Melvillean Parasites

Melvillean Parasites addresses an aspect of Herman Melville’s authorship largely overlooked by previous scholars: the abundance of narrators and characters in his writings in search of food—an aim they typically pursue through sponging off the people they encounter. Deploying the conceptual figure of the parasite as its primary analytical tool, the book interprets how the dream of a free meal plays out and is given literary form in Typee (1846), “Bartleby, the Scrivener” (1853), “Jimmy Rose” (1855), and The Confidence-Man (1857). In so doing, Melvillean Parasites aims to explain how Melville’s engagement with ethico-political issues concerning nourishment, dependency upon others, hospitality, and responsibility toward strangers, evolved and changed over time. Compared to the tendency of dehumanizing the parasite found in many of his contemporaries, the book claims that what sets him apart, is his insight into the unavoidable parasitic tendencies of us all: Herman Melville—patron saint of the parasite. Melvillean Parasites is intended for scholars, students, and general readers with an interest in the concept of the parasite, as well as Herman Melville’s authorship, American literature, and 19th century studies in general. Anders M. Gullestad is Associate Professor at the Department of Linguistic, Literary and Aesthetic Studies at the University of Bergen

Is the change in third-party debt collectors' law affecting the riskiness of single-family mortgages?

This paper performs an event study on the states in the United States of America with the most significant increase or decrease in third-party debt collector laws between 2000 and 2016 and observes whether this affects the riskiness related to single-family mortgages. This study utilizes a large panel data set of single-family mortgage loans from Fannie Mae. It employs a difference-in-difference strategy to examine the effect of change in debt collection legislation across five states and estimates the year-by-year effects. The analysis compares one law change from each of the states, Idaho, Colorado, North Dakota, Tennessee, and Connecticut. And further, compare data using the adjacent states which did not experience a law change in the two years prior and the two years after the legal changes as control variables. The findings of the study provide suggestive evidence of the effect of a legal change on the riskiness of mortgages. Still, no clear difference was observed between laws being loosened or tightened.Este artigo realiza um estudo de evento sobre os estados nos Estados Unidos da América com o aumento ou diminuição mais significativo nas leis de cobrança de dívidas de terceiros entre 2000 e 2016 e observa se isso afeta o risco relacionado com hipotecas unifamiliares. Este estudo utiliza um grande conjunto de dados de painel de empréstimos hipotecários unifamiliares da Fannie Mae. Ele emprega uma estratégia de diferences-in-diferences para examinar o efeito da mudança na legislação de cobrança de dívidas em cinco estados e estima os efeitos ano a ano. A análise compara uma mudança na lei de cada um dos estados, Idaho, Colorado, Dakota do Norte, Tennessee e Connecticut. Além disso, compara os dados usando estados adjacentes que não experimentaram uma mudança na lei nos dois anos anteriores e nos dois anos seguintes às mudanças legais comogrupo de controlo. Os resultados do estudo fornecem evidências sugestivas do efeito de uma mudança legal na aversão ao risco de hipotecas, mas não foi observada nenhuma diferença clara entre leis sendo flexibilizadas ou restringida

Melvillean Parasites

Melvillean Parasites addresses an aspect of Herman Melville’s authorship largely overlooked by previous scholars: the abundance of narrators and characters in his writings in search of food—an aim they typically pursue through sponging off the people they encounter. Deploying the conceptual figure of the parasite as its primary analytical tool, the book interprets how the dream of a free meal plays out and is given literary form in Typee (1846), “Bartleby, the Scrivener” (1853), “Jimmy Rose” (1855), and The Confidence-Man (1857). In so doing, Melvillean Parasites aims to explain how Melville’s engagement with ethico-political issues concerning nourishment, dependency upon others, hospitality, and responsibility toward strangers, evolved and changed over time. Compared to the tendency of dehumanizing the parasite found in many of his contemporaries, the book claims that what sets him apart, is his insight into the unavoidable parasitic tendencies of us all: Herman Melville—patron saint of the parasite. Melvillean Parasites is intended for scholars, students, and general readers with an interest in the concept of the parasite, as well as Herman Melville’s authorship, American literature, and 19th century studies in general. Anders M. Gullestad is Associate Professor at the Department of Linguistic, Literary and Aesthetic Studies at the University of Bergen

Cytokines as new treatment targets in chronic heart failure

Inflammatory cytokines may negatively influence contractility and contribute to the remodelling process in the failing myocardium. Traditional cardiovascular drugs appear to have little influence on the overall cytokine network in chronic heart failure (CHF). Increased interest in anticytokine therapy has therefore evolved. Several small studies have used tumour necrosis factor (TNF)-α as a target, resulting in improved functional capacity and myocardial performance. Intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG) represents another therapeutic approach in which the impact on myocardial performance appears to be correlated with anti-inflammatory effects. These studies demonstrate potential for immunomodulation as a therapy in addition to conventional cardiovascular treatment in CHF, but the most effective drugs in this regard have yet to be identified

Management of transboundary and straddling fish stocks in the Northeast Atlantic in view of climate-induced shifts in spatial distribution

The introduction of 200 n.m. exclusive economic zones (EEZs) in the late 1970s required increased collaboration among neighbouring coastal states to manage transboundary and straddling fish stocks. The established agreements ranged from bilateral to multilateral, including high‐seas components, as appropriate. However, the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea does not specify how quotas of stocks crossing EEZs should be allocated, nor was it written for topical scenarios, such as climate change with poleward distribution shifts that differ across species. The productive Northeast Atlantic is a hot spot for such shifts, implying that scientific knowledge about zonal distribution is crucial in quota negotiations. This diverges from earlier, although still valid, agreements that were predominately based on political decisions or historical distribution of catches. The bilateral allocations for Barents Sea and North Sea cod remain robust after 40 years, but the management situation for widely distributed stocks, as Northeast Atlantic mackerel and Norwegian spring‐spawning herring, appears challenging, with no recent overall agreements. Contrarily, quotas of Northern hake are, so far, unilaterally set by the EU despite the stock's expansion beyond EU waters into the northern North Sea. Negotiations following the introduction of EEZs were undertaken at the end of the last cooler Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) period, that is, with stock distributions generally in a southerly mode. Hence, today's lack of management consensus for several widely distributed fish stocks typically relates to more northerly distributions attributed to the global anthropogenic signal accelerating the spatial effect of the current warmer AMO.publishedVersio

When singing strengthens the capacity to aspire: girls’ reflexivity in rural Bangladesh

© 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.In the present paper, we explore the impact of singing for girls in rural Bangladesh. Previous findings in this field-based interview study (with 18 girls) have demonstrated that singing can act as a driving force in young girls’ psychological individuation processes, implying increased agency and autonomy. A critical question, however, is to what extent the village girls will manage to maintain a feeling of agency as they pass through puberty. How do they navigate between their own wish to continue singing and pressure from cultural norms (such as getting married)? Using Margareth Archer’s morphogenetic approach and Arjun Appadurai’s approach to culture as a capacity as analytical tools, we connect different modes of reflexivity to the girls’ capacity to aspire. We discuss specific mechanisms that emerge as relevant for the girls/young women as they navigate their way through the Bengali rural society.publishedVersio

The “Discard Ban Package”: Experiences in efforts to improve the exploitation patterns in Norwegian fisheries

A source to long-term increased catches and profitability for the fishing fleet is the reduction of discards and improvements in exploitation patterns. This article details the development of Norwegian regulatory measures to this end, in particular the introduction of a discard ban and the Barents Sea programme of real-time closures of fishing areas. Actual benefits of this policy are outlined

ALPHA: Implementation of a subset of PHIGS

ALPHA is a support system for applications using interactive computer graphics. The ALPHA system is a subsystem of the PHIGS graphic standard (the PHIGS version presented in dpANS X3.144-198x of October 1986), specifically tailored to the Xerox/Interlisp-D environment. The Programmer's Hierarchical Interactive Graphics System (PHIGS) is a functional specification of the interface between an application program and its graphic support system. PHIGS supports hierarchical graphics, user interaction and 3-D modelling. ALPHA is a detached CommonLisp package in the Interlisp-D environment. The package exports all ALPHA functions to be used and only imports necessary Interlisp-D functions