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1

Khatanzeyskiy, Aleksandr V. "Lend-Lease Armoured Vehicles in Operation Bagration (June 23 – August 29, 1944)." Vestnik of Northern (Arctic) Federal University. Series Humanitarian and Social Sciences, no. 1 (February 17, 2023): 43–53. http://dx.doi.org/10.37482/2687-1505-v242.

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This article dwells on the role of armoured vehicles obtained under the Lend-Lease agreement in the Byelorussian offensive operation (Bagration) in the summer of 1944. The author examines the use of foreign armoured vehicles in combat operations as part of tank, mechanized, and cavalry units of the Red Army and evaluates their quantity and quality. The Lend-Lease armoured vehicles participated in combat operations on all four fronts involved in Operation Bagration. Primarily, these were British Valentine Mk III and American M4A2 Sherman tanks. However, a significant contribution was also made by the SU-57 and M10 self-propelled artillery, as well as by the M3A1 Scout Car. In addition, the troops continued to use a certain number of M3 Medium and M3 Light tanks left over from the previous periods of the war. In 1944, they were no longer supplied. Foreign vehicles showed a good performance both in terms of reliability and combat qualities, in particular manoeuvrability, armour protection and firepower. Importantly, it was in the units advancing in the main direction that the number of Lend-Lease tanks was the largest (in the 1st Mechanized (100 %) and 3rd Guards Mechanized (91 %), in the 3rd Guards Cavalry (82.5 %) and in the 8th Guards Tank (59 %) Corps). In smaller numbers, foreign tanks were also available in the line units of all fronts involved in the operation (1st, 2nd and 3rd Byelorussian and 1st Baltic Fronts). In total, foreign tanks accounted for about 1/3 of the entire Soviet tank fleet in the Byelorussian offensive operation.
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Royal, P. M., and M. B. Smith. "A UK Military nurse practitioner on Exercise SAIF SAREEA 3: the first Overseas deployment." BMJ Military Health 166, no. 6 (May 10, 2020): 425–28. http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjmilitary-2020-001477.

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As the Queen Alexandra’s Royal Army Nursing Corps celebrates its 70th Anniversary, army nursing continues to advance patient care delivery to new levels. Advanced level nursing practice has moved from the relatively ‘calm’ confines of the NHS to the austere desert of Oman. This article will provide a personal account of the first deployment of a military nurse practitioner since it was formally introduced in 2012 to frontline medicine, leading an armoured prehospital treatment team.
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Gavrieli, Benjamin, Israel Potasman, and Robert H. Armon. "The quality of drinking water stored in canteens of field soldiers as a potential source of enteric diseases." Journal of Water and Health 8, no. 2 (November 9, 2009): 236–46. http://dx.doi.org/10.2166/wh.2009.029.

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Israel Defense Forces (IDF) guidelines for drinking water require the use of water only from sources that have been inspected and authorized by a medical expert. This study aimed to compare canteen water quality of two military units (infantry and armoured corps), to search for sources of possible microbial contamination and to look for any impact on gastrointestinal symptoms. Statistical analysis revealed that canteens of armoured corp soldiers were significantly more contaminated compared to those of infantry soldiers. Outdoor taps and water in trailers were found to harbour significantly higher numbers of microbial indicators compared to showers/lavatory sources; however, the numbers were much lower compared to canteens. Canteen water retention for more than one day revealed significantly increased numbers of examined microbial parameters, possibly due to secondary contamination or regrowth. Gastrointestinal symptoms were not significantly different between the two units despite the significant canteen water quality difference. An odds ratio evaluation was conducted on 45 exposure-illness combinations based on gastrointestinal symptoms, exposure and soldiers affiliation. Out of these 45 combinations only 14 resulted in odds ratio > 1, where 3 had high values (7.44, 7.46 and 11.2) suggesting a possible connection between diarrhoea and/or vomiting versus coliphages and faecal coliforms.
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Smoliński, Aleksander. "„Czerwona konnica”. Stan organizacyjny kawalerii RKKA od połowy lat 30. do momentu wybuchu wojny niemiecko-sowieckiej w czerwcu 1941 r." UR Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences 17, no. 4 (2020): 52–71. http://dx.doi.org/10.15584/johass.2020.4.4.

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The cavalry of the Workers ’and Peasants ’Red Army was an important component, meant mostly for offensive purposes. As a result, for the whole period from the end of Russian Civil War to the outbreak of German-Soviet war in June 1941 work was being done on the development of its large units, like brigades, divisions and corps – and even mounted armies. Ways to use them on a modern battlefield were searched for, in order to for them to cooperate with modern mechanized and armoured formations. That is why the author, based on archival sources and plentiful subject literaturemainly Russian, presented its state of organization and size, as well as the changes which occurred in the second half of the 1930’s and on the eve of the Great Patriotic War from 1941–1945.
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Šadinlija, Mesud. "The participation of the Yugoslav Army in the attacks on Sarajevo in december 1993 and january 1994 – Operation “Pancir-2”." Historijski pogledi 3, no. 4 (December 30, 2020): 287–303. http://dx.doi.org/10.52259/historijskipogledi.2020.3.4.287.

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Before the beginning of the aggression on Bosnia and Herzegovina, Yugoslavia had created, organized and armed a powerful military structure within the 2nd military area of the Yugoslav People’s Army, which was renamed into the Army of the Serb Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina in May of 1992. It had also never ceased to fill the ranks, arm, supply, train, equip and finance the Serb army which it had created in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Apart from that, abundant undeniable evidence exists which confirms the direct involvement of the Yugoslav Army as well as the special detachments of the Ministry of internal affairs of Serbia in the acts aimed against the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of Bosnia and Herzegovina, for the whole duration of the war and in different parts of the country. In this work we shall present the motives, intentions, chronology and consequences of the participation of special detachments of the Yugoslav Army and the State Security Agency of Serbia in the attacks on Sarajevo during December 1993 and January 1994. On the eve of the conclusion of the Geneva peace talks on the basis of the Owen-Stoltenberg plan, the Serb political and military leadership, expecting further pressure directed towards the signing of the peace treaty and withdrawal from the territory that the Serb forces had taken, reached a decision to strenghen their positions during December 1993. As for the whole duration of the war, Sarajevo was considered to be the strategically most important area, so a military operation “PANCIR-2” was devised, prepared and executed with the aim of taking the key objects of Sarajevo’s defence, which would force the opposition to accept a partition of the city. The forces of the Sarajevo-Romanija corps, and a brigade each from the Hercegovački and 1st Krajiški corps of the Army of the Republic of Srpska were engaged in this operation. From the composition of the Yugoslav Army, parts of the Special detachment corps were involved, with the support of charge and transport helicopters. The operation was planned in two stages, whereby the first had the aim to establish control over the following objects: Žuč, Orlić, Hum and Mojmilo, while the second stage had to result with established control over Hrasnica and Butmir. Units from the composition of the Special detachment corps of the Yugoslav Army initiated the execution of their task from Belgrade on 16 December 1993. The striking part was made up from members of the 72nd Special Brigade, with parts of other special detachments: Guards Motorized Brigade, Armoured Brigade and 63. Paratroops Brigade from Niš. The combined composition of the special detachments of the Yugoslav Army of 320 men represented the core of the fighting group from the composition of the Sarajevo-Romanija Corps, numbering a total of 3,000 fighters, and representing the main part of the Serb forces within the “PANCIR-2” operation. Colonel Milorad Stupar, the commander of the 72nd Special Brigade of the Yugoslav Army, was named as commander of the fighting group. The attacks of Serb forces, with the participation of Special detachments of the Yugoslav Army and State Security Agency of Serbia, in their first phase lasted from 21 to 27 December 1993, when the 72nd Special Brigade suffered a heavy defeat in the battles on Betanija and Orahov Brijeg. Due to the suffered losses, this detachment was incapable of further military action and it was ordered to retreat to Belgrade. Instead of it, parts of the Guards Motorized Brigade were directed into Vogošća. During January, these units were engaged in battle activities of somewhat diminished intensity on the lines of Sarajevo’s defence, because in the meantime the focus of the fighting was again shifted towards the Olovo-Vareš battlefield. Active participation of the units of the Yugoslav Army in the “PANCIR-2” operation was discontinued by the end of January 1994. Their return to Belgrade was executed on 28 and 29 January in three marching columns with 45 vehicles, 3 tanks, 2 armoured vehicles, 2 self-propelled anti-aircraft guns PRAGA and one engineering machine.
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6

Gawrych, George W. "Chariots of the Desert: The Story of the Israeli Armoured Corps, by David Eshel. xvii + 202 pages, index, biobibliography, maps, photos, annexes. Brasseys, London; Macmillan, New York1989. $24.95. - Militarization and Security in the Middle East: Its Impact on Development and Democracy, by Amin Hewedy. 144 pages, index, tables, figures. St. Martin’s Press, New York1989. $39.95." Middle East Studies Association Bulletin 24, no. 2 (December 1990): 224–26. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0026318400023415.

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7

Duplan, Yannick, Dominique Saletti, and Pascal Forquin. "Identification of the Quasi-Static and Dynamic Behaviour of Projectile-Core Steel by Using Shear-Compression Specimens." Metals 9, no. 2 (February 12, 2019): 216. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/met9020216.

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Armour-Piercing (AP) projectiles constitute a major threat to be considered for the design of bi-layer-armour configurations constructed using a ceramic front plate backed with a composite/metal layer. When they are not made of tungsten-carbide the cores of these projectiles are made of hard steel, and are the main part that defines the penetration performance of the projectile. However, due to specific testing difficulties, the dynamic behaviour of these high-strength steel AP projectiles has not been investigated in sufficient detail. In this study, a detailed experimental investigation of the dynamic behaviour of the steel used for the steel core of 7.62 mm BZ-type AP projectiles was analysed through the use of Shear-Compression Specimens (SCS). In this study, results from both quasi-static and dynamic experiments were examined. The data processing method employed was set and validated based on numerical simulations. Both quasi-static and dynamic SCS experiments were done with the steel tested which clearly indicated the steel cores exhibit a very high elastic limit, little strain-hardening, and very little strain-rate sensitivity despite the wide range of strain-rates considered. This experimental characterisation paves the way to the numerical modelling for the analysis of ballistic impact of 7.62 mm AP projectile against lightweight armour configurations.
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8

Lu, Xing, and Bin Wang. "On the Strength of Angle-Patterned Sandwich Cores under Various Loading Conditions." Key Engineering Materials 535-536 (January 2013): 413–17. http://dx.doi.org/10.4028/www.scientific.net/kem.535-536.413.

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Angled sandwich core made of thin aluminium sheets was analysed numerically to investigate their mechanical performace under various loading conditions. The stress distribution and deformation were compared with conventional hexgonal honeycomb cores of same relative density under various loadings. Possible failure modes are observed. The finding helps to provide a guidance to the design of ligthweight armour against explosive loading.
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9

Sadoch, Kamil, and Mariusz Magier. "Conception of 120 mm Kinetic Energy Fragmentating Projectile (PELE) for Leopard 2 Tank. Part 1. Numerical Calculations." PROBLEMY TECHNIKI UZBROJENIA 155, no. 4 (May 27, 2021): 49–61. http://dx.doi.org/10.5604/01.3001.0014.9005.

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Ammunition used by modern tanks is generally designed to fight strongly armour cladded vehicles and concentrated groups of infantry. Deployment of strongly armour cladded combat vehicles to special missions and asymmetrical conflicts is useful due to their resistance against firing by the infantry. The optimisation of used ammunition and often the development of completely new types is required for efficient use of tanks. The paper presents some studies on selected options of 120 mm kinetic energy fragmentating projectile (PELE) which can be successfully used in urban areas. A review of accessible scientific data was made to analyse possibilities for using some types of materials as components of these projectiles. Projectile’s shell was made of 1045 steel, and the cores were made of aluminium 1050 or polyamide 12.
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10

Kuprii, S. O., O. V. Lifantii, and O. V. Shelekhan. "BARROW 6 OF VODOSLAVKA BURIAL GROUND. THE GRAVE OF SCYTHIAN NOBILITY." Archaeology and Early History of Ukraine 33, no. 4 (December 25, 2019): 182–212. http://dx.doi.org/10.37445/adiu.2019.04.11.

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This is the first publication of the barrow 6 of burial ground placed near Vodoslavka village in Novotroitskyi district of Kherson Oblast of Ukraine. Under the small mound of soil 1.4 m height two wealthy persons were buried in the same catacomb with two entering pits. Due to stratigraphy observation, the funeral rate in this case had two phases. Firstly, the body of Scythian noble warrior was placed in the grave in his armour and with weapon. Near him on the West his horse was putted in separate small grave. Some time since, the woman’s corpse dressed in ceremonial gown with gold decoration was placed near man in his grave. Lately, the grave was robbed (probably not long time since funeral rates). But robbers used the second entering pit for their purpose. It is very uncommon, that after taking some of the grave goods and disturbing the upper part of bodies, thefts have leaved in the second entering pit the animal sacrifice (?) — horse corpse. The grave goods demonstrate the high social level of the two Scythians. The man was buried with representative set of weapon: set of ranged weapon, spears and javelins, scaled armour and antique greaves. On the woman’s skeleton the number of gold clothes decorations were recorded. Besides that, the set of silver table ware was found inside the catacomb, and the entrance to the grave was lock with wagon parts. The analysis of the gold appliquйs and rings, armour, weapon and silver vessels shows the time of burial — second—third quarter of the 4th century BC. The area, where these noble Scythians found their last resting place, was strategically important at that time. This barrow was built on the way that leaded from the Bosporan Kingdom to the center of the Scythia in the Dnieper River area.
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11

McPhie, Jocelyn, James D. L. White, Carolyn Gorny, Marie D. Jackson, Magnús Tumi Gudmundsson, and Samantha Couper. "Lithofacies from the 1963-1967 Surtsey eruption in SUSTAIN drill cores SE-2a, SE-2b and SE-03." Surtsey research 14 (June 2020): 19–32. http://dx.doi.org/10.33112/surtsey.14.2.

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Surtsey was drilled in 2017 in the context of the Surtsey Underwater volcanic System for Thermophiles, Alteration processes and INnovative Concretes (SUSTAIN) project. Vertical drill holes, SE-02a and SE02b (drilled to 191.64 m), and angled drill SE-03 (drilled to 354.05 m), intersected armoured lapilli tuff and lapilli tuff generated mainly by explosive eruptions at Surtur from November 1963 to January 1964. The top ~20 m of lapilli tuff was erupted from Surtungur. Intervals of coherent basalt in SE-02b (15.7 to 17 m and <15 cm at the end) and in SE-03 (<1 m at ~60 m and ~238 m, and 10 m near the base) are probably intrusions that may have fed the small lavas erupted at Surtur ~2.5 years later. Although collared only a few m from the 1979 drill hole, neither SE-02a nor SE-02b intersected the 13-m-thick interval of basalt found in the 1979 drill hole. The 2017 drill cores are entirely lithified and variably altered, reflecting the effects of hydrothermal alteration and cement deposition on the originally fresh, unconsolidated ash and lapilli. Drill hole SE-03 was drilled on an azimuth of 264o and at 55o from horizontal, obliquely crossing the crater- and conduit-fill of Surtur. Although the exact trajectory of SE-03 is unknown (the drill hole was not surveyed), the drill hole ended at a vertical depth of ~100 m below the pre-eruption sea floor, however, sedimentary facies known to underlie the sea floor nearby were not intersected. Surtur eruptions therefore excavated the pre-eruption sea floor to a depth of several tens of m.
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12

Watkin, Jeffrey, Ian Stead, Duncan Hook, and Susan Palmer. "A Decorated Shield-Boss from the River Trent, near Ratcliffe-on-Soar." Antiquaries Journal 76 (March 1996): 17–30. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0003581500047405.

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Part of an Iron Age shield has recently been identified amongst the collection of Leamington Spa Art Gallery and Museum, Warwickshire, adding another example to the corpus of Iron Age shields recently published in this journal. The newly recognized remains are in three parts and were recorded in the museum's accessions register as ‘3 pieces of horse armour’. These pieces were re-identified as the boss, spine and terminal discs of an Iron Age shield in the course of a project carried out between September 1992 and March 1994 to fully document and record on a computer database the whole of the museum's collection. Leamington Spa Art Gallery and Museum is managed by Warwick District Council and the three pieces have the accession numbers M1092.1928.1–3.
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13

Galay, V. J., R. S. Pentland, and R. A. Halliday. "Degradation of the South Saskatchewan River below Gardiner Dam." Canadian Journal of Civil Engineering 12, no. 4 (December 1, 1985): 849–62. http://dx.doi.org/10.1139/l85-098.

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The construction of Gardiner Dam on the South Saskatchewan River has resulted in the trapping of substantial sediment loads within the reservoir, causing some degradation of the riverbed below the dam. Analysis of cross-section and sediment data collected since the closure of the dam indicates that the average bed level has dropped 2 m (6.5 ft) downstream of the dam and that the bed has started to armour (become coarser). The degradation has progressed approximately 8 km (5 mi) below the dam. The pattern of the river channel has not altered significantly and the river has become more stable since the operation of the dam, especially in the lower reach just above Saskatoon.Detailed computations using the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers HEC-6 sediment model indicate that, by the year 2001, total degradation may be about 5.3 m (13.8 ft). The computer model also verifies that a high flood release could result in a substantial increase to the degradation that has already taken place. Key words: river behaviour, degradation, fluvial processes, sediment routing model.
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Kiran, U. Ravi, Ashutosh Panchal, S. S. Kalyan Kamal, K. K. Sahu, D. Mishra, T. K. Nandy, and Ch R. V. S. Nagesh. "Microstructure and Mechanical Properties of Tungsten Heavy Alloy Prepared Using Tungsten Metal Powder Produced from Heavy Alloy Scrap." Defence Science Journal 73, No 2 (March 9, 2023): 241–51. http://dx.doi.org/10.14429/dsj.73.18722.

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Tungsten metal powder, using a hydrometallurgical route, was extracted from tungsten heavy alloy scrap that was generated during machining of penetrator cores for the manufacture of Fin Stabilised Armour Piercing Discarding Sabot (FSAPDS). The powder was subjected to extensive characterisation that included physical property evaluation and analysis of the alloy chemistry in order to assess its suitability for the preparation of tungsten heavy alloys with enhanced mechanical properties. Subsequently, a tungsten heavy alloy based on W-Ni-Co was consolidated using this powder through liquid phase sintering followed by heat treatment and swaging operations to realize long rods (~500 mm). This was followed by a detailed characterisation that included microstructure and mechanical property. The mechanical properties of these rods are promising, exhibiting a good balance of tensile and impact properties, which in turn underscores the potential of these recycled powders in the production of premium quality heavy alloy long rods for stringent applications such as kinetic energy penetrators.
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Leblanc, Hélène, and Franck Cinato. "Scholastic Clues in Two Latin Fencing Manuals." Acta Periodica Duellatorum 11, no. 1 (May 15, 2023): 39–63. http://dx.doi.org/10.36950/apd-2023-004.

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Intellectual historians have rarely attended to the genre of fighting manuals, but these provide a new window on long-debated questions such as the relationship between Scholasticism and Humanism. This article offers a close comparison of the first known fencing manual, the 14-th century Liber de Arte Dimicatoria (Leeds, Royal Armouries FECHT 1, previously and better known as MS I.33), and the corpus of fighting manuals which underwent a remarkable expansion during the 15th and 16th centuries. While the former clearly shows its origins in a scholastic background, the latter is mainly viewed as reflecting its humanist context. To this historiographical division corresponds a linguistic one: MS I.33 is a Latin text, while the rest of the corpus is mainly written in German and Italian. However, exceptions arise, amongst which, Heinrich von Gunterrodt’s Sciomachia et Hoplomachia: sive de Veris Principiis Artis Dimicatoriae (1579), the first text which explicitly refers to I.33. This article will compare these two texts, in order to interrogate their common relation to Scholasticism, namely the traditional frame of the knowledge within the medieval and early modern universities. The intent is to show that (at least some) Renaissance fight books include references to Scholasticism and to provide a better qualification of the nature of such references. The general hypothesis is that a large part of the texts―and products of culture―of the Renaissance that have been read, until recently, exclusively in relation to a humanist intellectual background can valuably be interpreted in the context of a Scholasticism that is still vivid during the period in question.
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Patel, Shivdayal, and Murlidhar Patel. "The efficient design of hybrid and metallic sandwich structures under air blast loading." Journal of Sandwich Structures & Materials 24, no. 3 (March 2022): 1706–25. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/10996362211065748.

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A novel hybrid composite honeycomb sandwich structure (HCHSS) and metallic honeycomb sandwich structure (MHSS) were developed to obtain realistic and blast resistance parameters for the consideration of blast loading. Hybrid composite square honeycomb sandwich structure (HCSHSS) and metallic honeycomb sandwich structure with different cores such as square, hexagonal, octagonal, and circular were modelled to obtain the target protection level (lowest deflection) for the vehicle armour structure. The Johnson-Cook and Donadon failure criteria were incorporated into finite element analysis (FEA) for MHSS and HCSHSS, respectively. For the progressive damage modelling of the HCSHSS, the Donadon criterion was implemented in ABAQUS/Explicit software as a user-defined subroutine. The HCSHSS showed the fibre failure, matrix failure and delamination modes of failure in composite laminates and the plastic deformation failure of the core and metal plates. The HCSHSS was shown to have excellent blast worthiness properties in comparison to the MHSS. The metallic circular honeycomb sandwich structure (MCHSS) was shown to have the minimum deflection of the top and bottom face plates as compared to the square, hexagonal and octagonal honeycomb sandwich structures. A novel HCSHSS has obtained the minimum deflection for both the top and the bottom face plates in comparison to the other MHSS.
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Tarade, Sara Slamić, and Dijana Vuković. "Discovering the Significance of Sports Footwear Brands through Text Analysis." GATR Journal of Management and Marketing Review (GATR JMMR) VOL. 8 (4) OCTOBER - DECEMBER 2023 8, no. 4 (December 28, 2023): 166–75. http://dx.doi.org/10.35609/jmmr.2023.8.4(7).

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Objective - This paper focuses on analyzing the significance of sports footwear brands by processing large text data from the Internet. In a modern environment, the brand distinguishes a company's products or services from those of its competitors. A strong brand can help build trust with customers as they perceive the brand as reliable and trustworthy. Methodology/Technique - The study uses NLP (Natural Language Processing) methods to analyze rich text content on the Internet. The research focus is based on the application of innovative methods to determine the importance and value of a brand using NLP techniques by analyzing the content of a large corpus of text originating from websites dealing with sports footwear brands. The NLP analysis models were programmed using the low-code analysis tool KNIME. Findings – The analysis is carried out for the most well-known sports footwear brands such as Nike, Adidas, Puma, Under Armour, Reebok and Asics. The research object refers to the analysis of brand significance and the evaluation of consumer opinions on sports footwear, based on the processing of large text data from the internet. Novelty - The research results are based on an innovative approach to measuring and evaluating the brand significance in sports footwear using NLP methods to analyze large text content from the Internet. The results obtained show that this new approach to metrics and evaluation can significantly improve existing methods of brand evaluation. Type of Paper: Empirical JEL Classification: M32, M39. Keywords: Brand, NLP Method, Text Analysis, Online Brand Management Strategies, Sports Footwear. Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Tarade, S.S; Vuković, D. (2023). Discovering the Significance of Sports Footwear Brands through Text Analysis, J. Mgt. Mkt. Review, 8(4), 166 – 175. https://doi.org/10.35609/jmmr.2023.8.4(7)
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Flower, Richard. "TAMQVAM FIGMENTVM HOMINIS: AMMIANUS, CONSTANTIUS II AND THE PORTRAYAL OF IMPERIAL RITUAL." Classical Quarterly 65, no. 2 (September 2, 2015): 822–35. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s000983881500035x.

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Constantius, as though the Temple of Janus had been closed and all enemies had been laid low, was longing to visit Rome and, following the death of Magnentius, to hold a triumph, without a victory title and after shedding Roman blood. For he did not himself defeat any belligerent nation or learn that any had been defeated through the courage of his commanders, nor did he add anything to the empire, and in dangerous circumstances he was never seen to lead from the front, nor even to be among the front ranks. But he wanted to display an exaggeratedly long procession, standards stiff with gold and the beauty of his attendants, to a population who were living more peacefully, neither anticipating nor wishing to see this or anything like it. For perhaps he was unaware that some earlier emperors had been content with lictors in peacetime, but when the heat of battle could not allow inactivity, one of them had entrusted himself to a small fishing boat, blasted by raging gales, another had followed the example of the Decii and offered up his life in a vow for the state, and another had himself explored the enemy camp alongside the regular soldiers; that, in short, various of them had won renown for magnificent deeds, and so committed their glories to the distinguished memory of posterity. …When he was approaching the city, observing with a serene expression the respectful attendance of the Senate, and the venerable likenesses of the patrician families, he thought, not like Cineas, the legate of Pyrrhus, that a multitude of kings had been assembled together, but rather that this was the refuge of the whole world [cumque urbi propinquaret, senatus officia, reuerendasque patriciae stirpis effigies, ore sereno contemplans, non ut Cineas ille Pyrrhi legatus, in unum coactam multitudinem regum, sed asylum mundi totius adesse existimabat]. Next, when he turned his gaze to the general populace, he was astonished at the speed with which every type of men from everywhere had flowed into Rome. As though he were trying to terrify the Euphrates or the Rhine with the sight of arms, with the standards in front of him on each side, he sat alone in a golden chariot, glittering with the shimmer of many different precious stones, whose flashes seemed to produce a flickering light. After many others had preceded him, he was surrounded by dragons, woven from purple cloth and affixed to the golden, bejewelled tips of spears, open to the wind with their broad mouths and so hissing as though roused with anger, trailing the coils of their tails in the wind [eumque post antegressos multiplices alios, purpureis subtegminibus texti, circumdedere dracones, hastarum aureis gemmatisque summitatibus illigati, hiatu uasto perflabiles, et ideo uelut ira perciti sibilantes, caudarumque uolumina relinquentes in uentum]. Then there came a twin column of armed men, with shields and plumed helmets, shining with glittering light, clothed in gleaming cuirasses, with armoured horsemen, whom they call clibanarii, arranged among them, masked and protected by breastplates, encircled with iron bands, so that you might have thought them to be statues finished by the hand of Praxiteles, not men [sparsique catafracti equites, quos clibanarios dictitant, personati thoracum muniti tegminibus, et limbis ferreis cincti, ut Praxitelis manu polita crederes simulacra, non uiros]. Slender rings of metal plates, fitted to the curves of the body, clothed them, spread across all their limbs, so that, in whatever direction necessity moved their joints, their clothing moved likewise, since the joins had been made to fit so well.When he was hailed as Augustus with favourable cries, [Constantius] did not shudder at the din that thundered from hills and shores, but showed himself unmoved, as he appeared in his provinces. For, when passing through high gates, he stooped his short body, and, keeping his gaze straight, as though his neck were fixed, he turned his head neither right nor left, as though an image of a man, and he was never seen to nod when the wheel shook, or to spit or wipe or rub his face or nose, or to move his hand [nam et corpus perhumile curuabat portas ingrediens celsas, et uelut collo munito, rectam aciem luminum tendens, nec dextra uultum nec laeua flectebat, tamquam figmentum hominis, nec, cum rota concuteret, nutans, nec spuens, aut os aut nasum tergens uel fricans, manumue agitans uisus est umquam]. Although this behaviour was an affectation, it, and other aspects of his more private life, were however indications of extraordinary endurance, granted to him alone, as it was given to be supposed. This passage, which describes the aduentus of Constantius II into Rome in 357, is one of the best-known episodes in the Res Gestae of Ammianus Marcellinus. This historical work was completed by the retired military officer in around 390, with the surviving books covering the period from 353 to the aftermath of the Battle of Adrianople in 378. Unsurprisingly, this passage is also one of the most debated. Throughout his work, Ammianus regularly criticized Constantius as a weak, vicious ruler, influenced by women and, in particular, eunuchs, and so contrasted him with his cousin and successor Julian, the emperor who receives the most favourable treatment within this text. The degree and nature of criticism within this particular passage has, however, been the subject of a variety of wildly differing interpretations. It is clear that, at the outset, Ammianus is inveighing against the notion of holding a triumph for victory in a civil war, but there has been debate over whether Constantius was actually celebrating a triumph or merely the anniversary of his accession. Similarly, the description of the Senate as ‘the refuge of the whole world’ has been read in contrasting ways, being regarded as derogatory by Johannes Straub, as neutral, or even positive, by Pierre Dufraigne, and as respectful by R.C. Blockley. While this passage as a whole is generally read as an attack on Constantius for his pretentions to ill-deserved military glory, it also raises the question of whether Ammianus was also criticizing Constantius for the way in which he performed his aduentus, emphasizing his pompous and autocratic behaviour in order to contrast him with Julian, who preferred to behave more like a ciuilis princeps in public. Of course, such a reading almost inevitably produces a portrait of Ammianus as an impractically nostalgic figure, harking back to a style of rule which was anachronistic in the post-Diocletianic Later Roman Empire. In addition, Ammianus also presented Julian as performing an aduentus into Constantinople in 361, employing some phrases that were similar to those used to describe Constantius’ procession in 357. Furthermore, as John Matthews has illustrated, Ammianus’ presentations of the occasions when Julian eschewed late-antique imperial protocol are not without tinges of criticism, and his judgement on the propriety of different modes of imperial behaviour varied dependent on the context.
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Wardle, Sophie L., T. J. O'Leary, S. Jackson, and J. P. Greeves. "Effect of sex and combat employment on musculoskeletal injuries and medical downgrading in trained military personnel: an observational cohort study." BMJ Military Health, January 19, 2023, e002284. http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/military-2022-002284.

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IntroductionFollowing the opening of all combat roles to women across the UK Armed Forces, there is a requirement to understand the risk of injury to these female personnel. Women injure at a higher rate than men during basic military training, but fewer data are published from individuals who have passed military training.MethodsA bespoke survey was designed to investigate differences in injury prevalence and medical downgrading between sexes and career employment groups (ie, job roles) in the UK Armed Forces.ResultsQuestionnaire data were evaluated from 847 service personnel (87% men) employed incombatroles (Royal Marines, Infantry, Royal Armoured Corps, Royal Air Force Regiment (all men)) andnon-combatroles (Royal Regiment of Artillery, Corps of Royal Engineers, Royal Logistic Corps and Combat Service Support Corps who were attached to one of the participating units (men and women)). Women reported more total (OR 1.64 (95% CI: 1.03 to 2.59), p=0.035), lower limb (OR 1.92 (95% CI: 1.23 to 2.98), p=0.004) and hip (OR 2.99 (95% CI: 1.59 to 5.62), p<0.001) musculoskeletal injuries in the previous 12 months than men, but there were no sex differences in the prevalence of current or career medical downgrading due to musculoskeletal injury (both p>0.05). There were no differences in 12-month musculoskeletal injury prevalence between men in combat roles and men in non-combat roles (all p>0.05), but men in non-combat roles were more likely to be currently medically downgraded (OR 1.88 (95% CI: 1.27 to 2.78), p=0.001) and medically downgraded during their career (OR 1.49 (95% CI: 1.11 to 2.00), p=0.008) due to musculoskeletal injury than men in combat roles. More time in service and quicker 1.5-mile run times were associated with increased prevalence of total musculoskeletal injuries, and female sex was a predictor of hip injury.ConclusionsAlthough women are at greater risk of injury than men, we have no evidence that combat employment is more injurious than non-combat employment. The prevention of hip injuries should form a specific focus of mitigation efforts for women.
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Hu, Zhengyi, Guitao Shi, Pavel Talalay, Yuansheng Li, Xiaopeng Fan, Chunlei An, Nan Zhang, et al. "Deep ice-core drilling to 800 m at Dome A in East Antarctica." Annals of Glaciology, April 5, 2021, 1–12. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/aog.2021.2.

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Abstract A deep ice core was drilled at Dome A, Antarctic Plateau, East Antarctica, which started with the installation of a casing in January 2012 and reached 800.8 m in January 2017. To date, a total of 337 successful ice-core drilling runs have been conducted, including 118 runs to drill the pilot hole. The total drilling time was 52 days, of which eight days were required for drilling down and reaming the pilot hole, and 44 days for deep ice coring. The average penetration depths of individual runs were 1 and 3.1 m for the pilot hole drilling and deep ice coring, respectively. The quality of the ice cores was imperfect in the brittle zone (650−800 m). Some of the troubles encountered are discussed for reference, such as armoured cable knotting, screws falling into the hole bottom, and damaged parts, among others.
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21

Barnsdale, Liam. "Trooping the (School) Colour." M/C Journal 26, no. 1 (March 14, 2023). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.2970.

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Introduction Throughout the early and mid-twentieth century, cadet training was a feature of many secondary schools and educational establishments across Australia, with countless young men between the ages of 14 and 18 years of age undergoing military training, ostensibly in preparation for service in Australia’s armed forces upon their coming of age. Unlike earlier in the century, when cadet training was mandatory for all males within the relevant age range, during the Second World War cadet detachments could only be formed and maintained by secondary schools for pupils attending those schools. Additionally, the Australian Army provided so little financial support to school cadet detachments during the conflict that schools had to rely on the parents of their pupils to purchase their sons’ not inexpensive cadet uniforms, with a result that only a limited number of schools could afford to maintain a cadet detachment, and almost every schools that could do so made enrolment in their detachments voluntary for their pupils. Counterbalancing these material obstacles, however, was the threat of the ongoing conflict and the demands for trained soldiers both overseas and within Australia, which resulted in school cadet training becoming increasingly popular between 1939 and 1945, with many schools across Australia either establishing new cadet detachments or expanding their existing cadet detachments in order to contribute to their nation’s war effort. Not only did the Second World War increase the number of cadet detachments among educational establishments, but cadet training became more diverse and varied both within and between schools. Owing to their preoccupation with maintaining both the Australian Imperial Force and a defence force against a potential invasion of Australia, the Australian Army’s supervision of and contribution to cadet training became more sporadic than it had been in peacetime. As a result, school headmasters became increasingly powerful in their discretion to direct the cadet training that went on at their schools, with the Australian Army providing little to no input to or supervision of the day-to-day training at the myriad of cadet detachments across the nation. This state of affairs allowed schools, and the educators who ran them, an unprecedented amount of freedom to enact their own idealised version of military training through their cadet detachments, resulting in a diverse range of training syllabi, organisational practices, and uniforms. Unlike in other nations such as New Zealand, Australian schools’ cadet uniforms were not issued by the Australian Army, but instead were designed and purchased by the individual cadet detachments, with the Australian Army only providing official recognition and partial funding for the designs. Under this system, Australian schools designed a diverse range of uniforms for their cadet detachments, tailoring them to suit their individual conceptions of what cadet training should contain and how a cadet detachment should appear. This resulted in cadet detachments clad in uniforms that reflected the ideals of the schools to which they were attached, with the training practices and identities of a school reflected in the design of its cadet uniform. This article will examine two prevalent influences behind the design of Australian school cadet uniforms during the Second World War – the competing prioritisation of smartness and practicality, and the range of identities and loyalties which schools attempted to inculcate in their pupils. In the process, it will be argued that these variations in cadet uniform designs reflect the diversity of practices and ideology within male secondary education in Australia during the 1940s. Uniforms for Purpose Despite the limitations imposed by wartime shortages, a school’s priorities for their cadet training could still be expressed through their design of uniforms. For many, the range of priorities can be summarised as a split between smartness and toughness. Some establishments designed their cadet uniforms on traditional ideals of rigid sartorial orderliness, tailoring them to be pleasing to the eye when paraded in public. Others disregarded smartness in favour of hard-wearing uniforms more suited to rigorous physical training under a variety of climactic conditions, emphasising comfort and durability above appearance. Schools did not openly state that their choice of uniform was motivated by a desire to have their cadets appear impressive on the parade ground. However, many voiced their praise for their cadet detachments’ appearances in public parades. One example of this can be found in the June 1940 edition of Terrace, the magazine of Christian Brothers’ College Gregory Terrace, in which the cadet training column finished by proudly declaring that “the appearance of the cadets and their military bearing called forth expressions of praise from all who saw them marching in the Corpus Christi procession at NC” (“G.T. Corps Jottings” 5). Similar evidence of a school’s prioritisation of smartness and presentability in their cadet training can also be found in numerous contemporary descriptions of cadet training by the cadets themselves. One anonymous pupil at Sydney Church of England Grammar School described the hardships that the school’s cadets faced in maintaining their uniforms – a khaki combination of woollen slouch hat, tunic with brass buttons, brown leather ‘Sam Browne’ belt and trousers with a blue stripe down each leg. In a lengthy poem describing many aspects of school life, the pupil’s ‘Song of Shore’ described how “of each cadet the heart is set on being clean and smart; A fleck of dust, a speck of rust, will break his sergeant's heart” (‘A Song of Shore’ 131). These demands for cleanliness and smartness weighed heavily on a cadet, with the author lamenting how “he cleans his boots, he cleans his belt, he cleans his bits of brass: his Brasso goes to chapel and his Kiwi into class; but still they say, ‘Put it away! To Friday drill you go!’ And button-sticks in period six are dangerous things to show” (‘A Song of Shore’ 131). Given that this context of uniform maintenance is the only description of cadet training in this poem, the emphasis placed on sartorial orderliness at schools such as Sydney Church of England Grammar School was clearly strong enough to eclipse all other aspects of training in the eyes of those subjected to it. Uniforms designed to visually impress, however, often wore out quite quickly under the harsh conditions of cadet training. One cadet at Geelong College noted how after an afternoon of instruction on the school oval in “a comfortable spot in the rain and wind … my well-tailored uniform is sopping with either sweat or rain according to the consistent weather of these parts. My chin-strap has lost all its flavour and generally I feel most inefficient” (“Chank” 31). The short life of stylistically-prioritised uniforms was often exacerbated by the difficulty of obtaining replacement items of clothing under wartime conditions. In 1941, the cadet uniforms of Hale School, Western Australia – presented in fig. 1 and consisting of slouch hat, woollen khaki tunic, Khaki drill breeches and tall leather gaiters – had been reduced in number and quality to such an extent that one boy described the process of selecting uniforms at the beginning of each year as “scramble day”, when, “after trying on various clothing you begin to wonder how many deformed people were in the corps before you” (“Lance-Corporal” 96). The cadet elaborated by lamented how “pick[ing] out the right hat is like winning the Charities, and all you can do is to hope for the best next year” (“Lance-Corporal” 96), and “on being issued with your hat badge you will say confidently, ‘Well, at least this must fit.’ But don't be optimistic; it is sure to have the clip missing” (“Lance-Corporal” 97). The shortage of serviceable uniforms became so acute that by 1943 the annual ‘Cadet Notes’ article in the school’s magazine The Cygnet announced that “it would be greatly appreciated if Old Boys who have any part of a uniform, would make it available” (“Cadets” Cygnet 20). This sentiment was echoed the following year by an anonymous cadet’s cartoon (fig. 2), highlighting the deplorable state of the school’s cadet uniforms after so many years of use, with frayed hems, baggy seams, and, most significantly, a severe shortage of sizes which fitted the average cadet (“Uniforms for ‘B’ Company” 74). This, when compared with the formal photographs of cadets published by the school in an earlier edition of the Cygnet, seen in fig. 1, gives a clear indication of the disparity between the image that schools intended to project and the and that which cadets perceived. Fig. 1: Hale School cadet uniforms as presented by the school in 1939 (“Officers and N.C.Os.” 55) Fig. 2: Hale School cadet uniforms as perceived by a cadet in 1944 (“Uniforms for ‘B’ Company” 74) For many schools, however, the ideal cadet uniform was simple, easily-maintained and durable, often drawing inspiration from contemporary, rather than traditional, military uniforms. When designing a uniform for their newly-established cadet detachment in 1939, Brisbane Boys’ College stated categorically that “the first consideration was smartness” and that “the preservation of that smartness will be the duty of every cadet” (“Cadet Corps” 41). However, while other schools chose stiff and heavy woollen cadet uniforms, the committee appointed by the College to decide on a uniform opted for a light combination of felt hat, khaki drill jacket, and shorts, “similar in design to that of the Darwin Mobile Force”, a new Australian Army formation created the previous year intended to defend Australia’s northern coastline from invasion, “which looked so smart when that force marched through the city early in the year” (“Cadet Corps” 41-42). When further explaining their choice, the College argued that “shorts, we consider, are more serviceable for the Queensland climate” (“Cadet Corps” 42). Brisbane Boys’ College was not the only establishment to be impressed by new military formations and their heralding of a new form of warfare. Newcastle Boys’ High School’s cadet uniform deviated from those of other schools’ cadet detachments by including a navy blue beret in place of the ubiquitous felt ‘slouch hat’. This choice of headwear, coupled with the School’s unusual decision to replace the normal khaki items of clothing with a field grey battledress-style jacket and slacks, was so similar to that worn by the armoured divisions both in Australia and Britain that when the Newcastle Sun published a picture of four Newcastle cadets wearing their new uniforms, they jocularly warned their readers that “these are not members of the Tank Corps” (“High School Cadet Corps” 7). Evidently, while some schools opted for a more traditionally smart design for their cadet uniforms, others chose to emulate more modern military uniform designs, even to the point where their uniforms lost all similarity to those traditionally worn by cadet detachments in Australia. It was not through the emulation of contemporary Australian Army uniforms that schools implemented practical uniform components in place of stylish ones. When several independent Roman Catholic schools in New South Wales applied to form cadet units and intended to adopt cadet uniforms in a variety of colours with brimless, forage cap headdress, Australia’s Military Board directed Captain McConnel, the Staff Officer Commanding Senior Cadets for New South Wales, “to invite schools again to reconsider the uniforms they have submitted with a view to their adoption of the Australian Hat and Khaki materials” (McConnel 1). McConnel acknowledged that “particular uniforms are not stipulated”, but claimed “khaki to be most suitable and economical for field training while the Australian Hat gives greater protection from the sun”, which was a factor of “considerable importance” as “work in the open is one of the main objects of cadet training” (McConnel 1). However, despite McConnel’s emphatic pleas to the institutions to reconsider their uniforms, only two of the eleven schools chose to alter their uniforms to suit the Military Board’s recommendations. The remainder either compromised by retaining their forage caps but adopting McConnel’s recommendation of using khaki material for their uniforms, or, as was the case with Marist Brothers’ High School, Darlinghurst, wrote in response to McConnel’s letter stating that they found “no reason for altering the design initially submitted”, and persisted with their application (Frederic 1). This case demonstrates that while dispassionate logic could motivate schools to design practical uniforms resistant to the wear and tear produced by strenuous outdoor cadet training in the Australian climate, these considerations were often outweighed by the subjective ideological motivations behind educators’ desires to adopt attractively smart cadet uniforms that were expensive and ill-suited to physical training. Evidently, educators’ personal desires to make their cadets, and as a result their schools, appear impressively smart and orderly were a powerful motivation behind not only their choice of uniform but also their support for cadet training in its entirety. These motivations could and frequently did outweigh practical considerations, to the point where the appearance of a cadet detachment, and thereby that of the cadet detachment’s school, was considered more important than the training it provided. Uniforms as Identity The division between concepts of cadet training held by the Australian Army and the highly diverse forms of training practiced by individual schools extended beyond differences of opinion over the relative merits of smartness and practicality expressed by cadet uniforms. A cadet uniform not only reflected educators’ intentions regarding the contents of their training, but also reflected the values of the group identity they wished to immerse their boys in, and the overarching group to which this identity owed its loyalty. The best example of uniforms reflecting a cadet detachment’s loyalty can be seen in the widespread adoption of uniforms that emulated Australian Army uniforms almost exactly. Although Australian cadet detachments were not issued with official Service Dress uniforms until 1945, many detachments’ uniforms emulated the Service Dress’s design and material down to the ubiquitous wide-brimmed ‘slouch hat’ or ‘Australian hat’ worn by the Australian Army in both the First and Second World Wars. Brother RJ McCartney, “the nominal C.O.” of the cadet detachment at Christian Brothers’ College Ipswich, specifically described his detachment’s uniform to the Queensland Times in 1944 as “similar to that issued to Army personnel” after declaring that “the training [cadets] receive will be most useful to them should they join one of the fighting forces later” (“95 Boys” 2). The popularity of this design cannot be attributed solely to the arguments made by the Military Board for its practicality, and the symbolic power of these uniforms raised the cadet detachments from insular, extra-curricular organisations to a unified whole, connected to the Commonwealth’s war effort through their uniforms and the martial identities they espoused. Fig. 3: A contemporary drawing of Brisbane Boys’ College cadet badge from 1939 (“Cadet Corps” 42) Not all Australian educational establishments, however, chose to emulate the Australian Army uniform in their cadet detachments’ uniforms, with many adopting uniforms that emphasised school or local identities above national identity. Most schools expressed their local identity through the implementation of school colours in their hat bands or ‘puggaree’ or designed insignia for their cadet uniforms based on school insignia. The cadet detachment at Brisbane Boys College adopted a badge that was nearly identical to the College badge, seen in fig. 3, albeit with a crown in place of the book (“Cadet Corps” 42). This alteration brought the design into alignment with common practice in military insignia, but it could also be viewed as symbolic representation of the difference between the College and the cadet detachment – whereas the College’s primary objective was to educate, the cadet detachment’s objective was to instil a sense of patriotism and duty. The most prominent examples of schools deviating in this manner can be found among Presbyterian schools, many of which chose to emphasise their Scottish ancestry instead of their Australian nationality. One such school was Scotch College in Claremont, Western Australia, where in August 1939, after “several unsuccessful attempts to secure a uniform dress for the cadets”, “the corps fitted out with uniforms which made the boys look like trained soldiers … which consisted of a Cameron kilt, with a kangaroo-skin sporran, a khaki tunic and glengarrie [sic]” (“Cadets” Scotch 16), which gave the detachment the appearance of a highland regiment of the British Army. After being issued with their new uniforms and instructed on their wearing, an event that was satirically recalled later that year by a cadet asking the headmaster what was worn beneath the kilt, the cadets were addressed by the school’s headmaster Mr Anderson, who “mention[ed] the fine example set by our predecessors, which example, he knew, we would endeavour to live up to” (“Cadets” Scotch 16). A similar uniform was worn by The Scots College, Sydney, prior to and during the Second World War. The College’s cadet uniform, shown in fig. 4, was just as rife with Scottish motifs as the uniform of Scotch College, including a kilt which one anonymous cadet described as “eleven yards of pleats, folds, buckles, buttons and straps all mixed up” (“C.S.R., IVa” 91). The Scots College’s uniform incorporated more colonial aspects than their West Australian contemporary’s uniform, however, with the glengarry and khaki tunic replaced by a Blancoed-white pith helmet and dark green standing-collared jacket with hooks and eyes that, according to the anonymous cadet, “were typically scotch”, in that “they would not give in” (“C.S.R., IVa” 91). Despite the free issue of Service Dress by the Australian Army in 1945, the College maintained its distinctly Scottish cadet uniform, albeit with the pith helmet replaced by a glengarry cap. So strong was the College’s prioritisation of its colonial ancestral identity above any contemporary Australian national identity that the Sun newspaper described them as “Black Watch juniors” when publishing a photograph of them parading “in support of the War Loan Campaign” in October 1941, seen in fig. 4 (“Black Watch Juniors” 3). Although these schools formed the minority in espousing divergent local identities above a centralised national identity, is these exceptions to the broad consensus which reflect the diverse nature of not only cadet training but secondary education within Australia in the first half of the twentieth century. Furthermore, this diversity was only revealed due to the refusal of the Australian Army to issue free uniforms to cadet detachments, with the resulting absence of a centralised identity leading to a vacuum in which schools decided upon an identity with which to imbue their pupils through the medium of cadet uniforms. Fig. 4: The Scots College cadets parading through Sydney, as presented by the Sun (“Black Watch Juniors” 3). Conclusion The Australian Army’s refusal to issue a free, standardised cadet uniform to secondary school cadet detachments prevented many educational establishments from establishing their own cadet detachment. However, this policy allowed those schools that did establish a detachment to clothe their members in a manner that they believed would align with the school’s unique conceptions of both what cadet training should consist of and how a cadet detachment should be presented to the world. As a result of this freedom, Australian secondary school cadet uniforms were influenced by a wide range of practical and ideological factors, with a diverse range of uniform designs reflecting an equally diverse range of thinking around cadet training. Some schools preferred a cadet uniform to be tough and suited to strenuous outdoor use under harsh climatic conditions, with Brisbane Boys’ College modelling their uniform after the recently-formed Darwin Mobile Force and incorporating shorts and a wide-brimmed Australian hat of the type recommended by the Australian Army for its value in shielding its wearer from the sun. Other cadet uniforms, such as those adopted by many Roman Catholic schools in Sydney, emphasised sartorial orderliness and visual splendour, incorporating unusual colours and forage caps to showcase their cadets and their school while emphasising their institutions’ individuality, against the Australian Army’s recommendations for durability and practicality. Similarly, a school’s cadet uniform could reflect its ideological objectives, revealing the identity it aimed to immerse its pupils in. The wide range of schools’ cadet uniform headdress alone, from ‘slouch hats’ to glengarry and forage caps to pith helmets, reveals the many split loyalties and ideals held by Australian schools during the Second World War between imperial, national, local, and religious identities and ethos. However, despite Australian Schools’ diverse and meticulously curated choices in cadet uniforms, cadets’ contemporary descriptions of their uniforms reveal that the intentions behind the uniforms’ designs were often entirely lost on those who wore them. Many cadets overlooked the lofty educational and ideological intentions behind their educators’ choices and instead only took note of their ridiculous, impractical, and uncomfortable aspects. This difference in perception, with educators praising and pupils decrying their cadet uniforms, reveals the performative nature of the entire uniform design process, with schools designing their cadet detachments’ uniforms not for those wearing them but for any third party who might view them. As such, schools’ overtures regarding the practicality, smartness and identity of their uniforms were not the result of the schools’ established practices, but the values with which the schools wished to be associated, with cadet uniforms acting as the medium through which these values would be communicated to the wider world. Images “Black Watch Juniors in City Parade.” The Sun 10 Oct. 1941: 3. “Officers and N.C.Os. of the Cadet Corps, 1939.” The Cygnet: Hale School Magazine 19.3 (June 1939): 55. “Uniforms for ‘B’ Company. Only Two Sizes 2 Large OR 2 Small.” The Cygnet: Hale School Magazine 14.4 (June 1944): 74. References “A Song of Shore” The Torch-Bearer: The Magazine of the Sydney Church of England Grammar School 43.2 (1 Sep. 1939): 130-131. “Cadets.” The Cygnet: Hale School Magazine 13.3 (June 1943): 19-20. “Cadets.” The Scotch College Reporter 32 (Dec. 1939): 16-17. “Cadet Corps.” The Portal: The Magazine of the Brisbane Boys’ College Dec. 1939: 41-43. “Chank”; “A Day in the Ranks.” The Pegasus: The Journal of The Geelong College 37.1 (June 1946): 30-31. “C.S.R., IVa”; “A Bonny Wee Scotsman.” The Scotsman: A Record of The Scots College, Bellevue Hill, Sydney 32.3 (May 1946): 91. “G.T. Corps Jottings.” Terrace: Quarterly Review, Published by Christian Brothers’ College Gregory Terrace, Brisbane, Queensland 3.2 (24 June 1940): 5. “High School Cadet Corps.” The Newcastle Sun 4 June 1940: 7. “Lance-Corporal”; “Scramble Day.” The Cygnet: Hale School Magazine 13 (5 June 1941): 96-97. “95 Boys Receive Training in School Cadet Corps.” The Queensland Times 21 Aug. 1944: 2. Memoranda Brother Frederic to Captain McConnel. “Cadets – Educational establishments – Approval to form senior cadet detachments – Roman Catholic schools.” 7 April 1941. Australian War Memorial, Ref. AWM61 426/2/176. Captain McConnel to Director CBC Waverley, CBC Lewisham, CBC Darlinghurst, MBC Darlinghurst, MBC Randwick, MBC Kogarah, MBC Parramatta, MBC Church Hill, DLSC Ashfield, DLSC Marrickville, HCC Ryde, SJC Hunter's Hill. “Cadets – Educational establishments – Approval to form senior cadet detachments – Roman Catholic schools.” 13 March 1941. Australian War Memorial, Ref. AWM61 426/2/176.
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Baptista Neto, José Antônio, and Maria Augusta Martins Da Silva. "OCORRÊNCIA E ORIGEM DE BOLAS DE LAMA NAS PRAIAS DA ENSEADA DE JURUJUBA (BAÍA DE GUANABARA) - NITERÓI-RJ." Boletim Paranaense de Geociências 49 (December 31, 2001). http://dx.doi.org/10.5380/geo.v49i0.4125.

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O objetivo deste trabalho é relatar a ocorrência, bem como determinar a origem, de bolas de lama freqüentemente encontradas nas praias de São Francisco e Charitas, no fundo da Enseada de Jurujuba (setor leste da Baía de Guanabara), após ressacas ou fortes tempestades. As bolas de lama apresentam, principalmente, as cores preta, cinza-clara, ou esverdeadas. São de diversos tamanhos e cobertas por biodetritos, quartzo ou outros fragmentos. Os estudos mineralógicos e geoquímicos permitiram a correlação entre as bolas de lama e a sequência sedimentar descrita nos testemunhos coletados na Enseada de Jurujuba. As bolas de lama cinza-clara e esverdeadas tem sua origem associada à camada de lama inferior existente à cerca de 3 metros de profundidade, dentro da sequência sedimentar da Enseada. As bolas de lama pretas são provenientes da camada de lama superior, depositada nos últimos três (3) mil anos. As dragagens realizadas na Enseada, na década de setenta, chegaram a atingir a camada de lama inferior, a qual passa a ser remobilizada pela ação das ondas e correntes durante períodos de ressaca ou tempesta-des. OCCURRENCE AND ORIGIN OF MUD BALLS ALONG THE BEACHES OF JURUJUBA SOUND (GUANABARA BAY) − NITERÓI-RJ Abstract This paper studies at the occurrence and origen of armoured mud balls on São Francisco and Charitas beaches - Jurujuba Sound (eastern Guanabara Bay), frequently found in the region after storms. The mud balls are mainly black, light grey and greenish, of various sizes, and covered by biodetritus, quartz or other fragments. The mud balls are similar to ones previously studied on a variety of modern environments including marine and lacustrine shorelines. Armoured mud balls can potentially become preserved in the geological record, thus the understanding of the modern environments of formation will aid the reconstruction of paleoenvironments. Mineralogical and geochemical studies allow the correlation between the mud balls and the sedimentary sequence described in cores collected in the sound. The source of mud for the light grey mud balls is with the lower mud layer, that occurs at around 3 meters within the sedimentary sequence, while the black balls originate from the upper muddy sequence that was deposited in the last 3 thousand years. The dredging carried out in the area in the 70’s penetrated the lower mud layers, which made the mud available to be remobilized by wave and current action during periods of surges or storms.
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Clark, Chris, Richard J. M. Taylor, Malcolm P. Roberts, and Simon L. Harley. "Modification of the isotopic and geochemical compositions of accessory minerals controlled by microstructural setting." Journal of Metamorphic Geology, June 22, 2024. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/jmg.12789.

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AbstractIn situ age and trace element determinations of monazite, rutile and zircon grains from an ultrahigh temperature (UHT) metapelite‐hosted leucosome from the Napier Complex using laser split‐stream analysis reveal highly variable behaviour in both the U–Pb and trace element systematics that can be directly linked to the microstructural setting of individual grains. Monazite grains armoured by garnet and quartz retain two concordant ages 2.48 and 2.43 Ga that are consistent with the previously determined ages for peak UHT metamorphism in the Napier Complex. Yttrium in the armoured grains is unzoned with contents of ~700 ppm for the garnet‐hosted monazite and in the range 400–1,600 ppm for the monazite enclosed within quartz. A monazite grain hosted within mesoperthite records a spread of ages from 2.43 to 2.20 Ga and Y contents ranging between 400 and 1,700 ppm. This grain exhibits core to rim zoning in both Y and age, with the cores enriched in Y relative to the rim and younger ages in the core relative to the rim. A monazite grain that sits on a grain boundary between mesoperthite and garnet records the largest spread in ages—from 2.42 to 2.05 Ga. The youngest ages in this grain are within a linear feature that reaches the core and is connected to the grain boundary between the garnet and mesoperthite; the oldest ages are observed where monazite is in contact with garnet. Yttrium in the grain is enriched in the core and depleted at the rim with the strongest depletions where monazite is adjacent to grain boundaries between the silicate minerals or in contact with garnet. The unarmoured monazite grains have lower intercept ages of 1.85 Ga, which overlaps with the bulk of ages determined from the rutile and is coincident with a previously reported zircon age obtained through depth profiling from the Napier Complex. The age and chemical relationships outlined above illustrate decoupling between the geochemical and geochronological systems in monazite. Individual grains are suggestive of a range of processes that modify these systems, including volume diffusion, flux‐limited diffusion and fluid‐enhanced recrystallization, all operating at the scale of a single thin section and primarily controlled by host mineral microstructural setting. These findings illustrate how the development of simple partitioning coefficients (cf. garnet/zircon) and geospeedometry based on experimentally determined diffusion coefficients on grain separates may not be achievable. However, it highlights the utility of combining age and trace element concentrations from multiple accessory minerals with microstructural information when trying to build a complete history of tectonothermal events experienced by an ancient rock system that has undergone a prolonged history of thermal, deformational and fluid flow events.
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Benites-Munoz, Daniela, Pierpaolo Ricci, Imanol Touzon, Fernando Salcedo, Rupert Raymond, and Diogo Nunes. "Fatigue-life prediction methods of a dynamic power cable for a floating testing platform – a numerical approach." Proceedings of the European Wave and Tidal Energy Conference 15 (September 2, 2023). http://dx.doi.org/10.36688/ewtec-2023-410.

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Floating testing platforms and marine energy devices use Dynamic Power Cables (DPC) to connect to the testing centres or the national grids. These power cables are, therefore, an inherent component in the reliable operation of the floating structure, and their integrity throughout the design life of the device should be ensured from the early stages of the project. Fatigue failure is one of the most common factors affecting the cable's performance due to the cyclic loads caused by waves and currents. However, accurately estimating the fatigue life of DPC has proved challenging due to their material and geometric nonlinearities. In addition to fatigue failure, the cable design life is also characterised by its ability to withstand extreme conditions on-site. This paper addresses the design, analysis and specification of a dynamic power cable that will be deployed at the Biscay Marine Energy Platform (BiMEP) for the connection of the HarshLab 2.0, a floating testing platform for materials, subsystems and components developed and operated by Tecnalia. BiMEP is exposed to severe waves that induce large motions on the HarshLab buoy, and different numerical models for the analysis of the hydrodynamic response are reviewed and calibrated against model tests. To address a comprehensive study of the power cable at the design stage, this paper focuses on reviewing different fatigue-life prediction methods employed for a DPC, considering the damage in the steel armour and the conductor cores. It also covers the cable's response when the system operates under extreme sea conditions and the potential implications of sensitive variables such as loss of buoyancy and marine growth. To perform the fatigue-life study, long-term cyclic loading in each cable component was compared with its resistance to fatigue damage. In this case, the damage for each variable was derived from stress- and strain-based curves for the high-strength steel (armour) and the copper (core conductor) depending on the selected approach. The design iterative process using the studies performed in this paper led to the definition of a Lazy Wave design with a high-level optimisation of some components, e.g. the ballast and buoyancy modules and the bend stiffener. In general, the behaviour across the cable length is similar between the different fatigue-life approaches, with the most significant expected fatigue damage found in localised hot spots near the bend stiffener and the belly (sag-bend region) of the cable, before the buoyancy modules. It is found that, despite a significant difference across the magnitude of fatigue life estimated in sensitive areas, the final design complies with all design criteria and reaches a satisfactory fatigue life.
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Drăghici, Teodora Ligia. "Evolutia simbolisticii blazoanelor in cazul innobilarilor cu acordare de blazon in Transilvania, Banat si Partium in cursul secolelor XVI-XVIII. Studiu comparativ / The evolution of the Representations of the Coats of Arms in Cases of Ennoblement in Transylvania, Banat and Partium During the 16th-18th Centuries. Comparative Study." Analele Banatului XXI 2013, January 1, 2013. http://dx.doi.org/10.55201/bhde3001.

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If during the 16th century the kings of Hungary and the principles of Transylvania rewarded the virtues of their subjects through the grant of diplomas with coats of arms, this praxis proliferated in the 17th century with the debut of military campaigns of the two Rákóczi principles of Transylvania. Naturally, the boost of the warriors and the reward of their faithful services could be easily done through this type of ennoblement.In time we could distinguish more stages in the process of ennoblement, from far- reaching diplomas in which are specified the services of the subjects and their virtues, followed by donations of land, with the enumeration of the situations when they could use the coat of arms, to the simple mention of the ennoblement without the description of the coat of arms.As for the coats of arms granted, with a few exceptions the blue enamel of the shields prevailed, symbolizing nobility, faith, and good morals. e natural figures and the chimeras or artificial ones are of a great variety. A frequent natural figure used is the human body in different postures, vestimentation and attitudes, whether illustrating foot soldiers or riders in armour with sword or spear, or foot soldiers dressed in green or red according to the corps they belong to; a frequent representation due to the political and military realities of the time are the heads of Turkish either cut off or skewered by the sword or spear. e natural figures from the animal world are the lion as a symbol of courage, the bear as a symbol of force, the wolf as a symbol of watchfulness and prudence. Birds frequently appear including the pigeon, the swan, the vulture, the pelican, and the crane, static or flying, holding branchs, flowers, wheat, rings, crosses or stones. As for the external ornaments of the shield, generally they use a military helmet, crowned by a royal diadem, symbolizing the authority of those who confer the coat of arms.e colours and the metals are the consecrated ones: azure as a symbol of Jupiter, gold for the sun, red as a symbol for Mars and silver as a symbol of the moon.In conclusion, the title of nobility for the “armalists” meant from a socio-economic point of view only the exemption from the taxes they owe for their houses and surroundings which due to their small sizes couldn’t bring a significant profit.Of course, the noble status and the awareness of belonging to the caste of noble, gave them the feeling of an important role than if they had continued to belong to that “statu et conditione plebea”, from which they were elevated and introduced “in coetum et numerum verorum, natorum, indubitatorum, insignitorumque Regni noştri Transilvaniae et partium Hungariae eidem annexarum nobilium” as stated in the documents.During the 18th century we witness a change in point of the representations of the coats of arms due to the evolution of the political situation and to the praxis of the ennoblement. In comparison with the relatively simple compositions specific to the ennoblements for military virtues, granted in large number to warriors of modest origin with recurrence of typical military symbols, at the ennoblement at the end of the 17th century and into the 18th century we witness a diversification of the representations and a more coherent personalization, with less frequent similarities between the coats of arms granted to different families.
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Pargman, Daniel. "The Fabric of Virtual Reality." M/C Journal 3, no. 5 (October 1, 2000). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.1877.

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Introduction -- Making Sense of the (Virtual) World Computer games are never "just games". Computer games are models of reality and if they were not, we would never be able to understand them. Models serve three functions; they capture important, critical features of that which is to be represented while ignoring the irrelevant, they are appropriate for the person and they are appropriate for the task -- thereby enhancing the ability to make judgements and discover relevant regularities and structures (Norman 1993). Despite the inherently unvisualisable nature of computer code -- the flexible material of which all software constructs are built -- computer code is still the most "salient" ingredient in computer games. Less salient are those assumptions that are "built into" the software. By filtering out those parts of reality that are deemed irrelevant or unnecessary, different sorts of assumptions, different sorts of bias are automatically built into the software, reified in the very computer code (Friedman 1995, Friedman and Nissenbaum 1997). Here I will analyse some of the built-in structures that constitute the fabric of a special sort of game, a MUD. A MUD is an Internet-accessible "multi-participant, user-extensible virtual reality whose user interface is entirely textual" (Curtis, 1992). The specific MUD in question is a nine-year old Swedish-language adventure MUD called SvenskMUD ("SwedishMUD") that is run by Lysator, the academic computer club at Linköping University, Sweden. I have done field studies of SvenskMUD over a period of three and a half years (Pargman, forthcoming 2000). How is the SvenskMUD adventure world structured and what are the rules that are built into the fabric of this computer game? I will describe some of the ways in which danger and death, good and evil, courage, rewards and wealth are handled in the game. I will conclude the paper with a short analysis of the purpose of configuring the player according to those structures. Revocable Deaths Characters (personae/avatars) in SvenskMUD can be divided into two categories, players and magicians. Making a career as a player to a large part involves solving quests and killing "monsters" in the game. The magicians are all ex-players who have "graduated" and gone beyond playing the game of SvenskMUD. They have become the administrators, managers and programmers of SvenskMUD. A watchful eye is kept on the magicians by "God", the creator, owner and ultimate custodian of SvenskMUD. My own first battle in the game, in a sunlit graveyard with a small mouse, is an example of a bit-sized danger suitable for newcomers, or "newbies". I correctly guessed that the mouse was a suitably weak opponent for my newborn character, but still had to "tickle" the mouse on its belly (a euphemism for hitting it without much force) 50 times before I managed to kill it. Other parts of this epic battle included 45 failed attempts of mine to "tickle" the mouse, 39 successful "tickles" of the mouse and finally a wild chase around the graveyard before I caught up with the mouse, cornered it and managed to kill it and end the fight. Although I was successful in my endeavour, I was also more than half dead after my run-in with the mouse and had to spend quite some time engaged in more peaceful occupations before I was completely healed. It was only later that I learned that you can improve your odds considerably by using weapons and armour when you fight... Should a SvenskMUD player fail in his (or less often, her) risky and adventurous career and die, that does not constitute an insurmountable problem. Should such a thing pass, the player's ghost only has to find the way back to a church in one of the villages. In the church, the player is reincarnated, albeit with some loss of game-related abilities and experience. The way the unfortunate event of an occasional death is handled is part of the meta-rules of SvenskMUD. The meta-rules are the implicit, underlying rules that represent the values, practices and concerns that shape the frame from which the "ordinary" specific rules operate. Meta-rules are part of the "world view that directs the game action and represents the implicit philosophy or ideals by which the world operates" (Fine 1983, 76). Despite the adventure setting with all its hints of medieval lawlessness and unknown dangers lurking, SvenskMUD is in fact a very caring and forgiving environment. The ultimate proof of SvenskMUD's forgiveness is the revocable character of death itself. Fair Dangers Another SvenskMUD meta-rule is that dangers (and death) should be "fair". This fairness is extended so as to warn players explicitly of dangers. Before a dangerous monster is encountered, the player receives plenty of warnings: You are standing in the dark woods. You feel a little afraid. East of you is a small dark lake in the woods. There are three visible ways from here: east, north and south. It would be foolish to direct my character to go east in this situation without being adequately prepared for encountering and taking on something dangerous in battle. Those preparations should include a readiness to flee if the expected danger proves to be superior. If, in the example above, a player willingly and knowingly directs a character to walk east, that player has to face the consequences of this action. But if another player is very cautious and has no reason to suspect a deadly danger lurking behind the corner, it is not considered "fair" if that player's character dies or is hurt in such a way that it results in damage that has far-reaching consequences within the game. The dangerous monsters that roam the SvenskMUD world are restricted to roam only "dangerous" areas and it is considered good manners to warn players in some way when they enter such an area. Part of learning how to play SvenskMUD successfully becomes a matter of understanding different cues, such as the transition from a safe area to a dangerous one, or the different levels of danger signalled by different situations. Should they not know it in advance, players quickly learn that it is not advisable to enter the "Valley of Ultimate Evil" unless they have reached a very high level in the game and are prepared to take on any dangers that come their way. As with all other meta-rules, both players and magicians internalise this rule to such an extent that it becomes unquestionable and any transgression (such as a dangerous monster roaming around in a village, killing newbie characters who happen to stray its way) would immediately render complaints from players and corresponding actions on behalf of the magicians to rectify the situation. Meta-Rules as "Folk Ideas" Fine (1983, 76-8) enumerates four meta-rules that Dundes (1971) has described and applies them to the fantasy role-playing games he has studied. Dundes's term for these meta-rules is "folk ideas" and they reflect existing North American (and Western European) cultural beliefs. Fine shows that these folk ideas capture core beliefs or central values of the fantasy role-playing games he studied. Three of Dundes's four folk ideas are also directly applicable to SvenskMUD. Unlimited Wealth The first folk idea is the principle of unlimited good. There is no end to growth or wealth. For that reason, treasure found in a dungeon doesn't need a rationale for being there. This folk idea is related to the modernist concept of constant, unlimited progress. "Some referees even 'restock' their dungeons when players have found a particular treasure so that the next time someone enters that room (and kills the dragon or other beasties guarding it) they, too, will be rewarded" (Fine 1983, 76). To restock all treasures and reawaken all killed monsters at regular intervals is standard procedure in SvenskMUD and all other adventure MUDs. The technical term is that the game "resets". The reason why a MUD resets at regular intervals is that, while the MUD itself is finite, there is no end to the number of players who want their share of treasures and other goodies. The handbook for SvenskMUD magicians contains "design guidelines" for creating quests: You have to invent a small story about your quest. The typical scenario is that someone needs help with something. It is good if you can get the story together in such a way that it is possible to explain why it can be solved several times, since the quest will be solved, once for each prospective magician. Perhaps a small spectacle a short while after (while the player is pondering the reward) that in some way restore things in such a way that it can be solved again. (Tolke 1993, my translation) Good and Evil The second folk idea is that the world is a battleground between good and evil. In fantasy literature or a role-playing game there is often no in-between and very seldom any doubt whether someone encountered is good or evil, as "referees often express the alignment [moral character] of nonplayer characters through stereotyped facial features or symbolic colours" (Fine 1983, 77). "Good and evil" certainly exists as a structuring resource for the SvenskMUD world, but interestingly the players are not able to be described discretely in these terms. As distinct from role-playing games, a SvenskMUD player is not created with different alignments (good, evil or neutral). All players are instead neutral and they acquire an alignment as they go along, playing SvenskMUD -- the game. If a player kills a lot of mice and cute rabbits, that player will turn first wicked and then evil. If a player instead kills trolls and orcs, that player first turns good and then saint-like. Despite the potential fluidity of alignment in SvenskMUD, some players cultivate an aura of being good or evil and position themselves in opposition to each other. This is most apparent with two of the guilds (associations) in SvenskMUD, the Necromancer's guild and the Light order's guild. Courage Begets Rewards The third folk idea is the importance of courage. Dangers and death operate in a "fair" way, as should treasures and rewards. The SvenskMUD world is structured both so as not to harm or kill players "needlessly", and in such a way that it conveys the message "no guts, no glory" to the players. In different places in the MUD (usually close to a church, where new players start), there are "easy" areas with bit-sized dangers and rewards for beginners. My battle with the mouse was an example of such a danger/reward. A small coin or an empty bottle that can be returned for a small finder's fee are examples of other bit-sized rewards: The third folk idea is the importance of courage. Dangers and death operate in a "fair" way, as should treasures and rewards. The SvenskMUD world is structured both so as not to harm or kill players "needlessly", and in such a way that it conveys the message "no guts, no glory" to the players. In different places in the MUD (usually close to a church, where new players start), there are "easy" areas with bit-sized dangers and rewards for beginners. My battle with the mouse was an example of such a danger/reward. A small coin or an empty bottle that can be returned for a small finder's fee are examples of other bit-sized rewards: More experienced characters gain experience points (xps) and rise in levels only by seeking out and overcoming danger and "there is a positive correlation between the danger in a setting and its payoff in treasure" (Fine 1983, 78). Just as it would be "unfair" to die without adequate warning, so would it be (perceived to be) grossly unfair to seek out and overcome dangerous monsters or situations without being adequately rewarded. And conversely, it would be perceived to be unfair if someone "stumbled over the treasure" without having deserved it, i.e. if someone was rewarded without having performed an appropriately difficult task. Taken from the information on etiquette in an adventure MUD, Reid's quote is a good example of this: It's really bad form to steal someone else's kill. Someone has been working on the Cosmicly Invulnerable Utterly Unstoppable Massively Powerful Space Demon for ages, leaves to get healed, and in the interim, some dweeb comes along and whacks the Demon and gets all it's [sic] stuff and tons of xps [experience points]. This really sucks as the other person has spent lots of time and money in expectation of the benefits from killing the monster. The graceful thing to do is to give em [sic] all the stuff from the corpse and compensation for the money spent on healing. This is still a profit to you as you got all the xps and spent practically no time killing it. (Reid 1999, 122, my emphasis) The User Illusion An important objective of the magicians in SvenskMUD is to describe everything that a player experiences in the SvenskMUD world in game-related terms. The game is regarded as a stage where the players are supposed to see only what is in front of, but not behind the scenes. A consistent use of game-related terms and game-related explanations support the suspension of disbelief and engrossment in the SvenskMUD fantasy world. The main activity of the MUD users should be to enter into the game and guide their characters through a fascinating (and, as much as possible and on its own terms, believable) fantasy world. The guiding principle is therefore that the player should never be reminded of the fact that the SvenskMUD world is not for real, that SvenskMUD is only a game or a computer program. From this perspective, the worst thing players can encounter in SvenskMUD is a breakdown of the user illusion, a situation that instantly transports a person from the SvenskMUD world and leaves that person sitting in front of a computer screen. Error messages, e.g. the feared "you have encountered a bug [in the program]", are an example of this. If a magician decides to change the SvenskMUD world, that magician is supposed to do the very best to explain the change by using game-related jargon. This is reminiscent of the advice to "work within the system": "wherever possible, things that can be done within the framework of the experiential level should be. The result will be smoother operation and greater harmony among the user community" (Morningstar and Farmer 1991, 294). If for some reason a shop has to be moved from one village to another, a satisfactory explanation must be given, e.g. a fire occurring in the old shop or the old shop being closed due to competition (perhaps from the "new", relocated shop). Explanations that involve supernatural forces or magic are also fine in a fantasy world. Explanations that remind the player of the fact that the SvenskMUD world is not for real ("I moved the shop to Eriksros, because all magicians decided that it would be so much better to have it there"), or even worse, that SvenskMUD is a computer program ("I moved the program shop.c to another catalogue in the file structure") are to be avoided at all costs. Part of socialising magicians becomes teaching them to express themselves in this way even when they know better about the machinations of SvenskMud. There are several examples of ingenious and imaginative ways to render difficult-to-explain phenomena understandable in game-related terms: There was a simple problem that appeared at times that made the computer [that SvenskMUD runs on] run a little slower, and as time went by the problem got worse. I could fix the problem easily when I saw it and I did that at times. After I had fixed the problem the game went noticeably faster for the players that were logged in. For those occasions, I made up a message and displayed it to everyone who was in the system: "Linus reaches into the nether regions and cranks a little faster". (Interview with Linus Tolke, "God" in SvenskMUD) When a monster is killed in the game, it rots away (disappears) after a while. However, originally, weapons and armour that the monster wielded did not disappear; a lucky player could find valuable objects and take them without having "deserved" them. This specific characteristic of the game was deemed to be a problem, not least because it furthered a virtual inflation in the game that tended to decrease the value of "honestly" collected weapons and loot. The problem was discussed at a meeting of the SvenskMUD magicians that I attended. It was decided that when a monster is killed and the character that killed it does not take the loot, the loot should disappear ("rot") together with the monster. But how should this be explained to the players in a suitable way if they approach a magician to complain about the change, a change that in their opinion was for the worse? At the meeting it was suggested that from now on, all weapons and shields were forged with a cheaper, weaker metal. Not only would objects of this metal "rot" away together with the monster that wielded them, but it was also suggested that all weapons in the whole game should in fact be worn down as time goes by. (Not to worry, new ones appear in all the pre-designated places every time the game resets.) Conclusion -- Configuring the Player SvenskMUD can easily be perceived as a "blooming buzzing confusion" for a new player and my own first explorations in SvenskMUD often left me confused even as I was led from one enlightenment to the next. Not everyone feels inclined to take up the challenge to make sense of a world where you have to learn everything anew, including how to walk and how to talk. On the other hand, in the game world, much is settled for the best, and a crack in a subterranean cave is always exactly big enough to squeeze through... The process of becoming part of the community of SvenskMUD players is inexorably connected to learning to become an expert in the activities of that community, i.e. of playing SvenskMUD (Wenger 1998). A player who wants to program in SvenskMUD (thereby altering the fabric of the virtual world) will acquire many of the relevant concepts before actually becoming a magician, just by playing and exploring the game of SvenskMUD. Even if the user illusion succeeds in always hiding the computer code from the player, the whole SvenskMUD world constitutes a reflection of that underlying computer code. An implicit understanding of the computer code is developed through extended use of SvenskMUD. The relationship between the SvenskMUD world and the underlying computer code is in this sense analogous to the relationship between the lived-in world and the rules of physics that govern the world. All around us children "prepare themselves" to learn the subject of physics in school by throwing balls up in the air (gravity) and by pulling carts or sledges (friction). By playing SvenskMUD, a player will become accustomed to many of the concepts that govern the SvenskMUD world and will come to understand the goals, symbols, procedures and values of SvenskMUD. This process bears many similarities to the "primary socialisation" of a child into a member of society, a socialisation that serves "to make appear as necessity what is in fact a bundle of contingencies" (Berger and Luckmann 1966, 155). This is the purpose of configuring the player and it is intimately connected to the re-growth of SvenskMUD magicians and the survival of SvenskMUD itself over time. However, it is not the only possible outcome of the SvenskMUD socialisation process. The traditional function of trials and quests in fantasy literature is to teach the hero, usually through a number of external or internal encounters with evil or doubt, to make the right, moral choices. By excelling at these tests, the protagonist shows his or her worthiness and by extension also stresses and perhaps imputes these values in the reader (Dalquist et al. 1991). Adventure MUDs could thus socialise adolescents and reinforce common moral values in society; "the fantasy hero is the perfectly socialised and exemplary subject of a society" (53, my translation). My point here is not that SvenskMUD differs from other adventure MUDs. I would imagine that most of my observations are general to adventure MUDs and that many are applicable also to other computer games. My purpose here has rather been to present a perspective on how an adventure MUD is structured, to trace the meaning of that structure beyond the game itself and to suggest a purpose behind that organisation. I encourage others to question built-in bias and underlying assumptions of computer games (and other systems) in future studies. References Berger, P., and T. Luckmann. The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. London: Penguin, 1966. Curtis, P. "MUDding: Social Phenomena in Text-Based Virtual Realities." High Noon on the Electronic Frontier. Ed. P. Ludlow. Cambridge, MA: MIT P, 1996. 13 Oct. 2000 <http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/academic/computer-science/virtual-reality/communications/papers/muds/muds/Mudding-Social-Phenomena.txt>. Dalquist, U., T. Lööv, and F. Miegel. "Trollkarlens lärlingar: Fantasykulturen och manlig identitetsutveckling [The Wizard's Apprentices: Fantasy Culture and Male Identity Development]." Att förstå ungdom [Understanding Youth]. Ed. A. Löfgren and M. Norell. Stockholm/Stehag: Brutus Östlings Bokförlag Symposion, 1991. Dundes, A. "Folk Ideas as Units of World View." Toward New Perspectives in Folklore. Ed. A. Paredes and R. Bauman. Austin: U of Texas P, 1971. Fine, G.A. Shared Fantasy: Role-Playing Games as Social Worlds. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1983. Friedman, B. and H. Nissenbaum. "Bias in Computer Systems." Human Values and the Design of Computer Technology. Ed. B. Friedman. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP, 1997. Friedman, T. "Making Sense of Software: Computer Games and Interactive Textuality." Cybersociety: Computer-Mediated Communication and Community. Ed. S. Jones. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1995. Morningstar, C. and F. R. Farmer. "The Lessons of Lucasfilm's Habitat." Cyberspace: The First Steps. Ed. M. Benedikt. Cambridge: MA, MIT P, 1991. 13 Oct. 2000 <http://www.communities.com/company/papers/lessons.php>. Norman, D. Things That Make Us Smart: Defending Human Attributes in the Age of the Machine. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1993. Pargman, D. "Code Begets Community: On Social and Technical Aspects of Managing a Virtual Community." Ph.D. dissertation. Dept. of Communication Studies, Linköping University, Sweden, forthcoming, December 2000. Reid, E. "Hierarchy and Power: Social Control in Cyberspace." Communities in Cyberspace. Ed. M. Smith and P. Kollock. London, England: Routledge, 1999. Tolke, L. Handbok för SvenskMudmagiker: ett hjälpmedel för byggarna i SvenskMUD [Handbook for SvenskMudmagicians: An Aid for the Builders in SvenskMUD]. Printed and distributed by the author in a limited edition, 1993. Wenger, E. Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning and Identity. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP, 1998. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Daniel Pargman. "The Fabric of Virtual Reality -- Courage, Rewards and Death in an Adventure MUD." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3.5 (2000). [your date of access] <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0010/mud.php>. Chicago style: Daniel Pargman, "The Fabric of Virtual Reality -- Courage, Rewards and Death in an Adventure MUD," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3, no. 5 (2000), <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0010/mud.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Daniel Pargman. (2000) The Fabric of Virtual Reality -- Courage, Rewards and Death in an Adventure MUD. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3(5). <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0010/mud.php> ([your date of access]).
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27

Franks, Rachel. "A Taste for Murder: The Curious Case of Crime Fiction." M/C Journal 17, no. 1 (March 18, 2014). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.770.

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Abstract:
Introduction Crime fiction is one of the world’s most popular genres. Indeed, it has been estimated that as many as one in every three new novels, published in English, is classified within the crime fiction category (Knight xi). These new entrants to the market are forced to jostle for space on bookstore and library shelves with reprints of classic crime novels; such works placed in, often fierce, competition against their contemporaries as well as many of their predecessors. Raymond Chandler, in his well-known essay The Simple Art of Murder, noted Ernest Hemingway’s observation that “the good writer competes only with the dead. The good detective story writer […] competes not only with all the unburied dead but with all the hosts of the living as well” (3). In fact, there are so many examples of crime fiction works that, as early as the 1920s, one of the original ‘Queens of Crime’, Dorothy L. Sayers, complained: It is impossible to keep track of all the detective-stories produced to-day [sic]. Book upon book, magazine upon magazine pour out from the Press, crammed with murders, thefts, arsons, frauds, conspiracies, problems, puzzles, mysteries, thrills, maniacs, crooks, poisoners, forgers, garrotters, police, spies, secret-service men, detectives, until it seems that half the world must be engaged in setting riddles for the other half to solve (95). Twenty years after Sayers wrote on the matter of the vast quantities of crime fiction available, W.H. Auden wrote one of the more famous essays on the genre: The Guilty Vicarage: Notes on the Detective Story, by an Addict. Auden is, perhaps, better known as a poet but his connection to the crime fiction genre is undisputed. As well as his poetic works that reference crime fiction and commentaries on crime fiction, one of Auden’s fellow poets, Cecil Day-Lewis, wrote a series of crime fiction novels under the pseudonym Nicholas Blake: the central protagonist of these novels, Nigel Strangeways, was modelled upon Auden (Scaggs 27). Interestingly, some writers whose names are now synonymous with the genre, such as Edgar Allan Poe and Raymond Chandler, established the link between poetry and crime fiction many years before the publication of The Guilty Vicarage. Edmund Wilson suggested that “reading detective stories is simply a kind of vice that, for silliness and minor harmfulness, ranks somewhere between crossword puzzles and smoking” (395). In the first line of The Guilty Vicarage, Auden supports Wilson’s claim and confesses that: “For me, as for many others, the reading of detective stories is an addiction like tobacco or alcohol” (406). This indicates that the genre is at best a trivial pursuit, at worst a pursuit that is bad for your health and is, increasingly, socially unacceptable, while Auden’s ideas around taste—high and low—are made clear when he declares that “detective stories have nothing to do with works of art” (406). The debates that surround genre and taste are many and varied. The mid-1920s was a point in time which had witnessed crime fiction writers produce some of the finest examples of fiction to ever be published and when readers and publishers were watching, with anticipation, as a new generation of crime fiction writers were readying themselves to enter what would become known as the genre’s Golden Age. At this time, R. Austin Freeman wrote that: By the critic and the professedly literary person the detective story is apt to be dismissed contemptuously as outside the pale of literature, to be conceived of as a type of work produced by half-educated and wholly incompetent writers for consumption by office boys, factory girls, and other persons devoid of culture and literary taste (7). This article responds to Auden’s essay and explores how crime fiction appeals to many different tastes: tastes that are acquired, change over time, are embraced, or kept as guilty secrets. In addition, this article will challenge Auden’s very narrow definition of crime fiction and suggest how Auden’s religious imagery, deployed to explain why many people choose to read crime fiction, can be incorporated into a broader popular discourse on punishment. This latter argument demonstrates that a taste for crime fiction and a taste for justice are inextricably intertwined. Crime Fiction: A Type For Every Taste Cathy Cole has observed that “crime novels are housed in their own section in many bookshops, separated from literary novels much as you’d keep a child with measles away from the rest of the class” (116). Times have changed. So too, have our tastes. Crime fiction, once sequestered in corners, now demands vast tracts of prime real estate in bookstores allowing readers to “make their way to the appropriate shelves, and begin to browse […] sorting through a wide variety of very different types of novels” (Malmgren 115). This is a result of the sheer size of the genre, noted above, as well as the genre’s expanding scope. Indeed, those who worked to re-invent crime fiction in the 1800s could not have envisaged the “taxonomic exuberance” (Derrida 206) of the writers who have defined crime fiction sub-genres, as well as how readers would respond by not only wanting to read crime fiction but also wanting to read many different types of crime fiction tailored to their particular tastes. To understand the demand for this diversity, it is important to reflect upon some of the appeal factors of crime fiction for readers. Many rules have been promulgated for the writers of crime fiction to follow. Ronald Knox produced a set of 10 rules in 1928. These included Rule 3 “Not more than one secret room or passage is allowable”, and Rule 10 “Twin brothers, and doubles generally, must not appear unless we have been duly prepared for them” (194–6). In the same year, S.S. Van Dine produced another list of 20 rules, which included Rule 3 “There must be no love interest: The business in hand is to bring a criminal to the bar of justice, not to bring a lovelorn couple to the hymeneal altar”, and Rule 7 “There simply must be a corpse in a detective novel, and the deader the corpse the better” (189–93). Some of these directives have been deliberately ignored or have become out-of-date over time while others continue to be followed in contemporary crime writing practice. In sharp contrast, there are no rules for reading this genre. Individuals are, generally, free to choose what, where, when, why, and how they read crime fiction. There are, however, different appeal factors for readers. The most common of these appeal factors, often described as doorways, are story, setting, character, and language. As the following passage explains: The story doorway beckons those who enjoy reading to find out what happens next. The setting doorway opens widest for readers who enjoy being immersed in an evocation of place or time. The doorway of character is for readers who enjoy looking at the world through others’ eyes. Readers who most appreciate skilful writing enter through the doorway of language (Wyatt online). These doorways draw readers to the crime fiction genre. There are stories that allow us to easily predict what will come next or make us hold our breath until the very last page, the books that we will cheerfully lend to a family member or a friend and those that we keep close to hand to re-read again and again. There are settings as diverse as country manors, exotic locations, and familiar city streets, places we have been and others that we might want to explore. There are characters such as the accidental sleuth, the hardboiled detective, and the refined police officer, amongst many others, the men and women—complete with idiosyncrasies and flaws—who we have grown to admire and trust. There is also the language that all writers, regardless of genre, depend upon to tell their tales. In crime fiction, even the most basic task of describing where the murder victim was found can range from words that convey the genteel—“The room of the tragedy” (Christie 62)—to the absurd: “There it was, jammed between a pallet load of best export boneless beef and half a tonne of spring lamb” (Maloney 1). These appeal factors indicate why readers might choose crime fiction over another genre, or choose one type of crime fiction over another. Yet such factors fail to explain what crime fiction is or adequately answer why the genre is devoured in such vast quantities. Firstly, crime fiction stories are those in which there is the committing of a crime, or at least the suspicion of a crime (Cole), and the story that unfolds revolves around the efforts of an amateur or professional detective to solve that crime (Scaggs). Secondly, crime fiction offers the reassurance of resolution, a guarantee that from “previous experience and from certain cultural conventions associated with this genre that ultimately the mystery will be fully explained” (Zunshine 122). For Auden, the definition of the crime novel was quite specific, and he argued that referring to the genre by “the vulgar definition, ‘a Whodunit’ is correct” (407). Auden went on to offer a basic formula stating that: “a murder occurs; many are suspected; all but one suspect, who is the murderer, are eliminated; the murderer is arrested or dies” (407). The idea of a formula is certainly a useful one, particularly when production demands—in terms of both quality and quantity—are so high, because the formula facilitates creators in the “rapid and efficient production of new works” (Cawelti 9). For contemporary crime fiction readers, the doorways to reading, discussed briefly above, have been cast wide open. Stories relying upon the basic crime fiction formula as a foundation can be gothic tales, clue puzzles, forensic procedurals, spy thrillers, hardboiled narratives, or violent crime narratives, amongst many others. The settings can be quiet villages or busy metropolises, landscapes that readers actually inhabit or that provide a form of affordable tourism. These stories can be set in the past, the here and now, or the future. Characters can range from Edgar Allan Poe’s C. Auguste Dupin to Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade, from Agatha Christie’s Miss Jane Marple to Kerry Greenwood’s Honourable Phryne Fisher. Similarly, language can come in numerous styles from the direct (even rough) words of Carter Brown to the literary prose of Peter Temple. Anything is possible, meaning everything is available to readers. For Auden—although he required a crime to be committed and expected that crime to be resolved—these doorways were only slightly ajar. For him, the story had to be a Whodunit; the setting had to be rural England, though a college setting was also considered suitable; the characters had to be “eccentric (aesthetically interesting individuals) and good (instinctively ethical)” and there needed to be a “completely satisfactory detective” (Sherlock Holmes, Inspector French, and Father Brown were identified as “satisfactory”); and the language descriptive and detailed (406, 409, 408). To illustrate this point, Auden’s concept of crime fiction has been plotted on a taxonomy, below, that traces the genre’s main developments over a period of three centuries. As can be seen, much of what is, today, taken for granted as being classified as crime fiction is completely excluded from Auden’s ideal. Figure 1: Taxonomy of Crime Fiction (Adapted from Franks, Murder 136) Crime Fiction: A Personal Journey I discovered crime fiction the summer before I started high school when I saw the film version of The Big Sleep starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. A few days after I had seen the film I started reading the Raymond Chandler novel of the same title, featuring his famous detective Philip Marlowe, and was transfixed by the second paragraph: The main hallway of the Sternwood place was two stories high. Over the entrance doors, which would have let in a troop of Indian elephants, there was a broad stained-glass panel showing a knight in dark armour rescuing a lady who was tied to a tree and didn’t have any clothes on but some very long and convenient hair. The knight had pushed the visor of his helmet back to be sociable, and he was fiddling with the knots on the ropes that tied the lady to the tree and not getting anywhere. I stood there and thought that if I lived in the house, I would sooner or later have to climb up there and help him. He didn’t seem to be really trying (9). John Scaggs has written that this passage indicates Marlowe is an idealised figure, a knight of romance rewritten onto the mean streets of mid-20th century Los Angeles (62); a relocation Susan Roland calls a “secular form of the divinely sanctioned knight errant on a quest for metaphysical justice” (139): my kind of guy. Like many young people I looked for adventure and escape in books, a search that was realised with Raymond Chandler and his contemporaries. On the escapism scale, these men with their stories of tough-talking detectives taking on murderers and other criminals, law enforcement officers, and the occasional femme fatale, were certainly a sharp upgrade from C.S. Lewis and the Chronicles of Narnia. After reading the works written by the pioneers of the hardboiled and roman noir traditions, I looked to other American authors such as Edgar Allan Poe who, in the mid-1800s, became the father of the modern detective story, and Thorne Smith who, in the 1920s and 1930s, produced magical realist tales with characters who often chose to dabble on the wrong side of the law. This led me to the works of British crime writers including Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, and Dorothy L. Sayers. My personal library then became dominated by Australian writers of crime fiction, from the stories of bushrangers and convicts of the Colonial era to contemporary tales of police and private investigators. There have been various attempts to “improve” or “refine” my tastes: to convince me that serious literature is real reading and frivolous fiction is merely a distraction. Certainly, the reading of those novels, often described as classics, provide perfect combinations of beauty and brilliance. Their narratives, however, do not often result in satisfactory endings. This routinely frustrates me because, while I understand the philosophical frameworks that many writers operate within, I believe the characters of such works are too often treated unfairly in the final pages. For example, at the end of Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms, Frederick Henry “left the hospital and walked back to the hotel in the rain” after his son is stillborn and “Mrs Henry” becomes “very ill” and dies (292–93). Another example can be found on the last page of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four when Winston Smith “gazed up at the enormous face” and he realised that he “loved Big Brother” (311). Endings such as these provide a space for reflection about the world around us but rarely spark an immediate response of how great that world is to live in (Franks Motive). The subject matter of crime fiction does not easily facilitate fairy-tale finishes, yet, people continue to read the genre because, generally, the concluding chapter will show that justice, of some form, will be done. Punishment will be meted out to the ‘bad characters’ that have broken society’s moral or legal laws; the ‘good characters’ may experience hardships and may suffer but they will, generally, prevail. Crime Fiction: A Taste For Justice Superimposed upon Auden’s parameters around crime fiction, are his ideas of the law in the real world and how such laws are interwoven with the Christian-based system of ethics. This can be seen in Auden’s listing of three classes of crime: “(a) offenses against God and one’s neighbor or neighbors; (b) offenses against God and society; (c) offenses against God” (407). Murder, in Auden’s opinion, is a class (b) offense: for the crime fiction novel, the society reflected within the story should be one in “a state of grace, i.e., a society where there is no need of the law, no contradiction between the aesthetic individual and the ethical universal, and where murder, therefore, is the unheard-of act which precipitates a crisis” (408). Additionally, in the crime novel “as in its mirror image, the Quest for the Grail, maps (the ritual of space) and timetables (the ritual of time) are desirable. Nature should reflect its human inhabitants, i.e., it should be the Great Good Place; for the more Eden-like it is, the greater the contradiction of murder” (408). Thus, as Charles J. Rzepka notes, “according to W.H. Auden, the ‘classical’ English detective story typically re-enacts rites of scapegoating and expulsion that affirm the innocence of a community of good people supposedly ignorant of evil” (12). This premise—of good versus evil—supports Auden’s claim that the punishment of wrongdoers, particularly those who claim the “right to be omnipotent” and commit murder (409), should be swift and final: As to the murderer’s end, of the three alternatives—execution, suicide, and madness—the first is preferable; for if he commits suicide he refuses to repent, and if he goes mad he cannot repent, but if he does not repent society cannot forgive. Execution, on the other hand, is the act of atonement by which the murderer is forgiven by society (409). The unilateral endorsement of state-sanctioned murder is problematic, however, because—of the main justifications for punishment: retribution; deterrence; incapacitation; and rehabilitation (Carter Snead 1245)—punishment, in this context, focuses exclusively upon retribution and deterrence, incapacitation is achieved by default, but the idea of rehabilitation is completely ignored. This, in turn, ignores how the reading of crime fiction can be incorporated into a broader popular discourse on punishment and how a taste for crime fiction and a taste for justice are inextricably intertwined. One of the ways to explore the connection between crime fiction and justice is through the lens of Emile Durkheim’s thesis on the conscience collective which proposes punishment is a process allowing for the demonstration of group norms and the strengthening of moral boundaries. David Garland, in summarising this thesis, states: So although the modern state has a near monopoly of penal violence and controls the administration of penalties, a much wider population feels itself to be involved in the process of punishment, and supplies the context of social support and valorization within which state punishment takes place (32). It is claimed here that this “much wider population” connecting with the task of punishment can be taken further. Crime fiction, above all other forms of literary production, which, for those who do not directly contribute to the maintenance of their respective legal systems, facilitates a feeling of active participation in the penalising of a variety of perpetrators: from the issuing of fines to incarceration (Franks Punishment). Crime fiction readers are therefore, temporarily at least, direct contributors to a more stable society: one that is clearly based upon right and wrong and reliant upon the conscience collective to maintain and reaffirm order. In this context, the reader is no longer alone, with only their crime fiction novel for company, but has become an active member of “a moral framework which binds individuals to each other and to its conventions and institutions” (Garland 51). This allows crime fiction, once viewed as a “vice” (Wilson 395) or an “addiction” (Auden 406), to be seen as playing a crucial role in the preservation of social mores. It has been argued “only the most literal of literary minds would dispute the claim that fictional characters help shape the way we think of ourselves, and hence help us articulate more clearly what it means to be human” (Galgut 190). Crime fiction focuses on what it means to be human, and how complex humans are, because stories of murders, and the men and women who perpetrate and solve them, comment on what drives some people to take a life and others to avenge that life which is lost and, by extension, engages with a broad community of readers around ideas of justice and punishment. It is, furthermore, argued here that the idea of the story is one of the more important doorways for crime fiction and, more specifically, the conclusions that these stories, traditionally, offer. For Auden, the ending should be one of restoration of the spirit, as he suspected that “the typical reader of detective stories is, like myself, a person who suffers from a sense of sin” (411). In this way, the “phantasy, then, which the detective story addict indulges is the phantasy of being restored to the Garden of Eden, to a state of innocence, where he may know love as love and not as the law” (412), indicating that it was not necessarily an accident that “the detective story has flourished most in predominantly Protestant countries” (408). Today, modern crime fiction is a “broad church, where talented authors raise questions and cast light on a variety of societal and other issues through the prism of an exciting, page-turning story” (Sisterson). Moreover, our tastes in crime fiction have been tempered by a growing fear of real crime, particularly murder, “a crime of unique horror” (Hitchens 200). This has seen some readers develop a taste for crime fiction that is not produced within a framework of ecclesiastical faith but is rather grounded in reliance upon those who enact punishment in both the fictional and real worlds. As P.D. James has written: [N]ot by luck or divine intervention, but by human ingenuity, human intelligence and human courage. It confirms our hope that, despite some evidence to the contrary, we live in a beneficent and moral universe in which problems can be solved by rational means and peace and order restored from communal or personal disruption and chaos (174). Dorothy L. Sayers, despite her work to legitimise crime fiction, wrote that there: “certainly does seem a possibility that the detective story will some time come to an end, simply because the public will have learnt all the tricks” (108). Of course, many readers have “learnt all the tricks”, or most of them. This does not, however, detract from the genre’s overall appeal. We have not grown bored with, or become tired of, the formula that revolves around good and evil, and justice and punishment. Quite the opposite. Our knowledge of, as well as our faith in, the genre’s “tricks” gives a level of confidence to readers who are looking for endings that punish murderers and other wrongdoers, allowing for more satisfactory conclusions than the, rather depressing, ends given to Mr. Henry and Mr. Smith by Ernest Hemingway and George Orwell noted above. Conclusion For some, the popularity of crime fiction is a curious case indeed. When Penguin and Collins published the Marsh Million—100,000 copies each of 10 Ngaio Marsh titles in 1949—the author’s relief at the success of the project was palpable when she commented that “it was pleasant to find detective fiction being discussed as a tolerable form of reading by people whose opinion one valued” (172). More recently, upon the announcement that a Miles Franklin Award would be given to Peter Temple for his crime novel Truth, John Sutherland, a former chairman of the judges for one of the world’s most famous literary awards, suggested that submitting a crime novel for the Booker Prize would be: “like putting a donkey into the Grand National”. Much like art, fashion, food, and home furnishings or any one of the innumerable fields of activity and endeavour that are subject to opinion, there will always be those within the world of fiction who claim positions as arbiters of taste. Yet reading is intensely personal. I like a strong, well-plotted story, appreciate a carefully researched setting, and can admire elegant language, but if a character is too difficult to embrace—if I find I cannot make an emotional connection, if I find myself ambivalent about their fate—then a book is discarded as not being to my taste. It is also important to recognise that some tastes are transient. Crime fiction stories that are popular today could be forgotten tomorrow. Some stories appeal to such a broad range of tastes they are immediately included in the crime fiction canon. Yet others evolve over time to accommodate widespread changes in taste (an excellent example of this can be seen in the continual re-imagining of the stories of Sherlock Holmes). Personal tastes also adapt to our experiences and our surroundings. A book that someone adores in their 20s might be dismissed in their 40s. A storyline that was meaningful when read abroad may lose some of its magic when read at home. Personal events, from a change in employment to the loss of a loved one, can also impact upon what we want to read. Similarly, world events, such as economic crises and military conflicts, can also influence our reading preferences. Auden professed an almost insatiable appetite for crime fiction, describing the reading of detective stories as an addiction, and listed a very specific set of criteria to define the Whodunit. Today, such self-imposed restrictions are rare as, while there are many rules for writing crime fiction, there are no rules for reading this (or any other) genre. People are, generally, free to choose what, where, when, why, and how they read crime fiction, and to follow the deliberate or whimsical paths that their tastes may lay down for them. Crime fiction writers, past and present, offer: an incredible array of detective stories from the locked room to the clue puzzle; settings that range from the English country estate to city skyscrapers in glamorous locations around the world; numerous characters from cerebral sleuths who can solve a crime in their living room over a nice, hot cup of tea to weapon wielding heroes who track down villains on foot in darkened alleyways; and, language that ranges from the cultured conversations from the novels of the genre’s Golden Age to the hard-hitting terminology of forensic and legal procedurals. Overlaid on these appeal factors is the capacity of crime fiction to feed a taste for justice: to engage, vicariously at least, in the establishment of a more stable society. Of course, there are those who turn to the genre for a temporary distraction, an occasional guilty pleasure. There are those who stumble across the genre by accident or deliberately seek it out. There are also those, like Auden, who are addicted to crime fiction. So there are corpses for the conservative and dead bodies for the bloodthirsty. There is, indeed, a murder victim, and a murder story, to suit every reader’s taste. References Auden, W.H. “The Guilty Vicarage: Notes on The Detective Story, By an Addict.” Harper’s Magazine May (1948): 406–12. 1 Dec. 2013 ‹http://www.harpers.org/archive/1948/05/0033206›. Carter Snead, O. “Memory and Punishment.” Vanderbilt Law Review 64.4 (2011): 1195–264. Cawelti, John G. Adventure, Mystery and Romance: Formula Stories as Art and Popular Culture. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1976/1977. Chandler, Raymond. The Big Sleep. London: Penguin, 1939/1970. ––. The Simple Art of Murder. New York: Vintage Books, 1950/1988. Christie, Agatha. The Mysterious Affair at Styles. London: HarperCollins, 1920/2007. Cole, Cathy. Private Dicks and Feisty Chicks: An Interrogation of Crime Fiction. Fremantle: Curtin UP, 2004. Derrida, Jacques. “The Law of Genre.” Glyph 7 (1980): 202–32. Franks, Rachel. “May I Suggest Murder?: An Overview of Crime Fiction for Readers’ Advisory Services Staff.” Australian Library Journal 60.2 (2011): 133–43. ––. “Motive for Murder: Reading Crime Fiction.” The Australian Library and Information Association Biennial Conference. Sydney: Jul. 2012. ––. “Punishment by the Book: Delivering and Evading Punishment in Crime Fiction.” Inter-Disciplinary.Net 3rd Global Conference on Punishment. Oxford: Sep. 2013. Freeman, R.A. “The Art of the Detective Story.” The Art of the Mystery Story: A Collection of Critical Essays. Ed. Howard Haycraft. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1924/1947. 7–17. Galgut, E. “Poetic Faith and Prosaic Concerns: A Defense of Suspension of Disbelief.” South African Journal of Philosophy 21.3 (2002): 190–99. Garland, David. Punishment and Modern Society: A Study in Social Theory. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1993. Hemingway, Ernest. A Farewell to Arms. London: Random House, 1929/2004. ––. in R. Chandler. The Simple Art of Murder. New York: Vintage Books, 1950/1988. Hitchens, P. A Brief History of Crime: The Decline of Order, Justice and Liberty in England. London: Atlantic Books, 2003. James, P.D. Talking About Detective Fiction. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009. Knight, Stephen. Crime Fiction since 1800: Death, Detection, Diversity, 2nd ed. New York: Palgrave Macmillian, 2010. Knox, Ronald A. “Club Rules: The 10 Commandments for Detective Novelists, 1928.” Ronald Knox Society of North America. 1 Dec. 2013 ‹http://www.ronaldknoxsociety.com/detective.html›. Malmgren, C.D. “Anatomy of Murder: Mystery, Detective and Crime Fiction.” Journal of Popular Culture Spring (1997): 115–21. Maloney, Shane. The Murray Whelan Trilogy: Stiff, The Brush-Off and Nice Try. Melbourne: Text Publishing, 1994/2008. Marsh, Ngaio in J. Drayton. Ngaio Marsh: Her Life in Crime. Auckland: Harper Collins, 2008. Orwell, George. Nineteen Eighty-Four. London: Penguin Books, 1949/1989. Roland, Susan. From Agatha Christie to Ruth Rendell: British Women Writers in Detective and Crime Fiction. London: Palgrave, 2001. Rzepka, Charles J. Detective Fiction. Cambridge: Polity, 2005. Sayers, Dorothy L. “The Omnibus of Crime.” The Art of the Mystery Story: A Collection of Critical Essays. Ed. Howard Haycraft. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1928/1947. 71–109. Scaggs, John. Crime Fiction: The New Critical Idiom. London: Routledge, 2005. Sisterson, C. “Battle for the Marsh: Awards 2013.” Black Mask: Pulps, Noir and News of Same. 1 Jan. 2014 http://www.blackmask.com/category/awards-2013/ Sutherland, John. in A. Flood. “Could Miles Franklin turn the Booker Prize to Crime?” The Guardian. 1 Jan. 2014 ‹http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/jun/25/miles-franklin-booker-prize-crime›. Van Dine, S.S. “Twenty Rules for Writing Detective Stories.” The Art of the Mystery Story: A Collection of Critical Essays. Ed. Howard Haycraft. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1928/1947. 189-93. Wilson, Edmund. “Who Cares Who Killed Roger Ackroyd.” The Art of the Mystery Story: A Collection of Critical Essays. Ed. Howard Haycraft. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1944/1947. 390–97. Wyatt, N. “Redefining RA: A RA Big Think.” Library Journal Online. 1 Jan. 2014 ‹http://lj.libraryjournal.com/2007/07/ljarchives/lj-series-redefining-ra-an-ra-big-think›. Zunshine, Lisa. Why We Read Fiction: Theory of Mind and the Novel. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 2006.
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