Journal articles on the topic 'Covert Cognizance'

In this article I analyze the cognitive possibilities lying on the boundary of the finite and eternity being with reference to Saint Thomas Aquinas and Edith Stein’sthought. According to Saint Thomas, the rational cognition, which covers what is calleda natural world, is the highest form of knowledge and fixes its limit. Edith Stein, on thecontrary, claims that a mystical cognizance, which bases on experience and empathy,enriched by the message of the Gospel, should complement the rational one. What’scommon in those two concepts is a reference to God’s grace – the moments of revelationenlighten the efforts of human intellect. Thus knowledge on the eternal being merges both natural and supernatural cognizance.

This article presents trends in the development of sustainable urbanism, in which innovations and technologies are brought to the fore. It is assumed that at this stage the necessary measures are being introduced to improve the efficiency of services and the use of resources in smaller machines (energy efficiency or efficiency in your enterprises) with information technology. This creates the conditions within the regional development offer to develop a concept of a smart city ("smart city"). In practice, the smart city is growing beyond this initial goal to one that applies to entire cities and urban blocks, not just the transport system or buildings, and covers a large area. This raises the need to study the development of settlements in order to better illustrate the processes of development of geo-spaces through the prism of the introduction of new communication technologies.

There is currently no detailed classification and description of plant communities in Khutse Game Reserve (KGR), Botswana, using phytosociological techniques. The main aim of this study was to classify and describe plant communities in KGR. Classification and description of plant communities will help in understanding the plant ecology of KGR. Braun-Blanquet sampling method was applied in 91 stratified random relevés. Nine plant communities were identified and classified using Modified TWINSPAN which is contained in JUICE program. The results showed that there was a statistically significant difference in percentage cover of herbaceous plants between the different plant communities. Schmidtia pappophoroides-Stipagrostis uniplumis and Heliotropium lineare-Enneapogon desvauxii communities had higher cover (%) of herbaceous plants than other communities. Catophractes alexandri-Stipagrostis uniplumis community had the highest cover (%) of shrubs. There was no statistically significant difference in plant species diversity (Shannon-Wienner Index) and species evenness between plant communities, but there was a statistically significant difference in plant species richness between the different plant communities. Dichrostachys cinerea-Grewia flava community, Senegalia mellifera subsp. detinens-Maytenus species community and Catophractes alexandri-Stipagrostis uniplumis community had lower number of species, whereas Vachellia luederitzii var. retinens-Grewia flava community had the highest number (46) of plant species. This study will help the Department of Wildlife and National Parks (DWNP) to develop an updated and informed Management Plan for the reserve, which takes cognizance of the plant ecology of the reserve.

This study examines the potentials of Remote Sensing techniques and GIS in land resources management with particular reference to detect land use and land cover changes in Jos East L.G.A, between 1995 to 2015. In this study, administrative maps, remotely sensed data (Landsat and Nigeriasat-1 satellite imageries) and GIS techniques were used in the image analysis. All these were done using Ilwis 3.3 Academic, ERDAS 9.3, IDIRISI 17.0 and ArcGIS 10.1. Digital camera was also used for ground truthing. The results were presented using classified imageries. Between the years 1995 to 2015, there was consistent change in the land use land cover of Jos east with different LULC categories. Throughout the study years, vegetation was observed to have the highest percentage of the total land coverage with 57544.28 ha (63%) in 1995, decreasing to 50322.96 ha (50%) in 2005, and 34969.95 (39%) in the year 2015. While agricultural/farm land was gradually increasing throughout the study period with 21271.05 ha (23%) in 1995, 27017.37 ha (27%) in 2005 and 25406.19 ha (28%) in 2015. Findings also showed that build-up-areas/settlement development increased consistently from 1451.97ha (2%) in 1995, 3290.49 ha (3%) in 2005 to 5817.96 (6%) in 2015. It was concluded that agriculture in the study area is increasing while large areas of vegetation is drastically reducing and being converted to farmlands and settlements. It is recommended that government should put up a reliable land management system in form of restrictions on premature conversion of agricultural land, there should be policies that control threat to the vegetation cover. Government should take cognizance of the land use and land cover at a regular interval to ascertain the changes that are taking place in the study area.

Abstract Categories intentionally create discontinuities. By breaking the world up into cognizable chunks, they simplify the information environment. But the signals they provide may be inaccurate or scrambled by strategic behavior. This Article considers how law might approach the problem of optimal categorization, given the role of categories in managing and transmitting information. It proceeds from the observation that high categorization costs can be addressed through two opposite strategies—making classifications more fine-grained (splitting), and making classifications more encompassing (lumping). Although continuizing and other forms of splitting offer intuitive answers to inaccurate classification and gaming along category lines, lumping is sometimes a better solution. If category membership carries multiple and offsetting implications, the incentive to manipulate the classification system is dampened. To take a simple example, insurance that covers only one risk is more vulnerable to adverse selection than is an insurance arrangement that covers two inversely correlated risks. Making categories larger, more durable, and more heterogeneous can produce such offsets. These and other forms of bundling can arrest damaging instabilities in categorization.

This article examines the representation of under-age girls in the sex trade through a comparative analysis of the social scientific monograph Gangs and Girls: understanding juvenile prostitution and the fictional novel, Lullabies for Little Criminals. Through a semiotic examination of the book covers, and a discursive deconstruction of the fairy-tale conventions of the textual content, the author considers how the ‘grown up gaze’ is both gratified and sometimes challenged. She further demonstrate that ironically, the fictional account in Lullabies offers a more nuanced consideration of the socio-economic factors that contribute to the abuse and sexual exploitation of children than the expert account in Gangs. The article concludes by suggesting ‘grown ups' must be cognizant of the voyeuristic tendencies and the political pitfalls of adult renderings of girl prostitutes.

The urban heat island (UHI) effect is a global problem that is likely to grow as a result of urban population expansion. Multiple studies conclude that green spaces and waterbodies can reduce urban heat islands. However, previous studies often treat urban green spaces (UGSs) as static or limit the number of green spaces investigated within a city. Cognizant of these shortcomings, Landsat derived vegetation and land surface temperature (LST) metrics for 80 urban green spaces in Puebla, Mexico, over a 34-year (1986–2019) and a 20-year (2000–2019) period were studied. To create a photo library, 73 of these green spaces were visited and the available land cover types were recorded. Green spaces with Indian laurel were found to be much greener and vegetation index values remained relatively stable compared to green spaces with mixed vegetation cover. Similarly, green spaces with large waterbodies were cooler than those without water. These results show that larger green spaces were significantly cooler (p < 0.01) and that size can explain almost 30% of temperature variability. Furthermore, green spaces with higher vegetation index values were significantly cooler (p < 0.01), and the relationship between greenness and temperature strengthened over time.

The Yorubà News, published by Obasa ̣ , co-pioneered journalism, nay publishing, in Yorùbá language in southwestern Nigeria. Based in Ìbàdan and ̀ published by Ìlarè Printers, ̣́ The Yorùbá News, a bi-lingual serial in English and Yorùbá languages, remarkably had varying contents and wide circulation covering its locale, Íbàdan significantly; the southern protectorate, particularly Yorùbá land appreciably; and the entire nation, Nigeria marginally. Published weekly, Obasa – the Editor and Proprietor – successfully edited ̣ The Yorubà News ́ for over two decades from 1924 – 1945 when he died. Adopting the Diffusion of Innovations theory, this study examines the form and content of the newspaper. The form examines the structure and layout of the newspaper while the content discusses and evaluates issues covered in the publication. The form of The Yorùbá News is discussed in the context of the print media as a periodical by taking technical cognizance of its physical features: format, design and layout, typography, columns, paper, size and production quality. Content-wise, the paper exhaustively describes the subject matters of The Yorubà News ́ by dwelling critically on the issues raised, examining in details and critiquing its recurrent subject matters notably: the news stories, editorials, cover, advertorials, news and notes, etc. The inter-dependence of form and content is also examined to bring to the fore the social, cultural, political, and economic values of the maiden Yorùbá Newspaper: The Yorùbá News.

The Yorubà News, published by Obasa ̣, co-pioneered journalism, nay publishing, in Yorùbá language in southwestern Nigeria. Based in Ìbàdan and ̀ published by Ìlarè Printers, ̣́ The Yorùbá News, a bi-lingual serial in English and Yorùbá languages, remarkably had varying contents and wide circulation covering its locale, Íbàdan significantly; the southern protectorate, particularly Yorùbá land appreciably; and the entire nation, Nigeria marginally. Published weekly, Obasa – the Editor and Proprietor – successfully edited ̣ The Yorubà News ́ for over two decades from 1924 – 1945 when he died. Adopting the Diffusion of Innovations theory, this study examines the form and content of the newspaper. The form examines the structure and layout of the newspaper while the content discusses and evaluates issues covered in the publication. The form of The Yorùbá News is discussed in the context of the print media as a periodical by taking technical cognizance of its physical features: format, design and layout, typography, columns, paper, size and production quality. Content-wise, the paper exhaustively describes the subject matters of The Yorubà News ́ by dwelling critically on the issues raised, examining in details and critiquing its recurrent subject matters notably: the news stories, editorials, cover, advertorials, news and notes, etc. The inter-dependence of form and content is also examined to bring to the fore the social, cultural, political, and economic values of the maiden Yorùbá Newspaper: The Yorùbá News.

Diversification, like tobacco use prevention and cessation, is an important public health concern. The multilevel patterns of tobacco dependency suggest the need for public health approaches to the “tobacco problem.” To understand how newspaper and wire service journalists cover issues involving diversification among tobacco farmers, the authors performed a content analysis of a subset of 100 articles on diversification and tobacco farming. Prochaska and DiClemente’s stages of change model was applied to the “problem behavior” of tobacco farming. Among news accounts relating to tobacco farmers or tobacco farming, print media accounts gave relatively little attention to the issue of diversification. Farmers in the sample of news accounts were generally cognizant of pressures to diversify away from reliance on tobacco cultivation but were frustrated due to obstacles to diversification such as limited diversification options and relative absence of infrastructure supports. Community leaders and policy-relevant sources generally supported diversification.

ABSTRACT A blog is a website maintained by an individual or group of individuals that includes observations and opinions regarding a specific subject matter. This paper explores the opportunities and issues regarding blogs as accounting research and teaching resources. While locating applicable blogs is challenging, they can be valuable resources regarding current events and their archives provide perspectives that can cover several years. For research, blogs are a continuous and timely source of research ideas and should be part of any literature review. Blogs that criticize current accounting practice not only identify issues ripe for research, but also frequently present recommendations to address those issues. Academics can transform those criticisms and recommendations into testable questions or hypotheses to investigate using various qualitative and quantitative research methods. As teaching resources, blogs provide an opportunity for students to analyze and evaluate others' opinions, which should improve students' critical thinking and make them cognizant and conversant in accounting subject matters. Students can also create their own blogs as a form of reflection.

Presently, there are plethora of controversies as regards whether Civil Society Organizations (CSO’s) should be taxed in Ghana. Against this backdrop, the study examined the impact of tax exemptions to CSO’s on revenue mobilization targets in Ghana using descriptive statistics, exploratory and cross sectional surveys Quantitative research embodying primary data in the form of questionnaires were administered to 240 respondents from selected CSO’s in Ghana from a population of 350. Non probability sampling framework in the form of simple random sampling was used in the selection of the research participants. Data was analyzed using the Statistical Product and Service Solutions (SPSS, Version26). The findings show that 96% of respondents strongly agreed that there was a symbiotic relationship between tax exemptions to CSOs by government since CSOs help to attract investors into the economy through advocacy for transparent and accountable government structures, 88% response rate strongly disagreed that tax exemptions to CSOs should be broadened beyond just corporate taxes as currently entails in section 97 of the Income Tax Act 2015 (Act 896), 100% of the respondents strongly agreed that business incomes of CSOs should be subject to tax cognizance with section 97 of the Income Tax Act 2015 (Act 896) which stipulates that any other income from business earned by a CSO must be subject to tax, while 81% of the respondents disagreed that tax exemptions to CSOs negatively affected revenue mobilization. Based on the findings, the study recommended that the current tax exemption to CSOs which covers only corporate taxes should be maintained since it has no negative impact on revenue mobilization and to help build a more resilient civil society organization and concludes that tax exemptions to CSOs do not adversely affect revenue mobilization

The manner in which the media presents nature matters a lot. The media legitimises abusive beliefs. On this basis, this work investigated the ecologically oppressive ideologies reinforced by the Cameroonian English newspaper. Analysis focused on uncovering-to-resist discursive patterns that activated anthropocentrism (human dominance over nature). The data comprised thirty-five newspaper articles randomly selected from nine English Language newspaper publishers in Cameroon. Ecocriticrical discourse analysis (EcoCDA) is the theoretical framework adopted in this study. The descriptive statistical method (DSM) was used to analyse the data. Analyses subsumed identification, quantification and interpretation of discourse entities. Findings revealed that the Cameroonian press used diverse language patterns to manipulate agents, processes and aftermaths of environmental depletion. The press, thus, encoded anthropocentric ideologies in discursive forms like pronouns, verbs, transitivity, personification and jargon. Ecological injustices uncovered and resisted included deforestation, consumerism and growth, mineral extraction and construction, inter alia. Cognizant of the sustenance nature that offers earthly life, it was recommended that press [wo]men should refrain from manipulative language forms and stories that downplay efforts to conserve nature. They should rather cover nature-conserving stories regularly, and in language forms that align with and reinforce global efforts to protect and conserve the biophysical environment.

Under the conditions of a rich transformation of the Ukrainian society the national morality’s problem acquires contradictions in today's information society, therefore interaction researches of its aspects in social regulation have always been and are important. Modern neuroethics is formed as an academic disciplinary, asserting to be a variety of overlay ethical issues, apologetic and morality by the natural models established on new neurobiology’s notes and cognizable sciences. The aim of the article is to explore the essence of folk morality as a mental, social and determinative phenomenon, its neuroethical aspects particularly. In previous eras, education aimed to instill personal virtues and shape character, so ideas about moral life are in all cultures over time. In centuries-old religious teaching, the commandments have been used as the basis for moral behavior. They were given by God Moses himself on Mount Sinai after a forty-day conversation (Yakuhno I., 2019). In modern philosophy, where the ideals of democracy, for example, embrace the fundamental concepts of freedom, equality, respect and dignity for all, people have the right to determine for themselves what moral life is. Such a conversation covers different points of view among observers and scholars who think deeply about these issues. Therefore, folk morality has become the subject of our study, because it is not just a basic model to follow, but fundamental.

Energy expansion and security in the current world scenario focuses on increasing the energy generation capacity and if possible, adopting cleaner and greener energy in that development process. However, too often this expansion and planning alters the landscape and human influence on its surroundings through a very complex mechanism. Resource extraction and land management activity involved in energy infrastructure development and human management of such development systems have long-term and sometimes unforeseen consequences. Although alternative energy sources are being explored, energy production is still highly dependent on fossil fuel, especially in most developing countries. Further, energy production can potentially affect land productivity, land cover, human migration, and other factors involved in running an energy production system, which presents a complex integration of these factors. Thus, land use, energy choices, infrastructure development and the population for which such facilities are being developed must be cognizant of each other, and the interactions between them need to be studied and understood closely. This study strives to analyze the implications of linkages between the energy industry, urbanization, and population and especially highlights processes that can be affected by their interaction. It is found that despite advancement in scientific tools, each of the three components, i.e., population growth, urbanization, and energy production, operates in silos, especially in developing countries, and that this complex issue of nexus is not dealt with in a comprehensive way.

Urban forests are critical element in ameliorating urban habitats and building sustainable cities. Local residents are the key players in maintaining greenery of the city as they collectively own majority of land in most cities. Therefore, they need to engage in planting and retaining trees on their properties in order to reach canopy cover in urban areas. The project surveyed 200 local residents in Bharatpur Metropolitan City to examine their attitude towards trees on their property on the basis of 'Affective', 'Behavioral' and 'Cognitive' ABC model of attitude. Results show that majority of the residents have positive attitude towards trees as they have high cognitive intention towards trees, and showed willingness to retain the existing trees and add more in future. However, very few are cognizant of the environmental values of trees. The most common positive effects of trees on their property are food, shade, and clean and fresh air. The most common negative effects are increase in bushes and weeds, wildlife hazards and risk of fall due to wind. Urban planners interested in influencing residents' decisions about urban trees need to work on public outreach. Residents need to be motivated and made aware of the long term and multifunctional benefits of trees for retaining the existing trees and planting more in their property. They should also, be made aware of the type of trees that are suitable for plantation on residential property in order to avoid the problems that can be created due to trees.

The belief that God, or the Supreme Being, is the source of all that exists is common among a wide range of African communities that still retain a good measure of their traditional religio-cultural heritage. The Abagusii of Western Kenya is one of the communities that has been exposed to and actually embraced the western culture. This notwithstanding, the Abagusii are still proud of their traditional customs and still maintain a good measure of these practices, either in their original form or with modifications. In this paper we examine the influence of belief in God on the day-to-day activities of the Abagusii and assess the similarity of their religiosity with that of the Judeans as reflected in the book of Ruth. The purpose of this work is to contribute to the on-going debate on inculturation by projecting a trajectory that appreciates the authenticity of all cultures. In comparing the similarity between Abagusii and Judean conception of and interaction with the divine, this paper covers the following key areas: the nature and function of God, human limitations, the relationship between God and humans, the notion of divine intervention, and the influence of religious consciousness on the daily life of the community and its members. The author is cognizant that the Book of Ruth may not provide a comprehensive picture of the Judean concept of God. But it provides a basis for a comparative study on the way community members utilized their religious awareness and identity to govern their daily lives.

The perceived risk of pest resurgence upon transition from conventional to organic-based farming systems remains a critical obstacle to expanding organic vegetable production, particularly where chemical fumigants have provided soilborne pest and disease control. Microplots were used to study the effects of soil amendments and cropping sequences applied over a 2-year transitional period from conventional to organic tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) cultivation on the incidence of bacterial wilt caused by Ralstonia solanacearum, purple nutsedge (Cyperus rotundus) reproduction, root galling by Meloidogyne incognita, and soil nematode populations. A continuation of tomato monoculture during the transitional period resulted in a disease incidence of 33%, as compared with 9% in microplots that were rotated with sunn hemp (Crotalaria juncea) and Japanese millet (Echinochloa crusgalli var. frumentacea). The benefits of disease control from a crop rotation extended into to a second season of organic tomato cultivation season, where bacterial wilt declined from 40% in microplots with a tomato monoculture to 17% in plots with a crop rotation sequence. Combining applications of urban plant debris with a continued tomato monoculture increased the incidence of bacterial wilt to 60%. During the transition period, tomato plants following a cover crop regime also had significantly lower levels of root galling from root-knot nematode infection compared with plants in the continuous tomato monoculture. Nutsedge tuber production was significantly increased in plots amended with broiler litter but not urban plant debris. Compared with a continuous monoculture, the results illustrate the importance of a systems-based approach to implementing transitional organic practices that is cognizant of their interactive effects on resident soilborne disease, weed, and pest complexes.

Background/Context Since the 2016 presidential election, hate-based speech, crime, and violence have been on the rise in the United States, (re)creating a need for adults to engage children in dialogue related to white supremacy as it exists today, instead of framing it as a problem that ended with the civil rights movement. Following an incident of racist vandalism at her home, the author of this article (a White mother) conducted a search for picture books that could serve as vehicles to discuss race-based hate and whiteness with children like her young Black son. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study This study draws upon Critical Race Theory, Critical Whiteness Studies, and Critical Multicultural Analysis to explore the emancipatory possibilities of literacy education. Given that children's literature has the potential to engage young readers in transactions that promote critical literacy, this study focuses on the following research questions: 1) To what extent do picture books set in a post-civil-rights era United States address explicit and physical acts of white supremacy or hate directed against Black people's bodies, families, or properties? 2) How might such picture books aid parents, educators, and other adults in their attempts to raise children's awareness about white supremacy/hate? Research Design The first part of this article, which documents the author's search for children's picture books about explicit and physical acts of white supremacy/hate, utilizes first person narrative. The second part of this article consists of a multimodal content analysis of five texts, all meeting the following criteria: 1) written and illustrated in picture book format, 2) include child characters, 3) set in the United States, 4) set in a post-civil-rights era, 5) include an incident of white supremacist crime or violence (a physical act directed toward a person or property), 6) depict/address an incident directed against a Black individual or group. Conclusions/Recommendations Findings of this study point to the need for more picture books that challenge whiteness in its overt and covert forms, particularly in contemporary contexts, in order to provide children with opportunities to engage critically with current issues that have emerged in this heightened era of white supremacy and hate-based crime and violence. The picture books that do address white supremacy, in its current manifestation, tend to include stories about White police killing and shooting Black individuals and the protests that follow such incidents. Yet these stories, as well as one about an incident in which a group of White gang members physically attack two Black children (Ntozake Shange's Whitewash), are not equal in their level of explicitness about what occurs, their identifications of the White perpetrators involved in what happens, or their demonstrations of how the incidents are rooted in white supremacy. Accordingly, educators and other adults will often need to fill in significant “truth gaps” in order to raise children's social consciousness related to whiteness and racism. One of the primary recommendations presented in this piece is to accompany these picture books and picture books like them with discussion questions related to the stories that are and are not told in the texts, as well as to facilitate conversation with children related to power and agency as exhibited by the Black characters. Most important, educators and other adults should remain cognizant of the fact that, while books like the ones in this examination may help to address traumas and help facilitate testimony related to race-based hate, children should have opportunities to construct and express their own understandings of textual relevance on this topic.

Purpose While the words diversity, disparate impact, and discrimination are commonly read and heard by working adults and professionals, they can at times be confusing and fearful to some managers. The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of a specific aspect of US civil rights laws – the disparate impact theory. The authors provide an analysis based on the statute, case law interpreting, and applying the statute, administrative guidelines from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, as well as legal and management commentary. The paper illustrates the requirements of a plaintiff employee’s initial case based on the disparate impact theory. The challenging causation component which requires some degree of statistical evidence is given particular attention. Limitations to the paper are stated at the beginning; and recommendations to managers are explored and provided toward the end of the paper. Design/methodology/approach It is a legal paper which covers all the laws related to discrimination based on disparate impact and disparate treatment theories. Actual court cases up until this month and Americans laws related to this concept are reviewed and critically discussed. Findings The salient feature of disparate impact is that this legal theory allows a plaintiff job applicant or employee to sustain a case of illegal discrimination without providing any evidence of a discriminatory motive. As opposed to the disparate treatment liability is imposed based on disproportionate adverse results and not discriminatory intent. Research limitations/implications This paper deals with the disparate impact theory pursuant to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. However, it must be pointed out that the disparate impact theory is also applicable to claims arising under the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act. Since the focus of this paper is Title VII federal and state constitutional issues, such as the applicability of the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection clause that may arise in disparate impact cases involving government entities will not be addressed. Practical implications Managers and employees can protect themselves in the workplace from illegal discriminatory practices. Initially, employers and managers must be aware of the distinction between a disparate impact case and a disparate treatment case with the latter requiring evidence of intentional discrimination. Evidence, of course, can be direct or circumstantial or inferential. Whereas in a disparate impact case there is no intentional discrimination; and as such proof of discriminatory intent is not required. Rather, the employee has to present evidence that the employer’s neutral on-its-face employment policy or practice caused an adverse disproportionate impact on the employee as a member of a protected class. Social implications Human resources professionals and managers must become educated in diversity laws in order to provide an inclusive workplace for all employees and candidates. Employers have legitimate areas of concern in hiring and promoting employees; and the courts are cognizant of employer responsibilities; and thus the employers must be able to show how specific knowledge, skills, education, training, backgrounds, as well as height, weight, strength, and dexterity are legitimate qualifications that directly relate to successful job performance. Originality/value This is an original paper by the authors.

Reference evapotranspiration (ET0) is a rudimental variable in the estimation of crop water requirement, and preparation of irrigation schedule. Prediction of ET0 is a necessitous one for estimation of crop water requirement in future time step. In this paper ET0 is predicted using Artificial Neural Network (ANN) by different inputs Like Temperature, Cloud cover, Vapor pressure, Precipitation and its combinations by various models. Before prediction, the predictability of all the input time series is calculated individually and the effect of predictability on prediction is analyzed in models having single predictor. In spite of inserting additional predictor in input, the reason for increase of Root mean squared error is justified in terms of predictability in the models having multiple predictors. Also it is seen that the performance of models with multiple predictors is better when compared to single predictor models in the estimation of ET0.

The grand system of Islam has foundations in Qur’an and Sunnah of Hazrat Muhammad Peace and Blessings of Allah be Upon Him. Though the system is perfect, comprehensive, and covers all spheres of life, yet it has opened doors for Ijtihad. Ijtihad brings dynamism and movement in the construction of Islamic knowledge and its legal matters. The capacity of Ijtihad was used by the Companions May Allah be pleased with them and the people followed them and is still practiced by Muslim jurists and scholars for sorting out rationally the contemporary challenges. The practice of Ijtihad has given an immense treasure of knowledge in the form of Islamic Jurisprudence, Fiqah which is in cognizance with the human spiritual, psychological, moral and all other needs keeping in view the barriers of time and space. A religious decree Fatwa is the most contributing practice adds to Fiqah. The collection of Fatwa is called as Fatawa.

This study assessed spatial expansion of urban activities and agricultural lands in Makurdi metropolis, Benue State-Nigeria between the period of 1999 and 2012. The study employed ILWIS Academic 3.2a image processing software to conduct Land Use Land Cover Change (LULCC) analysis on Remotely Sensed (RS) data and Geographical Information System (GIS). A supervised classification was also adopted to identify land use type, and image differencing to identify the change. The study found out that there is a continuous decline in the total amount of farmland in Makurdi from 1999-2012. Specifically, it was found that in 1999, farmlands covered 43% of the study area while in 2012 it was reduced to 22%, indicating that spatial expansion of urban activities has been on the increase and may result in absolute loss in cropland with other sustainability risks and threats of livelihoods if not appropriately managed. The study therefore recommended that spatial expansion of urban activities should be well managed and controlled as well as to take into cognizance areas needed to be reserved for farming while carrying out urban development of an area.

The goal of the study is to improve and maintain the soil fertility. Fundamentally the term soil fertility covers larger proposition and often encompass environmental issues. There had been many attempts addressing the hurdles encountered in ensuring soil fertility. Analyzing the data about the fertilizers consumption by the farmers, we demonstrate the effectiveness of fuzzy based system in achieving maximum productivity together with high cognizance to soil fertility. The proposed fuzzy systems address the solution of the soil luxuriance hurdles in terms of pesticides poisoning especially farmland. The usage of pesticides poses a serious threat to the health of the environment affecting adversely the future generations. On the other hand, it is important not only to preserve soil fertility but also to plant the crops as well. The proposed work have been constructed based on the usage of fertilizers with diverse cropping pattern randomly selected during a pair of cropping cycle and found that the repetition of the cycle failing miserably as the soil fertility gravely damaged. The suggested procedure will enhance the environmental ecosystem and improving the socio-economic status of farmers. Moreover, this increase in the farm products has a positive impact to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of a country.

Diversification, like tobacco use prevention and cessation, is an important public health concern. The multi-level patterns of tobacco dependency suggest the need for public health approaches to the “tobacco problem.” To understand how newspaper and wire service journalists cover issues involving diversification among tobacco farmers, the authors performed a content analysis of a subset of 100 articles on diversification and tobacco farming. Prochaska and DiClemente’s stages-of-change model was applied to the “problem behavior” of tobacco farming. Among news accounts relating to tobacco farmers or tobacco farming, print media accounts gave relatively little attention to the issue of diversification. Farmers in the sample of news accounts were generally cognizant of pressures to diversify away from reliance on tobacco cultivation but were frustrated due to obstacles to diversification, such as limited diversification options and relative absence of infrastructure supports. Community leaders and policy-relevant sources generally supported diversification.

Christ-figures increasingly permeate the popular cinema, but hunting for them is not necessarily a benign or unproblematic activity. Following a selective review of the film and religion literature, and a preliminary scan of the popular cinema utilizing textually-based humanist film criticism as the guiding analytical lens, one danger and eleven types of academic disquiet were explicated herein. Namely: (1) When Factual Minimalism Equals Certainty: Holy Hope, (2) Misidentification: When Something Supposedly “Christian” Was Something Else, (3) When Nothing Equals Something: Creatio Ex Nihilo, (4) Spiritually Negating Christian Iconography: Form Versus Substance, (5) Some Problems with the Secular-is-Sacred Argument, (6) Film is Not a Substitute for Faith, Religion, or God, (7) Rewriting the Film: Aesthetic Violence?, (8) Tenuous Links, Strained Associations, and Uncertain Correspondences, (9) Rejecting Overt Religion for Covert Religion: Distorting Theology and Misdirecting Faith?, (10) From Symbolism Fatigue to Symbolism Cynicism, and (11) Pattern Appeasement: From Being Uncritical to Narrative Insights. It was concluded that being cognizant of the inherent dangers and sources of academic disquiet is a valuable means of expanding one’s visual and intellectual imagination, and also useful for the postmodern church. Further research into the subtextual sub-genre of the religion-and-film field was encouraged, warmly recommended, and is already long overdue.

Aim: The aim of the study was to determine the frequency of occurrence and percentage distribution of Kell blood group antigens in indigenes of Ogoni ethnic group of Rivers State, Nigeria. Study Design: This was a cross-sectional study carried out among indigenes of Ogoni whose first generational parental origin is Ogoni. A total of 101 subjects (49 females and 52 males), within the age of 30–60 years were recruited for the study and they were apparently healthy and free from transfusion transmissible infections upon serological screening. Place and Duration of Study: Ogoniland is located in an area along the Niger Delta Eastern edge, and to the north-east of the Imo River and Port Harcourt city. Ogoniland covers about 1036 Sq Km and borders the Bay of Guinea. All participants were recruited in Bori. Bori is the traditional headquarter of Ogoni. Bori is located on latitude: 4040ʹ34.64ʺ N and longitude: 7021ʹ54.68ʺ E. The analysis was carried out at the Post Graduate Laboratory of Rivers State University, Nkpolu-Oroworukwo, Port Harcourt, Rivers State, Nigeria. Port Harcourt, the capital of Rivers State, is located on latitude 4.750N and longitude 7.000E and lies along Bonny River in the Niger Delta. All subjects were recruited the same day and their blood samples collected on 2nd October, 2019, and analysis conducted on 3rd October, 2019. Methodology: Identification of Kell blood group antigens was done using Anti-Kell monoclonal reagent, prepared by Lorne Laboratories Ltd, UK. Lot No: 76090-A5; Expiry Date: 2021/02/21. Phenotyping of red cells was done using tube method as described by Lorne Laboratory Ltd. Results: The result showed zero frequency of occurrence and percentage distribution of Kell blood group antigen in the studied population (49 males and 52 females). Conclusion: The presence of Kell blood group antigens in indigenes of Ogoni recruited for the study which serve as representative of the Ogonis was rare. It is therefore necessary to take into cognizance that haemolytic transfusion reactions due to Kell antigens and antibodies will rarely occur, and as such Kell blood group is not significant in blood transfusion and in antenatal and blood group serology amongst the Ogonis.

Abstract Riparian buffers implemented to minimize sediment, nutrients, and disturbance impacts on streams during forest operations vary greatly in the degree to which ecological criteria are used in their design. Because most forest operations are concentrated around headwater streams, our primary research objective was to identify a floristically based riparian boundary for headwater streams using plant species composition and indicator species to classify riparian environments distinct from the surrounding upland forest. Within three forested regions of the Northeast US, understory vegetation plots were sampled along perpendicular transects extending from the stream bank into the upland forest. At all sites, species richness was highest adjacent to the stream, decreasing exponentially within 6–12 m from the channel. Species composition closest to the stream was significantly different from all other lateral distances, but identified riparian indicator species were of limited practical use across all sites. However, changes in species richness can serve to identify a riparian area extent up to 6–12 m from headwater streams. Study Implications Riparian areas around headwater streams can be sensitive to forest management activities, particularly harvesting. Riparian management zone (RMZ) buffers around these streams vary in the degree to which they are based on ecological criteria; for example, fixed-width buffers may or may not adequately protect the riparian area. Our study within three forests of the Northeast detected a significant exponential decreasing trend in understory plant species richness within 6–12 m (20–40 ft) from the stream bank. We believe this ecologically based floristic zone closest to the stream represents the most sensitive part of the RMZ. This study recommends a 12 m (40 ft) zone to maintain the majority of the forest cover and minimize the impact of logging equipment. Foresters should be cognizant of this 12 m zone when implementing silvicultural activities and planning harvest access systems.

The usual postmodern suspicions about diligently deciphering authorial intent or stridently seeking fixed meaning/s and/or binary distinctions in an artistic work aside, this self-indulgent essay pushes the boundaries regarding normative academic research, for it focusses on my own (minimally celebrated) published creative writing’s status as a literary innovation. Dedicated to illuminating some of the less common denominators at play in Australian horror, my paper recalls the creative writing process involved when I set upon the (arrogant?) goal of creating a new genre of creative writing: that of the ‘Aboriginal Fantastic’. I compare my work to the literary output of a small but significant group (2.5% of the population), of which I am a member: Aboriginal Australians. I narrow my focus even further by examining that creative writing known as Aboriginal horror. And I reduce the sample size of my study to an exceptionally small number by restricting my view to one type of Aboriginal horror literature only: the Aboriginal vampire novel, a genre to which I have contributed professionally with the 2011 paperback and 2012 e-book publication of That Blackfella Bloodsucka Dance! However, as this paper hopefully demonstrates, and despite what may be interpreted by some cynical commentators as the faux sincerity of my taxonomic fervour, Aboriginal horror is a genre noteworthy for its instability and worthy of further academic interrogation.Surprising to many, Aboriginal Australian mythology includes at least one truly vampire-like entity, despite Althans’ confident assertion that the Bunyip is “Australia’s only monster” (16) which followed McKee’s equally fearless claim that “there is no blackfella tradition of zombies or vampires” (201). Gelder’s Ghost Stories anthology also only mentions the Bunyip, in a tale narrated by Indigenous man Percy Mumbulla (250). Certainly, neither of these academics claim Indigeneity in their ethnicity and most Aboriginal Australian scholars will happily agree that our heterogeneous Indigenous cultures and traditions are devoid of opera-cape wearing Counts who sleep in coffins or are repelled by crucifix-wielding Catholics. Nevertheless, there are fascinating stories--handed down orally from one generation to the next (Australian Aborigines, of course, have no ancestral writing system)--informing wide-eyed youngsters of bloodsucking, supernatural entities that return from the grave to feed upon still living blackfellas: hence Unaipon describes the red-skinned, fig tree-dwelling monster, the “Yara Ma Yha Who […] which sucks the blood from the victim and leaves him helpless upon the ground” (218). Like most vampires, this monster imparts a similarly monstrous existence upon his prey, which it drains of blood through the suckers on its fingers, not its teeth. Additionally, Reed warns: “Little children, beware of the Yara-ma-yha-who! If you do not behave yourselves and do as you are told, they will come and eat you!” (410), but no-one suggests this horrible creature is actually an undead human.For the purposes of this paper at least, the defining characteristics of a vampire are firstly that it must have once been an ordinary, living human. Secondly, it must have an appetite for human blood. Thirdly, it must have a ghoulish inability to undergo a permanent death (note, zombies, unlike vampires it seems, are fonder of brains than fresh hemoglobin and are particularly easy to dispatch). Thus, according to my criteria, an arguably genuine Aboriginal Australian vampire is referred to when Bunson writes of the Mrart being an improperly buried member of the tribe who has returned after death to feed upon the living (13) and when Cheung notes “a number of vampire-like creatures were feared, most especially the mrart, the ghost of a dead person who attacked victims at night and dragged them away from campsites” (40). Unfortunately, details regarding this “number of vampire-like creatures” have not been collated, nor I fear, in this era of rapidly extinguishing Aboriginal Australian language use, are they ever likely to be.Perhaps the best hope for preservation of these little known treasures of our mythology lies not with anthropologists but with the nation’s Indigenous creative writers. Yet no blackfella novelist, apparently, has been interested in the monstrous, bloodsucking, Aboriginal Undead. Despite being described as dominating the “Black Australian novel” (Shoemaker 1), writer Mudrooroo--who has authored three vampire novels--reveals nothing of Aboriginal Australian vampirology in his texts. Significantly, however, Mudrooroo states that Aboriginal Australian novelists such as he “are devoting their words to the Indigenous existential being” (Indigenous 3). Existentiality, of course, has to do with questions of life, death and dying and, for we Aboriginal Australians, such questions inevitably lead to us addressing the terrible consequences of British invasion and genocide upon our cultural identity, and this is reflected in Mudrooroo’s effective use of the vampire trope in his three ‘Ghost Dreaming’ novels, as they are also known. Mudrooroo’s bloodsuckers, however, are the invading British and Europeans in his extended ‘white man as ghost’ metaphor: they are not sourced from Aboriginal Australian mythology.Mudrooroo does, notably, intertwine his story of colonising vampires in Australia with characters created by Bram Stoker in his classic novel Dracula (1897). He calls his first Aborigine to become a familiar “Renfield” (Undying 93), and even includes a soft-porn re-imagining of an encounter between characters he has inter-textually named “Lucy” and “Mina” (Promised 3). This potential for a contemporary transplantation of Stoker’s European characters to Australia was another aspect I sought to explore in my novel, especially regarding semi-autobiographical writing by mixed-race Aboriginal Australians such as Mudrooroo and myself. I wanted to meta-fictionally insert my self-styled anti-hero into a Stoker-inspired milieu. Thus my work features a protagonist who is confused and occasionally ambivalent about his Aboriginal identity. Brought up as Catholic, as I was, he succumbs to an Australian re-incarnation of Stoker’s Dracula as Anti-Christ and finds himself battling the true-believers of the Catholic Church, including a Moroccan version of Professor Van Helsing and a Buffy-like, quasi-Islamic vampire slayer.Despite his once revered status, Mudrooroo is now exiled from the Australian literary scene as a result of his claim to Indigeneity being (apparently) disproven (see Clark). Illness and old age prevent him from defending the charges, hence it is unlikely that Mudrooroo (or Colin Johnson as he was formerly known) will further develop the Aboriginal Australian vampire trope in his writing. Which situation leaves me to cautiously identify myself as the sole Aboriginal Australian novelist exploring Indigenous vampires in his/her creative writing, as evidenced by my 312 page novel That Blackfella Bloodsucka Dance!, which was a prescribed text in a 2014 Indiana University course on World Literature (Halloran).Set in a contemporary Australia where disparate existential explanations including the Aboriginal Dreamtime, Catholicism, vampirism and atheism all co-exist, the writing of my novel was motivated by the question: ‘How can such incongruent ideologies be reconciled or bridged?’ My personal worldview is influenced by all four of these explanations for the mysteries of life and death: I was brought up in Catholicism but schooled in scientific methodology, which evolved into an insipid atheism. Culturally I was drawn to the gothic novel and developed an intellectual interest in Stoker’sDracula and its significance as a pro-Catholic, covert mission of proselytization (see Starrs 2004), whilst simultaneously learning more of my totem, Garrawi (the Sulphur-crested White Cockatoo), and the Aboriginal Dreamtime legends of my ancestral forebears. Much of my novel concerns questions of identity for a relatively light-complexioned, mixed ancestry Aboriginal Australian such as myself, and the place such individuals occupy in the post-colonial world. Mudrooroo, perhaps, was right in surmising that we Aboriginal Australian authors are devoted to writing about “the Indigenous existential being” for my Aboriginal vampire novel is at least semi-autobiographical and fixated on the protagonist’s attempts to reconcile his atheism with his Dreamtime teachings and Catholicism. But Mudrooroo’s writing differs markedly from my own when it comes to the expectations he has regarding the audience’s acceptance of supernatural themes. He apparently fully believed in the possibility of such unearthly spirits existing, and wrote of the “Maban Reality” whereby supernatural events are entirely tenable in the Aboriginal Australian world-view, and the way these matters are presented suggests he expects the reader to be similarly convinced. With this Zeitgeist, Mudrooroo’s ‘Ghost Dreaming’ novels can be accurately described as Aboriginal Gothic. In this genre, Chanady explains, “the supernatural, as well as highly improbable events, are presented without any comment by the magical realist narrator” ("Magic Realism" 431).What, then, is the meaning of Aboriginal Gothic, given we Aboriginal peoples have no haunted castles or mist-shrouded graveyards? Again according to Chanady, as she set out in her groundbreaking monograph of 1985, in a work of Magical Realism the author unquestioningly accepts the supernatural as credible (10-12), even as, according to Althans, it combines “the magical and realist, into a new perspective of the world, thus offering alternative ways and new approaches to reality” (26). From this general categorisation, Althans proposes, comes the specific genre of Aboriginal Gothic, which is Magical Realism in an Indigenous context that creates a “cultural matrix foreign to a European audience [...] through blending the Gothic mode in its European tradition with the myths and customs of Aboriginal culture” (28-29). She relates the Aboriginal Gothic to Mudrooroo’s Maban Reality due to its acting “as counter-reality, grounded in the earth or country, to a rational worldview and the demands of a European realism” (28). Within this category sit not only the works of Aboriginal Australian novelists such as Mudrooroo, but also more recent novels by Aboriginal Australian writers Kim Scott and Alexis Wright, who occasionally indulge in improbable narratives informed by supernatural beings (while steering disappointingly clear of vampires).But there is more to the Aboriginal Gothic than a naïve acceptance of Maban Reality, or, for that matter, any other Magical Realist treatments of Aboriginal Australian mythology. Typically, the work of Aboriginal Gothic writers speaks to the historical horrors of colonisation. In contrast to the usually white-authored Australian Gothic, in which the land down under was seen as terrifying by the awestruck colonisers, and the Aborigine was portrayed as “more frightening than any European demon” (Turcotte, "Australian Gothic" 10), the Aboriginal Gothic sometimes reverses roles and makes the invading white man the monster. The Australian Gothic was for Aborigines, “a disabling, rather than enabling, discourse” (Turcotte, "Australian Gothic" 10) whilst colonial Gothic texts egregiously portrayed the colonised subject as a fearsome and savage Other. Ostensibly sub-human, from a psychoanalytic point of view, the Aborigine may even have symbolised the dark side of the British settler, but who, in the very act of his being subjugated, assures the white invader of his racial superiority, moral integrity and righteous identity. However, when Aboriginal Australian authors reiterate, when we subjugated savages wrestle the keyboard away, readers witness the Other writing back, critically. Receivers of our words see the distorted and silencing master discourse subverted and, indeed, inverted. Our audiences are subjectively repositioned to see the British Crown as the monster. The previously presumed civil coloniser is instead depicted as the author and perpetrator of a violently racist, criminal discourse, until, eventually, s/he is ultimately ‘Gothicised’: eroded and made into the Other, the villainous, predatory savage. In this style of vicious literary retaliation Mudrooroo excelled. Furthermore, as a mixed ancestry Aborigine, like myself, Mudrooroo represented in his very existence, the personification of Aboriginal Gothic, for as Idilko Riendes writes, “The half caste is reminiscent of the Gothic monstrous, as the half caste is something that seems unnatural at first, evoking fears” (107). Perhaps therein lies a source of the vehemency with which some commentators have pilloried Mudrooroo after the somewhat unconvincing evidence of his non-Indigeneity? But I digress from my goal of explicating the meaning of the term Aboriginal Gothic.The boundaries of any genre are slippery and one of the features of postmodern literature is its deliberate blurring of boundaries, hence defining genres is not easy. Perhaps the Gothic can be better understood when the meaning of its polar opposite, the Fantastic, is better understood. Ethnic authorial controversies aside and returning to the equally shady subject of authorial intent, in contrast to the Aboriginal Gothic of novelists Mudrooroo, Scott and Wright, and their accepting of the supernatural as plausible, the Fantastic in literature is characterised by an enlightened rationality in which the supernatural is introduced but ultimately rejected by the author, a literary approach that certainly sits better with my existential atheism. Chanady defined and illustrated the genre as follows: “the fantastic […] reaffirmed hegemonic Western rational paradigms by portraying the supernatural in a contradictory manner as both terrifying and logically impossible […] My examples of the fantastic were drawn from the work of major French writers such as Merimee and Maupassant” ("Magic Realism" 430). Unfortunately, Chanady was unable to illustrate her concept of the Fantastic with examples of Aboriginal horror writing. Why? Because none existed until my novel was published. Whereas Mudrooroo, Scott and Wright incorporated the Magical Realism of Aboriginal Australian mythology into their novels, and asked their readers to accept it as not only plausible but realistic and even factual, I wanted to create a style that blends Aboriginal mythology with the European tradition of vampires, but ultimately rejects this “cultural matrix” due to enlightened rationality, as I deliberately and cynically denounce it all as fanciful superstition.Certainly, the adjective “fantastic” is liberally applied to much of what we call Gothic horror literature, and the sub-genre of Indigenous vampire literature is not immune to this confusion, with non-Australian Indigenous author Aaron Carr’s 1995 Native American vampire novel, The Eye Killers, unhelpfully described in terms of the “fantastic nature of the genre” (Tillett 149). In this novel,Carr exposes contemporary Native American political concerns by skillfully weaving multiple interactive dialogues with horror literature and film, contemporary U.S. cultural preoccupations, postmodern philosophies, traditional vampire lore, contemporary Native literature, and Native oral traditions. (Tillett 150)It must be noted, however, that Carr does not denounce the supernatural vampire and its associated folklore, be it European or Laguna/Kerasan/Navajo, as illogical or fanciful. This despite his “dialogues with […] contemporary U.S. cultural preoccupations [and] postmodern philosophies”. Indeed, the character “Diana” at one stage pretends to pragmatically denounce the supernatural whilst her interior monologue strenuously defends her irrational beliefs: the novel reads: “‘Of course there aren’t any ghosts,’ Diana said sharply, thinking: Of course there were ghosts. In this room. Everywhere” (197). In taking this stock-standard approach of expecting the reader to believe wholeheartedly in the existence of the Undead, Carr locates his work firmly in the Aboriginal Gothic camp and renders commentators such as Tillett liable to be called ignorant and uninformed when they label his work fantastic.The Aboriginal Gothic would leave the reader convinced a belief in the supernatural is non-problematic, whereas the Aboriginal Fantastic novel, where it exists, would, while enjoying the temporary departure from the restraints of reality, eventually conclude there are no such things as ghosts or vampires. Thus, my Aboriginal Fantastic novel That Blackfella Bloodsucka Dance! was intended from the very beginning of the creative writing process to be an existentially diametric alternative to Magical Realism and the Aboriginal Gothic (at least in its climactic denouement). The narrative features a protagonist who, in his defeat, realises the danger in superstitious devotion and in doing so his interior monologue introduces to the literary world the new Aboriginal Fantastic genre. Despite a Foucauldian emphasis in most of my critical analysis in which an awareness of the constructed status and nature of the subject/focus of knowledge undermines the foundations of any reductive typology, I am unhesitant in my claim to having invented a new genre of literature here. Unless there is, undiscovered by my research, a yet-to-be heralded work of Aboriginal horror that recognises the impossibility of its subject, my novel is unique even while my attitude might be decried as hubristic. I am also cognizant of the potential for angry feedback from my Aboriginal Australian kin, for my innovative genre is ultimately denigrating of all supernatural devotion, be it vampiric or Dreamtime. Aboriginal Fantastic writing rejects such mythologies as dangerous, fanciful superstition, but I make the (probably) too-little-too-late defence that it rejects the Indigenous existential rationale somewhat less vigorously than it rejects the existential superstitions of Catholicism and/or vampirism.This potential criticism I will forbear, perhaps sullenly and hopefully silently, but I am likely to be goaded to defensiveness by those who argue that like any Indigenous literature, Aboriginal Australian writing is inherently Magical Realist, and that I forsake my culture when I appeal to the rational. Chanady sees “magic realism as a mode that expresses important points of view, often related to marginality and subalternity” ("Magic Realism" 442). She is not alone in seeing it as the generic cultural expression of Indigenous peoples everywhere, for Bhabha writes of it as being the literature of the postcolonial world (6) whilst Rushdie sees it as the expression of a third world consciousness (301). But am I truly betraying my ancestral culture when I dismiss the Mrart as mere superstition? Just because it has colour should we revere ‘black magic’ over other (white or colourless) superstitions? Should we not suspect, as we do when seated before stage show illusionists, some sleight of (writing) hand? Some hidden/sub-textual agenda meant to entertain not educate? Our world has many previously declared mysteries now easily explained by science, and the notion of Earth being created by a Rainbow Serpent is as farcical to me as the notion it was created a few thousand years ago in seven days by an omniscient human-like being called God. If, in expressing this dubiousness, I am betraying my ancestors, I can only offer detractors the feeble defence that I sincerely respect their beliefs whilst not personally sharing them. I attempt no delegitimising of Aboriginal Australian mythology. Indeed, I celebrate different cultural imaginaries for they make our quotidian existence more colourful and enjoyable. There is much pleasure to be had in such excursions from the pedantry of the rational.Another criticism I might hear out--intellectually--would be: “Most successful literature is Magical Realist, and supernatural stories are irresistible”, a truism most commercially successful authors recognise. But my work was never about sales, indeed, the improbability of my (irresistible?) fiction is didactically yoked to a somewhat sanctimonious moral. My protagonist realises the folly and danger in superstitious devotion, although his atheistic epiphany occurs only during his last seconds of life. Thus, whilst pushing this barrow of enlightened rationality, my novel makes a somewhat original contribution to contemporary Australian culture, presenting in a creative writing form rather than anthropological report, an understanding of the potential for melding Aboriginal mythology with Catholicism, the “competing Dreamtimes, white and black” as Turcotte writes ("Re-mastering" 132), if only at the level of ultimately accepting, atheistically, that all are fanciful examples of self-created beyond-death identity, as real--or unreal--as any other religious meme. Whatever vampire literature people read, most such consumers do not believe in the otherworldly antagonists, although there is profound enjoyment to be had in temporarily suspending disbelief and even perpetuating the meme into the mindsets of others. Perhaps, somewhere in the sub-conscious, pre-rational recesses of our caveman-like brains, we still wonder if such supernatural entities reflect a symbolic truth we can’t quite apprehend. Instead, we use a totemic figure like the sultry but terrifying Count Dracula as a proxy for other kinds of primordial anxieties we cannot easily articulate, whether that fear is the child rapist on the loose or impending financial ruin or just the overwhelming sense that our contemporary lifestyles contain the very seeds of our own destruction, and we are actively watering them with our insouciance.In other words, there is little that is new in horror. Yes, That Blackfella Bloodsucka Dance! is an example of what I call the new genre of Aboriginal Fantastic but that claim is not much of an original contribution to knowledge, other than being the invention of an extra label in an unnecessarily formalist/idealist lexicon of literary taxonomy. Certainly, it will not create a legion of fans. But these days it is difficult for a novelist to find anything really new to write about, genre-wise, and if there is a reader prepared to pay hard-earned money for a copy, then I sincerely hope they do not feel they have purchased yet another example of what the HBO television show Californication’s creative writing tutor Hank Moody (David Duchovny) derides as “lame vampire fiction” (episode 2, 2007). I like to think my Aboriginal Fantastic novel has legs as well as fangs. References Althans, Katrin. Darkness Subverted: Aboriginal Gothic in Black Australian Literature and Film. Bonn: Bonn UP, 2010. Bhabha, Homi. Nation and Narration. London and New York: Routledge, 1990. Bunson, Matthew. The Vampire Encyclopedia. New York: Gramercy Books, 1993. Carr, Aaron A. Eye Killers. Norman: U of Oklahoma P, 1995. Chanady, Amaryll. Magical Realism and the Fantastic: Resolved versus Unresolved Antinomy. New York: Garland Publishing, 1985. Chanady, Amaryll. “Magic Realism Revisited: The Deconstruction of Antinomies.” Canadian Review of Comparative Literature (June 2003): 428-444. Cheung, Theresa. The Element Encyclopaedia of Vampires. London: Harper Collins, 2009. Clark, Maureen. Mudrooroo: A Likely Story: Identity and Belonging in Postcolonial Australia. Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2007. Gelder, Ken. The Oxford Book of Australian Ghost Stories. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1994. Halloran, Vivien. “L224: Introduction to World Literatures in English.” Department of English, Indiana University, 2014. 2 Aug. 2014 ‹http://www.indiana.edu/~engweb/undergradCourses_spring.shtml›. McKee, Alan. “White Stories, Black Magic: Australian Horror Films of the Aboriginal.”Aratjara: Aboriginal Culture and Literature in Australia. Eds. Dieter Riemenschneider and Geoffrey V. Davis. Amsterdam: Rodopi Press (1997): 193-210. Mudrooroo. The Indigenous Literature of Australia. Melbourne: Hyland House, 1997. Mudrooroo. The Undying. Sydney: Harper Collins, 1998. Mudrooroo. The Promised Land. Sydney: Harper Collins, 2000. Reed, Alexander W. Aboriginal Myths, Legends and Fables. Sydney: Reed New Holland, 1999. Riendes, Ildiko. “The Use of Gothic Elements as Manifestations of Regaining Aboriginal Identity in Kim Scott’s Benang: From the Heart.” Topos 1.1 (2012): 100-114. Rushdie, Salman. “Gabriel Garcia Marquez.” Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism 1981-1991. London: Granta and Penguin Books, 1991. Shoemaker, Adam. Mudrooroo. Sydney: Harper Collins, 1993. Starrs, D. Bruno. “Keeping the Faith: Catholicism in Dracula and its Adaptations.” Journal of Dracula Studies 6 (2004): 13-18. Starrs, D. Bruno. That Blackfella Bloodsucka Dance! Saarbrücken, Germany: Just Fiction Edition (paperback), 2011; Starrs via Smashwords (e-book), 2012. Tillett, Rebecca. “‘Your Story Reminds Me of Something’: Spectacle and Speculation in Aaron Carr’s Eye Killers.” Ariel: A Review of International English Literature 33.1 (2002): 149-73. Turcotte, Gerry. “Australian Gothic.” Faculty of Arts — Papers, University of Wollongong, 1998. 2 Aug. 2014 ‹http://ro.uow.edu.au/artspapers/60/›. Turcotte, Gerry. “Re-mastering the Ghosts: Mudrooroo and Gothic Refigurations.” Mongrel Signatures: Reflections on the Work of Mudrooroo. Ed. Annalisa Oboe. Amsterdam: Rodopi Press (2003): 129-151. Unaipon, David. Legendary Tales of the Australian Aborigines. Eds. Stephen Muecke and Adam Shoemaker. Carlton: The Miegunyah Press, 2006.