At the intersection of globalization and "civilizational originality' : cultural production in Putin's Russia

This special issue originates from a transnational collaboration of scholars in philology, comparative literature, social theory, sociology, anthropology, ethnography, and media studies. The collection strives to advance a research agenda built on the nexus of three intellectual and academic domains: post-Soviet Russian cultural studies', the research paradigm put forward by Cultural Studies, as well as empirical methods developed in sociology. The collection illustrates the importance of expanding the experience of Cultural Studies beyond its established spheres of national investigation, while it also speaks to the necessity to re-evaluate the hegemony of the English-language academic and cultural production on the global scale. The collection offers insights into the gamut of cultural practices and institutional environments in which Russian cultural production happens today. It shows how cultural industries and institutions in Russia are integrated into the global marketplace and transnational communities, while they also draw on and contribute to local lives and experiences by trying to create an autonomous space for symbolic production at personal and collective levels. Through diverse topics, the issue sheds light on the agency, i.e. practitioners and participants, creators and consumers, of Russian cultural production and the neoliberal practices implemented on creative work and cultural administration in Russia today. The Introduction outlines the development of academic studies on Russian cultural practices since 1991; describes main political developments shaping the cultural field in Putin's Russia; and, finally, identifies the Cultural Studies debates the editors of the collection find most productive for investigations of Russia, i.e. the instrumentalization of culture and culture as resource. Relocated in an analysis of a post-socialist society, these conceptualisations seem increasingly problematic in a situation where local and federal policies governing cultural and creative work focus simultaneously on marketization and on nationalism as the main tools of legitimizing the federal government.Peer reviewe

A Practical Guide to Adopting Bayesian Analyses in Clinical Research

Background: Bayesian statistical approaches are extensively used in new statistical methods but have not been adopted at the same rate in clinical and translational (C&T) research. The goal of this paper is to accelerate the transition of new methods into practice by improving the C&T researcher s ability to gain confidence in interpreting and implementing Bayesian analyses. Methods: We developed a Bayesian data analysis plan and implemented that plan for a two-Arm clinical trial comparing the effectiveness of a new opioid in reducing time to discharge from the post-operative anesthesia unit and nerve block usage in surgery. Through this application we offer a brief tutorial on Bayesian methods and exhibit how to apply four Bayesian statistical packages from STATA, SAS, and RStan to conduct linear and logistic regression analyses in clinical research. Results: The analysis results in our application were robust to statistical package and consistent across a wide range of prior distributions. STATA was the most approachable package for linear regression but was more limited in the models that could be fitted and easily summarized. SAS and R offered more straightforward documentation and data management for the posteriors. They also offered direct programming of the likelihood making them more easily extendable to complex problems. Conclusion: Bayesian analysis is now accessible to a broad range of data analysts and should be considered in more C&T research analyses. This will allow C&T research teams the ability to adopt and interpret Bayesian methodology in more complex problems where Bayesian approaches are often needed. © 2023 Cambridge University Press. All rights reserved.Open access journalThis item from the UA Faculty Publications collection is made available by the University of Arizona with support from the University of Arizona Libraries. If you have questions, please contact us at [email protected]

Near field enhancements from angled surface defects : a comparison of scanning laser source and scanning laser detection techniques

Enhancement of the Rayleigh wave signal amplitude at a surface defect, due to interference of incident, reflected and mode converted waves, has been reported by several authors, and it has been suggested that this could be used as a fingerprint of the presence of such cracking. The scanning laser line source technique in particular, where signal amplitude is enhanced as the laser generating the Rayleigh waves is in the region of a surface defect, has been reported as a suitable detection tool. However, the previous work has looked primarily at defects propagating normal to the surface, which may not always be a suitable approximation, and the enhancement measured when a detection laser rather than a generation laser is near a crack may, in some cases, be more significant. This work explores near field effects for both laser generation and laser detection points near a defect, and compares the enhancements for defects which are angled relative to the surface. We use a combination of finite element method models and experimental results, and probe enhancements of both the amplitude and frequency signals, and show that scanning the detection point may be a better method for locating surface defects if they are inclined at an angle to the surface