“A priceless book to have out here”: soldiers reading Shakespeare in the first world war

The links between the 1916 Shakespeare tercentenary and the global conflict with which it coincided have been the subject of increasing scholarly attention. Recent work has examined the cultural, political, and military contexts of commemoration events and shown how Shakespeare as cultural symbol was mobilized for war. No systematic work has yet been done, however, on the most basic level of Shakespeare's cultural mobilization: the individual act of reading Shakespeare in the context of wartime. Utilising the methodologies of the new “history of reading”, this article examines the place of Shakespeare's texts in the reading lives of British and Commonwealth soldiers. Drawing upon contemporary letters and diaries, it demonstrates that there are several distinct types of Shakespearean reading practice recoverable from the archives. “Compliant” readers strove to recover conventionally patriotic messages from Shakespeare's texts. “Nostalgic” readers used Shakespeare as a form of escapism or a way of asserting a civilian identity separate from military service. Direct evidence for the reading habits of ordinary soldiers is more difficult to recover from the archives than those of officers. Nevertheless, scattered references to Shakespearean texts in the diaries and correspondence of ordinary-ranking soldiers show that Shakespeare could also function as a symbol of cultural literacy for working-class autodidacts at war

The next-generation liquid-scintillator neutrino observatory LENA

We propose the liquid-scintillator detector LENA (Low Energy Neutrino Astronomy) as a next-generation neutrino observatory on the scale of 50 kt. The outstanding successes of the Borexino and KamLAND experiments demonstrate the large potential of liquid-scintillator detectors in low-energy neutrino physics. LENA's physics objectives comprise the observation of astrophysical and terrestrial neutrino sources as well as the investigation of neutrino oscillations. In the GeV energy range, the search for proton decay and long-baseline neutrino oscillation experiments complement the low-energy program. Based on the considerable expertise present in European and international research groups, the technical design is sufficiently mature to allow for an early start of detector realization.Comment: Whitepaper for the LENA low-energy neutrino detector, 67 pages, 32 figure

Ecological Drivers of and Responses by Arctic Benthic Communities, with an Emphasis on Kongsfjorden, Svalbard

Knowledge on the causes and consequences that structure benthic communities is essential to understand and conserve Arctic ecosystems. This review aims to summarize the current knowledge on the effects of abiotic and biotic factors on species interactions and community traits, i.e. diversity, structure, and functioning of Arctic coastal hard- and soft-bottom habitats, with emphasis on Kongsfjorden (Svalbard). Current evidence indicates that descriptive and mensurative studies on the distribution of species prevail and few studies allow inferences on the underlying processes generating observed patterns. Furthermore, Arctic hard- and soft-bottom communities show some fundamental differences in their ecology. The recovery in hard-bottom communities from disturbance, for instance, takes exceptionally long (i.e. > decadal) due to slow growth and/or sporadic recruitment, while it is considerably shorter in soft-bottom communities. Also, Arctic hard-bottom communities display strong competitive hierarchies that appear negligible in communities populating sedimentary shores. This review concludes with a suggestion to shift the focus in Arctic benthos research from pattern to processes and the identification of major research gaps. These include (i) the apparent demarcation of studies being devoted to either rocky or to sedimentary shores, which hamper studies on habitat connectivity, (ii) the lack of studies addressing the effects of pathogens and diseases on community ecology, and (iii) the incomplete assessment of potentially significant drivers of community ecology, such as trophic interactions, recruitment success, and competition