Theoretical Treatise Research Articles

Review: Leopold Eidlitz: Architecture and Idealism in the Gilded Age, by Kathryn E. Holliday

Kathryn E. Holliday ; Leopold Eidlitz: Architecture and Idealism in the Gilded Age ; New York and London: W.W. Norton & Co., 2008, 168 pp., 8 color and 150 b/w illus. $55.00, ISBN 9780393732399 Students of nineteenth-century American architecture often recall astonished first impressions of P. T. Barnum's home, the domestic extravaganza Iranistan (1848), and of the glittering, fantastic interior of New York's Temple Emanu-El, formerly at Fifth Avenue and 43rd Street (1866––68). Their architect, Prague-born Leopold Eidlitz (1823––1908) is well known for these and other works, and as the rare nineteenth-century architect to attempt a theoretical treatise on contemporary practice. Eidlitz's The Nature and Function of Art, More Especially of Architecture (London, 1881) was described by William H. Jordy and Ralph Coe as the fullest statement of the functional-organic view of architecture …… produced by any nineteenth-century American.1 Kathryn Holliday's book is the first published account of Eidlitz's built and written oeuvre, parts of which had been examined in earlier master's theses and PhD dissertations. In five chapters, Holliday presents a chronological and thematic narrative of Eidlitz's nearly five-decade career. A catalog of the architect's built and unexecuted projects is included as an appendix. This is no small accomplishment. There are only five extant buildings by Eidlitz in New York, the city with which he is most closely associated. Fewer than ten of his drawings are known, and his personal papers are lost. Despite these drawbacks, Holliday's presentation of …

Simple and Sustainable Earthen Architecture: Innovative Buildings from Local Materials

AbstractIn nearly all hot-arid and temperate climates, earth has always been the most prevalent building material. Even today, one third of the human population resides in earthen houses; in developing countries this figure is more than one half. It has proven impossible to fulfill the immense requirements for shelter in the developing countries with industrial building materials, i.e. brick, concrete and steel, nor with industrialized construction techniques. In the developing countries, requirements for shelter can be met only by using local building materials and relying on do-it-yourself construction techniques. Earth is the most important natural building material, and it is available in most regions of the world. It is frequently obtained directly from the building site when excavating foundations or basements. In the industrialized countries, careless exploitation of resources and centralized capital combined with energy-intensive production is not only wasteful; it also pollutes the environment and increases unemployment. In these countries, earth is being revived as a building material. Earth as a building material comes in a thousand different compositions, and can be variously processed. Loam, or clayey soil, as it is referred to scientifically, has different names when used in various applications, for instance rammed earth, soil blocks, mud bricks or adobe. Increasingly, people when building homes demand energy- and cost-effective buildings that emphasize a healthy, balanced indoor climate. They are coming to realize that mud, as a natural building material, is superior to industrial building materials such as concrete, brick and lime-sandstone. The data and experiences and the specific realizations of earth construction contained in this paper may be used as guidelines for a variety of construction processes and possible applications by engineers, architects, entrepreneurs, craftsmen and public policy-makers who find themselves attempting, either from desire or necessity, to come to terms with humanity’s oldest building material. Then in concluding the paper, various buildings of this kind are documented. They can be traditional or modern, simple or sophisticated, humble or exclusive. This paper deals with earth as a building material, and provides a summary survey of all of its applications and construction techniques. Written in response to an increasing worldwide interest in building with earth. No theoretical treatise, however, can substitute for practical experience involving actually building with earth.

Analytical investigation of an on-road in-pit heavy traffic situation

The paper considers the problem of an on-road in-pit heavy traffic situation that might occur during the operation of a shovel-truck system. During their travel, trucks encounter other pieces of haulage frequently that can affect the truck's performance. It is a well-known fact that by increasing the number of trucks in the system, the productivity of the truck system grows. However, this only works to a certain degree because when many haulers circulate in a given pit, they might start to interfere with one another, and the system's productivity begins to decrease. The authors present an approach how to analyse such a situation by applying the Sivazlian and Wang queuing model. An example is given illustrating the theoretical treatise.

A theoretical treatise for notch and defect sensitivity under torsion

A sound theoretical study on defect and notch sensitivity under torsion loading is carried out, with the aim to extend to mode III a diagram proposed some years ago by Atzori and Lazzarin, which makes explicit the bridging at the fatigue limit between defect sensitivity and notch sensitivity under tension loading. Analogies and differences between the previous and the new diagram are highlighted. Finally some new expressions for the notch sensitivity under torsion are presented as well.

Art Education Aims in the Age of New Media: Moving Toward Global Civil Society

Tchnology is ubiquitous (Delacruz, 2009b). Kids and families, students and communities are plugged in, cued to the latest electronic developments and diversions, ready to creatively adapt them to their own purposes. Scholars and policy makers are increas ingly focused on what teachers need to know about and do with technology. This article is written as a broad, conceptual, and theoretical treatise on the aims of art education in the age of global electronic media, drawing from my own teaching experiences, readings, and insights about the intersections of technology and art education. These aims are actually not as much about technology pedagogy per se as they are about how technology pedagogy may be aligned with growing interests in connecting art education to emerging notions of global1 civil society.

Fear of Enemies and Collective Action. By Ioannis D. Evrigenis. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007. 256p. $85.00.

This book may be read from two complementary and enlightening perspectives: as a history of political thought centered on the role played by fear in group formation, and as a theoretical treatise on “negative association,” that is, collective action based on a principle of identification in opposition to others. Both perspectives sustain each other. The first draws attention to a rich and insightful reinterpretation of classical and lesser-known texts. The peculiarity of this history of political thought is that it records not inflection points but continuity and resilience. The second perspective is intended to bring about positive knowledge. This conflation of genres is an appealing facet of the book. In tracing a continuity of thought, Ioannis Evrigenis purports to demonstrate the validity of a theoretical claim about the centrality of negative association. By the same token, the historical exposé lays bare the set of premises that sustains the claim.

Alexander Tcherepnin: The Saga of a Russian Emigré Composer (review)

Reviewed by: Alexander Tcherepnin: The Saga of a Russian Emigré Composer Olga Haldey Alexander Tcherepnin: The Saga of a Russian Emigré Composer. By Ludmila Korabelnikova. Translated by Anna Winestein. Edited by Sue-Ellen Hershman-Tcherepnin. (Russian Mu sic Studies.) Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008. [xvi, 264 p. ISBN-13: 9780253349385. $39.95.] Illustrations, music examples, bibliographic references, index, discography. Although not as well known as some of his contemporaries, Alexander Nikolaevich Tcherepnin (1899–1977) built an impressive life for himself as a composer, pianist, and teacher. His career spanned almost three quarters of a century, spread over three continents, and brought him into contact with some of the most fascinating creative personalities of the age. Yet as an emigré, Tcherepnin until recently was shunned in his native Russia, and despite spending decades of his creative life in New York and Chicago he has been, for reasons unknown, largely ignored in this country as well. When Ludmila Korabelnikova's book was published in 1999 (Aleksandr Cherepnin: dolgoe stranstvie [Alexander Tcherepnin: A Long Journey, Moscow: Yazyki Russkoi Kul'tury, 1999]), it became the first, groundbreaking Tcherepnin study in Russian. Its translation by Anna Winestein, as the title under review, has the distinction of being the inaugural biography of the composer in the English language. It is fitting, perhaps, that this study was penned by a Russian scholar, for throughout his life Alexander Tcherepnin identified with his home country, from which he was torn by wars and revolutions. The preferred language for this polyglot was evidently Russian, and his musical style, however modern and idiosyncratic, was by his own admission rooted in the tradition of the St. Petersburg compositional school, just as it was true of his models Stravinsky and Prokofiev. Prior to Korabelnikova's work, the most important publications on Tcherepnin have been a bio-bibliography by Enrique Arias (Alexander Tcherepnin: A Bio-Bibliography [New York: Greenwood, 1989]) and a concise German-language biography by the composer's friend Willy Reich (Alexander Tcherepnin [Bonn: Belaieff, 1970]). As non-Russian speakers, both authors were unable to make use of the Russian-language primary sources preserved in the archives and private collections of Moscow, Tbilisi, Paris, Basel, and New York. Access to these materials is essential to illuminating Tcherepnin's life, aesthetic views, and compositional processes, as well as to understanding his status as an emigré and his relationship with the Russian musical diaspora. Korabelnikova's language skills, her training and experience as an archivist, and her personal contacts with the Tcherepnin family put her in a unique position among current scholars to address the issue of Tcherepnin's "Russianness." It is both a central focus and a major strength of the present volume, re-titled in its English version as Alexander Tcherepnin: The Saga of a Russian Emigré Composer. Korabelnikova's protagonist is unusual even by twentieth-century standards in his obsessively self-reflective nature. The most minute aspects of Tcherepnin's life are covered in a voluminous correspondence with relatives and friends. From his earliest years, he kept detailed diaries, almost all of them preserved; penned multiple autobiographies in varied lengths and languages; and wrote several analytical accounts of his compositional theories that he started to formulate as a teenager, and that informed his work from then on. In keeping with the "historical and documentary" nature of her book (p. 172), the author frequently takes a step back to allow the documentary evidence—letters, diaries, memoirs, and analytical perspectives by the composer and those close to him—to speak for itself. The appendices include a reprint of a short autobiography Tcherepnin wrote in 1964 (previously published as "A Short Auto biography," Tempo 130 [September 1979]: 12–18), and his previously unpublished 1962 English-language theoretical treatise, "Basic Elements of My Musical Language," the manuscript of which was donated by [End Page 326] the composer's son Ivan to the Glinka State Central Museum of Musical Culture in Moscow. A unique feature of the present book is its heavy reliance on the so-called Tcherepnin Compendium—a treasure trove of primary and secondary sources compiled by the composer's widow, his students, colleagues, friends, and the members of the Tcherepnin Society of America...

Uses of Metaphor: Richard Rorty's Literary Criticism and the Poetics of World-Making

Uses of Metaphor:Richard Rorty's Literary Criticism and the Poetics of World-Making Günter Leypoldt (bio) The so-called revival of pragmatism since the 1980s gained much of its cultural momentum in literature departments that welcomed Richard Rorty's philosophical antitraditionalism as a refreshing contribution to contemporary theory. And yet, Rorty's authority as a literary scholar has remained ambiguous. While literary critics tend to appreciate his turn to narrative—as an alternative to abstract theorizing—they often find it harder to accept his narrative ethics. As a result (and in contrast to the most prominent pragmatists in the literary field),1 Rorty has been accused of a backward-looking approach to literary artwork: a program of "literature as ethical reflection," according to Lawrence Buell, that "looks suspiciously like old-fashioned value thematics," a "pre-modern" approach that renders "aesthetic sensibility ultimately subservient to the goal of moral improvement."2 But why would a declared postmetaphysical pragmatist revert to premodern reading practices? Critics have invoked the specter of neoconservatism,3 and pondered personal deficiencies in Rorty's literary sensibility: such as a "puritan" distrust of aesthetic pleasure,4 inattentiveness to the intricate "sound and rhythm of poetic language,"5 or a habit of "philosophizing" literary texts by reducing them to propositional statements.6 It seems that such implausible explanations result from translating Rorty's pragmatist approach into literary studies without taking into account his view of literature as world-making.7 The concept of world-making as metaphoric redescription (in Rorty's terms) is arguably at odds with the conceptual coordinates of Kantian aesthetics that continue to shape contemporary views of the literary. We tend to feel so much at home with these coordinates (and a critical repertoire that questions them) that it is easy to misunderstand Rorty's revision, and to place him where he does not belong: in a quasi-formalist literary ethics that emerged in contemporary literary departments, often in response to the pioneering work of Martha Nussbaum. [End Page 145] I. Literary Ethics and the "Neglect of Form" The family resemblances between Rorty and Nussbaum are well known. Trained philosophers disillusioned with their field, both have expressed an aversion to philosophical inquiry based on the idea of a moral reason independent of human emotion and circumstance. They also share the conviction that the novel's thick description of human particularities offers richer explorations of ethical complexities than the theoretical treatise. But apart from disagreements on epistemology, they have markedly different concepts of the literary imagination. Nussbaum views her program of literature as ethical reflection as a stand against formalist traditions. Any explanation of "how literary theory lost [its] practical dimension," she says, should "include the influence of Kant's aesthetics; of early twentieth-century formalism; of the New Criticism." Nussbaum's critique of the disinterested artwork dovetails with a broad consensus, in the 1980s, against midcentury notions of literariness (as the inner form of autonomous aesthetic objects). But in contrast to more thoroughly antiformalist theoretical trends, Nussbaum tends to choose a middle way in her revisionist readings of canonical authors. She cautions her readers that what gives "ethical writing about literature a bad name" is partly the "neglect of literary form" by some of its practitioners.8 She holds that a successful ethical turn in literary theory needs to pay attention to how "form and content shape one another."9 This dialectical view characterizes some of Nussbaum's best work, especially her readings of Henry James, probably her most persuasive case for a turn to ethics in literary studies. They have helped to encourage a literary ethics that considers literariness and ethico-moral insight as two sides of the same coin, implying, for instance, that somehow Henry James's superior narrative skills contribute to the moral depth of his vision, which depth makes him all the more literary. In Nussbaum's terms, the ethical imagination in The Golden Bowl is "finely tuned" precisely because it emerges from "a fine work of art" whose stylistic sophistication defies paraphrase into the "flat" language of moral philosophy.10 Moral intelligence is thus understood as a heightened perception of complexity, and ethical progress becomes a question of improving...

Ufasomes as Plausible Carriers for Horizontal Gene Transfer

In this article, we propose ufasomes as carriers for the horizontal transfer of genes from plants. “Ufasome” is an abbreviation for unsaturated fatty acid liposomes, which are generated at specific pH. The formation of ufasomes is believed to occur due to associative interaction in mixtures of fully ionized and unionized fatty acids at pH > 7.0. In past, ufasomes have been widely considered as pre-biotic models for cellular compartments. Using same principles, in the present work, we provide a theoretical treatise presenting ufasomes as carriers for horizontal transfer of engineered genes from plants to either soil-microbes or to environment.

Islamic world's development policy responses to the challenges of financial globalization

Purpose – This paper aims to analyze the nature, mechanisms, conventional and modern instruments, dynamics, and the future possibilities of the contemporary phenomenon of financial globalization from the point of view of identifying and addressing the corresponding real politico‐economic challenges confronted by the contemporary Islamic world. In this context, the paper focuses on the institutional responses of the contemporary Islamic world to the challenges of financial globalization. Design/methodology/approach – The approach of the paper is to develop a theoretical treatise on its subject, in the light of research work of Ali Khan who points to the imperative of an Islamic institutional response to financial globalization, by treating the institution of Islamic banking as the concrete proxy of the Islamic financial institution, and to highlight the actual and prospective responses of the Islamic financial institutions to the challenges of financial globalization. Findings – Financial globalization is an evolving reality. Because of its atheistic, materialistic, undemocratic, non‐universal and interest‐based world view and character, financial globalization has been posing a serious challenge to the contemporary Islamic countries’ agenda of economically empowering and developing themselves through the integration of their economies along the universal Islamic lines exhibited in the form of one Islamic Ummah. Research limitations/implications – Research limitations are embodied in the overwhelming problem of finding the latest comprehensive set of data in the context of the relevant Islamic economic variables. Practical implications – The interest‐based Bretton Woods institutions and the conventional‐cum‐new instruments as well as the interest‐based mechanism of financial globalization are determined to be Islamically useless and irrelevant for the Islamic countries. Therefore, the Islamic countries are left with only the financial instruments of Islamic interest‐free foreign direct investment/workers’ remittances/equities along with the several additional Islamic instruments of financial globalization which have the potential of ensuring the Islamic countries’ development according to the Islamic ideals without compromising the sovereignty and integrity of the Islamic Ummah. Originality/value – The paper presents an objective Islamic critique of the capitalist financial globalizations as well as documenting a progressive institutional‐cum‐development policy response to the challenges of financial globalization from the point of view of ensuring the development and empowerment of both the Islamic Ummah and the whole of humanity in the Islamic universal frameworks.

(De)Constructing the Human as Human Institution: A Reflection on the Coherence of Hannah Arendt’s Practical Philosophy

Etienne Balibar (De)Constructing the Human as Human Institution: A Reflection on the Coherence of Hannah Arendt’s Practical Philosophy WORKS HAVE THEIR HISTORY, WHICH IS BOTH INTERNAL, MIRRORING AN intellectual development that sometimes can involve great shifts and rectifications, and external, responding to events and addressing ques­ tions that were not fully anticipated. This seems to be particularly the case for someone who, claiming to look for an understanding of the changes that the historical present has produced, and wanting to remain open to the unpredictable element of politics, has given a crucial mean­ ing to the category of the event. More than any great thinker, perhaps we might suggest that Arendt is one who never wrote twice the same book, and more than that, never wrote two successive books from the same point of view. She would allow herself to become transformed by the writing itself, and by the correspondence between the writing and the event, although this correspondence probably is neither straightfor­ ward nor completely visible. It also does not mean that this historicity, this character of the work as a continuous, unfinished experiment of thought, will abolish the permanence of certain crucial questions that social research Vol 74 : No 3 : Fall 2007 727 remain the horizon of the philosophical quest, and even account for its apparent variations. Without further justifications I will ask permis­ sion to borrow elements from texts that belong to different periods and different genres, even looking for extremely heterogeneous formula­ tions, in order to give the problem its maximum saliency. A PARADOXICAL “CRITIQUE OF HUMAN RIGHTS” Why is there a persisting difficulty at the core of Arendt’s discourse on human rights, at least from a philosophical point of view? It is—to put it first in schematic terms—because Arendt has developed one of the most radical critiques of the idea of an anthropological foundation of rights, and the classic doctrine of “human rights” as a foundation of the political, while pushing to the extreme the vindication of some of these rights as unconditional, and assimilating their neglect to a virtual or actual destruction of the human. So there is a first level of the diffi­ culty that we might describe by asking the following question: How is it possible to reconcile a critique of the idea of basic human rights while at the same time locating a typical politics ofhuman rights at the core of politics in general, especially democratic politics? The difficulty seems to be not solved but, on the contrary, rein­ forced and aggravated, when we look at the kind of “anthropology” that was presented by Arendt in what arguably is her most systematic theoretical treatise, namely The Human Condition, published in 1958. We know that the term “condition” here carries a critique of speculative or metaphysical theories of “human nature” in a double sense: it refers to the fact that there is no such thing as a universal essence of the human inhabiting each individual person, to parody a famous Marxian formula that seems to be perfectly compatible here, but “only” (and in fact this is more, not less) a plurality of singular humans, and the “world” they form by relating to each other in a more or less conflictual manner. It also refers to the great problem addressed in the book, this time against the Marxian tradition, namely the “alienating” character of the rela­ tionship between two kinds of conditions: those that concern the repro­ duction of life, or the “natural” conditions, and those that concern the 728 social research construction of the public realm, or the “political” conditions. What seems to Arendt to have become typical of modernity is a specific form of alienation (not only self-alienation, but, as she insists, world-alienation ), whereby the reproduction of life has become increasingly technicized , making it possible for humans not only to view themselves as self-producing beings, but also to substitute this technical reproduction of life for the construction of the “good life,” or the world of politi­ cal interactions. The paradoxical result is that the political becomes reduced to its “natural” basis in the inverted form of an absolute artifi­ ciality. This is a...

Cultural Intimacy: Social Poetics in the Nation-State (review)

Michael Herzfeld, Cultural Intimacy: Social Poetics in Nation-State. New York and London: Routledge, December, 2004 (2nd edition), 280 pp. From his earliest days in discipline, Michael Herzfeld has shown an inordinate interest in theory. His first book, Ours Once More: Folklore, Ideology, and Making of Modem Greece, is a theoretical treatise and even his ethnographies (The Poetics of Manhood: Contest and Identity in a Cretan Mountain Village; A Place in History: Social and Monumental Time in a Cretan Town; and The Body Impolitic: Artisans and Artifice in Global Hierarchy of Value) are notable for their combination of high quality ethnographic description and extensive theorizing. Other books, like Anthropology through Looking-Glass: Critical Ethnography in Margins of Europe and The Social Production of Indifference: Exploring Symbolic Roots of Western Bureaucracy, are entirely theoretical. Even his introductory textbook is entitled, Anthropology: Theoretical Practice in Culture and Society. Moreover, virtually all of his dozens of published articles are largely theoretical commentaries. The trajectories of his career and publications strongly suggest that Herzfeld is determined to make a truly significant theoretical contribution, not just to discipline of anthropology or even social sciences in general, but to intellectual world at large. With publication of Cultural Intimacy in 1997, Herzfeld made his bid to join ranks of elite company of social theorists of nationalism like Ernest Gellner and Benedict Anderson whom scholars of nationalism fail to cite at their peril. The concept of intimacy, despite some criticism (most of it constructive rather than damning), has resonated with scholars from a number of disciplines and now, ten years after Herzfeld coined it, it seems destined to join such seminal concepts as Andersen's imagined community and Foucault's gouvernmentalite as sine qua nons of any discourse on subject of nationalism and concept of nation-state. In and of itself, cultural intimacy is a rather simple and not-very-profound concept. Herzfeld describes it as the recognition of those aspects of a cultural identity that are considered a source of external embarrassment but that nevertheless provide insiders with their assurance of common sociality... (3). Exploring what he calls creative dissent within seemingly seamless fabric of nation-state, he strives to understand how people negotiate terrain of social identity and daily life in the...modern nation-state, and how they can be fiercely patriotic and just as fiercely rebellious at same time (91). Cultural intimacy can be registered in many ways and Herzfeld admits that it is not unrelated to simplistic self-stereotypes or national traits like stiff upper lip of British; but despite apparent simplicity of this concept, Herzfeld is able to imbue it with profundity while also demonstrating quite convincingly how cultural intimacy has serious implications for our understanding of nationalism and nation-state. Ultimately Herzfeld achieves his goal of demonstrating that ideologies and intimacy of everyday social life are revealingly similar (3), even when latter appear to stand in direct opposition to former. One way Herzfeld illustrates this is through an exposure of ironies, inversions and paradoxes in which he so delights. Throughout book he demonstrates how disparate groups often invoke same rhetoric/images/tropes to justify contradictory actions or ideologies. For example, he argues that law and lawless often resort to same cliches when acting in opposition to each other, citing case of Cretan sheep rustlers and authorities of Greek state as well as that of self-styled militias and U.S. government, all of whom invoke a formerly perfect social order to justify their contradictory actions (109). …

Guidelines for Improving Breast Health Care in Limited Resource Countries: The Breast Health Global Initiative

Breast cancer is an increasingly urgent problem in low- and mid-level resource regions of the world. Despite knowing the optimal management strategy based on guidelines developed in wealthy countries, clinicians are forced to provide less-than-optimal care when diagnostic or treatment resources are lacking. For this reason, it is important to identify which resources most effectively fill health care needs in limited-resource regions, where patients commonly present with more advanced disease at diagnosis, and to provide guidance on how new resource allocations should be made to maximize improvement in outcome. Established in 2002, the Breast Health Global Initiative (BHGI) created an international health alliance to develop evidence-based guidelines for countries with limited resources to improve breast health outcomes. The BHGI serves as a program for international guideline development and as a hub for linkage among clinicians, governmental health agencies, and advocacy groups to translate guidelines into policy and practice. The BHGI collaborated with 12 national and international health organizations, cancer societies, and nongovernmental organizations to host 2 BHGI international summits. The evidence-based BHGI guidelines, developed at the 2002 Global Summit, were published in 2003 as a theoretical treatise on international breast health care. These guidelines were then updated and expanded at the 2005 Global Summit into a fully comprehensive and flexible framework to permit incremental improvements in health care delivery, based on outcomes, cost, cost-effectiveness, and use of health care services.

How dietary restriction catalyzed the evolution of the human brain: An exposition of the nutritional neurotrophic neoteny theory

The purpose of this theoretical treatise is to explain the evolution of human encephalization. The evolutionary expansion of the human brain is herein regarded as a single component of an interrelated complex encompassing depressed somatic and sexual development and increased longevity. These cardinal phenotypic features, termed the Quadripartite Complex, were selected for their adaptiveness amidst the environmental deterioration extant during the formative phase of human evolution--the Plio-Pleistocene period. This interval of environmental transformation inevitably eventuated in ecological alteration and dietary diminution. Suggestively, experimentally imposed dietary restriction routinely results in lengthened lifespan, delayed sexual maturation, depressed growth and increased encephalization as a concomitant consequence of body mass reduction and brain mass maintenance. Thus, dietary restriction ostensibly induces discernible metabolic adaptations whether incurred ontologically or evolutionarily. Several experiments indicate that dietary restriction promotes the preservation and generation of neurons via induction of neurotrophic factors. To the extent that neurogenesis is a molecular mediator of mental acuity, it is evident that nutrition and cognition are intimately linked. Extrapolating to an evolutionary context, increased intelligence ought to confer advantages to organisms enduring dietary deprivation insofar as increased intelligence ensures more facile food acquisition. This reasoning underlies the nutritional neurotrophic neoteny (N(3)) theory, which holds that humans exhibit an altered pattern of neurotrophin expression resulting from positive selection for heightened intelligence amidst environmental deterioration and consequent dietary deficiency. The altered pattern of neurotrophin expression exhibited by humans, it is deduced, results in a protracted phase of developmental neurogenesis and a resultant retention of neurons that would otherwise be extirpated due to programmed cell death. Importantly, during neonatal neurogenesis mammals produce an excess number of neurons whose eventual destruction is dictated by neurotrophic factors. An altered pattern of neurotrophin expression during neurogenesis, as N(3) proposes, could therefore furnish a larger adult brain. As to how humans could afford to accrete exuberant neural tissue under conditions of chronic food scarcity the homo hypothalamic hypometabolism (H(3)) theory offers a plausible answer: reduced growth and delayed sexual maturation, mediated by the hypothalamus and its endocrine effectors, offset the energetic costs of increased encephalization in humans. H(3) is herein presented as a general theory of human evolution while N(3) may be regarded as a special theory of human encephalization.

La stratégie matérialiste d’Henry Howard médecin aliéniste québécois (1815-1887)

At the end of the 19th century, Henry Howard appeared as the first Quebec "aliéniste" to attempt to develop an inclusive theoretical treatise on the question of madness. Why this sudden upheaval ? There existed numerous european theories ; that might have sufficed. The author attempts to show the multiple connections of this theoretical pro-lect to the socio-political problems of québécois society. Howard tries, from the perspective of the theory which he elaborates, to intervene in the major discussions affecting Quebec: ultra montanism, the problem of universal compusory education, public morality. At a more professional level he attempts to intervene in the legal dispute opposing judicial and medical competence in the cases of insanity pleas, as well as in the question of the scientific and social status of the "aliéniste". The involvement in these struggles manifests itself in Howard's treatise as much at the level of the concepts themselves, and their architecture, as at the thematic level and in the applications which he naturally draws. It is not onty external and contingent but works on the text from the inside as well. The article attempts to suggest that at the very moment that the treatise on the alienated-which would become the "science" that we know today- seeks to structure itself into a theory, it cannot break its attachment to its determining social context and that, ignoring its ideological role it, in truth, succeeds only in creating illusion and the impression of a progressive process, all the while being circumstantial and having a verted interest.

Biodiversity in the Age of Ecological Indicators

The multifarious nature of biodiversity is considered in relation to difficulties of definite determination and managerial mandates for monitoring. At a micro scale there is some convergence with the concept of community, but the linkage is largely lost in the spectra of temporal scope, spatial scales, successional seres, and taxonomic trajectories. Practicality points to selecting suitable suites of indicators as surrogates for particular purposes. Domains of partial ordering on multiple indicators constitute comparable collectives, whereas different domains require recognition of special situations. Theoretical treatise and practical process can proceed in parallel, with dialogue and cross-fertilization serving to invigorate and inspire; whereas compulsive concern for completeness and consistency can be counter-productive as well as unduly expensive. Inability to completely capture all aspects of biodiversity in one full formulation is interesting and integral to issues of biocomplexity.

High resolution of streamer seismic data: obtaining optimal results

Andrew Long, PGS Marine Geophysical, defines the requirements for successful high resolution 3D marine seismic surveys and how these can be met. High resolution of seismic data results when high frequency geological features in close proximity can be precisely focused without any contamination from artefacts or noise (i.e. high signal-to-noise ratio). In general, recoverable frequency bandwidth is an important factor for vertical resolution, and dense 3D spatial sampling is an important factor for spatial resolution. Vertical and horizontal resolution is linked by the success of high frequency focusing and imaging. Without pursuing a theoretical treatise, the following section discusses the geophysical principles that are relevant for high-resolution seismic imaging. High resolution of 3D seismic data is achieved by the application of rigorous geophysical principles. In particular, the systematic pursuit of 1) uniform target illumination, 2) dense spatial sampling of the reflected wavefield, and 3) careful processing and imaging, will collectively deliver an optimum result. Note that the final step can never be successfully completed without the platform of proper target illumination and wavefield sampling. Several 3D data examples are used to demonstrate how flexible survey design and implementation can robustly achieve very high resolution target imaging for all target depths and challenges.

Digital and Conventional Dental Photography: A Practical Clinical Manual

A UK dentist in private practice specializing in aesthetic, restorative, and implant dentistry provides a practical reference guide rather than a theoretical treatise for clinicians wishing to integrate photography into their practices. Dr. Ahmad covers all aspects of this endeavor, from concepts of

The Six Sad Questions. A Year-Long Reference Relationship

It all began one night when Dr. M's best friend showed up at the reference desk. I didn't know Dr. M then. His friend wanted to find out if we had any books on copyright. This was an elderly man, obviously unafraid of research in a big academic library like ours. He told me he had retired from our university's English department, as had Dr. M, but Dr. M didn't live close enough to make the trip in to campus at night. My library is a major academic law library. Obviously we had books on copyright. Of course, I was not going to heap all of them onto this frail and unsuspecting inquirer. So began a relationship of reference service that was to last for almost a year; it was the first of the six sad questions.The First Sad QuestionDo you have any books on copyright? might not seem like a sad question from its words alone. But the reason for asking that question is what makes it sad. Early in the reference interview I learned that Dr. M thought some of his research and writings had been appropriated. His friend wanted him to sue for breach of and had come to the library to find out to do that. If he had been an attorney or law student, the reference interview might have ended there. I could easily have given him something on how to enforce a copyright knowing that he would be able to understand and utilize the content. But facing a public patron of retirement age, I wanted to narrow down his research query. Maybe he really only needed some definitions to use in writing an intimidating letter. Perhaps a theoretical treatise on academic was all he wanted at that point. Since he clearly did not know enough about law to precisely describe his research need, I asked he and Dr. M hoped to use the information they wanted from the law library. He told me that Dr. M's goal was to prevent the person who had appropriated his research from being able to publish or otherwise use it.Dr. M had spent his career collecting and annotating the letters between British author Charles Lamb and his sister Marianne. Having published three volumes of the letters during his teaching years, Dr. M recruited a younger professor to help him complete three additional volumes after he retired. Upon learning that the younger professor had obtained a publication contract without Dr. M's name on it, Dr. M had successfully demanded that the publisher cancel the deal. Now, he was afraid that the young professor might simply wait for Dr. M to become feeble or die and then submit the work under his own name again.From this, of course, I knew that his information need was not necessarily law. What he needed was assurance. And, he needed to convey a strong message to this younger professor plus the rest of the world that this was his work and he would control its use. A lawsuit could satisfy his goal, but it would take a lot of time and money. This was an elderly man who was no longer deriving an income. The information he needed from the library was not necessarily how do I file a suit but how do I protect my work and reputation given the time and resources I have? That question, I could answer with one word, publication. If he could get his story into the right publication, his original research and writing would be referenced and his accusation against the younger professor would be public and available to anyone researching him in the future.The Second Sad QuestionWho would publish such a story? That is what Dr. M asked me when he called the next morning. It's only a sad question because of his humble outlook. He did not think there was a readership, unless perhaps the newsletter of the Charles Lamb Society ran the story, but that would only cause divisiveness within the society which he certainly did not want to do. I suggested The Chronicle of Higher Education. My library subscribes to it and I read at least its daily e-mail updates. Clearly Dr. …

Contribution of historical and literary works to the understanding of political phenomena

Contribution of historical and literary works to the understanding of political phenomena