCS

Abstract Point cloud registration based on the 4PCS+ICP algorithm will lead to many problems such as large registration error, low efficiency, and unstable running time, especially when it encounters large point cloud data, these problems will be more prominent, which greatly limits the application of the algorithm. Based on these shortcomings, we propose an optimized registration algorithm, called BH4PCS, to improve the applicability of the 4PCS algorithm. In our method, we first extract the boundary Harris-3D points through the edge detection algorithm and Harris-3D key point extraction method, then we use the 4PCS algorithm for point cloud coarse registration, and finally use KD-ICP to speed up the fine registration. After experimental verification and comparison with the existing artworks, our proposed algorithm registers the larger point cloud model by only using a small number of data points, optimizing the registration efficiency, accuracy, and operation stability of the 4PCS + ICP registration method, and has good robustness to outliers.

Serial Forms: The Unfinished Project of Modernity, 1815–1848

Serial Forms: The Unfinished Project of Modernity, 1815–1848

Reflecting on Reactions to Hagia Sophia’s Reopening as a Mosque

Reflecting on Reactions to Hagia Sophia's Reopening as a Mosque Patricia Blessing (bio) and Ali Yaycıoğlu (bio) KEYWORDS Hagia Sophia, Istanbul, Ottoman, Byzantine In this essay, we reflect on the conversion of Hagia Sophia from museum back to mosque in light of the discussions that have taken place since the transformation happened on 24 July 2020. Let us begin with the initial reactions to the museum-to-mosque conversion, especially in mainstream media in the US and Europe. In much of that reporting, Hagia Sophia's Byzantine past was emphasized, and narratives of Ottoman conquest connected to misleading notions of Islamic iconoclasm followed. Thus, the building's life as a church (537–1453) has obscured its history as a mosque (1453–1934). Among reactions to the 2020 transformation, writing that also carefully considered the Hagia Sophia's Ottoman context, and the fact that the building was affected by changes in Ottoman political and religious life over time, was slow to emerge.1 Why does this matter? Hagia Sophia is a Byzantine monument, it is an Ottoman monument, and it was until 2020 one of modern Turkey's most important museum-monuments. This statement should be self-apparent, yet in reactions to the museum-to-mosque conversion, Hagia Sophia at times appeared only as a Byzantine monument that has now—through the insistence of Turkey's current government, fulfilling a long-time dream of right-wing politics—turned into a mosque to the detriment of its Byzantine past. We contend that this view is mistaken because it does not take into account the entire history of the building, and it neglects the multiple and complex past(s) of both the monument and the city where it is located. Interestingly in Turkey, we have a mirror image of this one-dimensional representation of Hagia Sophia, this time as a mosque. The Ottoman conquest of the city in 1453, according to the supporters of Hagia Sophia's conversion, was seen as an almost eschatological event, resulting in the building's rebirth [End Page 197] as a spiritual monument for Muslims, rendering its earlier history irrelevant. This view becomes clear from the name of the building, which now appears as "Ayasofya-i Kebir Camii" (Grand Ayasofya Mosque) on an official website presenting cultural sites in Turkey.2 Commemorative coins issued recently use the same name with the dates 1453–2020, ignoring the first 900 years of Hagia Sophia's existence.3 Islamists saw the 1934 decision to turn the mosque into a museum during the early Turkish republic as a top-down imposition, ignoring the sensitivities of pious Muslims and also waqf law. This conquest narrative emphasizing the rebirth of the building as a mosque has, since the 1950s, been popular among different branches of Turkey's right wing political establishment. It is now also the official view of the state, the result of a larger push toward homogenizing the historical representation of Istanbul under the Islamist AKP (in alliance with the nationalist MHP). In recent years, we have seen the government pursue a political agenda based on the representation of Istanbul as a Sunni Muslim Turkish city in a Sunni Muslim Turkey, with a glorious Sunni, Muslim, Turkish and Ottoman past. This agenda belies the past and present ethnic, racial, and religious diversity of the city (and Turkey at large). An open question at the moment is whether the new administration of Istanbul under Ekrem İmamoğlu, the social democrat mayor who was elected in June 2019 after defeating a decades-old Islamist municipal government, will change this monolithic representation. The larger point concerning the suppression of Byzantine heritage goes beyond Istanbul, but is especially poignant there due to the number of extant sites, most of which have functioned as mosques since the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.4 Of these sites, Hagia Sophia and the Kariye Camii/Chora Church are the only ones that had been functioning as museums until summer 2020. Soon after Hagia Sophia's reopening as a mosque, an analogous decision was taken for the Kariye Camii/Chora Church, raising fears about the fate of its fourteenth-century mosaics and wall-paintings.5 As Christina Maranci has...

TO DRAIN OR NOT TO DRAIN: A THERAPEUTIC CONUNDRUM IN A PATIENT WITH PERICARDIAL TAMPONADE AND EISENMENGER SYNDROME

TOPIC: Cardiovascular Disease TYPE: Medical Student/Resident Case Reports INTRODUCTION: PAH is diagnosed when mean pulmonary artery pressure is greater or equal to 20 mmHg at rest with a pulmonary vascular resistance =3 Wood units. In regions without endemic schistosomiasis, it is commonly idiopathic (1). Eisenmenger syndrome (ES) is the most advanced form of pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) and is associated with several congenital heart defects such as ASDS, VSDS etc. CASE PRESENTATION: We present the case of a 30-year-old patient with a past medical history of Trisomy-21, unrestricted ventricular septal defect (VSD) complicated by Eisenmenger Syndrome, PAH (On Treprostinil and Bosentan), chronic hypoxia and Hashimoto's Thyroiditis, who presented from his group home for acute on chronic shortness of breath and fever. Initially, he was hypoxic and hypotensive with signs of severe volume overload on physical exam. Oxygen saturations improved mildly on high flow nasal cannula (HFNC). CT chest and bedside echocardiogram showed a massive pericardial effusion (4.5 cm at the largest point) with tamponade physiology, and pulsus paradoxus (Figure 1,2,3). He was started on vasopressors, inotropes, intravenous prostacyclin and inhaled epoprostenol. Extracorporeal membrane oxygen (ECMO) was planned to stabilize him and drain the effusion, but the family refused ECMO. A Swanz Ganz catheter was placed under fluoroscopic guidance to help guide management but it crossed the VSD and inadvertently ended up in the aorta after which it was removed. After multiple discussions with adult congenital heart disease experts, it was decided that draining the pericardial effusion was not an option given the concern for acute right ventricular failure which could precipitate hemodynamic collapse and cardiac arrest. Another concern was bleeding complications especially bleeding into the pericardial cavity from inadvertently puncturing the multiple collateral vessels that such patients develop. The patient gradually developed increasing vasopressor requirements and eventually passed away. DISCUSSION: A pericardial effusion develops when fluid accumulates between the two layers of pericardium. In PAH, it may develop due to elevated right atrial pressures or underlying connective tissue disease. Its presence in PAH is associated with a significantly increased risk of death and the decision to drain such an effusion remains highly controversial. Multiple studies have reported dismal prognosis of patients who have had such effusions drained (2). The Euro heart survey reported that mortality was particularly high in patients with Eisenmenger's, and they had an increased frequency of major bleeding events as well (2). CONCLUSIONS: Pericardial effusion drainage in patients with pulmonary arterial hypertension is controversial and is associated with poor outcomes. Mortality is particularly high in patients with Eisenmenger's, and a multidisciplinary approach should be utilized to manage such patients. REFERENCE #1: Simonneau G, Montani D, Celermajer DS, et al. Haemodynamic definitions and updated clinical classification of pulmonary hypertension. Eur Respir J. 2019;53(1):1801913. REFERENCE #2: Engelfriet PM, Duffels MG, Möller T, et al. Pulmonary arterial hypertension in adults born with a heart septal defect: the Euro Heart Survey on adult congenital heart disease. Heart. 2007;93(6):682-687. DISCLOSURES: No relevant relationships by Saad Farooq, source=Web Response No relevant relationships by ELLIOT SULTANIK, source=Web Response No relevant relationships by Guy Weigold, source=Web Response No relevant relationships by Omar Yacob, source=Web Response

Review: Cool Town: How Athens Georgia Launched Alternative Music and Changed American Culture, by Grace Elizabeth Hale

Review: Cool Town: How Athens Georgia Launched Alternative Music and Changed American Culture, by Grace Elizabeth Hale

Trophy Hunters: War Writing in the Twentieth Century

Trophy Hunters: War Writing in the Twentieth Century

The Effect of Isometric Scaling on Flaked Stone Projectile Point Impact Durability: An Experimental Assessment

ABSTRACT A variety of flaked stone projectile point attributes can affect impact durability, which is the relationship between projectile impact force and point breakage. We examine the role of isometric scaling – size – on impact durability. Using 30 experimentally knapped points that varied predominately only in size, we conducted a ballistics experiment to understand whether points of certain sizes were more likely to break, or more likely to lose length, either absolutely or as a percentage of original length. Our results suggested that points of different sizes did not differ in how much absolute length they lost, but that there is a significant relationship between point size and percentage of original length lost – namely that larger points are more likely to lose less percentage length. Our experimental results suggest that point size should be considered along with shape and other attributes in future studies of impact durability and technological evolution.

Lift Study of a Flapping MAV Wing Design Based on Bat Wings

Bio-inspiration is a design ideation method that uses observations found in nature to solve a mechanical problem. In this study, a simulation study of a micro air vehicle (MAV) wing design that is based on bat wings was done and validated experimentally. The wing model was generated using an in vivo observation where the margin wing shape was traced and then used to generate a flat wing with a margin shape of a batwing. The lift of the wing was studied at 4m/s wind speed with a flapping angle of 55°, and at the angle of attack from 0° to 35°. The simulation was done using ANSYS V1.6 software and the experimental study was done using an open circuit subsonic wind tunnel. It was observed that the wing has a stall angle of 25° and a CLmax of 3.2. The result also shows that the difference between the simulation and the observation result to be small with 0.2% at the smallest point and 5% at the largest point. This shows that the simulation model was valid and can be used for future wing design.

Bahia's Independence: Popular Politics and Patriotic Festival in Salvador, Brazil, 1824–1900

Brazil's independence was unique within Latin America. The transition from a colonial holding to an independent nation witnessed no major battles, retained continuity with the same royal family, and, most significantly, produced an empire rather than a republic. Within the limited arena of battles, the most important skirmishes took place around Salvador, capital of the Northeastern state of Bahia. Since the 1820s, patriots there have long labored to preserve this distinction. The creation of a commemorative celebration known as Dois de Julho (Second of July) was central to this effort and has been surprisingly long-lasting in its power to mobilize people in the streets. It is still celebrated today and continues to be one of Bahia's most significant civic festivals, although it never succeeded in achieving status as a national celebration.Hendrik Kraay's book Bahia's Independence seeks to uncover the early roots of this celebration and to trace its transformations over the first century of its existence. Over the course of his work, he argues that the festival was political in its origins and more generally attempts to correct an older historiography that he proposes has obscured the festival's true political origins and significance. Following the contributions of James Sanders and others, he argues that the early years of the century witnessed surprisingly broad and liberal participation in politics at the local level. Insisting that participants were also engaging in nation making through involvement in political events such as the festival, he advocates that politics in early independent Brazil were not nearly so restrictive as once believed.While the framing of Kraay's work engages with these larger political questions, the chapters themselves delve into close and painstaking study of the festival itself and its involvement in the larger Bahian political scene. The first three chapters are dedicated to tracing change over time. In chapter 1 Kraay shows that the origins of the festival, often assumed to be popular and somewhat spontaneous, were in fact more political than early folklorists and historians wished to acknowledge. Kraay situates the festival both as a continuation of civic and religious celebrations of the colonial era and as a tool by local radicals to influence political debates. The next two chapters continue this chronological narrative, revealing a broader popular participation in the 1850s and 1860s that became threatening enough to political authorities who were attempting to impose order that some elements of the celebration were banned altogether. Chapter 4 steps back to try to analyze participants' understanding of the festival, an undertaking made difficult by the uneven record of newspapers during the nineteenth century, the primary source base for Kraay's study. The event was framed without reference to Brazil's system of slavery, although it did incorporate an indigenous female symbol (referred to as a cabocla) as a central icon and element in the celebrations, despite growing discomfort with the symbol at the close of the nineteenth century. Chapter 5 looks at how a dynamic theater scene, charged with developing national themes, took up the topic of Bahia's independence struggles in galas and plays for the elite. And chapter 6 analyzes the battles that unfolded over the placement of and symbols to be used with a monument dedicated to the event. As Kraay shows, though city officials tried to relocate the center of festivities to a more formal square in the center of town focused around the new monument, popular understandings continued to ground the festivities elsewhere.As he moves through the analysis in the course of the chapters, Kraay returns to several larger points. One is that Bahia's focus on battles as the ultimate cause of independence challenged traditional narratives that exclusively privileged the actions of Pedro I. This counternarrative revealed a significant form of radical liberalism in Latin America that early on imagined the nation as having popular roots and origins, albeit with somewhat unclear racial dynamics. A second is that regionalism and nationalism fed into one another, a point well developed for the twentieth century. Kraay suggests, however, that this nineteenth-century regionalism was set apart from its twentieth-century counterparts by the latter's focus on cultural distinctiveness, a contrast that deserves further development.Kraay's research throughout the book is fine-grain and detailed, and he has dedicated 20 years to uncovering all available sources for this study in archives and especially newspapers. The reader, however, may sometimes get lost in the details, particularly in the chapters tracing the festival's alterations over time; more streamlining would have helped the reader hold on to the important points more easily. Such a critique, however, should not take away from the quality of this work. The book's larger arguments are engaging and important, and this meticulous work should interest scholars of nineteenth-century popular politics across Brazil and Latin America.

Search for Identity: A Study of Manju Kapur’s Difficult Daughters

This paper presents the woman as a person who fights against concealment and mistreatment of the male-controlled society. The novel Difficult Daughters reasonably shows the situation of ladies and her aching battle to build up an identity. Manju Kapur has come out as a genuine social scholar in her novels in light of the fact that there is a reason behind her composition. Her novels has been composed with a distinct reason in the light of the fact that the author attempts to dissect issues identified with the working class or upper white-collar class women. Manju Kapur is greatly intrigued to present the inquiries and issues identified with women’s from larger point of view. In her novels, the questions have developed basically with regards to the identity of the educated working-class women. Manju Kapur's female protagonists are generally well-read. They are resilient people yet detained inside the limit of moderate society. Their instruction drives them to free speculation for which their family and society become unbearable to them, in their individual fight with family and society through which they dove into a committed exertion to look a personality for them as the qualified woman with flawless foundation. The author has depicted her protagonist as woman trapped in the contention between the interests of the fragile living creature and longing to be a piece of the political and scholarly society of today.

Are We There Yet? Preemptory Issues of Arbitrability and Jurisdiction in Contracts Tainted by Corruption Allegations

With a steady growth of International business transactions, corruption has intensified across all sectors of economic activity. Some of the effects of this tectonic shift has also been felt in Arbitration forums, cutting across all forms, even though the methodology of truce remains contentious. One of the primary investigations in this scholarship is to come out with answers to the burgeoning question of ‘how to deal with corruption’ in the field of Arbitration law. For years since the ICC Case of 1963, corruption allegations have thrown some confusing propositions before the arbitral tribunals across the globe, lending a parallel and divided jurisprudence on the matters where contracts tainted by corruption are argued. This has in turn caused a fetch shift transformation in how these allegations are investigated and what consequences they may cast on the resulting awards across forms of arbitration. The present article tries to paint a wholesome picture of the peremptory issues of ratione materie jurisdiction, arbitrability and to some extent, even admissibility in the light of corruption ridden contractual claims. Firstly, a comparison is drawn with arbitral forums dealing with investment treaty based issues and contractual matters involving private parties. Secondly, an inquiry is led into the arbitrability of contracts, where corruption allegations are raised. Thirdly, an examination is conducted on the modern arbitral confusion around the powers of the arbitral tribunals in terms of evidentiary procedure, investigative powers and jurisdictional authority. Finally, a discussion is conducted on the consequences that flow from the finding of corruption in contracts. While, these answers may not get a unanimous response in terms of their viability, they nonetheless initiates an expedition into the larger point of deflection, ‘Are We There Yet’.