Book Review: the adaptation industry: the cultural economy of contemporary literary adaptation

Adaptation constitutes the driving force of contemporary culture, with stories adapted across an array of media formats. Until now, adaptation studies has been concerned almost exclusively with textual analysis, in particular with compare-and-contrast studies of individual novel and film pairings. The Adaptation Industry re-imagines adaptation not as an abstract process, but as a material industry. It presents the adaptation industry as a cultural economy of interlocking institutions, stakeholders and decision-makers all engaged in the actual business of adapting texts. Casey Brienza finds that the book is a fantastic contribution to the social scientific literature on cultural production and highly recommends it to all scholars in that fiel

Book review: internet literature in China by Michel Hockx

This book examines the budding Chinese literary communities and their practices on the Internet. In Internet Literature in China, author Michael Hockx’s theoretical use of postsocialism as an organizing concept in the exploration of China’s online literary communities is what makes this such a fantastic contribution, writes Casey Brienza

Book review: pressed for time: the acceleration of life in digital capitalism by Judy Wajcman

In Pressed for Time, Judy Wajcman explains why we immediately interpret our experiences with digital technology as inexorably accelerating everyday life. She argues that we are not mere hostages to communication devices, and the sense of always being rushed is the result of the priorities and parameters we ourselves set rather than the machines that help us set them. Casey Brienza thinks this book is a star turn from a one of the UK’s most important sociologists

Book review: Anime: a history by Jonathan Clements

"Anime: A History." Jonathan Clements. BFI and Palgrave Macmillan. 2013. --- Japanese animation is at the nexus of an international multimedia industry worth over $6.5 billion a year, linked to everything from manga to computer games, Pokémon and plushies. In this book, Jonathan Clements sets out to chronicle the production and reception history of anime, from a handful of hobbyists in the 1910s to the Oscar-winning Spirited Away and beyond. Casey Brienza finds this book to be a magisterial effort that will prove invaluable for scholars, particularly in the social sciences, who are interested in the political economy of anime production

On the population of remnant FRII radio galaxies and implications for radio source dynamics

The purpose of this work is two-fold: (1) to quantify the occurrence of ultra-steep spectrum remnant FRII radio galaxies in a 74 MHz flux limited sample, and (2) perform Monte-Carlo simulations of the population of active and remnant FRII radio galaxies to confront models of remnant lobe evolution, and provide guidance for further investigation of remnant radio galaxies. We find that fewer than 2$\%$ of FRII radio galaxies with S$_{ \rm74~MHz} > 1.5$ Jy are candidate ultra-steep spectrum remnants, where we define ultra-steep spectrum as $\alpha_{\rm 74~MHz}^{\rm 1400~MHz} > 1.2$. Our Monte-Carlo simulations demonstrate that models involving Sedov-like expansion in the remnant phase, resulting in rapid adiabatic energy losses, are consistent with this upper limit, and predict the existence of nearly twice as many remnants with normal (not ultra-steep) spectra in the observed frequency range as there are ultra-steep spectrum remnants. This model also predicts an ultra-steep remnant fraction approaching 10$\%$ at redshifts $z < 0.5$. Importantly, this model implies the lobes remain over-pressured with respect to the ambient medium well after their active lifetime, in contrast with existing observational evidence that many FRII radio galaxy lobes reach pressure equilibrium with the external medium whilst still in the active phase. The predicted age distribution of remnants is a steeply decreasing function of age. In other words young remnants are expected to be much more common than old remnants in flux limited samples. For this reason, incorporating higher frequency data $\gtrsim 5$ GHz will be of great benefit to future studies of the remnant population.Comment: 19 pages, 8 figures, 4 table

Book review: enhancing the doctoral experience: a guide for supervisors and their international students by Steve Hutchinson, Helen Lawrence, and Dave Filipović-Carter

This an excellent, thoughtfully-produced pragmatic guide to the very fine and complicated art of doctoral supervision across cultures, writes Casey Brienza

The life cycle of radio galaxies as seen by LOFAR

Dit proefschrift onderzoekt de verschillende evolutionaire fases die waargenomen worden in radiosterrenstelsels. Wat deze sterrenstelsels bijzonder maakt is de aanwezigheid van een superzwaar zwart gat in hun centrum, dat het omringende materiaal aantrekt onder invloed van zijn enorme zwaartekracht. Gedurende dit proces worden twee bundels van relativistische deeltjes gevormd (ook wel: jets), die tot buiten het oorspronkelijke sterrenstelsel uitdijt en het merendeel van hun energie uitzenden op radiofrequenties. Deze jets komen periodiek voor en kunnen een substantiële invloed hebben op het sterrenstelsel. Het is dan ook van cruciaal belang om hun evolutie en de tijdschaal van hun activiteit te bestuderen om het totale proces van de formatie van sterrenstelsels te begrijpen. In het bijzonder hebben we in dit proefschrift de eigenschappen en evolutie van restanten en herstarte radiosterrenstelsels bestudeerd, wat respectievelijk overeenkomt met de fases waarin de jets stoppen of herstarten. Voor dit project hebben we op uitgebreide schaal gebruik gemaakt van de LOw Frequency ARray (LOFAR), een nieuwe generatie radiotelescoop gestationeerd in Nederland, waarmee de hemel wordt waargenomen op frequenties lager dan 250 MHz. Waarnemingen op MHz-frequenties zijn ideaal voor het bestuderen van de oudste emissie die geproduceerd is door de jets van herstarte of restanten van radiosterrenstelsels gedurende eerdere fases van activiteit. Daarmee stellen ze ons in staat om de evolutie van radiosterrenstelsels over een lange tijdschaal te reconstrueren