Short History Research Articles

Traduire ensemble pour faire résonner les voix de la marge

Although the history of translation and its iconography mostly convey to us a vision of translation as an individual and solitary activity (Monti, 2018, p. 9), in Canada, which is officially bilingual and multicultural at the federal level, the practice of literary translation has recently increasingly taken collective forms. In the following paper, the analysis will be based on two examples of a collaboration between literary translator Arianne Des Rochers with Natasha Kanapé-Fontaine (for the book Islands of Decolonial Love/Cartographie de l’amour décolonial) and with Édith Bélanger (for the book A Short History of the Blockade/Une brève histoire des barricades), the two works written in English by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, a leading figure in Canada’s Aboriginal resurgence.

Navalist blues: a short history of Turkey’s unorthodox navy leagues (1909–2021)

ABSTRACT This study tracks the shifts in Turkish pro-navalism by writing a short history of the Ottoman and Turkish navy leagues from 1909 to 2021. By studying the continuities and differences between these organisations, this paper makes two key arguments. Firstly, although the Ottoman and later Turkish navy leagues were similar to the ones found elsewhere, they differed with their primary focus being raising funds for naval rearmament projects. Secondly, the appearance of these navy leagues in the Turkish context coincides with periods of increased hostility in between Greece and the Ottoman Empire/Turkey. Periods of “thaw,” however, precluded a Turkish navy league of any sort. This suggests that Turkish pro-navalism and thus state tolerance for openly navalist organisations ebbed and flowed based on the country’s relationship with its Western neighbour. Aside from the scholarship at hand, this study uses documents from both Turkish and American governmental archives to make its case.

Tree-based analysis of longevity predictors and their ten-year changes: a 35-Year mortality follow-up

BackgroundPrior studies on longevity often examine predictors in isolation and rely solely on baseline information, limiting our understanding of the most important predictors and their dynamic nature. In this study, we used an innovative regression tree model to explore the common characteristics of those who lived longer than their age and sex peers in 35-years follow-up. We identified different pathways leading to a long life, and examined to how changes in characteristics over 10 years (from 1979 to 1989) affect the findings on longevity predictors.MethodsData was obtained from the “Tampere Longitudinal Study on Ageing” (TamELSA) in Finland. Survey data was collected in 1979 from 1056 participants aged 60–89 years (49.8% men). In 1989, a second survey was conducted among 432 survivors from the 1979 cohort (40.2% men). Dates of death were provided by the Finnish Population Register until 2015. We employed an individual measure of longevity known as the realized probability of dying (RPD), which was calculated based on each participant’s age and sex, utilizing population life tables. RPD is based on a comparison of the survival time of each individual of a specific age and sex with the survival time of his/her peers in the total population. A regression tree analysis was used to examine individual-based longevity with RPD as an outcome.ResultsThis relative measure of longevity (RPD) provided a complex regression tree where the most important characteristics were self-rated health, years of education, history of smoking, and functional ability. We identified several pathways leading to a long life such as individuals with (1) good self-rated health (SRH), short smoking history, and higher education, (2) good SRH, short smoking history, lower education, and excellent mobility, and (3) poor SRH but able to perform less demanding functions, aged 75 or older, willing to do things, and sleeping difficulties. Changes in the characteristics over time did not change the main results.ConclusionThe simultaneous examination of a broad range of potential predictors revealed that longevity can be achieved under very different conditions and is achieved by heterogeneous groups of people.

Short Spatiotemporal Fire History Explains the Occurrence of Beetles Favoured by Fire.

The number and area of forest fires in northern Europe have been dramatically reduced during the past century, and several fire-favoured species are now threatened. To promote the recovery of these species, prescribed burning is often used as a conservation measure, and to optimise the use of these conservation burns, knowledge is needed on suitable fire frequency, size and placement in the landscape. The aim of this study was to analyse the effect of recent fire history (12 yrs) on beetles sampled using smoke attraction traps at 21 forest sites in a 10,000 km2 region. We analysed the odds of finding a fire-favoured beetle species or individual among the beetles in each trap using a new spatiotemporal connectivity measure and compared the results to non-fire-favoured and saproxylic species. For fire-favoured beetles, both the number of species and individuals significantly increased with connectivity to previous fires, while the other two groups did not. The spatiotemporal connectivity that best explained the patterns suggests that fire-favoured beetles mainly respond to fires within a 2 km range up to 2-3 years after the fire. Hence, to preserve fire-favoured insects, prescribed fires must be close in space and time to other fires-whether prescribed or natural.

A short history of philosophies of hydrological model evaluation and hypothesis testing

A short history of philosophies of hydrological model evaluation and hypothesis testing

Invited Commentary: Thirty-five Years of Leaky Vaccines.

Over the past 35 years, the term "leaky vaccine" has gained widespread use in both mathematical modeling and epidemiologic methods for evaluating vaccines. Here we present a short history as we recall it of how the term was coined in the context of the history of sporozoite malaria vaccines that were thought to be possibly leaky in the 1980s. We draw a contrast with the all-or-none vaccine mechanism and review a few consequences for study design and population level effects. We invite readers to contribute information covering the time period preceding our memories in the 1980s as we may have overlooked something.

Underlying mechanisms for the effect of Nb micro-alloying on the elemental distribution and precipitation behavior in the X70 weld metal

Niobium (Nb) is a widely recognized micro-alloying element due to its low cost and substantial impact on steel properties. While the effect of Nb in processed steels has been well investigated, studies on its elemental distribution and precipitation behavior in weld metal remain scarce. This study focuses on the weld metal of specially designed Nb-rich X70 pipeline steel by scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) and energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS) characterization, complemented with thermodynamic and kinetics modeling analysis. In the majority of the weld, Nb was essentially uniformly distributed. This suggests that Nb primarily exists in the solid solution form in the weld metal, which is also supported by precipitation kinetics modeling results. This is primarily due to the short thermal history associated with the welding process, which leads to insufficient time for the uniform precipitation of Nb. Two instances of Nb precipitates were observed at the weld centerline and reinforcement region. The low partition coefficient of Nb results in an elevated local concentration along the weld centerline. However, precipitation kinetics calculations suggest that this enhancement alone is not adequate to induce precipitate formation. The occurrence of MnS and the prior formation of Ti precipitates may provide heterogeneous nucleation sites for Nb, facilitating the nucleation of Nb precipitates in the weld centerline and reinforcement region.

A short history of the smallest

Abstract This paper tells the story of the Standard Model of particle physics. That starts in the 1930s with the idea of the pion and then traces its roots from an embryonic quark theory to its contemporary form. Early scepticism towards the quark model dissolved as it elegantly elucidated baryon and meson structures, and helped to uncover the intricacies of the weak and strong interactions. The Δ++ particle’s existence demanded the introduction of ‘colour’ charge, giving birth to Quantum Chromodynamics. Successive discoveries of heavy quarks, heavy leptons and their corresponding neutrinos fortified the Standard Model. The verification of the existence of gluons, the discovery of the W and Z bosons, and - finally - the Higgs boson are considered triumphs of the theory. However, despite its success, the model has inadequacies, notably with regard to dark matter and energy, but also in explaining the very origin of its many free parameters. New ideas and discoveries are needed to help solve these mysteries.

Examples of entropy: from physics to nature

Abstract This paper aims to give a short history of how the concept of entropy has been developed and how it is used today in diverse scientific disciplines in our quest for understanding ourselves and our environment. The first part of the paper gives a historical perspective, which starts with the invention of the first heat engines, continues with the verbal formulation of the laws of thermodynamics and ends with the formulation of the mathematical equations that tell the complete story of thermodynamics by describing the transport of mass, momentum, energy and entropy. The second part of the paper focusses on the use of entropy beyond heat engines and shows how entropy has influenced the thinking in scientific disciplines such as chemistry, biology, ecology, communication, economy and sociology. Both a historical summary and the examples presented in this paper are limited to within the domain of classical mechanics. Although entropy has ignited powerful ideas and has many uses in both relativistic and quantum mechanics, these are not within the scope of this paper.

Education of Future Language Workers: Supporting Students’ Startups as a Teaching Strategy

The article discusses the role of student start-ups in general and their introduction into the academic curriculum as graduation projects in particular. The paper provides an overview and short history of the student start-up as a concept and the term, underlining, on the one hand, a contemporary demand for student entrepreneurship encouragement, their social capital built-up and University-industry collaboration but problematic ambiguity of their realization, on the other. The authors claim the innovations as it goes is most challenging for both teachers and students of non-business academic programs and requires a certain shift in teaching strategies as well as the curriculum. The paper dwells on the existing background of student start-ups in non-business fields and underlines that in such circumstances teaching and extracurricular activities become a major tool to promote the entrepreneurial intentions among the students. The authors claim the academic training can benefit from a suchlike approach and the transdisciplinary projects may serve as a practice-oriented cumulative ground for student start-ups. The paper illustrates how these projects can be implemented. The authors have stepped up their efforts towards introducing a student start-up to show how a certain student project can later launch them into business resulting in creating a new venture.

Kulturowe aspekty dark web

The article contains a review of research on the cultural aspects of the Dark Web. A semi-systematic literature review was used for this purpose, as such an approach enables the reviewing of a multi- or interdisciplinary research area. Scopus, an international and multidisciplinary database indexing academic publications, was the source of bibliographic data. It turned out that there is a relatively short history of research on the cultural aspects of the Dark Web. The first publications on the topic only appeared in the Scopus database in 2005, and it continues to be a niche area of research, with the annual number of indexed publications around a few dozen. The author distinguished the following groups of issues that researchers deal with: (1) motivations among Dark Web users for making use of this part of the internet; (2) the impact of the Dark Web’s existence and the anonymity it provides on human behaviour; (3) the specificity of trading activity on “dark markets”; (4) steps taken by illegal traders to gain a reputation and customer trust; (5) communication practices on discussion forums; (6) the freedom to disseminate information; and (7) the methodology for studying communities on “dark networks”.

Evolutionary Trends in Carbon Market Risk Research

The carbon emissions trading market is an essential tool for addressing climate change. The carbon emissions trading market has a relatively short history, and the research and management of risks in this market require further development. This paper takes as its research object 1272 pieces of English literature studies published by international scholars and featured on the Web of Science between 2002 and 2024. It uses CiteSpace software to categorize changes in the trends related to carbon market risk research based on time, space, and keyword clustering mapping. The results reveal the following: (1) In terms of the timeline, the risk evolution of the international carbon market is divided into an embryonic period (2002–2007), a developmental period (2008–2018), and a prosperous period (2019–2024); (2) from the perspective of spatial distribution, carbon market risk research institutions are multipolar, with China, the United States, and the United Kingdom, among other countries, issuing more studies on the topic; these studies mainly emerge from universities and research institutions; and (3) in terms of research hotspots, they revolve around four disciplinary issues, namely, primary research related to carbon market risk, carbon market risk categories, carbon market risk measurement, and response programs.

Decoding Bitcoin: leveraging macro- and micro-factors in time series analysis for price prediction.

Predicting Bitcoin prices is crucial because they reflect trends in the overall cryptocurrency market. Owing to the market's short history and high price volatility, previous research has focused on the factors influencing Bitcoin price fluctuations. Although previous studies used sentiment analysis or diversified input features, this study's novelty lies in its utilization of data classified into more than five major categories. Moreover, the use of data spanning more than 2,000 days adds novelty to this study. With this extensive dataset, the authors aimed to predict Bitcoin prices across various timeframes using time series analysis. The authors incorporated a broad spectrum of inputs, including technical indicators, sentiment analysis from social media, news sources, and Google Trends. In addition, this study integrated macroeconomic indicators, on-chain Bitcoin transaction details, and traditional financial asset data. The primary objective was to evaluate extensive machine learning and deep learning frameworks for time series prediction, determine optimal window sizes, and enhance Bitcoin price prediction accuracy by leveraging diverse input features. Consequently, employing the bidirectional long short-term memory (Bi-LSTM) yielded significant results even without excluding the COVID-19 outbreak as a black swan outlier. Specifically, using a window size of 3, Bi-LSTM achieved a root mean squared error of 0.01824, mean absolute error of 0.01213, mean absolute percentage error of 2.97%, and an R-squared value of 0.98791. Additionally, to ascertain the importance of input features, gradient importance was examined to identify which variables specifically influenced prediction results. Ablation test was also conducted to validate the effectiveness and validity of input features. The proposed methodology provides a varied examination of the factors influencing price formation, helping investors make informed decisions regarding Bitcoin-related investments, and enabling policymakers to legislate considering these factors.

Beyond Ellis Island: Unpacking the Negativity Around Contemporary Migration

The year 2024 is the 100th anniversary of the end of Ellis Island as the welcoming gateway to and for millions of international migrants to the United States. It is also a presidential election year in the same country, where migrants and migration are lambasted, even as the economy cannot have enough of them. This behaviour pattern is not unique. By focusing mainly on the United States, this paper proposes a set of inter-related explanations as to why immigration can become – and persist in being seen – as a negative policy issue in the public eye. First, anti-immigration rhetoric is adopted as a rallying call by at least one mainstream political party. Second, the country’s migration policies are enacted via executive order; and thus, they unwittingly become a proxy scorecard of alleged government inefficiency and incompetence, which, in turn, are projected as risks to national security. Third, in countries with either a relatively short history of independence, or with strong nativist cultures, nourished by a discourse of identity, patriotism, and a proto-ethnic sense of ‘the nation’, immigrants are seen to pose an existential threat; at best, any migrants have an obligation to ‘fit in’ via assimilation into their host community.

Case Report: Soft tissue infection with Burkholderia thailandensis capsular variant: case report from the Lao PDR

Background Burkholderia thailandensis is an environmental bacteria closely related to Burkholderia pseudomallei that rarely causes infection in humans. Some environmental isolates have shown to express a capsular polysaccharide known as B. thailandensis capsular variant (BTCV), but human infection has not previously been reported. Although B. thailandednisis has been identified in environmental samples in Laos before, there have not been any human cases reported. Case A 44-year-old man presented to a district hospital in Laos with a short history of fever and pain in his left foot. Physical examination identified a deep soft-tissue abscess in his left foot and an elevated white blood count. A deep pus sample was taken and melioidosis was suspected from preliminary laboratory tests. The patient was initially started on cloxacillin, ceftriaxone and metronidazole, and was then changed to ceftazidime treatment following local melioidosis treatment guidelines. Laboratory methods A deep pus sample was sent to Mahosot Hospital microbiology laboratory where a mixed infection was identified including Burkholderia sp. Conventional identification tests and API 20NE were inconclusive, and the B. pseudomallei-specific latex agglutination was positive. The isolate then underwent a Burkholderia species specific PCR which identified the isolate as B. thailandensis. The isolate was sent for sequencing on the Illumina NovaSeq 6000 system and multi-locus sequence typing analysis identified the isolate had the same sequence type (ST696) as B. thailandensis E555, a strain which expresses a B. pseudomallei-like capsular polysaccharide. Conclusion This is the first report of human infection with B. thailandensis in Laos, and the first report of any human infection with the B. thailandensis capsular variant. Due to the potential for laboratory tests to incorrectly identify this bacteria, staff in endemic areas for B. thailandensis and B. pseudomallei should be aware and ensure that appropriate confirmatory methods are used to differentiate between the species.

A short natural history of mental time travels: a journey still travelled?

Tulving's introduction of episodic memory and the metaphor of mental time travel has immensely enriched our understanding of human cognition. However, his focus on human psychology, with limited consideration of evolutionary perspectives, led to the entrenched notion that mental time travel is uniquely human. We contend that adopting a phylogenetic perspective offers a deeper insight into cognition, revealing it as a continuous evolutionary process. Adherence to the uniqueness of pre-defined psychological concepts obstructs a more complete understanding. We offer a concise natural history to elucidate how events that occurred hundreds of millions of years ago have been pivotal for our ability to mentally time travel. We discuss how the human brain, utilizing parts with ancient origins in a networked manner, enables mental time travel. This underscores that episodic memories and mental time travel are not isolated mental constructs but integral to our perception and representation of the world. We conclude by examining recent evidence of neuroanatomical correlates found only in great apes, which show great variability, indicating the ongoing evolution of mental time travel in humans.This article is part of the theme issue 'Elements of episodic memory: lessons from 40 years of research'.

System behaviour of water and environmental law

Rules and procedures of mechanical things might be revealed by a piece by piece, linear analysis, while large unorganised masses can be approached by means of statistics. However, there is a vast middle layer of entities with complex structure and hardly calculable non-linear procedures that offer themselves for system science. System thinking makes possible that we understand wicked problems, perfect storms and other similar phenomena that otherwise resist the old, positivist, silo-thinking. In these cases, we learn that elements of a system form structures, develop procedures through which they together produce such results that could have been unimaginable solely by the elements alone. Is it possible that with the help of system thinking we will be able to better grasp the essence of laws, moreover, we can design and implement laws with higher effectiveness? Is law a system? Or rather a complex tiered system of sub-systems, embedded into larger social-economic systems? In order to test these questions we analyse two intriguing sets of legal problems, to learn if we can describe and interpret them as systems that are – like systems generally – protecting their integrity with accommodation and resilience. The first example is the development of the segment of water laws that regulates drilling of small size wells for farms, where we see a 140 years process off gradual, more and more successful accommodation to the double social needs of protecting the interests of small farmers and sustainable development in respect to underground waters. This system resisted successfully an abrupt change that would have not fit to its goals. The second example is climate law as such – a relatively new development in the short history of modern environmental law, which can be hardly called a success story, because of the stiff resilience of the relevant branches of law. Indeed, resilience of law, as a complex, flexible and effective system does not always work according to our wishes.

What Is African Art? A Short History by Peter Probst

What Is African Art? A Short History by Peter Probst

Perceptual narrowing continues throughout childhood: Evidence from specialization of face processing

Face recognition shows a long trajectory of development and is known to be closely associated with the development of social skills. However, it is still debated whether this long trajectory is perceptually based and what the role is of experience-based refinements of face representations throughout development. We examined the effects of short and long-term experienced stimulus history on face processing, using regression biases of face representations towards the experienced mean. Children and adults performed same–different judgments in a serial discrimination task where two consecutive faces were drawn from a distribution of morphed faces. The results show that face recognition continues to improve after 9 years of age, with more pronounced improvements for own-race faces. This increased narrowing with age is also indicated by similar use of stimulus statistics for own-race and other-race faces in children, contrary to the different use of the overall stimulus history for these two face types in adults. Increased face proficiency in adulthood renders the perceptual system less tuned to other-race face statistics. Altogether, the results demonstrate associations between levels of specialization and the extent to which perceptual representations become narrowly tuned with age.

El Mauser Mexicano: A Short History of the Mauser Rifle in Mexico

Beginning in 1897, the 7 × 57 mm Mauser rifle became the reglementary shoulder weapon of the Mexican armed forces, a title it would hold for 70 years. Purchased abroad from various European countries or manufactured domestically, Mexico experimented with different Mauser variants in its quest to field a gun that could be used comfortably and effectively by the average soldier. Reliable and sturdy, these Mausers were prized trophies in the hands of the revolutionary forces, who could not access the European markets; they gladly discarded their rolling block and lever-action carbines in exchange for the captured bolt-action Mauser. In fact, Mauser rifles are still in use in Mexico today, in the hands of the Defensas Rurales operating in the highlands of Mexico. This article draws primarily on Spanish-language sources, including a range of primary and secondary sources held in Mexican collections such as the Casasola Archive, to present a chronology of Mexican Mauser rifles and an explanation of the industrial, strategic, and logistical considerations that shaped the Mexican military’s modern arms industry more generally. The exploration of the Mexican military archives also allows the author to delve into the decisions and factors influencing the choice and evolution of firearms within the Mexican armed forces. As a result, the article presents information on Mexican arms production and acquisition hitherto not covered in the English-language literature.