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Presents books written by authors with a emphasis on the culture of public credit while excoriating it in favor of the landed interest. "The Discourse of the Sublime: Readings in History, Aesthetics and the Subject," by Peter De Bolla; "Writings and the Rise of Finance: Capital Satires of the Early Eighteenth Century," by Colin Nicholson; "Models of Value: Eighteenth-Century Political Economy and the Novel," by James Thompson.

During the summer of 2006, over four hundred Catholic ethicists from around the world gathered for four days in Padua, Italy. About sixty of the conference papers have become available in two edited collections, Catholic Theological Ethics in the World Church: The Plenary Papers from the First Cross-cultural Conference on Catholic Theological Ethics, and Applied Ethics in a World Church: The Padua Conference. As the conference was marked by a distinctive and creative tension-between the diversity which characterized the nationalities and cultural identities of the participants, on the one hand, and the commonness of their religious heritage, on the other-these essays can tell us much about contemporary Catholic ethics in its response to global pluralism. The following develops four reflections. First, the conference papers pursue a style of scholarship that is at once critically creative and ecclesially rooted. Second, the conference raises new concerns about the importance that Christian formation must have in a pluralist world. Third, the participants affirm and defend the ultimate universality of moral goods while also arguing that these goods are expressed and embodied in unavoidably particular ways. Finally, the most important contribution that Catholic ethics can make to public conversations about issues of common concern is through its articulation and defense of key human values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

“I found myself, as I grew older, increasingly writing about sexuality and its manifestations in human practice. And I found most of my raw material in the lumber room of the Western European imagination,” Angela Carter wrote in “Notes from the Front Line.” The passage is significant for several reasons. Carter identifies sexuality in its diverse manifestations as her main concern and acknowledges images derived from European popular tradition as the source of her “raw material.” Moreover, she characterises her prose as intertextual and identifies herself as a Caucasian Westerner. It is from this contemporary, Europe-centred perspective that she, first, surveys manifestations of sexuality, and then uses them to create her own—often allegorical—imaginative stories. This paper is concerned with the former stage of Carter’s intellectual endeavour: surveying expressions of sexuality in public discourse from a Western woman’s point of view. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The book "Wissenschaftliches Arbeiten an deutschen Universitäten" by Schäfer and Heinrich has been published in its second edition and is specifically aimed at foreign students in the humanities and social sciences. It provides practical assistance with exercises and fills a gap in the literature on academic work, as it is explicitly targeted at foreign students. The book covers various aspects of academic work, such as note-taking, presenting, and writing a written academic paper. It also includes exercises and examples to help students. Although the book has some shortcomings, it can be recommended as long as there is no better work available for the target audience. [Extracted from the article]

This paper addresses the gap between familiar popular narratives describing Artificial Intelligence (AI), such as the trope of the killer robot, and the realistic near-future implications of machine intelligence and automation for technology policy and society. The authors conducted a series of interviews with technologists, science fiction writers, and other experts, as well as a workshop, to identify a set of key themes relevant to the near future of AI. In parallel, they led the analysis of almost 100 recent works of science fiction stories with AI themes to develop a preliminary taxonomy of AI in science fiction. These activities informed the commissioning of six original works of science fiction and non-fiction response essays on the themes of "intelligence" and "justice" that were published as part of the Slate Future Tense Fiction series in 2019 and 2020. Our findings indicate that artificial intelligence remains deeply ambiguous both in the policy and cultural contexts: we struggle to define the boundaries and the agency of machine intelligence, and consequently find it difficult to govern or interact with such systems. However, our findings also suggest more productive avenues of inquiry and framing that could foster both better policy and better narratives around AI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past few decades of film theory, significant scholars and acclaimed filmmakers have established that documentary, just like fiction, must resort to ambiguous and subjective rhetorical figures to represent the world. This claim has led some scholars to conclude that documentary as a term referring to itself as being non-fictional might be disregarding its inevitable fictional elements. This argument may suggest that documentary, just like fiction, when representing the historical world fictionalizes reality. If we accept this claim as true, we need to ask whether terms such as fiction and non-fiction or documentary make sense when discussing the process of representing reality. Does this claim mean that cinema can only fictionalize reality and therefore we should eradicate from this discussion terms such as non-fiction or documentary?. The questions that this paper intends to answer are: Can the term fiction exist without referring to the term non-fiction or documentary? What roles do documentary and fiction play in representing the historical world? Are these terms necessary to communicate and understand the process of representing reality?. This paper has established that fiction and documentary are necessary terms that emerge in cinema narration as a means to mirror human experience's needs to organize, communicate and understand reality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses various books on the topic of German as a foreign language for the workplace. The anthology "Der Betrieb als Sprachlernort" by Sander and Efing examines the significance of the workplace as a place for language learning. The monograph "Deutsch für den Beruf. Eine Einführung" by Niederhaus is a standard work in the field of professional and subject-specific German instruction. Another book covers various chapters on reading, writing, speaking, and listening in a professional context, as well as methodological and didactic approaches for language instruction. All of these books contribute to the enrichment of the field of German for the workplace. [Extracted from the article]

Between Pierre Nora's lieux de mémoire and Paul Ricoeur's body-object there appears to be a relation of community and personal memory. Before death, the human body holds three meanings: material, symbolic, and functional, but post-mortem the body also becomes a place where both community and individual can update their relationship with death and mortality. In the twenty-first century, secularization of death practices inevitably leads to a secular view of the body. In Cailin Doughty's nonfiction, the body seems to stand at the crossroad between spirituality and secularization, so between the meaning of the body and the body as a lieu. This paper will discuss how Nora's and Ricoeur's interpretations of memory and body apply to Doughty's representation of the dead body within a death denying twenty-first century Western society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reviews two books including "On Paper: The Everything of Its 2000-Year History" by Nicholas A. Basbanes, and "Shady Characters: The Secret Life of Punctuation, Symbols and Other Typographical Marks" by Keith Houston.

This article examines the politics of judicialization in Thailand between 2006 and 2014, looking at the ways in which the judiciary became regularly embroiled in politics during this extremely contentious period. It takes as its starting point important royal speeches of 2006, and the interpretation of those speeches offered by the prominent academic and social critic Thirayudh Boonmee. Several key judicial decisions which had lasting political consequences are closely examined, including the 2006 election annulment, the 2007 banning of Thai Rak Thai, the removal of pro-Thaksin Shinawatra prime ministers Samak Sundaravej and Yingluck Shinawatra in 2008 and 2014, Thaksin's conviction on corruption-related charges in 2008 and the judicial seizure of his assets in 2010. Some of the questions posed in this paper are as follows: Does judicialization inevitably mean conservative attempts to curtail the power of politicians and undermine electoral politics? Are judges working on behalf of Thai society, or in alignment with certain vested interests? Could greater judicial activism serve progressive social and political causes in the Thai context? The paper argues that Thailand's "judicialization" is a complex phenomenon: judgements made by different courts, in different cases and at different times need to be scrutinized on their individual merits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a list of forthcoming papers including "Immunohistochemical Analysis of Cytokines and Apoptosis in Tuberculosis Lymphadentis," by Telmina Mustafa, Stanley Mogga, Sayoki Mfinanga, Odd Mørkve and Lisbet Sviland, "Drinking a Lot Is Good for Dendritic Cells," by Christopher Norbury and "Fibrosis in Heart Disease: Understanding the Role of Transforming Growth Factor-Beta 1 in Cardiomyopathy, Valvular Disease and Arythmia," by Razi Khan and Richard Sheppard.

My life as nonfiction writer has lead to my interest in doing an autoethnographical study and this paper will discuss how autoethnography can be performed using transpersonal psychology as a model. Autoethnography is a personal narrative akin to biography and memoir, and has become a more prevalent research method because of its accessibility and the ease with which the reader can connect with the researcher's and participant's lived experiences and/or epiphanies. The best narratives consist of embodied, vulnerable, and evocative writing, which help to explore, transform, and heal through various life journeys. This self-awareness and self-discovery are some of the main goals of transpersonal psychology. This paper will address the link between performing an autoethnographical study and the transpersonal psychology model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Life-long reading has positive effects on our lives and health. This study examines the ways in which adult library patrons read today. Using circulation statistics from four public libraries in the north suburbs of Chicago, Illinois, we explore the differences in reader preferences between traditional print reading (print book checkouts) and e-reading (eBook downloads). This data analysis provides insights on adult patrons' use of public libraries today (i.e. the most likely genre to be checked out are fiction and the preferred reading method is print). This paper also offers some practical suggestion on libraries' collection development, as well as readers' engagement and retention as they relate to technological advancements on book format. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper treats the articles as represented in A.E. Housman: Classical Scholar. Since Housman wrote on a wide variety of ancient authors, the numerous areas of expertise in which he engaged are noted and examined by a cadre of scholars who are marked by eminence. Each of these papers is summarily critiqued in the following review-essay. Moreover notation of two distinct pathways toward original studies of Housman's rigorous scholarship are then supplied. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper shows that some Japanese non-fiction writers are using various structural characteristics of spoken discourse in their writing. Their written discourse includes non-canonical word order and long sentences that are produced by combining a series of clauses. Their sentences may lack case or topic marking particles, but they may contain clause-final particles. Their discourse looks like it may have gone through a dynamic, on-going formation process because it includes reformulation and changes in the structure in midstream. It is proposed that writers who adopt such an. approach are deliberately blurring the boundary between speech and writing for multiple reasons. They may be exhibiting their creativity and innovation as well as their anti-establishment ideology. Vernacular style writing may also be an attempt to engage, involve, and connect with their readers. Further, they may be reflecting as well as expressing contemporary society in which orality is viewed favorably and as a result, writing in general has become increasingly more casual than before. The phenomenon discussed in this paper may be viewed as a reflection of erosions and shifting of traditional genres. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the first part of this essay review (“ Bildung Between Human Value, Political Rhetoric and Historical Transformation”), the term Bildung is introduced and central questions for the review are raised. How can a term that is charged with the utopian hopes of enlightenment and the appropriation of these hopes by the rising middle class between 1770 and 1830 guide the current discourse on education? How can Bildung serve as a principle of contemporary educational practice? In the second part of this essay review (“Rewriting Bildung: The Place of a Normative Theory of Education”), I look at the rewriting of this idea in a collection of essays written by educational philosophers in Educating Humanity: Bildung in Postmodernity ( Løvlie, Mortensen, & Nordenbo, 2003 ). These authors present transformations of Bildung to cope with postmodern realities. I review these essays in terms of their potential to save human values against dehumanizing trends of postmodernity and globalization. In the third part of this essay, I examine the transformation of Bildung into educational practice via “ Bildung-centered Didaktik.” Two German Didaktik traditions are explained and the other two books, Looking Into Classrooms: Papers on Didactics ( Menck, 2002 ) and Teaching as Reflective Practice: The German Didaktik Tradition ( Westbury, Hopmann, & Riquarts, 2000 ), are reviewed with respect to their role for the contemporary discourse on Didaktik and their contribution to classroom practice. The relationship between Bildung and curriculum serves as a background to several of the papers. I also discuss the role of Bildung and Didaktik for teacher education and confront the books’ theoretical ideas with current issues of educational reform. Finally, I present a discussion of the different approaches and my own conclusions. They include arguments to defend a utopian and partly idealist concept against managerial approaches to education that restrict themselves to performativity and effectiveness. My conclusions also underline the need for rewriting Bildung in the late modernity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper begins with a brief description of the fundamental change in the way India is perceived today compared to its image in its early decades after independence - from a weak player in the international system to a potential great power in the twenty-first century. The author then places Edward Luce's In Spite of the Gods: The Strange Rise of Modern India and Mira Kamdar's Planet India: How the World's Fastest Growing Democracy is Transforming America and the World within this changed perception of the India, and evaluates the arguments made by them. While Kamdar's book conveys the message that India is rising even as it has multiple challenges to overcome, it does not tell us much more. By contrast, Luce's excellent book presents the most definitive non-academic account of the rise of India by focusing on its economy, politics, society, and foreign policy. The paper also places India's "rise" in an historical context and shows that what we are witnessing is not just India's rise, but its recrudescence. The paper concludes by briefly discussing what a rising India seeks from the world and what kind of a power it wants to be. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines chronic poverty in the developing country context within the entitlement theory approach. The dialogue on entitlement theory originally introduced by Sen is extended here to explore poverty and its persistence, or chronic poverty. A conceptual framework is presented, in which poverty and its persistence are explained within the context of the individual's economic and non-economic situation and development incentives. These attributes are influenced by the individual's entitlements. It is shown that poor endowments and resource base are important causes of persistent poverty. Policies aimed at reducing poverty therefore must address problems associated with improving the entitlements of individuals and households. The definition of ‘entitlements’ in the paper is not restricted to material possessions—the economic entitlements of the individual or the household—but is extended to incorporate the individual's skills, education and productive ability—the non-economic entitlements. The discussion is rooted in the increasing awareness of multidimensional poverty. The paper focuses on rural poverty in certain parts of India, where most of India's chronic poverty is situated. Over a million people can be classified as chronically poor in terms of duration, severity and deprivation. This is despite the government's commitment to the eradication of poverty since the early 1950s, with a total expenditure of nearly $7 billion in the past 50 years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The interplay of literature and psychology, the cross-section of these areas opens up vast possibilities for literary studies, but, at the same time, they cause just as many dilemmas: the reader enters an uncertain terrain when s/he endeavours to lay down the foundations for his/her reading at the cross-sections of the two disciplines. This paper sets out to answer a number of strategically posed questions: in what kind of conceptual discourse can we interpret the psychological representations of literary texts? What are at stake at such interpretations? Another aim of this investigation is to find a conceptual and discursive structure in which the novels of Mór Jókai can be analyzed within the framework of psychological criticism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews the cultural, demographic, economic, and social sources that have produced a transformation in the restitution of marriage over the past century. It describes trends in marriage and remarriage that have altered the life course of children in families. The consequences of growing levels of marital instability for children are described. Particular attention is devoted to the changing parenting system and alterations in the kinship system of children whose parents divorced and remarried. Some problems in interpreting the effects of divorce on children are identified. The paper concludes with a discussion of public policy issues related to divorce and remarriage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A recent and growing discussion in philosophy addresses the construction of models and their use in scientific reasoning by comparison with fiction. This comparison helps to explore the problem of mediated observation and, hence, the lack of an unambiguous reference of representations. Examining the usefulness of the concept of fiction for a comparison with non-denoting elements in science, the aim of this paper is to present reasonable grounds for drawing a distinction between these two kinds of representation. In particular, my account will suggest a demarcation between fictional and non-fictional discourse as involving two different ways of interpreting representations. This demarcation, leading me to distinguish between fictional and non-fictional forms of enquiry, will provide a useful tool to explore to what extent the descriptions given by a model can be justified as making claims about the world and to what degree they are a consequence of the model's particular construction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes new research into the motivations, demographics, processes, and outcomes of self-publishing authors of books. The findings challenge traditionally held notions about self-publishing being a process undertaken by the untalented, as a last resort. The cohort studied emerges as highly educated, often well informed about the publishing process, and generally very positive about the self-publishing experience. As the number of people self-publishing continues to grow and associated technology progresses, a number of fundamental implications for stakeholders in both the non-fiction and fiction publishing business pipelines are noted. With disintermediation now widespread, there will be increased pressure on the traditional industry to adapt its business models and focus on adding value. At the same time, opportunities in publishing services can be identified and the role of the author is significantly enhanced. Parallels between the cultures and processes of academic and self-publishing authors are discussed; these will set the scene for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the visuals second grade students included in their own information book compositions during a science unit on weather during which multimodal science trade books on the topic of weather were read aloud. First, the multimodal nature of the information books used in the unit are described. Second, the teacher's talk about visual representations during read alouds of books on weather is presented. And third, the children's own information books about weather topics are examined for inclusion of labeled pictorial illustrations with accompanying captions and graphical representations. These analyses reveal that 1) information book authors vary in their use of visual information, 2) some graphics may be more salient for children, and 3) children's use of pictorial illustrations and graphical representations in their own compositions seems to be impacted by both teacher attention to particular types of visual representations and immersion in information book graphics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we propose a new algorithm for removing Gaussian noise from natural images while preserving important details for further processing. Similar patches appear frequently in an image. Our algorithm is based on this high redundancy in natural images. Our initial step is to perform an image segmentation by a constrained quad-tree-split-and-merge technique. Then for each patch, using an extended SSD, we identify all similar patches in the image and recalculate the patch by summing up a weighted copy of each similar patch. Since the mean of white noise is zero, the final image will be noise free and important details are preserved. Experimental comparisons of Wiener Filter, Wavelet Threshold Methods and our method will be carried out by using different types of images. The result shows that our method is more efficient in both noise removing and detail preserving. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a review essay of three books representing new research into the relationship between Cold War mobilization and postwar American political development: Michael Hogan, A Cross of Iron: Harry S. Truman and the Origins of the National Security State, 1945–1954 (Cambridge University Press, 1998); Guy Oakes, The Imaginary War: Civil Defense and American Cold War Culture (Oxford University Press, 1994); and Peter Trubowitz, Defining the National Interest: Conflict and Change in American Foreign Policy (University of Chicago Press, 1998). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Andrew J. Deroche. Andrew Young: Civil Rights Ambassador. Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 2003. xxiii + 193 pp. Illustrations, bibliography, notes, index. $65.00 (cloth), $19.95 (paper). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Christopher Endy. Cold War Holidays: American Tourism in France. Chapel Hill, NC and London: University of North Carolina Press, 2004. 286 pp. $49.95 (cloth), $19.95 (paper). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reviews the book "Creating Knowledge Locations in Cities: Innovation and Integration Challenges" edited by Willem van Winden, Luis de Carvalho, Erwin van Tuijl, Jeroen van Haaren and Leo van den Berg.

The article focuses on the book "Operational Research '90," edited by Hugh E. Bradley. The book is a compendium of 67 papers from the twelfth IFORS international conference on operational research held in Athens, Greece during June 1990, in which 500 papers were presented. This volume offers three areas of interest to readers of Transportation Science: technical papers related to transportation and location; the broader theme of the role and practice of operations research (OR) and accounts of the status of OR in specific countries, with special emphasis on developing countries. The paper presents an iterative solution procedure for the case of a single stack and notes the added complexity of multiple stacks. The allocation is based on a game theoretic interpretation that requires multi-period capacitated network design programs to be solved. Vehicle routing is represented in three papers. A. Lukka and M. Lukka give a summary account of a simulation model designed to assess the benefits of combining local dispatching operations.

The article reviews the book "Regional Development Agencies: The Next Generation? Networking, Knowledge and Regional Policies" edited by Nicola Bellini, Mike Danson and Henrik Halkier.

This section is maintained by Vladik Kreinovich. Please send your abstracts (or copies of papers that you want to see reviewed here) to vladik@utep.edu, or by regular mail to: Vladik Kreinovich, Department of Computer Science, University of Texas at El Paso, El Paso, TX 79968, USA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reviews the book "Creative Industries and Innovation in Europe: Concepts, Measures and Comparative Case Studies" edited by Luciana Lazzeretti.

The article reviews the book "Complex Adaptive Innovation Systems: Relatedness and Transversality in the Evolving Region" by Philip Cooke.

The article reviews the book "Entrepreneurship and Innovation in Second Tier Regions," by Heike Mayer.

Reviews the microfilm `The Papers of Zebulon Vance,' from University Publications of America.