Mucedorus: the last ludic playbook, the first stage Arcadia

This article argues that two seemingly contradictory factors contributed to and sustained the success of the anonymous Elizabethan play Mucedorus (c. 1590; pub. 1598). First, that both the initial composition of Mucedorus and its Jacobean revival were driven in part by the popularity of its source, Philip Sidney's Arcadia. Second, the playbook's invitation to amateur playing allowed its romance narrative to be adopted and repurposed by diverse social groups. These two factors combined to create something of a paradox, suggesting that Mucedorus was both open to all yet iconographically connected to an elite author's popular text. This study will argue that Mucedorus pioneered the fashion for “continuations” or adaptations of the famously unfinished Arcadia, and one element of its success in print was its presentation as an affordable and performable version of Sidney's elite work. The Jacobean revival of Mucedorus by the King's Men is thus evidence of a strategy of engagement with the Arcadia designed to please the new Stuart monarchs. This association with the monarchy in part determined the cultural functions of the Arcadia and Mucedorus through the Interregnum to the close of the seventeenth century

“Text up his name”: The Authorship of the Manuscript Play Dick of Devonshire

The manuscript play Dick of Devonshire has been attributed to several early modern dramatists, including Thomas Heywood, Robert Davenport, James Shirley, and Thomas Dekker. Identifying the author is important to obtaining a better understanding of the play's place in the Caroline commercial theater industry and how it came to be staged by Queen Henrietta Maria's Men in the summer of 1626. This article reviews the arguments that have been made for and against the various authorial candidates and, using historical and literary evidence as well as new computational analysis, establishes that Thomas Heywood is the play's most likely author

Geo.Power Project: SWOT Analysis and Transferability Assessment of Ground-Coupled Heat Pump (GCHP) Systems into the Province of Ferrara

In Phase II of the Geo.Power Interreg IV C project, the Province of Ferrara went through a SWOT analysis to estimate the weaknesses and potentialities for the application/adaptation of Ground Coupled Heat Pump technologies in its territory, based on the local technical, economic, and environmental situation. The SWOT analysis is based both on an internal analysis, which has the objective to carefully define Strengths (S) and Weaknesses (W) of the selected BPs (energy efficiency, reliability, economic efficiency, etc.), and on an external analysis, concerning Opportunities (O) and Threats (T) of the Ferrara target area where the selected BPs could be promoted for future replication. Five BPs have been selected and examined under a variety of different combinations of parameters in regards to current market situation, environment, location, legislation, financial incentives, application and type of installation, energy and cost efficienc

Towards a taxonomy of learning dynamics in 2 × 2 games

Do boundedly rational players learn to choose equilibrium strategies as they play a game repeatedly? A large literature in behavioral game theory has proposed and experimentally tested various learning algorithms, but a comparative analysis of their equilibrium convergence properties is lacking. In this paper we analyze Experience-Weighted Attraction (EWA), which generalizes fictitious play, best-response dynamics, reinforcement learning and also replicator dynamics. Studying games for tractability, we recover some well-known results in the limiting cases in which EWA reduces to the learning rules that it generalizes, but also obtain new results for other parameterizations. For example, we show that in coordination games EWA may only converge to the Pareto-efficient equilibrium, never reaching the Pareto-inefficient one; that in Prisoner Dilemma games it may converge to fixed points of mutual cooperation; and that limit cycles or chaotic dynamics may be more likely with longer or shorter memory of previous play.Marco Pangallo performed the research presented in this paper when he was affiliated to the Institute for New Economic Thinking and Mathematical Institute at the University of Oxford. He acknowledges financial support from INET and from the EPSRC award number 1657725. Tobias Galla acknowledges financial support from the Agencia Estatal de Investigacion (AEI, MCI, Spain) and Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional (FEDER, UE) under Project PACSS (RTI2018-093732-B-C21/C22), and the Maria de Maeztu Program for units of Excellence in R&D, grant MDM-2017-0711 funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033. Doyne Farmer acknowledges financial support from Baillie Gifford

Williams-Beuren Syndrome and celiac disease: A real association?

Celiac disease (CD) screening in patients with Williams-Beuren Syndrome (WBS) is suggested, although data described in literature are discordant regarding CD prevalence in WBS. We retrospectively collected data from 101 WBS Italian patients [mean age: 13.5 years], to clarify the CD prevalence in a large cohort. All patients underwent a CD biochemical screening: IgA and anti-transglutaminase reflex antibodies (tTGA). CD-specific HLA typing was available for 42 patients. Small intestinal biopsy was performed in patients according to ESPGHAN guidelines. In 7 WBS patients an overt celiac disease was diagnosed. In 3 patients CD was confirmed by symptoms, HLA-DQ heterodimers and CD specific antibodies title, whereas in 4 patients, it was confirmed by a small intestinal biopsy. CD prevalence in our cohort is 6.9% (7/101). In 42/101 patients the CD-specific HLA typing was available, detecting 29/42 (69%) patients genetically predisposed to CD. The CD prevalence and CD-specific HLA prevalence are both higher than in the general population (p < 0.001; p < 0.001). Our cohort is the most numerous described confirming that the CD risk in WBS patients is significantly greater than in general population. Moreover, our HLA typing results, as well as scientific literature, suggest that the higher CD prevalence in WBS patients might not be intrinsically related to the genetic disease itself but with the higher HLA prevalence. However, HLA typing should be performed in bigger WBS cohorts to confirm this hypothesis. Our data confirms that HLA typing is mandatory in WBS patients and that CD screening should be performed only if genetically predisposed