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Introduction: The human capacity to engage with fictional worlds raises important psychological questions about the mechanisms that make this possible. Of particular interest is whether people respond differently to fictional stories compared to factual ones in terms of how immersed they become and how they view the characters involved and their actions. It has been suggested that fiction provides us with a ‘fictive pass’ that allows us to evaluate in a more balanced, detached way the morality of a character’s behaviour. Methods: We use a randomised controlled experimental design to test this. Results and discussion: We show that, although knowing whether a substantial film clip is fact or fiction does not affect how engaged with (‘transported’ by) a troubling story an observer becomes, it does grant them a ‘fictive pass’ to empathise with a moral transgressor. However, a fictive pass does not override the capacity to judge the causes of a character’s moral transgression (at least as indexed by a causal attribution task). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is mindful of two separate phenomena: that recent years have seen a plethora of methodologically diverse and rewardingly curious works on theatre props, and that the Covid-19 pandemic halted in-person dramatic performance in the UK to a greater extent and for a longer duration than at any time since 1660. Accordingly, this essay offers four broad headings for enquiry, situating theatrical props in their longer past as well as theatre and archival conditions as we recently knew them: definitions, racialised props, methodologies, and futures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Significant advances have been made in species delimitation and numerous methods can test precisely defined models of speciation, though the synthesis of phylogeography and taxonomy is still sometimes incomplete. Emerging consensus treats distinct genealogical clusters in genome-scale data as strong initial evidence of speciation in most cases, a hypothesis that must therefore be falsified under an explicit evolutionary model. We can now test speciation hypotheses linking trait differentiation to specific mechanisms of divergence with increasingly large data sets. Integrative taxonomy can, therefore, reflect an understanding of how each axis of variation relates to underlying speciation processes, with nomenclature for distinct evolutionary lineages. We illustrate this approach here with Seal Salamanders (Desmognathus monticola) and introduce a new unsupervised machine-learning approach for species delimitation. Plethodontid salamanders are renowned for their morphological conservatism despite extensive phylogeographic divergence. We discover 2 geographic genetic clusters, for which demographic and spatial models of ecology and gene flow provide robust support for ecogeographic speciation despite limited phenotypic divergence. These data are integrated under evolutionary mechanisms (e.g. spatially localized gene flow with reduced migration) and reflected in emergent properties expected under models of reinforcement (e.g. ethological isolation and selection against hybrids). Their genetic divergence is prima facie evidence for species-level distinctiveness, supported by speciation models and divergence along axes such as behavior, geography, and climate that suggest an ecological basis with subsequent reinforcement through prezygotic isolation. As data sets grow more comprehensive, species-delimitation models can be tested, rejected, or corroborated as explicit speciation hypotheses, providing for reciprocal illumination of evolutionary processes and integrative taxonomies. [ Desmognathus ; integrative taxonomy; machine learning; species delimitation.] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Head and neck cancer (HNC) patients are at risk of weight change, due to inadequate nutrition intake or dehydration, when receiving radiotherapy (RT). This study aimed to develop methodology to measure water content changes on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans of the head and neck region over the course of RT. Methods: Retrospective datasets of 54 patients were analysed. Eligible patients had been treated for HNC with cisplatin chemoradiation (CRT) or RT alone and underwent a minimum of 2 MRI scans from weeks 0, 3 and 6 of their treatment. Anatomical regions consisting of ≥90% water, on T2‐weighted DIXON MRI sequences, were contoured. Water volume changes of all patients were evaluated, within an anatomically standardised external volume, by comparing the absolute water fraction volume (cc) (VEx90WF) and relative water fraction volume (%) (RelVEx90WF) at weeks 0 and 6 of RT. Results: There was a statistically significant difference between the RelVEx90WF at weeks 0 and 6 (P = 0.005). However, no statistically significant difference was identified between weeks 0 and 6 VEx90WF (P = 0.064). There were no statistically significant differences identified between patients who received CRT versus RT alone. Conclusion: This study developed a novel method for measuring changes in water fraction volumes over time, using T2‐weighted DIXON MRIs. The methodology created in this study requires further validation through phantom imaging, with known fat and water values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

PREMISE: Spatial variation in selective pressures can lead to intraspecific variation in life history, favoring some life histories and constraining others depending on the vulnerability of life stages. We examined how spatial variation in herbivory and climate influences flowering size and the occurrence of semelparity (reproducing once) versus iteroparity (reproducing multiple times) in the introduced range of an invasive plant, houndstongue (Cynoglossum officinale). Houndstongue is a short‐lived, semelparous perennial in its native range. In its introduced range, we previously documented increased rates of iteroparity and a higher median threshold flowering size compared to the native range. We hypothesized that the recent introduction of a specialist biocontrol insect (a root‐boring weevil, Mogulones crucifer) would decrease threshold flowering size and reduce the proportion of iteroparous plants because M. crucifer preferentially attacks large individuals and may reduce overwinter survival. METHODS: We surveyed 24 sites across the northwestern United States to quantify the frequency of semelparity versus iteroparity and to estimate weevil abundance and used demographic data collected from six sites to estimate median threshold flowering size. RESULTS: We found that sites with greater winter precipitation and no weevils had a greater proportion of iteroparous plants. Sites with higher weevil attack had a lower median threshold flowering size. CONCLUSIONS: The variation in frequency of flowering and threshold flowering size that we documented in North American houndstongue populations, and the relationships between this variation and herbivory and climate, provide evidence for how selective pressures covary with the life histories of invasive plants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article illuminates how the Ripper murders and their 1888 coverage re-theatricalised not only London, but many provincial towns. It looks beyond canonical theatrical contexts for, and responses to the Ripper, exploring extra-theatrical, popular performance 'scenarios' by civilian men, outside professional sites of theatricalised or medicalised spectatorship. It examines how civilian men personated key figures in the Ripper 'scenario': the plain-clothes detective, the Ripper's female victims, and the Ripper himself. These civilian performances illuminate our understandings of fin-de-siècle masculinity and its intersections with the melodramatic mode in theatre and culture. Simultaneously interrogating these performances through the lenses of fin-de-siècle theatre culture, the periodical press, and the anthropology of ritual magic reveals the cultural complexities of the 'personations' happening in streets and homes across the United Kingdom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article illuminates Henry Irving’s production of Shakespeare’s Cymbeline (1896) as a major contribution to fin-de-siècle Gothic culture. Cymbeline (1896) was one of the most popular Victorian Shakespeare productions, running to wild acclaim for more than seventy-two performances. In Cymbeline’s sexually-charged bedroom scene, Imogen, played by beloved Victorian actress Ellen Terry, was preyed upon by Henry Irving’s villainous Iachimo. Terry and Irving were at the zenith of a twenty-year partnership at London’s Lyceum theatre, and Victorian Britain’s greatest star actors. Ellen Terry’s Imogen became an ideally desirable heroine for both audiences and critics of Victorian Shakespeare. Simultaneously, Cymbeline, and the acclaimed performances of Terry and Irving, became a source for literature’s most famous Gothic vampire novel: Dracula, published by Bram Stoker in 1897. Bram Stoker was Henry Irving’s business manager, and intimately involved with Irving and Terry’s professional lives at the Lyceum theatre. This article reveals the relationship between Shakespeare and Dracula, especially Ellen Terry’s Imogen as an inspiration for Lucy Westenra. Textual evidence includes Terry’s correspondence and unpublished promptbooks, as well as Stoker’s biography of Henry Irving, and facsimile notes on Dracula. Examining Cymbeline (1896) and Dracula (1897) offers a new reading of Dracula, given Cymbeline’s obsession with liminal states and female vulnerability. Moreover, Victorian responses to Ellen Terry’s Imogen in the bedchamber scene highlight fin-de-siècle eroticisations of the sleeping woman, and Victorian fantasies of sexual access to the actress. Examining Terry’s reception illuminates the disjunction between performed female passivity as Imogen, and the professional, creative activity that underlined Terry’s stage practice and agency as a Victorian actress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article looks at the creation and dissemination of performance legacies in Shakespeare, from the nineteenth to the twenty-first centuries, looking particularly at Cymbeline. Henry Irving's 1896 production of William Shakespeare's Cymbeline starred Ellen Terry as Imogen, Briton princess and ideal Victorian Shakespearean heroine. The production's timing and reception confirmed Terry's current role, and contributed to her eventual legacy, as one of Britain's best-loved actresses. Simultaneously, coverage of the production mediated the evolving cultural status of Queen Victoria, who became Britain's longest-reigning monarch on 23 September 1896, the day Cymbeline's first-night reviews were published. Reviewers also highlighted the presence of Terry's son in Cymbeline's cast. Performing in 1896 as her theatrical heir (both within the plot and within fin-de-siècle theatre), Edward Gordon Craig, like his sister Edith Craig, would also become curators of their mother's memory. Dynastic memorialisation remains important to an actor's posthumous cultural capital: the familial stakeholder is still powerful today. The drive to identify professional, as well as biological heirs also persists, as Terry's successors and their successors are identified by twentieth- and twenty-first century theatre critics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Marketers, filmmakers, and cinema-goers assume that genre has a large effect on how the audience responds to and engages with a film. However, trait measures such as transportability suggest that, in some cases, individual differences may shape audience engagement more than genre does. To investigate this disparity, we compared viewers' enjoyment, identification with characters, and story world absorption (including three subscales: Transportation, Attention, and Emotional Engagement) for film clips from two very different genres (an emotional family film vs. an action chase scene) in a within-subjects design. Across two studies--an exploratory study and a preregistered replication--we found that participants' feelings of being transported into the narrative (a dimension of story world absorption) were more highly correlated across films than other measures were and tended to be less related to genre preference than the other audience response measures were. This pattern of results suggests that feelings of transportation may be more dependent on individual differences, and less sensitive to genre, than other forms of audience response. An exploratory analysis of a short scale measuring trait transportability suggested this measure was not the basis of the individual differences theorized to underlie transportation. Our results further highlight the importance of examining viewer engagement with narrative as a multidimensional, rather than unitary, concept. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]