scholarly journals Disentangling Human–Plant–Animal Dynamics at the Microscale: Geo-Ethnoarchaeological Case Studies from North Africa and the Near East

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (17) ◽  
pp. 8143
Author(s):  
Marta Portillo ◽  
Aroa García-Suárez
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Near East ◽  
Management Strategies ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
Built Environments ◽  
Suitable Material ◽  
Animal Management ◽  
Animal Dung ◽  
Source Of Information ◽  
Selection Of

Livestock dung is a suitable material for delineating the complexity of interactions between people, plants and animals as it contains critical information on environmental and ecological issues as well as socio-economic dynamics and cultural lifeways. However, animal faecal remains and other coprogenic materials are commonly overlooked in most archaeological research programs due, in part, to methodological challenges in its recovery and identification. This paper evaluates the contribution of integrated geoarchaeological approaches, together with comparative reference ethnoarchaeological records, to interdisciplinary microscopic analyses on the identification of animal dung and its archaeological significance within farming built environments. It brings together records from a selection of recent geo-ethnoarchaeological case studies across the Near East, one of the heartlands of plant and animal domestication, and from northern Africa, an understudied key area with critical implications for neighbouring regions such as the Sahara. This article examines the state-of-the-art of dung material identifications within agricultural and pastoral settlements and their potential for tracing ecological diversity, animal management strategies, penning, grazing and foddering, seasonality, and dung use. This review highlights the value of modern reference frameworks of livestock dung as a primary source of information for disentangling human–plant–animal dynamics through time and space.

scholarly journals Scholarly Tablet Collections in First-Millennium Assyria and Babylonia, c.700–200 BCE

2019 ◽  
pp. 319-366
Author(s):  
Eleanor Robson ◽  
Kathryn Stevens
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Recent Work ◽  
Near East ◽  
Ancient Near East ◽  
Scholarly Community ◽  
First Millennium ◽  
Per Se ◽  
The Temple ◽  
Selection Of

The half-millennium 700–200 BCE was the heyday of the cuneiform ‘library’: Pedersén counts nearly forty of them from that period in his foundational book Libraries and Archives in the Ancient Near East (1998). Yet there have been surprisingly few studies of cuneiform libraries per se. This chapter first summarizes, updates, and evaluates Pedersén’s survey, then uses a selection of this impressive array of evidence to explore some questions, raised in the authors’ respective recent work, about the functions of ‘libraries’ in first-millennium Assyria and Babylonia. The chapter focuses on three case studies which examine the relationships between Mesopotamian ‘libraries’ and two other notoriously complex Mesopotamian institutions: the temple and the scribal school. In particular, it is argued that ‘libraries’ as collections of artefacts were much more mobile within the scholarly community than many have acknowledged. Single archaeological find-spots will rarely reveal an intact collection, even assuming perfect conditions of preservation.

scholarly journals Students’ comprehension of the Greek economic crisis through an introductory macroeconomics course

2020 ◽  
pp. 10-10
Author(s):  
John Marangos ◽  
Eirini Triarchi
Keyword(s):  
Economic Crisis ◽  
Statistical Evaluation ◽  
Global Financial Crisis ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
Undergraduate Curriculum ◽  
University Courses ◽  
One Year ◽  
The University ◽  
Source Of Information ◽  
Selection Of

The purpose of the paper is to report on the effectiveness of macroeconomic courses in informing and educating Greek students during an actual economic crisis. To achieve this end, we rely upon an introductory macroeconomics course that focuses upon the severe Global Financial Crisis that got underway in 2008. We conducted a survey for examining how well Greek students understood the effects of this deep and prolonged crisis. What is innovative about our testing is that we undertook a statistical evaluation of responses of two cohorts of students drawn from Spring, 2014 and 2015 - as the crisis intensified from one year to the next. To the very best of our knowledge, such an exercise had not yet been attempted; namely, of measuring students? comprehension of a crisis and comparing the valuations of two cohorts of students as this particular crisis grew increasingly severe. Our findings suggest that students were confident that they achieved a comprehensive understanding of the variables underlying the Greek Economic Crisis. As the crisis escalated, students place increased importance on their university as a main source of information that influenced and helped in forming their perceptions of the economic crisis. However, our findings suggest that the university courses did not serve as their primary source of their information. In conclusion, the crisis helps to exposed gaps in the undergraduate curriculum that could be remedied through bringing in a better selection of up-to-date class materials.

The Propaganda Feedback Loop

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yochai Benkler ◽  
Robert Faris ◽  
Hal Roberts
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Feedback Loop ◽  
The Other ◽  
Hillary Clinton ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
The Public ◽  
False Reporting ◽  
Media Ecosystem ◽  
Crowd Out ◽  
Selection Of

This chapter presents a model of the interaction of media outlets, politicians, and the public with an emphasis on the tension between truth-seeking and narratives that confirm partisan identities. This model is used to describe the emergence and mechanics of an insular media ecosystem and how two fundamentally different media ecosystems can coexist. In one, false narratives that reinforce partisan identity not only flourish, but crowd-out true narratives even when these are presented by leading insiders. In the other, false narratives are tested, confronted, and contained by diverse outlets and actors operating in a truth-oriented norms dynamic. Two case studies are analyzed: the first focuses on false reporting on a selection of television networks; the second looks at parallel but politically divergent false rumors—an allegation that Donald Trump raped a 13-yearold and allegations tying Hillary Clinton to pedophilia—and tracks the amplification and resistance these stories faced.

Veiling Esther, Unveiling Her Story

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam J. Silverstein
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Muslim World ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
Religious Background ◽  
Literary Context ◽  
Shed Light ◽  
Selection Of

This book examines the ways in which the biblical book of Esther was read, understood, and used in Muslim lands, from ancient to modern times. It zeroes-in on a selection of case studies, covering works from various periods and regions of the Muslim world, including the Qur’an, premodern historical chronicles and literary works, the writings of a nineteenth-century Shia feminist, a twentieth-century Iranian dictionary, and others. These case studies demonstrate that Muslim sources contain valuable materials on Esther, which shed light both on the Esther story itself and on the Muslim peoples and cultures that received it. The book argues that Muslim sources preserve important, pre-Islamic materials on Esther that have not survived elsewhere, some of which offer answers to ancient questions about Esther, such as the meaning of Haman’s epithet in the Greek versions of the story, the reason why Mordecai refused to prostrate himself before Haman, and the literary context of the “plot of the eunuchs” to kill the Persian king. Furthermore, throughout the book we will see how each author’s cultural and religious background influenced his or her understanding and retelling of the Esther story: In particular, it will be shown that Persian Muslims (and Jews) were often forced to reconcile or choose between the conflicting historical narratives provided by their religious and cultural heritages respectively.

Modernism and Non-Translation

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
James Joyce ◽  
Ezra Pound ◽  
Modernist Literature ◽  
Cultural Implications ◽  
The Rich ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Reading Key ◽  
Modernist Fiction ◽  
Selection Of

Modernism and Non-Translation proposes a new way of reading key modernist texts, including the work of canonical figures such as T. S. Eliot, James Joyce, and Ezra Pound. The topic of this book is the incorporation of untranslated fragments from various languages within modernist writing. It explores non-translation in modernist fiction, poetry, and other forms, with a principally European focus. The intention is to begin to answer a question that demands collective expertise: what are the aesthetic and cultural implications of non-translation for modernist literature? How did non-translation shape the poetics, and cultural politics, of some of the most important writers of this period? Twelve essays by leading scholars of modernism explore American, British, and Irish texts, alongside major French and German writers, and the wider modernist recovery of Classical languages. They explore non-translation from the dual perspectives of both ‘insider’ and ‘outsider’, unsettling that false opposition, and articulating in the process their individuality of expression and experience. The range explored indicates something of the reach and vitality of the matter of translation—and specifically non-translation—across a selection of poetry, fiction, and non-fictional prose, while focusing on mainly canonical voices. Offering a series of case studies, the volume aims to encourage further exploration of connections across languages and among writers. Together, the collection seeks to provoke and extend debate on the aesthetic, cultural, political, and conceptual dimensions of non-translation as an important yet hitherto neglected facet of modernism, helping to redefine our understanding of that movement. It demonstrates the rich possibilities of reading modernism through instances of non-translation.

Conclusion

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Brooker ◽  
Margaret Hayward
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Political Leadership ◽  
Leadership Teams ◽  
Military Leadership ◽  
Rational Method ◽  
The Political ◽  
Unexpected Findings ◽  
Selection Of

The Conclusion points out that the preceding seven chapters’ examples and case studies have revealed some expected, and some unexpected conclusions. The six main cases revealed some expected uniformity in the leaders’ selection of rational methods. There was less uniformity, however, in the choice of the methods they emphasized, whether due to their personal preferences or to the circumstances they were facing. Two unexpected findings were the addition of a seventh appropriate rational method—learning—and the prevalence of dual-leadership teams. The conclusion goes on to suggest that this book’s theory and approach should be applied to versions of military leadership and to the political leadership of contemporary democracies.

scholarly journals Urban Industrial Tourism: Cultural Sustainability as a Tool for Confronting Overtourism—Cases of Madrid, Brussels, and Copenhagen

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (9) ◽  
pp. 4694
Author(s):  
Carmen Hidalgo-Giralt ◽  
Antonio Palacios-García ◽  
Diego Barrado-Timón ◽  
José Antonio Rodríguez-Esteban
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Reference Data ◽  
Urban Tourism ◽  
Industrial Heritage ◽  
Cultural Sustainability ◽  
Cultural Spaces ◽  
Patterns Of Behavior ◽  
Historic City ◽  
Selection Of ◽  
Industrial Tourism

The chief objective of this research was to analyze how the industrial heritage of three European capitals—Madrid, Brussels, and Copenhagen—has been integrated into the dynamics of their urban tourism, thereby generating new resources and cultural spaces. In regards to the latter point, this study poses the working hypothesis that industrial heritage can function as a tool for cultural sustainability, which allows for deconcentration away from historic city centers subjected to significant overtourism. To verify this hypothesis, a methodology has been designed based on the selection of specific indicators and the creation of maps, taking as reference data from the Tripadvisor travel portal. The results obtained are truly encouraging, and it would be interesting to expand this study by incorporating new case studies to allow us to discern additional patterns of behavior around urban industrial tourism.

Nutrient supplementation among pregnant women in China: an observational study

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Tao Han ◽  
Jingwen Dong ◽  
Jiangtao Zhang ◽  
Chenxiao Zhang ◽  
Yuxuan Wang ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Vitamin D ◽  
Folic Acid ◽  
Pregnant Women ◽  
Family Members ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
Cross Sectional Study ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Nutrient Supplementation ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Source Of Information

Abstract Objective: To clarify nutrient supplementation usage and primary source of information among pregnant women in China. Design: This cross-sectional study used information on nutrient supplementation and primary source of information collected via face-to-face interviews. Data on the usage of folic acid, calcium/vitamin D, iron, vitamins, docosahexaenoic acid, and other dietary supplements were collected. Primary source of information were categorized as family/relatives, friends/co-workers, the Internet, books/magazines, television/radio, doctors, other people, and oneself. Setting: Maternal and Child Health Hospital in Chengdu, China. Participants: 1081 Chinese pregnant women aged ≥ 20 years with singleton pregnancies. Results: In all three trimesters of pregnancy, usage was highest and most stable for folic acid (81.7%), followed by vitamins (vitamin A, B-group vitamins, vitamin C, and multivitamins; 75.0%), whereas calcium/vitamin D (51.4%) and iron (18.1%) usage was low, potentially indicating a deficiency risk. All supplementation usage percentages increased with pregnancy duration (p < 0.05). Notably, approximately 10% of the pregnant women in our study did not use any nutrient supplementation, and this was especially common in early pregnancy. More than 50% of the women reported getting information on nutrient supplementation from family members, and about 30% reported getting this information from doctors. Conclusions: Among pregnant women in China, awareness about nutrient supplementation increases as the pregnancy progresses, but some types of nutrient supplementation (such as calcium/vitamin D and iron) remain at low levels. It is necessary to pay more attention to the health education of pregnant women in China, and the influence of family members should be emphasized.

Big Data in Cultural Tourism – Building Sustainability and Enhancing Competitiveness

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Big Data ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Value Chain ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Cultural Tourism ◽  
End Users ◽  
Ethical Implications ◽  
Tourism Sector ◽  
Cultural Experiences ◽  
Selection Of

The use of big data is becoming increasingly important across the tourism sector and the value chain. With this publication, UNWTO intends to provide a baseline research on using big data by tourism and culture stakeholders, in order to improve the competitiveness of cultural tourism and reinforce its sustainability. The study sets the basis to connect tourism, culture and new technologies for mutual benefits, while calling for a reflection on the ethical implications for policymakers, businesses and end-users. The selection of case studies illustrates the most frequent case-scenarios of the use of big data in cultural tourism within destinations, compiled during the research. As the new technologies are facing ever-evolving scenarios, their use will be harnessed by the tourism sector in its endeavour to innovate and provide new cultural experiences.

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