A Curator's Perspective: Communities in Communication, July-December 2014

As with any exhibition, intellectual and practical concerns combined to shape Communities in Communication: Languages and Cultures in the Low Countries, 1450-1530. In practical terms, I was keen to showcase the substantial holdings of the John Rylands Library from and about this dynamic culture. The corpus has been built up over more than a century: one manuscript, French MS 144, was acquired as recently as 1997.1 Yet libraries and users worldwide can easily underestimate how much material relates to the Low Countries. Catalogues invariably classify documents by language and/or medium; a practice exemplified by the very shelfmark of French MS 144, and which obscures the connections between the cultural products of a region where books were produced in Dutch, French, English, and Latin, and in both manuscript and print.2 Communities in Communication was conceived partly to counter this tendency towards fragmentation

Variance Analysis of Basis Weight Variation on the Pilot Machine

The purpose of this study was to determine the significance of the variations of the pilot machine of the Department of Paper Science and Engineering at Western Michigan University by variance analysis conducted on basis weight profiles obtained from the Industrial Nucleonics scanning basis weight gauge. The profiles obtained from the basis weight gauge were subjected to a computer program which computed the cross-direction, machine-direction, and random component variations and determined F-ratios. The F-ratio shows the significance of the component variation. Cross-direction variation was found to decrease with speed. Machine-direction variation showed no significant trend and the random variation decreased with speed. It was found that the F-ratio comparing the machine-direction component to the random component was significant at the one per cent confidence level and should be lessened if better operational efficiency for the pilot machine is desired

The influence of linguistic and social factors on the recent decline of French ne

In this article we present some results showing the decline in radio speech in the use of the French negative particle ne over the last forty years or so. These results derive from a comparison of two radio corpora: an archival corpus recorded by Ågren (1973) in 1960–61. The second, contemporary corpus was recorded and analysed by one of the present authors (Smith) in 1997. Having described the variable in question, we present these corpora in turn and analyse results deriving from them. We then examine some of the linguistic constraints that endorse the progressive decline of ne in some contexts while hindering the process in others. Finally we consider some elements of the social context within which the decline of ne has been occurring

“We are against Islam!”: The Lega Nord and the Islamic folk devil

© 2012 the Author(s). This article has been published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. Without requesting permission from the Author or SAGE, you may further copy, distribute, transmit, and adapt the article, with the condition that the Author and SAGE Open are in each case credited as the source of the article.Since 1995, the Italian Lega Nord (LN) political party has depicted itself as the defender of Padania, a territory that covers the mainly affluent regions of Northern Italy. Around this politico-spatial territory, the LN has shaped an identity based on the notion of Popolo Padano (the Padanian People). Since the new millennium, LN rhetoric has increasingly focused—stemming more from the demands of realpolitik than those of conviction—on opposing irregular immigration per se and, more specifically, Islam and Muslim immigration. In the eyes of the LN propagandists and their media, the theology of Islam and its practitioners represent a growing threat to the modern Italian and Padanian identity (and tradition). The LN has not been alone in using the media to oppose Islam; the Italian media has reinforced LN messages; Muslims are generally depicted as dangerous and compared with terrorists and their religion and culture are described as the opposite of Italian/West values. Something approximating to a “moral panic” around this issue has ensued. Integral to this are notions of morality combined with practices of moral entrepreneurship. What follows seeks to highlight the LN’s stereotypical depictions of Islam. This evaluation is important because the LN was a major player in former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s government (2008-2011) and is still a significant party among the Italian political spectrum. Integral to what follows are the following questions: “Is contemporary Islamic immigration a threat to the Italian (and Padanian) way of life?” and “Are the perceived threats to be found in the periodic uncertainties that societies suffer or might we need to search for wider processes?

Criminal Justice Reform and Recidivism Reduction

This article briefly examines evidence-based approach to policymaking in criminal justice and the two conceptual pillars that serve as the foundation of this strategy: effectiveness and efficiency. The article also describes the Pew-MacArthur Results First Initiative, a “smart justice” approach to reducing recidivism under the auspices of The Pew Charitable Trusts and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, that is being led in Alaska by the Alaska Justice Information Center (AJiC), housed in the UAA Justice Center.[Introduction] / Pillars of Effective Recidivism Reduction / Focusing on Effectiveness: The RNR Model / Effectiveness and Efficiency: The Results First Cost-Benefit Model / Return on Investment: Alaska’s Adult Criminal Justice Programs / Conclusion // SIDEBARS / Defining Effectiveness: Levels of Evidence / AJiC's Mission / Resources on Criminal Justice ReformYe

U.S. Law of the Sea Cruise to Map and Sample the US Arctic Ocean Margin

U.S. Law of the Sea cruise to map and sample the US Arctic Ocean margin CRUISE HEALY 1202 August 25 to September 27, 2012 Barrow, AK to Dutch Harbor, A