Journal articles on the topic 'Perte hybride'

Une méthodologie d’optimisation et de dimensionnement des systèmes hybrides photovoltaïque/éolien avec batteries de stockage est présentée dans ce papier. Cette méthodologie est basée sur les concepts de la probabilité de perte d’énergie (DPSP) comme critère technique et du coût du kilowattheure minimal comme critère économique. La simulation est effectuée sur une période d’analyse d’une année, en utilisant les données horaires de l’irradiation solaire sur le plan horizontal, de la vitesse du vent et de la température ambiante enregistrées au sein du CDER, (Centre de Développement des Energies Renouvelables). Ces données nous ont permis de calculer la puissance horaire produite conjointement par l’aérogénérateur et le générateur photovoltaïque et ce, sur la même période d’analyse. Un profil de consommation journalier type a été adopté, il est supposé identique pour tous les jours de l’année et correspond au profil de consommation rencontré généralement dans les sites isolés.

L'étude de faisabilité et la conception optimale d'un système énergétique hybride pour fournir de l'énergie électrique à un site éloigné de M'Sila est examinée dans ce papier. Le but de ce document est de concevoir et de simuler un mini-réseau hybride PV/batterie optimal qui fonctionne d'une manière fiable, afin d'assurer une alimentation électrique ininterrompue. En raison de la nature intermittente des ressources renouvelables, un générateur diesel y est ajouté. Afin de réaliser l'étude de faisabilité du système hybride, la conception optimale du système est basée sur un modèle de simulation développé par le logiciel Homer®. Le logiciel est utilisé pour l'évaluation technique, économique et environnementale. Le concept de la probabilité de perte d’énergie (LPSP) est supposé nul (DPSP = 0 % signifie que la charge est toujours satisfaite), avec un coût net actuel total (TNPC) et un coût énergétique (LCOE) minimal. Dans ce contexte, un profil de charge pratique du site est utilisé avec des données météorologiques réelles. Les résultats de l'optimisation catégorisée montrent que, dans le cas d’une consommation de 9.8 kWh/jour, le système hybride PV/DG/Batterie peut être considéré économique dans le cas où le prix du diesel ne fluctue pas. Le système optimal est composé d'un module PV de 3 kW, d'un générateur diesel de 1 kW, d'un convertisseur de 2 kW et de 4 batteries modèle Hoppecke. D'après les résultats obtenues, la configuration est économique avec un coût en capital de 5.656 $, un coût d'exploitation annuel de 431 $/an, un coût net actuel de 11.159 $/an et un coût unitaire d'énergie de 0.244 $/kWh avec une fraction d'énergie renouvelable de 86 % et une réduction plus de 90.79% dans les émissions.

L’apparition de l’édition musicale à Lyon est un parfait exemple de l’utilité des sources archivistiques en complément des travaux bibliographiques classiques. En effet, si seulement trois éditions ont été retrouvées avant l’année 1532 (date des premières éditions musicales datées de l’imprimeur Jacques Moderne), la comparaison avec les mentions trouvées dans les inventaires de libraires ou de collections, essentiellement espagnols, révèle qu’une bonne quinzaine d’éditions ont été publiées entre 1525 et 1530, avec au moins trois procédés techniques : le procédé d’Antico en gravure, le procédé d’Attaingnant en typographie ou le procédé hybride du Contrapunctus (gravure en double impression). Il y a donc eu à Lyon, à cette époque, des essais et des hésitations multiples quant au choix du procédé et, pour les musicologues de notre temps, une perte sensible d’une part du répertoire musical de cette époque.

Les cellules solaires photovoltaïques (PV) perdent de leur efficacité lorsqu’elles fonctionnent sous haute température, notamment dans les régions sahariennes comme le sud de l’Algérie. Dans cette étude, nous proposons un nouveau système de refroidissement des cellules photovoltaïques. Ce système est basé sur l’intégration d’un module Peltier sous la cellule PV afin de la refroidir. Ce dispositif constitue un module hybride photovoltaïque-thermoélectrique (PV-TE) faisant intervenir simultanément l’effet photovoltaïque et l’effet Peltier. L’effet de l’intégration du module Peltier dans la cellule a été simulé sous Comsol Multiphysics et Matlab/Simulink. Les résultats de la simulation ont montré que le module Peltier permet le refroidissement de la cellule PV et maintient son fonctionnement à une température ambiante lui permettant de générer sa puissance maximale. C’est ainsi que pour toutes les températures testées, il y a perte de puissance, mais dès que le module Peltier intervient, la cellule retrouve son fonctionnement normal à température ambiante avec une puissance maximale égale à celle initiale de 2.6 W.

Christophe Honoré est l’auteur d’une œuvre à la première personne, parue entre 2017 et 2018, qui se déplie en trois volets, dont le roman Ton Père (2017), le film Plaire, aimer et courir vite (2018) et la pièce de théâtre Les Idoles (2018). Ce triptyque a principalement pour thèmes la figure de l’artiste homosexuel, la transmission et la perte. En effet, cette œuvre est hantée par la mort de personnalités chères à l’auteur, emportées par le Sida dans les années 1990. Alors, il les fait revivre et dialoguer dans la pièce de théâtre qui clôt ce triptyque, tandis que le film présente une histoire d’amour homosexuel entre un écrivain séropositif et un étudiant en cinéma et que le livre relate la paternité d’un narrateur homosexuel confronté à l’homophobie. L’article se propose d’examiner les différentes possibilités de figurations de soi en « artiste homosexuel » dans un dispositif hybride, qui convoque la littérature, le cinéma et le théâtre. Il s’agira aussi de mettre en avant l’éclatement sujet en plusieurs points, à travers les discontinuités formelles de cette œuvre. Le « je » se donne à voir dans une labilité, qui participe en retour à la construction dynamique du sujet et fait échec aux assignations à identité. Mots-clés : autofiction, artiste homosexuel, homophobie, Sida.

Background: Giant basal cell carcinomas (GBCC) can demonstrate very malignant behavior and pose a surgical challenge. Objective: To present a surgical technique utilizing Mohs and the resection of narrow bands of tissue to excise a GBCC that created a large facial defect of 5 cm x 2 cm. Methods: A unique combination of Mohs micrographic surgery and the recently described perimeter techniques used for lentigo maligna were used to resect the tumor. Results: This hybrid technique was tissue sparing and therefore helped prevent the complications associated with a larger resection and allowed for an easier reconstruction. At 2 months post resection the patient had no known metastasis or tumor recurrence. Conclusion: This case highlights the importance of early recognition of basal cell carcinoma and the complications that can arise when lesions are left untreated for a long duration. Also, we describe a surgical technique that could help reduce the complications associated with these large tumors. Contexte: Les carcinomes basocellulaires géants (CBCG) peuvent se montrer très malins, en plus d'être difficiles à opérer. Objectif: L'étude visait à présenter une technique chirurgicale, reposant sur la méthode de Mohs et nécessitant l'exérèse de bandes étroites de tissu afin d'enlever un CBCG qui avait créé une importante perte de substance faciale de 5 cm × 2 cm. Méthodes: Nous avons procédé à l'ablation de la tumeur grâce à une association tout à fait particulière de la chirurgie micrographique de Mohs et des techniques de détermination du périmètre, décrites dernièrement pour l'exérèse des lentigos malins. Résultats: Cette technique hybride offrait l'avantage de conserver du tissu et, par le fait même, aidait à prévenir les complications associées à des exérèses étendues, et facilitait la reconstruction. Deux mois après l'opération, le patient ne présentait pas de métastase décelable ni de récidive de la tumeur. Conclusions: Le présent cas fait ressortir l'importance de la reconnaissance précoce du carcinome basocellulaire et des complications auxquelles peut donner lieu l'absence prolongée de traitement des lésions. L'article contient aussi une description d'une technique chirurgicale, susceptible de diminuer les complications liées à ces grosses tumeurs.

Dans la plupart de ses romans, Milan Kundera met en scène un va-et-vient constant entre le territoire tchèque et d’autres pays essentiellement de l’Ouest, à travers les déplacements des personnages. Nous interrogeons ces flux d’im/migration centrifuge ou centripète (parfois ne dépassant pas le stade du simple projet) qui semblent participer à l’élaboration d’une poétique visant à établir un réseau de communication entre le déplacement spatial et le recentrement identitaire. Trois axes paraissent révélateurs du questionnement que l’auteur organise autour de cette problématique : d’abord la question de l’exil et/ou de l’immigration en tant que prétexte à l’évocation du rejet du pays natal et de la fuite des autres ou de soi ; ensuite celle de l’immigration à rebours qui se penche sur la perte et la reconquête de l’espace comme révélateurs de l’identité individuelle ; enfin, celle de la démystification de l’espace commun ou communautaire pour constituer un cheminement vers la réappropriation de soi. Nous partons de ce troisième axe dans une étude centrée sur la question de l’identité dans certains de ses romans.

« Le trait commun à toute chose est que tout est multiple ». Badiou, A. (2021). Alain Badiou par Alain Badiou (p. 79). PUF. Au cœur de notre contemporanéité, les interrogations sur notre identité marquent le rythme d’une construction qui n’est jamais sur le point de se figer, mais précisément pensée à travers les aléas de l’histoire et dans le bourbier des genres, des genres littéraires et, en particulier, des genres humains. Ce nouveau dossier de la revue HYBRIDA. Revue scientifique sur les hybridations culturelles et les identités migrantes, que nous coordonnons depuis l’Amérique latine, invoque précisément les modalités, les nuances et les significations autour de l’identité comme concept transculturel. En guise d’évocation augurale, nous voudrions mettre en exergue le regard très singulier sur les préoccupations politiques et humaines qu’incarnent l’œuvre et la figure de Jean Genet, sa grande littérature, mais également son travail d’action ou d’intervention sur le réel, sous l’égide de l’identité comme mutation ontologique inhérente à l’être. Cette ouverture politique et humaniste pourrait bien nous servir à trouver une cohérence dans la panoplie d’articles qui composent ce dossier ; comme si notre situation actuelle était déjà traversée, en quelque sorte, par les pressentiments genétiens, de nature transidentitaire, sur les ambivalences qui nous constituent et l’urgente nécessité de briser les archétypes et les stéréotypes à la recherche d’une réalité plutôt hétéroclite, d’identités multiples, en tension, au sein de leurs différences assumées. La condition identitaire revisitée pourrait donc être l’une des hypothèses à trouver dans ce dossier consacré à passer en revue, sous le titre d’IDENTITÉ/S, les auteur·e·s et les textes qui, abordant la question de manière hélicoïdale, tissent ce vaste rhizome. Contre « la nuit de l’esclavage » s’élèvent la rhapsodie antillaise et les contre-épopées que Mohamed Amine Rhimi analyse dans l’œuvre d’Édouard Glissant, comme l’une des manières de revendiquer une identité anéantie s’incarnant non pas dans un destin personnel mais dans un cadre communautaire. Séverin N’gatta nous démontre que la déconstruction d’un mythe tyrannique permet de lire dans les formes artistiques comment nous vivons dans un monde où les êtres hybrides prolifèrent et, bien souvent, reproduisent et multiplient les distorsions qui nous éloignent de la vérité. Claire David accorde toute sa place à la notion d’entre-deux dans l’écriture « migrante » de Fatima Daas, du point de vue linguistique, et spatial également, comme figuration des identités à l’image d’une pendule dont l’oscillation multiplie l’accentuation de la « quête identitaire ». Celle-ci est étudiée et déployée dans ses fractures, ou plutôt dans la construction définitive d’un sujet interstitiel régi par des paramètres relationnels qui sont, de nos jours, à la base de nos subjectivités toujours en transit. Dans l’article de Rolph Roderick Koumba, le concept nodal de frontière et les pièges du « fétichisme identitaire » réapparaissent à travers des postulats qui, célébrant l’itinérance et la condition transnationale, permettent l’apophthegme que les identités culturelles sont toujours en perpétuelle construction. Suivant ce mouvement de pensée, María Rodríguez Álvarez analyse trois productions audiovisuelles où la « banlieue » apparaît comme espace primordial pour rendre visibles les tensions identitaires se matérialisant dans les dichotomies dominant/dominé et dedans/dehors. Dans l’article de Rym Kheriji, la « réappropriation de soi » nous renvoie à son tour à des formes territoriales à partir desquelles l’on peut imaginer les localisations et les déplacements d’un paysage social. C’est ainsi que l’identité, ou plutôt la perte d’identité, nous est montrée sous son angle le plus complexe et contradictoire. Mourad Loudiy étudie l’expérience migrante à la lumière des constructions identitaires comme un « tiers-espace » qui fait surgir l’Autre, comme une (re)sémantisation qui offre une instance d’altérité conçue presque comme une membrane. L’article de Manuela Nave, suivant une méthodologie d’analyse comparée entre l’écrivain mexicain Carlos Fuentes et l’écrivain antillais Édouard Glissant, montre bien que la littérature offre une possibilité cosmopolite de reconfigurer de nouvelles limites, plus fluctuantes, circonscrites aux seuls bienfaits de l’interculturalité. Blanche Turck explore l’univers de la poésie à partir de la notion problématique de « sujet lyrique », trop englobante, voire généralisante. En effet, ce concept tient difficilement compte du nouveau statut des voix poétiques dans la poésie contemporaine, peuplée de présences transgenres, de polyphonies et de lyrismes relationnels. Le dossier se clôt sur l’article de Fanny Martín Quatremare qui étudie les pèlerinages d’Alexandra David-Neel où le voyage devient sans aucun doute une expérience spéculaire. Ainsi, le contact avec l’altérité pose à l’auteure des interrogations identitaires et des interpellations existentielles, comme dans un miroir déformant et révélant à la fois le reflet de soi. Nous vous invitons donc à une expérience de lecture polyphonique sur les IDENTITÉ/S qui nous permette de remettre en question nos a priori donnant accès à des univers d’ouverture et d’échange afin de raviver nos parcours personnels et nos mémoires collectives, de plus en plus hybrides et multidimensionnels.

Vegetation trampling that arises from off-trail excursions by people walking for recreation can negatively impact the structure of understory plants in natural spaces that are an essential element of urban green infrastructure in a modern city. In addition to reducing the esthetic quality and environmental values of urban remnant and replanted native vegetation, such trampling reduces the habitat that supports wildlife populations within the urban fabric. This case study draws upon several disparate methods for measuring vegetation structure and trampling impacts to produce a hybrid method that community-based citizen scientists (and land managers and other researchers) could use to simply, rapidly, and reproducibly monitor how trampling associated with urban recreation trails impacts the structure of understory vegetation. Applying the novel hybrid method provided evidence that trampling had reduced the vegetation structure adjacent to a recreational walking trail in an urban woodland remnant in Perth, Western Australia. The hybrid method also detected ecological variability at the local ecosystem-scale at a second similar woodland remnant in Perth. The hybrid sampling method utilized in this case study provides an effective, efficient, and reproducible data collection method that can be applied to recreation ecology research into aspects of trampling associated with trail infrastructure.

The article discusses Lynda-Nawel Tebbani's book L’éloge de la perte and her unique approach to Algerian literature in French. Tebbani uses a hybrid language and an inter-artistic approach that infuses her text with Andalusian music. The book evokes a melancholic aesthetic and a poetics of three main cities: Paris, Algiers, and Constantine. The article aims to unveil this poetic of the city, linked to Andalusian music, that imbues the book with its originality and Algerianness, and the singular voice of the diaspora. The interdisciplinary and analytical approach draws on geocriticism, psychoanalysis, and Gaston Bachelard's poetics of space.

"Comme Barthes qui pensait que la littérature devait céder la place à l’auto-écriture de tous, je pense que tout le monde devrait faire la même chose : raconter sa vie. Connais-toi toi-même. Mets-toi en forme. Mets-toi en ordre". Dustan, Guillaume (1999). Nicolas Pages (p. 400). Balland. Guillaume Dustan et sa particulière vision de la littérature (« en littérature, soit c’est soi, soit c’est du bidon », Dustan, 1999, p. 384) me permettent de commencer cette Ouverture du troisième numéro de la revue HYBRIDA. Revue scientifique sur les hybridations culturelles et les identités migrantes dont le Dossier central est intitulé SIDA/S – 40 ans. Pour suivre les conseils de Dustan, je vais raconter (un peu) ma vie : en 1994, étant ce que l’on appelle « jeune chercheur », j’ai présenté un projet sur « sida et littérature » qui m’aurait permis d’obtenir une bourse aboutissant à une thèse doctorale. Je n’ai pas eu la bourse et j’ai dû changer de sujet pour candidater à nouveau l’année suivante. J’ai finalement obtenu cette bourse, ce qui m’a permis de commencer ma « carrière » universitaire en 1996. Le fait est que, même si je me suis centré sur le corps dans le discours artistico-littéraire d’avant-garde, notamment dans le théâtre (« panique »), je n’ai jamais quitté ce premier projet et me suis toujours intéressé aux écritures liées à l’expérience de la maladie, et plus concrètement aux « récits de sida », surtout d’écrivains homosexuels ayant pour la plupart disparu à cause de l’épidémie. Le souvenir du congrès Sida y cultura (Sida et culture) à l’Université de Valence en 1997, organisé, il y a 25 ans, par Ana Monleón et Ahmed Haderbache, restera donc toujours comme un moment important dans ma mémoire affective et académique. Je leur serai toujours reconnaissant de m’avoir permis de publier mon premier article de recherche intitulé « Escribir en el apremio » (« Écrire dans l’urgence »). Malheureusement, ce « modeste » volume, qui a même été exposé au Musée d’Art Moderne de Valence (IVAM), n’a pas eu une large diffusion. C’est donc un privilège de pouvoir le rééditer comme Annexe à ce numéro d’HYBRIDA. Nous avons respecté l’édition originale de 1997, même si elle ne répond pas aux normes éditoriales de la revue ni aux critères actuels de « qualité » concernant les publications scientifiques. Le volume est composé d’un bel ensemble de dix-neuf contributions de personnes venues de générations, de formations et d’horizons différents, ce qui a permis une réelle circulation des savoirs et un échange intéressant entre l’activisme et l’Université. Certains d’entre eux nous ont quittés, prématurément. La mort nous surprend toujours. Voici donc toute ma reconnaissance (nunc et semper) à la Professeure de littérature française Elena Real, ma directrice de thèse, qui s’était spécialisée, entre autres, dans l’autobiographie contemporaine, concrètement dans l’écriture des femmes et les thématiques du corps et de la séduction ; et au journaliste et historien de la déportation homosexuelle Jean Le Bitoux, figure emblématique du militantisme en France et fondateur historique, avec d’autres intellectuels et activistes comme Frank Arnal (décédé à 42 ans en 1993) et Jean Stern, du magazine Le Gai Pied dont le premier numéro de 1979 contenait un article de Michel Foucault qui aurait suggéré le nom. Le magazine a été une grande fenêtre ouverte à la liberté d’expression et à l’activisme homosexuel jusqu’à sa disparition en 1992. Il comptait sur la collaboration habituelle d’intellectuel·le·s et d’auteur·e·s comme Jean-Paul Aron, Renaud Camus, Copi, Guy Hocquenghem, Nathalie Magnan, Hugo Marsan ou Yves Navarre, pour n’en citer que quelques-un·e·s. Même Jean-Paul Sartre lui a accordé une interview en 1980. Mais revenons à Sida y Cultura pour ajouter que les approches ont été riches et variées, aussi bien sociologiques que culturelles, sous une perspective historique (en comparant le sida avec d’autres maladies antérieures), du point de vue de l’analyse du discours sur le sida ou de l’analyse concrète d’œuvres et d’auteurs touchés par le sida comme Cyril Collard (mort en 1993 à 35 ans), Copi (mort en 1987 à 48 ans), Pascal de Duve (mort en 1993 à 29 ans), et bien évidemment Hervé Guibert (mort en 1991 à 36 ans). Nous avons eu la chance également de compter sur la collaboration de Juan Vicente Aliaga, critique d’art espagnol réputé, spécialiste en études de genre et LGBT, qui avait publié quelques années auparavant (1993), aux côtés de José Miguel G. Cortés, le premier essai fait en Espagne sur l’art et le sida intitulé De amor y rabia (D’amour et de rage) qui reste un référent important dans ce domaine. Concernant la coordination du Dossier central SIDA/S – 40 ANS, je tiens à remercier sincèrement Didier Lestrade, journaliste, écrivain et militant reconnu, fondateur d’Act Up-Paris, ainsi que du magazine Têtu, possédant une longue trajectoire et une importante production intellectuelle sur l’activisme LGBT. Ses trois derniers essais portent les titres suggestifs de : Minorités. L’essentiel (2014), Le Journal du Sida. Chroniques 1994-2013 (2015), « mon dernier livre sur le sida », affirme-t-il ; et I love Porn (2021), excellent essai qui reprend la forme du témoignage pour retracer une histoire particulière de la sexualité à partir des années 1970 par l’intermédiaire de la pornographie comme instrument politique de contestation. Je remercie également de tout cœur Ahmed Haderbache, traducteur de Guillaume Dustan en espagnol et grand spécialiste de son œuvre, d’avoir accepté de coordonner ce Dossier qui nous a paru nécessaire pour réactiver la mémoire d’une maladie et d’une production artistico-littéraire qui semble lointaine, voire révolue, surtout pour les jeunes générations, mais qui prend toute sa signification dans le contexte pandémique actuel. Ce Dossier, qui débute par un bel Avant-propos de Didier Lestrade intitulé « Sida : une épidémie presque oubliée » et par une Introduction d’Ahmed Haderbache, est composé de sept articles. Il part du fait sociologique et politique pour aborder la production littéraire, en passant par l’analyse filmique et théâtrale. Thierry Schaffauser s’intéresse aux personnes invisibles, voire oubliées, pour nous proposer une pertinente étude sur l’histoire des mobilisations des travailleuses du sexe contre le VIH en France et au Royaume-Uni ; Romain Chareyron fait une riche analyse des images du sida dans le film 120 battements par minute (2017) ; Henry F. Vásquez Sáenz aborde avec précision la pièce Une visite inopportune (1988), ce qui lui permet de restituer et de resituer la figure du dramaturge franco-argentin Copi en tant qu’auteur subversif et engagé, pionnier du théâtre autobiographique lié au sida. Les deux articles suivants, de Daniel Fliege et de l’écrivaine Ariane Bessette respectivement, proposent d’intéressantes analyses littéraires d’œuvres « autobiographiques » d’auteurs « controversés » car défenseurs des rapports sexuels non protégés ou barebacking : Guillaume Dustan (mort en 2005 à 39 ans) et Érik Rémès. Puisque HYBRIDA s’intéresse particulièrement aux contextes francophones ou comparés, nous avons créé une petite section à la fin du Dossier intitulée Autres regards afin de publier deux articles spécialement attirants. Le premier, écrit par Thibault Boulvain dont la thèse doctorale a été publiée en 2021 sous le titre L’art en sida 1981-1997, aborde les dernières années d’Andy Warhol (décédé en 1987) sous la perspective du sida ; le dernier, proposé par Caroline Benedetto, se penche sur les journaux intimes de l’artiste pluridisciplinaire américain David Wojnarowicz (mort en 1992 à 37 ans), en soulignant les influences françaises. Dans la section Mosaïque, où nous publions des études sur les hybridations culturelles et les identités migrantes qui ne correspondent pas à la thématique centrale du Dossier, nous publions trois articles. José Manuel Sánchez Diosdado analyse profondément les récits coloniaux des voyageuses françaises de la première moitié du XXe siècle qui se sont inspirées du Maroc. Feyrouz Soltani aborde le roman Verre Cassé de l’écrivain franco-congolais Alain Mabanckou pour y déceler les traces du métissage linguistique et culturel et, enfin, Rolph Roderick Koumba et Ama Brigitte Kouakou nous présentent la langue française comme instrument positif dans la construction de l’altérité à travers l’analyse des œuvres de l’écrivaine franco-sénégalaise Fatou Diome et de l’écrivaine franco-camerounaise Léonora Miano. La section Traces de la revue HYBRIDA est consacrée à la création littéraire et s’éloigne volontairement de l’esprit d’évaluation en double aveugle, bien que les soumissions soient strictement analysées et révisées par le comité éditorial. Dans ce numéro 3, nous publions quatre textes aussi différents qu’intéressants. Leurs auteur·e·s se sont inspiré·e·s de la thématique du Dossier central autour du sida. Nous avons l’honneur de publier un court récit de l’écrivaine québécoise Catherine Mavrikakis intitulé « Évitons de respirer l’air du temps » qui nous met en alerte par rapport aux préjugés qui perdurent de nos jours concernant le sida. Nous voudrions rappeler au passage que, partant de la pensée de Michel Foucault sur la santé et l’organisation sociale, ses recherches sur les écrits du sida, ainsi que sur les notions de contamination, d’aveu et de souffrance, sont d’une grande importance pour la thématique qui nous occupe. Nous ne pouvons que rester admiratifs face à sa double facette de professeure universitaire et d’écrivaine ; et souligner la force de ses romans « autofictionnels » dont Ce qui restera (2017), L’annexe (2019) et L’absente de tous bouquets (2020), pour n’en citer que les derniers. Ensuite, nous avons deux « témoignages » sincères et touchants. Le premier, intitulé Les spectres d’ACT UP, nous propose un parcours émotionnel et académique autour de l’expérience du sida. Son auteur, David Caron, Professeur à l’Université du Michigan, a fait une importante recherche dans le domaine des études LGBT et concrètement sur le VIH. Il s’est intéressé également aux études sur l’holocauste. Parmi ses dernières publications, nous trouvons The Nearness of Others. Searching for Tact and Contact in the Age of HIV (2014) et Marais gay, Marais juif. Pour une théorie queer de la communauté (2015). Le court et intense « témoignage » de Lydia Vázquez Jimémez (écrit en espagnol) intitulé « Filou, te fuiste demasiado pronto » (« Filou, tu es parti trop tôt ») nous montre la difficulté de l’aveu et de s’exprimer par rapport au sida, en nous dévoilant son expérience intime et douloureuse face au deuil dû à la perte de l’être aimé. Au-delà de sa brillante carrière universitaire en tant que spécialiste dans l’étude de l’érotisme et de la sexualité (notamment au XVIIIe siècle), avec une focalisation particulière sur les femmes et le collectif LGBT, je ne voudrais pas négliger sa facette de traductrice en espagnol de l’œuvre d’auteur·e·s admiré·e·s comme Abdellah Taïa, Annie Ernaux, Jean-Baptiste del Amo, Gabrielle Wittkop ou Fatima Daas, entre autres. En tant qu’auteure, j’aimerais signaler son livre illustré Journal intime (2019). Pour clore cette section de création littéraire et dans le but d’encourager l’écriture des jeunes écrivain·e·s, nous publions en espagnol la pièce inédite de Javier Sanz intitulée Reset. Volver a empezar (Reset. Repartir à zéro). Avec une fraîcheur et une franchise touchantes, la pièce aborde, en 2021, la problématique de l’incommunicabilité et de la difficulté à établir des relations amoureuses sincères, ainsi que la découverte de la séropositivité. Je suis persuadé que ce numéro d’HYBRIDA, 25 ans après Sida et Culture, marquera notre trajectoire en tant que revue universitaire. Il ne me reste qu’à remercier très sincèrement notre excellente équipe d’évaluation qui se nourrit et se diversifie à une grande vitesse grâce aux apports de spécialistes du monde entier. Et un sincère merci à José Luis Iniesta, Directeur Artistique de la revue, pour son investissement et son savoir-faire ; sans lui rien ne serait possible… Je vous propose un prochain rendez-vous pour fin juin 2022 pour le numéro 4 d’HYBRIDA. Salus in periculis

RésuméUne méthode d’éléments finis mixte hybride est appliquée pour l’approximation de l’écoulement associé au transport en milieu poreux non saturé. Le développement de ce modèle s’effectue dans le cadre du projet européen ARWET, lequel a pour objectif l’étude de nouvelles potentialités de dissipation des pesticides dans les zones humides. La formulation du modèle bidimensionnel est fondée sur les propriétés de l’espace de Raviart-Thomas. L’écueil numérique que posent les problèmes à convection dominante est surmonté par l’introduction d’un limiteur de flux alors qu’un limiteur de pente est généralement utilisé dans la littérature. Le limiteur suggéré est inconditionnellement stable et permet de conserver la précision des résultats à nombre de Peclet élevé.

The natural hybrid Drosera × sidjamesii Lowrie & Conran from Lake Gnangarra north of Perth, Western Australia is described and defined as a cross between D. nitidula Planch. subsp. omissa Marchant & Lowrie auct. non Diels and D. pulchella Lehm., between which it shows a high degree of intermediacy for almost all characters. Cytological examination of the hybrid and its parents confirms that the former at 2n = 46 is a combination of the 2n = 28 in D. nitidula subsp. omissa and 2n = 18 in D. pulchella. The hybrid grows along a narrow ecotone between the parental species, largely on sandy peat and along a presumed soil moisture/elevation gradient caused by the nearby lake. Nevertheless, within this ecotone the hybrid is significantly more frequent than either parental species, with D. pulchella mainly growing in peat soils closer to the lake and D. nitidula subsp. omissa on white sand further from the water. Field observations of morphotypes also suggest that the hybrid has arisen several times at the site, and that a limited number of plants at the site are becoming fertile and setting seed.

The natural hybrid Drosera � sidjamesii Lowrie & Conran from Lake Gnangarra north of Perth, Western Australia is described and defined as a cross between D. nitidula Planch. subsp. omissa Marchant & Lowrie auct. non Diels and D. pulchella Lehm., between which it shows a high degree of intermediacy for almost all characters. Cytological examination of the hybrid and its parents confirms that the former at 2n = 46 is a combination of the 2n = 28 in D. nitidula subsp. omissa and 2n = 18 in D. pulchella. The hybrid grows along a narrow ecotone between the parental species, largely on sandy peat and along a presumed soil moisture/elevation gradient caused by the nearby lake. Nevertheless, within this ecotone the hybrid is significantly more frequent than either parental species, with D. pulchella mainly growing in peat soils closer to the lake and D. nitidula subsp. omissa on white sand further from the water. Field observations of morphotypes also suggest that the hybrid has arisen several times at the site, and that a limited number of plants at the site are becoming fertile and setting seed.

La migration à l’adolescence est particulièrement délicate à cause du fardeau conjugué que représente à ce stade de la vie l’intégration des multiples pertes associées à la migration et l’adaptation au statut de jeune adulte. Le programme d’ateliers d’expression théâtrale vise à faciliter l’adaptation des adolescents immigrants et réfugiés à leur nouvel environnement à partir d’un travail créatif autour des enjeux identitaires liés à la migration et à un statut de minorité. Ces ateliers conjuguent une approche inspirée du théâtre playback qui permet une mise en scène du vécu personnel et le théâtre forum de Boal qui met l’accent sur la transformation collective de l’expérience. Les résultats d’une évaluation qualitative des ateliers d’expression théâtrale suggèrent que ceux-ci constituent un lieu d’expression ou les participants se sentent en sécurité et soutenus par l’équipe ainsi que par le caractère rituel du jeu théâtral. Les ateliers permettent de représenter la multiplicité des valeurs et des références internes et externes de l’adolescent et de les renégocier sans dichotomiser le « eux » et le « nous », en s’adressant aux questions de justice sociale qui se posent à la collectivité. Ils favorisent aussi l’élaboration des transitions de l’adolescence en permettant l’évocation des pertes de la migration et le passage vers une identité hybride.

The anti-episcopal polemic of early Scottish presbyterian historians like Row and Calderwood has misled us to presume that most contemporary presbyterians saw bishops as enemies of the gospel. Instead, both episcopal writings and the manuscript records of kirk sessions, presbyteries, and synods show presbytery within prelacy working quite well in Scotland from the Reformation until the troubled 1630s. William Cowper, minister of Perth from 1595 to 1613 and thereafter bishop of Galloway, illustrates how and why the system worked. Calvinist, visionary, preacher, and vigorous reformer of manners, Cowper as minister joined with the Perth session to impose discipline, administered communion Geneva-style, and enforced the Reformation's abolition of traditional holidays. He was by any definition a puritan, and he remained one after his acceptance of a bishopric in 1612. As bishop of Galloway he declined to enforce kneeling or observance of Christmas despite royal mandate, cooperated with presbyteries and sessions, and continued active preaching and discipline. Charges against him of greed and ambition prove unfounded. His puritan episcopacy represents and explains the success of the kirk's hybrid polity in the post-Reformation period.

De façon continue, le système québécois du logement social est touché par les transformations des systèmes de prise en charge des personnes ayant des incapacités. D’une manière générale, le logement est pressenti comme l’un des lieux privilégiés d’intervention visant l’amélioration de la santé et du bien-être. Les origines de ces changements correspondent à la volonté de trouver des alternatives aux institutions lourdes et coûteuses, mais surtout d’offrir de réelles opportunités aux gens y vivant. Les interfaces entre le secteur de la santé et du logement social s’en trouvent accrues (cibles et missions). On assiste à un déplacement des frontières qui séparaient auparavant ces deux univers. Ni logement ni hébergement, ces nouveaux milieux de vie substituts sont, en quelque sorte, des hybrides. Malgré tout, ces hybrides, en dépit des problèmes intersectoriels qu’ils peuvent créer, sont porteurs d’approches novatrices qu’on pourrait reconnaître dans l’élaboration des programmes et politiques concernant les milieux de vie substituts. Cet article fera état d’une recherche financée par les Instituts de recherche en santé du Canada (IRSC). À partir des huit cas étudiés dans la filière des personnes âgées en perte d’autonomie, une caractérisation des manifestations du phénomène d’hybridation sera faite. L’article s’attardera aux éléments à considérer pour évaluer la pénétration de l’univers de l’hébergement dans celui du logement et les conséquences que cela a sur le caractère inclusif et stimulant de ces logements offerts aux aînés ayant des incapacités.

The inheritance of geographic variation in body size in the southern brown bandicoot (Isoodon obesulus) was investigated through a common-environment crossbreeding experiment. The geographic variation in body size is related to habitat type, suggesting that it may be adaptive. Adults from two locations in Western Australia, Perth (large animals) and Albany (small animals), were collected and offspring from both hybrid and non-hybrid matings were reared under controlled conditions. All four variables examined (head length, pes length, ear length and body weight) were found to possess a large genetic component, supporting the interpretation that the geographic variation in size is adaptive. The three length variables initially showed additive genetic variation, although the variation in body weight displayed dominance. Genetically controlled differences in growth rate were also detected, with the smaller animals, found in the relatively poorer environment, possessing the faster intrinsic growth rate. Thus, not only does there appear to be adaptive divergence in initial body size, but the countergradient variation in growth rates provides additional evidence for adaptive divergence in this species.

En 2012, la société Kodak se plaçait sous la loi américaine sur la faillite, ne pouvant faire face à ses pertes suite à la disparition progressive de la photographie argentique depuis le tournant des années 2000. On explique fréquemment cet échec industriel par le fait que Kodak, faisant face à une technologie de rupture, fut confronté à un véritable dilemme et ne sut pas négocier le virage vers les technologies de l’imagerie numérique. Notre article pondère cette théorie en la considérant trop réductrice. Ses processus d’innovation bien structurés permirent à Kodak d’étudier les technologies des capteurs CCD et de concevoir la première caméra numérique magnétique dès les années 1970. Si le groupe américain se diversifia trop dans l’industrie chimique, cela ne l’empêcha pas de développer progressivement une R&D (Recherche & Développement) dans le numérique, et d’introduire sur le marché des produits soit hybrides argentiques-numériques, soit entièrement numériques.

The cultivar with high and positive breeding value can be used as a good parent for breeding of traits in hybridization programs because they can better transfer the desirable characteristics to the progeny in each case. To obtain the breeding value present investigation was carried out in maize with 33 inbreds of maize and seven inbreds of QPM lines to assess the breeding value of maize progenies for the better selection. The progeny values ranged from 62.04 (UMI 48 x CO 1) to 126.26 (CML 145 x CO 1). The breeding value ranged from 0.17 (UMI 48 x CO 1) to 0.39 (CML 145 x CO 1). CML 145 x CO 1 had high breeding value (0.39) with high progeny mean. UMI 48 x CO 1 had low breeding value (-0.17) with low progeny mean (90.80). The parent CML 145 was the superior most both for perse mean (P38=126.26) as well as for its hybrid progeny mean (C2= 168).

Keynote paper presented at the International Leucaena Conference, 1‒3 November 2018, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.Strategies to breed sterile leucaena for Western Australia include plant breeding and biotechnology tools to generate sterile lines at both the tetraploid and triploid ploidy levels. For tetraploids, the main target species is the commercial Leucaena leucocephala, that is well known for its potential as a high-quality, productive and persistent forage. Gene editing technologies (CRISPR) will be utilized to edit out flowering genes and develop a non-flowering L. leucocephala. For triploids, the strategy is to cross tetraploid species (L. leucocephala and/or L. diversifolia) with diploid species to generate sterile triploid hybrids. The diploid parents will include species that have good forage attributes such as L. collinsii, L. macrophylla, L. shannonii and L. pulverulenta. Several of these triploid crosses have already been created by the Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development (Perth, Western Australia) and will be evaluated in the Kimberley and Pilbara regions of Western Australia for their agronomic performance and sterility. Vegetative propagation will be required for the tetraploid gene-edited non-flowering L. leucocephala. Triploids can either be vegetatively propagated, once generated, or generated via a seed production nursery.

One hundred sixteen rose (Rosa spp.) cultivars were evaluated under minimal input conditions in north-central Texas for 3 years. Plant quality data included overall plant performance, number of flowers, percentage of bloom coverage, final vigor, and survival. Disease ratings for black spot (Diplocarpon rosae), petal blight (Alternaria alternata), powdery mildew (Sphaerotheca pannosa), and aphid (Myzus spp.) infestations were previously reported. Of the original 116 cultivars, 25 had 50% or higher mortality during the trial. Own-root cultivars performed significantly better than the grafted cultivars and had significantly better survival (P = 0.001). As a class, the Polyantha cultivars exhibited the best overall performance, mean bloom percentage, final vigor and survival, while cultivars in the Hybrid Tea class had the worst performance in all measures. Foliar nutrient content, bloom number, and mean percentage of bloom were not good predictors of overall performance. Of the diseases monitored, black spot was the most severe and was closely correlated to overall performance and final vigor, but was not the only factor determining overall performance. The top five cultivars in mean overall performance were RADrazz (Knock Out™), Caldwell Pink, Sea Foam, Perle d'Or, and The Fairy, in descending order.

The taxonomic status of Acacia holosericea A. CUM. ex Don is re-appraised in the light of recent isozyme, chromosome and field studies, as well as from a critical examination of specimens at BM, BRI, K, DNA and PERTH. Accordingly, A. holosericea, as traditionally defined, is now regarded as comprising three distinct species, each corresponding to a dierent level of ploidy. Acacia holosericea A. Cum. ex Don (tetraploid) is widespread, principally in tropical/subtropical areas of Western Australia, the Northern Territory and Queensland. Acacia neurocarpa A. Cunn. ex Hook. (diploid), occurs in tropical/subtropical Western Australia and the Northern Temtory and until now has been regarded as conspecific with A. holosericea. Acacia colei Mash & Thomson (hexaploid) is described as a new species which appears to have evolved as an allopolyploid hybrid between A. neurocarpa and A. cowleana (tetraploid). It is widespread and common in subtropical/arid Western Australia, the Northern Territory and Queensland. These four species are illustrated, mapped and their principal discriminating features given in tabular form and in a key. Acacia holosericea is neotypified to exclude A. neurocarpa, and A. neurocarpa is lectotypified to exclude A. dunnii (Maiden) Turrill.

The spatial disposition at metaphase of centromeres from Hordeum and Secale in root tip cells of H. chilense × S. africanum is described and compared with corresponding results for H. vulgare × S. africanum obtained previously. In both of these F1 sexual hybrids (2n = 2x = 14) each of the seven chromosome types from Secale was easily distinguished by its large size from any of the seven from Hordeum. In H. chilense × S. africanum, centromeres of Secale chromosomes tended to be nearer the centre of the metaphase plate than did centromeres of Hordeum chromosomes in both squash preparations seen by light microscopy and unsquashed cells examined using electron microscope three-dimensional serial thin section reconstructions. This difference was significant in some individual cells, and highly significant for pooled data for reconstructed cells and separately for squashed metaphases. In no cell were Hordeum centromeres on average significantly nearer the centre of the metaphase plate than Secale centromeres. These results agreed with those previously obtained for H. vulgare × S. africanum in that: (1) centromeres of the two parental haploid sets tended to be spatially separate; and (2) centromeres from one particular parent usually tended to be in the peripheral region of the metaphase plate that surrounded the central region containing the centromeres from the other parent. However, these results contrasted completely with those obtained previously in that Secale centromeres tended to be more central than Hordeum centromeres in H. chilense × S. africanum, but more peripheral than Hordeum centromeres in H. vulgare × S. africanum. As centromeres of the parental set with the larger chromosomes (i.e. Secale) can be either inside, or outside, centromeres from the parental genome with the smaller chromosomes (i.e. Hordeum), then clearly, a tendency for a concentric separation of parental genomes is not a packing phenomenon determined by chromosome size perse, but is presumably under genotypic control.

Eremaea is a genus of woody shrubs endemic to the south-west of Australia. With the exception of E. pauciflora all species are restricted to the kwongan or sandplain regions of the coastal plain northwards from Perth. Forty four populations covering the seven recognised species and a further 12 putative taxa were examined for allozyme variation at 15 polymorphic loci. Gene diversity statistics indicated that a greater proportion of genetic variability in Eremaea species was due to within- rather than among-population differences. The allozyme data supported morphological studies which indicated five species groups or complexes. Differentiation among and within species complexes was examined using gene frequency and genetic distance data. The average genetic distance (Nei's D) among populations within species ranged from 0.011 (E. acutifolia) to 0.051 (E. aff. brevifolia 3). Within species complexes the average genetic distance between taxa ranged from 0.050 to 0.157 while between complexes it ranged from 0.164 to 0.558. Of the 159 possible pairwise combinations between the 19 morphologically distinct taxa, 15 showed little allozyme divergence. Lack of allozyme divergence was attributed to either rapid and recent speciation or to introgressive hybridisation. Based on allozyme data E. aff. brevifolia x violacea is either of hybrid origin or is a recently derived hybrid, and field observations indicated that interspecific hybridisation occurs within Eremaea. Rapid and recent speciation, combined with hybridisation have resulted in a reticulate pattern of evolution in sections of this genus. Phylogenetic analyses based on these allozyme data were generally consistent with those based on morphological data except for the placement of E. purpurea and E. aff. pauciflora 4.

The anthropogenic movement of Eucalyptus species beyond their natural distributions is increasing the opportunity for interspecific hybridisation. The conservation implications arising from hybridisation between indigenous and introduced eucalypt species in modified urban landscapes is an increasingly important management issue that requires an assessment of risk. It has been claimed that much of the tuart (Eucalyptus gomphocephala DC., Myrtaceae) seed in Kings Park, a large urban bushland remnant in Perth, Western Australia, is of hybrid origin with introduced eastern Australian eucalypts, and especially with E. cladocalyx. Using molecular markers, we tested this claim and determined whether hybridisation in tuart is a conservation management issue in Kings Park, as well as the adjacent Bold Park. Eight microsatellite markers were used to genotype 220 open-pollinated tuart seedlings from 19 families. Allele frequency estimates for tuart were generated by genotyping 42 mature tuart trees. Forty-four trees of four alternative species thought to be capable of hybridising with tuart in these parks, including two non-indigenous species, E. cladocalyx and E. camaldulensis, and two indigenous species, E. decipiens and E. rudis, were also genotyped. Pairwise FST between tuart and each alternative species for these markers ranged from 0.105 to 0.204. A hybrid-index analysis of seedling genotypes showed no significant evidence for hybridisation, and no alternative species private alleles (n = 35) were found in any tuart offspring genotypes. A likelihood analysis showed that the maximum likelihood of observing no private alleles of the alternative species in the progeny occurred at a hybridisation frequency of zero for all four alternative species. We conclude that hybridisation between tuart and non-indigenous species is not currently a conservation management issue in Kings Park and Bold Park. Rather, the invasion of pure non-indigenous species, and in particular E. cladocalyx, as weeds into bushland is of greater management concern.

Comment décrire la variabilité génétique qui existe entre les valeurs moyennes des différents types génétiques issus d’un plan de croisement entre plusieurs populations ? Comment prédire la valeur moyenne des nombreux types génétiques que l’on peut obtenir, en fonction du système de croisement pratiqué, à partir de n populations parentales disponibles ? Ces questions illustrent les deux grandes fonctions des paramètres du croisement : l’analyse génétique et l’amélioration génétique. Contrairement aux paramètres qui décrivent la variabilité génétique intra-population des variances, les paramètres du croisement sont des effets fixés caractérisant les populations parentales étudiées. La première partie de l’article est consacrée à la modélisation du croisement. Nous présentons et analysons les "ingrédients" communs à de nombreux modèles du croisement : (1) les notions de "composante individuelle (ou directe)" et de "composante maternelle" (voire grand-maternelle) de la valeur moyenne d’un croisement, (2) les notions "d’effets moyens (ou additifs) des races parentales" et "d’effets d’hétérosis", (3) les composantes de l’hétérosis respectivement liées à la "dominance" et à "l’épistasie". L’hétérosis, ou "vigueur hybride", fait l’objet d’un développement particulier concernant ses facteurs de variation, ses mécanismes et leurs conséquences pour la prédiction de l’hétérosis à partir du degré d’hétérozygotie. On présente les paramètres du modèle de Dickerson (1969), qui est le plus utilisé en génétique animale : les effets additifs respectivement direct, maternel et grand-maternel (go, gm, gn), les effets d’hétérosis liés à la dominance respectivement direct et maternel (ho et hm) et les pertes épistatiques par recombinaison (ro et rm). La deuxième partie de l’article est consacrée aux protocoles d’estimation des paramètres de Dickerson. Enfin un exemple d’estimation illustre à la fois l’application du modèle de Dickerson à un dispositif diallèle (tous les croisements possibles entre n races prises 2 à 2) et une méthode simple d’estimation des paramètres du croisement.

The agriculturally dominated Counties of Huron and Perth in southwestern Ontario regulate forest harvesting on private land through diameter-limit-based tree conservation by-laws. The rates of harvesting, along with the volume and value of timber sales and the type and quantity of tree marking were examined for the years 1997 to 1999. Although these harvests may form an important part of periodic farm income, at only 13% forest cover, these landscapes maybe further degraded by unsustainable forest harvesting practices. Based on the three study years, the mean annual area of forest harvested was found to be 4.4% of the total private forest landbase. The mean volume harvested from upland and lowland deciduous forest was 4666 and 6148 fbm/ha, respectively. Over-harvesting under a diameter-limit or hybrid method occurred in 8% of woodlot area with removal rates in excess of 10 000 fbm/ha. The most severe over-harvesting disproportionately targeted lowland woodlots, possibly compromising the ecological health of these often sensitive areas. Sugar maple, red/silver maple and ash were most commonly harvested at 33%, 31% and 21% of total species volume, respectively. On average, for standing timber, landowners received $680/Mfbm in the upland hardwood forests and $281/Mfbm in the lowland hardwood forests. On an area basis, mean price paid was $3680/ha and $1956/ha respectively on upland and lowland forests. Only 8% of the private land was harvested using single-tree selection or stand improvement (92% harvest was diameter-limit or a hybrid of same). Using a simple model, we found that woodlot owners comprising at least 74% of private woodland area would need to participate in forest harvesting in order to maintain the 1997 to 1999 partial harvest area rate of 2349 ha/yr. This rate may not be sustainable, given poor forest conditions in some areas, past management practices and a reduction in landowners interested in forest harvesting. Improvements are needed to bring the level of good forestry practice up by 62% to meet the rates that were being performed under pre-1994, free, provincial government private land forestry programs. Key words: private land forestry, forest harvesting, forest conservation by-laws, sustainable forest management, diameterlimit harvest, private woodlots

La progression de la forêt sur les savanes guinéennes est une réalité mise en évidence par des études en Afrique centrale en général et au Cameroun en particulier. Ce phénomène relève de divers processus naturels et anthropiques non encore suffisamment élucidés. L’objectif de ce travail est de montrer le rôle de l’expansion des agroforêts à cacaoyers dans la progression de la forêt sur la savane au centre-Cameroun. Pour y parvenir, l’étude s’est appuyée sur les analyses diachroniques des images de télédétection et les enquêtes sociologiques. Il en ressort que, l’expansion récente des agroforêts à cacaoyers en savane est liée principalement à la raréfaction des forêts (37,31%) et aux conditions agroécologiques auxquelles s’adaptent bien les nouvelles variétés hybrides vulgarisées auprès des cacaoculteurs (32,84%). La création de la cacaoyère en association avec des divers arbres d’ombrage plantés ou préservés crée à long terme des conditions propices à l’installation permanente et la progression de la forêt en savane. Ainsi 47,05% des populations attestent d’un recul de la savane au profit de la forêt contre 32,35% qui pensent le contraire. Les analyses diachroniques des images satellitaires montrent également qu’entre 1990 et 2000, l’on a enregistré une perte des superficies de forêts et d’agroforêts qui sont passées de 356 809,12 ha en 1990 à 102 365,23 en 2000 ; soit un bilan de -71,31% du fait de la déprise cacaoyère suite à la crise économique de la fin des années 80. Par contre, elles sont passées de 102365,23 ha en 2000 à 130124,25 ha en 2020 ; soit une augmentation de +27,12% en 20 ans, consécutivement au relèvement des cours mondiaux du cacao et à la mise en œuvre des plans de relance de la filière cacao-café par les pouvoirs publics. Il serait donc important d’encourager davantage la création et la gestion intégrée de ces agroforêts dans une perspective du développement durable. The spread of forest over the Guinean savannahs has been highlighted by studies in Central Africa in general and Cameroon in particular. This phenomenon is the result of various natural and anthropogenic processes that have not yet been sufficiently elucidated. The aim of this study is to show the role played by the expansion of cocoa agroforests in the advance of forest over savannah in the study area. To achieve this, the study was based on diachronic analyses of remote sensing images and sociological surveys. It emerged that the recent expansion of cocoa agroforests in the savannah is mainly due to the increasing scarcity of forests (37.31%) and the agroecological conditions to which the new hybrid varieties popularised among cocoa farmers are well adapted (32.84%). The creation of cocoa plantations in association with various planted or preserved shade trees creates long-term conditions conducive to the permanent establishment and progression of forest into savannah. Thus, 47.05% of the population believe that the savannah is retreating in favour of the forest, compared with 32.35% who think the opposite. Diachronic analyses of satellite images also show that between 1990 and 2000, the area of forest and agroforest fell from 356,809.12 ha in 1990 to 102,365.23 ha in 2000, a decline of 71.31% as a result of the abandonment of cocoa production following the economic crisis at the end of the 1980s. On the other hand, the area under cocoa increased from 102365.23 ha in 2000 to 130124.25 ha in 2020, an increase of 27.12% in 20 years, following the rise in world cocoa prices and the implementation of government plans to revive the cocoa-coffee sector. It would therefore be important to further encourage the creation and integrated management of these agroforests with a view to sustainable development.

<p>This paper proposes a novel analysis of word order in Brazilian Portuguese (BP), based on a hybrid model of EPP satisfaction. It is proposed that the subject requirement or EPP is a [uD] feature on T which can be satisfied either by DP movement or by movement of an inflected verb bearing a [D] feature in BP. This, it is claimed, offers an explanatory account of basic word order patterns in BP. External argument DPs, merged above V, are closer to T than V, meaning that they must raise to satisfy the EPP, predicting SV(O) order with transitive and unergative predicates, including transitive psych-predicates. Internal arguments are merged below V, however, and so with unaccusatives, it is movement of the verb bearing a [uD] feature which satisfies the EPP, giving rise to VS order. With copular verbs which take small clause complements, a similar affect holds, as the copular verb can satisfy the EPP. Verb movement can also satisfy the EPP in impersonal contexts, hence the fact that BP lacks overt expletives.</p><p>Resumo: Este artigo propõe uma nova análise da ordem de palavras no Português Brasileiro (PB), baseada num modelo hibrido de satisfação do Princípio da Projeção Extendido (PPE). Propõe-se que o requisito de sujeito ou PPE é um rasgo [uD] no núcleo T, que se pode satisfazer ou por alçamento de um DP ou por movimento de um verbo flexionado com um traço [D] no PB. Esta abordagem oferece uma análise explanatória da ordem básica das palavras no PB. Os argumentos externos (dos verbos transitivos e inergativos) que originam acima do verbo, são mais perto de T, assim que devem mover para satisfazer o PPE, o que prediz corretamente a ordem SV(O) com estes verbos (incluso os predicados psicológicos transitivos). Os argumentos internos originam abaixo do verbo, assim que com os verbos inacusativos, e o verbo com um traco [D] que deve satisfazer o PPE, ocasionando a ordem VS. Com os verbos copulares com clausulas pequenas como complemento, observamos algo parecido porque a verbo copulativo também pode satisfazer o PPE. O alçamento do verbo também pode satisfazer o PPE em contextos impessoais, por isso a falta de expletivos no PB. </p><p> </p>

Allèle : une des formes alternatives d'un locus. Dans une cellule diploïde, il y a deux allèles pour chaque locus (un allèle transmis par chaque parent), qui peuvent être identiques. Dans une population, on peut avoir plusieurs allèles pour un locus.Annotation structurale : repérage des coordonnées des diverses structures dans le génome, telles que les gènes.Annotation fonctionnelle : renseignements sur les fonctions des séquences, le plus souvent pour les gènes.BAC : Bacterial Artificial Chromosome. Vecteur de clonage permettant l’obtention de clones bactériens contenant un grand fragment d’ADN génomique (taille > 100 kb*). Les BAC assemblés en contigs* sont à la base des cartes physiques du génome.Carte cytogénétique : carte des chromosomes. Réalisée par localisation visuelle (FISH*) au microscope de fragments d’ADN sur les chromosomes au stade métaphase de la mitose.Carte d’hybrides irradiés : réalisée en testant par PCR la présence ou l’absence de fragments d’ADN dans une collection de clones d’hybrides irradiés (RH*). Deux fragments d’ADN sont proches sur le génome s’ils sont trouvés fréquemment dans les mêmes clones.Carte génétique : obtenue par l’étude de la ségrégation dans des familles ou des populations, de marqueurs polymorphes, soit moléculaires, soit phénotypiques, deux séquences étant d’autant plus proches qu’elles sont souvent transmises ensemble lors de la méiose.Clonage positionnel : stratégie visant à identifier un gène responsable de l’expression d’un phénotype en utilisant des informations de position sur le génome.Contig : ensemble de clones (le plus souvent des BAC*) ou de lectures de séquence ordonnés grâce à des informations sur leur parties chevauchantes.Cosmide : vecteur de clonage permettant l’obtention de clones bactériens contenant des fragments d’ADN génomique de taille avoisinant les 50 kb*.CNV : Copy Number Variation ; polymorphisme du génome correspondant à la variation du nombre de copies d’une séquence, pouvant dans certains cas contenir un ou plusieurs gènes.Déséquilibre gamétique : pour deux loci quelconques, c'est le fait que la fréquence des haplotypes* estimée pour tous les gamètes est différente de celle attendue à partir du produit des fréquences alléliques de chaque locus. Synonyme : déséquilibre de liaison. Contraire de : équilibre gamétique.Dominance : qualificatif de l’effet d'un allèle, dont une copie suffit à l'expression du phénotype* approprié. L’allèle A est dominant sur l’allèle a si l’hétérozygote* Aa a le même phénotype* que l’homozygote AA.EST : Expressed Sequence Tag : séquences étiquettes (partielles) de transcrit, obtenues par séquençage aléatoire d’ARN.Evaluation génomique : évaluation de la valeur génétique d’individus d’après leurs génotypes pour un ensemble de loci distribués sur le génome, d’après des équations établies à partir des performances d’individus de référencephénotypés et génotypés.Expression génique : études visant à estimer le niveau de production (expression) des gènes en fonction d’états physiologiques ou de tissus différents.Exon : fraction de la partie codante d’un gène eucaryote. Les gènes des organismes eucaryotes sont le plus souvent fractionnés en plusieurs séquences d’ADN dans le génome, les exons, séparés entre eux par d’autres séquences (introns*).FISH : Fluorescent In Situ Hybridisation. Hybridation de sondes d’ADN marquées à l’aide d’un fluorochrome, sur des chromosomes au stade métaphase de la mitose. Permet la réalisation de la carte cytogénétique.Fingerprinting : technique permettant d’estimer très grossièrement la similarité entre des séquences d’ADN sans les séquencer, par la comparaison des longueurs de bandes produites par des enzymes de restriction coupant l’ADN à des sites précis.Fosmide : vecteur de clonage permettant l’obtention de clones bactériens contenant des fragment d’ADN génomique de taille déterminée et égale à 40 kb*.FPC : FingerPrint Contig* ; contig* de clones (généralement des BAC*) ordonnés par la technique du fingerprinting, afin d’obtenir une carte physique du génome.Génotype 1 : constitution génétique d'un individu. 2. Combinaison allélique* à un locus particulier, ex: Aa ou aa.Haplotype : combinaison allélique spécifique pour des loci appartenant à un fragment de chromosome défini.Héritabilité au sens strict : proportion de la variance phénotypique due à la variabilité des valeurs génétiques = proportion de la variance phénotypique due à la variance génétique additive.Hétérozygote : individu ayant des allèles non identiques pour un locus* particulier ou pour plusieurs loci. Cette condition définit l’ «hétérozygotie». Contraire de: homozygote.Homologues : séquences similaires en raison d’une origine évolutive commune.Hybride irradié : cellule hybride obtenue par fusion entre cellules hôte d’une espèce et donneuse d’une autre espèce, contenant une fraction aléatoire du génome de l’espèce donneuse, après cassures par irradiation, reconstitution aléatoire de chromosomes ou insertion dans des chromosomes de la cellule hôte et rétention partielle. Deux séquences proches sur le génome sont en probabilité dans les mêmes clones RH*, tandis que deux séquences distantes ont une probabilité faible d’être conservées ensemble.IBD : pour identity by descent. Identité entre deux chromosomes (ou parties de chromosomes), liée à leur descendance d’un même chromosome ancestral.Indel : Insertion – deletion ; polymorphisme de présence ou absence d’un ou plusieurs nucléotides.Intron : séquence non-codante dans les gènes, séparant les exons, qui codent pour une protéine.Kb : kilobase ; séquence de mille paires de bases (pb*).Locus (pl. : loci) : Site sur un chromosome. Par extension, emplacement d’un gène ou d’un marqueur génétique sur un chromosome.Marqueur génétique : séquence d'ADN dont le polymorphisme est employé pour identifier un emplacement particulier (locus) sur un chromosome particulier.Mate-pair : séquences appariées (1 à 10 kb* de distance), produites en circularisant les fragments d’ADN, puis par séquençage à travers le point de jointure.Mb : mégabase ; séquence d’un million de paires de bases (pb*) de longueur.Orthologues : séquences homologues* entre deux espèces.Paired-end : séquences appariées produites par la lecture des deux extrémités de courts fragments d’ADN (moins de 500 pb*) dans le cas des nouvelles technologies de séquençage.Paralogues : séquences homologues* résultat de la duplication d’une séquence ancestrale dans le génome. Il s’agit de deux (ou plus) séquences similaires par homologie dans un même génome.Pb : paire de base ; unité de séquence d’ADN, représentée par une base et sa complémentaire-inverse sur l’autre brin.Phénotype : caractère observable d'un individu résultant des effets conjugués du génotype et du milieu.Phylogénomique : utilise les méthodes de la génomique et de la phylogénie. Par la comparaison de génomes entiers, permet de mettre en évidence des pertes et gains de gènes dans les génomes, ainsi que leur variabilité moléculaire, afin (entre autres buts) d’aider à prédire leur fonctions.Plasmide : vecteur de clonage permettant l’obtention de clones bactériens contenant des fragment d’ADN génomique de taille allant de 500 pb* à 10 kb* environ.Polymorphisme d'ADN : existence de deux ou de plusieurs allèles* alternatifs à un locus.Puce à ADN ou puce pangénomique : Système permettant pour un individu le génotypage simultané de très nombreux marqueurs génétiques (de quelques milliers à quelques centaines de milliers).QTL : abréviation de locus à effets quantitatifs (de l’anglais Quantitative Trait Locus).Récessivité : qualificatif de l’effet d'un allèle, où l'homozygotie* est nécessaire pour l'expression du phénotype* approprié. opposé de : dominance*.RH : Radiation Hybrid (hybride irradié*)Sanger (méthode de) : méthode de séquençage publiée en 1977 (Sanger et al 1977) et encore utilisée de nos jours avec les séquenceurs à électrophorèse capillaire.Scaffold : ensemble de contigs* de séquence reliés entre eux par des informations apportées par des lectures appariées (mate-pairs* ou paired-ends*).Sélection assistée par marqueurs (abréviation : SAM) : utilisation d’un jeu restreint de marqueurs de l'ADN pour améliorer la réponse à la sélection dans une population : les marqueurs sont choisis comme étroitement liés à un ou plusieurs loci cibles, qui sont souvent des loci à effets quantitatifs ou QTL*.SNP : polymorphisme d'un seul nucléotide à une position particulière de la séquence d’ADN (abréviation de l’anglais Single Nucleotide Polymorphism).Supercontig : nom alternatif pour les scaffolds*.WGS : Whole Genome Shotgun ; production de lectures de séquence d’un génome entier de manière aléatoire.

Nous présentons dans ce papier, une méthode de dimensionnement optimal du générateur photovoltaïque et du banc de batteries dans un système hybride de production d’électricité (éolien - photovoltaïque) totalement autonome. Pour une charge et une probabilité de perte d’énergie données sous le critère d’un prix minimum du système, un nombre optimal de batteries et de modules photovoltaïques a été calculé. Ainsi, à partir de données horaires de l’irradiation solaire, de la température ambiante et de la vitesse du vent, nous avons calculé la puissance horaire produite par l’aérogénérateur et par le générateur photovoltaïque sur une période d’analyse d’une année. Ces données sont issues de mesures au centre de Bouzaréah. Un profil de consommation type a été adopté. Il correspond au profil rencontré généralement dans les sites isolés.

La Peste series (Movistar Plus+) represented a pre-pandemic benchmark in transmedia and hybrid (online and offline) fictional storytelling. This research delves into the keys for the construction of suspense through the development of interactive actions that place the public in a leading position in the story through the dialogue between geographical, fictional and expanded space. Therefore, we will examine the resignification of the city through the image built up by the participation of the viewer –in the series– and the user –in the transmedia actions–. We address both the study of the fictional and augmented space, taking into account the territory occupied by the different strata that made up the city in the sixteenth century, and the processes of expansion of the contents through interactive cartographies, movie maps, and Alternative Reality Games (ARG). As a result, we observe an expansion of the series through the metaphor of the map in an expedition that flits between past and present; fiction and reality; geographical space and cyberspace; the traditional medium –television series– and multiplatform formats, which produces at the same time a novel approach to the urban space of Seville from an experiential perspective.

AbstractThe Murchison Widefield Array is a Square Kilometre Array Precursor. The telescope is located at the Murchison Radio–astronomy Observatory in Western Australia. The MWA consists of 4 096 dipoles arranged into 128 dual polarisation aperture arrays forming a connected element interferometer that cross-correlates signals from all 256 inputs. A hybrid approach to the correlation task is employed, with some processing stages being performed by bespoke hardware, based on Field Programmable Gate Arrays, and others by Graphics Processing Units housed in general purpose rack mounted servers. The correlation capability required is approximately 8 tera floating point operations per second. The MWA has commenced operations and the correlator is generating 8.3 TB day−1 of correlation products, that are subsequently transferred 700 km from the MRO to Perth (WA) in real-time for storage and offline processing. In this paper, we outline the correlator design, signal path, and processing elements and present the data format for the internal and external interfaces.

AbstractThis repeated-measures study examined the effects of a hybrid of Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (TF-CBT) with other therapeutic approaches at a community-based clinic in Perth Western Australia among a sample of children and young people overwhelmingly experiencing multiple forms of maltreatment and with complex family situations (i.e., family and domestic violence, parental mental health, parental substance abuse). Drawing on 1713 individual client records from between 2017 and 2020, the researchers identified 113 children and young people with viable pre-post treatment assessments including 78 on the TSCC, 36 on the TSCYC, and 12 on the CBCL. Significant improvements on most clinical scales were identified on the TSCC and TSCYC. Sub-analysis of the TSCC results found no differences across gender, age, care status, therapy funding source, and the presence of sexual abuse in the rate of improvement on trauma symptoms. Overall, the study highlights that integrating different therapy approaches for populations with multiple and complex trauma symptoms accessing community-based services can be useful for supporting the delivery of TF-CBT for difficult to treat populations.

AbstractThe solar ultraviolet index (UVI) is a key public health indicator to mitigate the ultraviolet-exposure related diseases. This study aimed to develop and compare the performances of different hybridised deep learning approaches with a convolutional neural network and long short-term memory referred to as CLSTM to forecast the daily UVI of Perth station, Western Australia. A complete ensemble empirical mode decomposition with adaptive noise (CEEMDAN) is incorporated coupled with four feature selection algorithms (i.e., genetic algorithm (GA), ant colony optimization (ACO), particle swarm optimization (PSO), and differential evolution (DEV)) to understand the diverse combinations of the predictor variables acquired from three distinct datasets (i.e., satellite data, ground-based SILO data, and synoptic mode climate indices). The CEEMDAN-CLSTM model coupled with GA appeared to be an accurate forecasting system in capturing the UVI. Compared to the counterpart benchmark models, the results demonstrated the excellent forecasting capability (i.e., low error and high efficiency) of the recommended hybrid CEEMDAN-CLSTM model in apprehending the complex and non-linear relationships between predictor variables and the daily UVI. The study inference can considerably enhance real-time exposure advice for the public and help mitigate the potential for solar UV-exposure-related diseases such as melanoma.

AbstractThe importance of characterizing kerogen type in evaluating source rock and the nature of hydrocarbon yield is emphasized. However, traditional laboratory geochemical assessments can be time-intensive and costly. In this study, an innovative approach was taken to bridge this gap by utilizing machine learning techniques to ascertain key parameters—Organic Oxygen Index (OI), Hydrogen Index (HI), and kerogen type—from petrophysical logs of a well in the Perth Basin, Western Australia. This approach assembled geochemical data from 138 cutting samples of the Kockatea and Woodada formations and petrophysical log data. Subsequently, six machine learning algorithms were applied to predict the OI and HI parameters. The efficacy of these methods was assessed using statistical parameters, including Coefficient of Determination (R2), Average Percentage Relative Error, Average Absolute Percentage Relative Error, Root Mean Square Error, and Standard Deviation. The Support Vector Machines method emerged as the standout performer, with an R2 of 0.993 for the OI and 0.989 for the HI, establishing itself as an optimal tool for predicting these indices. Additionally, six classifiers were employed to determine kerogen types, with accuracy tested using precision, recall, F1-Score, and accuracy parameters.The study's findings highlight the superiority of the Gradient Boosting method in kerogen-type classification, achieving an impressive accuracy rate of 93.54%. It is concluded that when utilized with petrophysical logs, machine learning methodologies offer a powerful, efficient, and cost-effective alternative for determining OI, HI, and kerogen type. The novelty of this approach lies in its ability to accurately predict these crucial parameters using readily available well-log data, potentially revolutionizing traditional geochemical analysis practices. Graphical abstract

Culture is integral to Indigenous entrepreneurs, but how culture manifests in their entrepreneurial processes is understudied. This paper explores how Aboriginal entrepreneurs in Perth, Australia navigate cultural and commercial imperatives in their entrepreneurial practice. The study uses an interpretive lens and thematic analysis based on Altman’s hybrid economy model (HEM) to explore how ten Aboriginal entrepreneurs managed commercially viable enterprises while meeting their cultural obligations and aspirations. The focus is on the convergence of the customary and market economies and entrepreneurs’ experiences of navigating the hybridity of that space. We find that Aboriginal entrepreneurs iteratively assess the complementarity of cultural and commercial imperatives to protect their Indigenous identity while meeting business objectives. Cultural and commercial imperatives are navigated using context-dependent strategies. Strategies fall within fluid classifications of ‘high cultural–low commercial bias’, ‘high commercial–low cultural bias’, and an even consideration of both. We propose a contingency model to help explain Indigenous entrepreneurs’ approaches to navigating customary and commercial imperatives. This study contributes to knowledge of culture in Indigenous entrepreneurship by uncovering strategies Indigenous entrepreneurs can, and do, use to conduct business in ways culturally attuned to their indigeneity and situations.

RÉSUMÉ Les élections en Afrique sont des moments qui cristallisent de grandes tensions et s’accompagnent bien souvent de crises politiques. Dans un contexte de perte de confiance et de disqualification du juge national, considéré comme l’allié du pouvoir, la présente contribution pose la question du recours à la solution juridictionnelle supranationale. Nous y soutenons tout d’abord, dans une approche positiviste et contentialiste, l’émergence progressive d’un juge électoral africain à l’identité plurielle. Ce juge, nous arguons, a conquis ses titres de compétences originellement sous la bannière d’instruments classiques de protection des droits de l’homme puis, progressivement, par l’avènement plus récent de conventions hybrides régulant la démocratie, les élections et la gouvernance politique. Les décisions de la Commission et de la Cour africaines des droits de l’homme et des peuples ainsi que celles des Cours de justice de la CEDEAO et de la Communauté d’Afrique de l’Est, ayant trait à la matière électorale, en donnent une parfaite illustration. Nous relevons ensuite qu’il s’agit d’un juge à la juridiction limitée, en ce que sa compétence est sujette à l’observance de la traditionnelle condition d’épuisement des recours internes et qu’il applique exclusivement la norme de référence prévue par le législateur et dont il a reçu mandat de sauvegarde. Il s’agit enfin d’un juge à l’imperium discuté, dont l’autorité des décisions est à géométrie variable et les garanties d’exécution incertaines. TITLE AND ABSTRACT IN ENGLISH: The rise of an African regional electoral judge ABSTRACT: Elections in Africa are moments of great tension, which often come with political crises. In a context where the municipal election judge is untrusted and disqualified due to its perceived affiliation with the ruling party, this paper is devoted to appraising the alternative remedy of supranational mechanisms. Based on a positivistic and litigation standpoint, we observe the steady rise of an African regional electoral judge of a plural identity. This judge, we argue, was originally entrusted with jurisdiction as prescribed in traditional human rights instruments and, progressively in the recent years, in hybrid legal instruments pertaining to democracy, elections and political governance. This trend is well illustrated by the decisions of the African. Commission and African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights, as well as those of the ECOWAS and East African Courts of Justice relating to electoral matters. We further stress that the African regional election judge enjoys a limited jurisdiction, in that he is required to observe the well-established rule of exhaustion of local remedies and that he exclusively adjudicate on the applicable law as prescribed by the legislator and which he was entrusted to supervise. The authors finally posit that the judicial powers of the regional judges are disputed, and their decisions enjoy a variable authority while guarantees of their enforcement is uncertain.

La progression de la forêt sur les savanes guinéennes est une réalité mise en évidence par des études en Afrique centrale en général et au Cameroun en particulier. Ce phénomène se relève de divers processus naturels et anthropiques non encore suffisamment élucidés. L’objectif de ce travail est de monter le rôle de l’expansion des agroforêts à cacaoyers dans la progression de la forêt sur la savane dans la zone étudiée. Pour y parvenir, l’étude s’est appuyée sur les analyses diachroniques des images de télédétection et les enquêtes sociologiques. Il en ressort que, l’expansion récente des agroforêts à cacaoyers en savane est liée principalement à la raréfaction des forêts (37,31%)et aux conditions agroécologiques auxquelles s’adaptent bien les nouvelles variétés hybrides vulgarisées auprès des cacaoculteurs (32,84%). La création de la cacaoyère en association avec des divers arbres d’ombrage plantés ou préservés crée à long terme des conditions propices à l’installation permanente et la progression de la forêt en savane. Ainsi 47,05% des populations attestent d’un recul de la savane au profit de la forêt contre 32,35% qui pensent le contraire. Les analyses diachroniques des images satellitaires montrent également qu’entre 1990 et 2000, l’on a enregistré une perte des superficies de forêts et d’agroforêts qui sont passées de 356 809,12 ha en 1990 à 102 365,23 en 2000 ; soit un bilan de -71,31% du fait de la déprise cacaoyère suite à la crise économique de la fin des années 80. Par contre, elles sont passées de 102365,23 ha en 2000 à 130124,25 ha en 2020 ; soit une augmentation de +27,12% en 20 ans, consécutivement au relèvement des cours mondiaux du cacao et à la mise en œuvre des plans de relance de la filière cacao-café par les pouvoirs publics. Il serait donc important d’encourager davantage la création et la gestion intégrée de ces agroforêts dans une perspective du développement durable. The progression of the forest on the Guinean savannahs is a reality highlighted by studies in Central Africa in general and in Cameroon in particular. This phenomenon is the result of various natural and anthropogenic processes that have not yet been sufficiently elucidated. The objective of this work is to show the role of the expansion of cocoa tree agroforests in the progression of the forest over the savannah in the study area. To achieve this, the study relied on diachronic analyses of remote sensing images and sociological surveys. It emerged that the recent expansion of cocoa tree agroforests in the savannah is mainly linked to the scarcity of forests (37.31%) and to the agroecological conditions to which the new hybrid varieties popularised among cocoa farmers are well adapted (32.84%). The creation of the cocoa farm in association with various planted or preserved shade trees creates long-term conditions conducive to the permanent installation and progression of the forest into savannah. Thus, 47.05% of the populations attest to a retreat of the savannah to the benefit of the forest against 32.35% who think the opposite. Diachronic analyses of satellite images also show that between 1990 and 2000, the area of forest and agroforest fell from 356,809.12 ha in 1990 to 102,365.23 ha in 2000, i.e. a loss of 71.31% due to the abandonment of cocoa production following the economic crisis of the late 1980s. On the other hand, they increased from 102365.23 ha in 2000 to 130124.25 ha in 2020, i.e. an increase of +27.12% in 20 years, following the rise in world cocoa prices and the implementation of plans to revive the cocoa-coffee sector by the public authorities It would therefore be important to further encourage the creation and integrated management of these agroforests in a sustainable development perspective.

In recent decades, at Ukrainian farms and grain-processing enterprises, the technology of storing grain in silo bags has become widespread. In this type of storage, anaerobic conditions are created due to the physiological respiration process, which ensures extended shelf life of freshly harvested grain. This, in turn, allows the use of low-power processing equipment for post-harvest grain processing, which is especially important for wet and moist maize as it requires powerful grain dryers. The article presents the results of a study of the effect that the initial moisture content of maize grain, the temperature and the duration of its storage under anaerobic conditions have on the Falling Number, one of the quality parameters depending on the amylase activity of the grain. The object of the study was grain samples of freshly harvested (in 2017) dent maize, the hybrid DKC 3705, with the average moisture contents 14%, 21%, and 28%, stored under anaerobic conditions for 3 months at temperatures of +18°C, +11°C, and +4°C. The Falling Number was determined by the standardized Hagberg-Perten method on a ПЧП-7 instrument (“Falling Number Apparatus”). Based on the results obtained, histograms of the kinetics of Falling Number changes have been constructed, the analysis of which made it possible to establish patterns of the changes in the Falling Number depending on the moisture content of the grain and the duration of its storage at different temperatures. It has been shown that in the maize grain samples with the initial moisture content 14%, regardless of the temperature conditions during storage for 3 months, there is a steady tendency to a gradual decrease in the Falling Number. In the maize grain samples with the initial moisture content over 14%, at the beginning of storage, there is a period of an increase in the Falling Number, the intensity of which depends on the initial moisture content of the grain and the temperature conditions of its anaerobic storage. After the completion of post-harvest maturation processes in freshly harvested maize grain, its further storage leads to a decrease in the Falling Number. To summarize the experimental data, a nonlinear empirical equation is suggested to describe the patterns of changes in the Falling Number depending on the factors studied: the moisture content of maize grain, the temperature conditions and duration of storage. Considering that the value of the Falling Number is determined by the activity of the amylase complex of the grain, it can be used as an express method of monitoring the state of grain stored in silo bags.

These are the proceedings of the “New Scientific Opportunities at the TRIUMF ARIEL e-linac” workshop, which took place at TRIUMF laboratory, in Vancouver, Canada, May 25-27, 2022. The workshop was a hybrid of in-person and online attendance via Zoom, gathering together theorists and experimentalists with shared interests in MeV-scale physics at the intensity frontier, in order to stimulate ideas and collaboration for novel applications of new, high-intensity, modest-energy accelerators like the ARIEL e-Linac. While the LHC and its large detector collaborations continue to seek BSM physics at the energy frontier, and increasingly large subterranean detectors probe neutrino and dark matter signals with greater and greater sensitivities, the increasing scale of these experiments represents a substantial undertaking, in terms of cost and timeline. These have yielded important results, confirming the existence of the Higgs and furthering our understanding of neutrino dynamics, but they have not yet provided a clear view of what lies beyond the Standard Model. The prevailing expectations of the previous decades—minimal supersymmetry, WIMP-based dark matter—have not yet been observed. A complementary experimental thrust in the quest for new physics is to probe lower energy scales at the intensity and precision frontiers. Such experiments can be mounted more nimbly, and in parallel, to focus on different reported anomalies as lampposts, to improve precision in places where new physics may lurk, and to test new classes of BSM physics that may arise at those energies. With no definitive guidance on the form an underlying theory must take, this is an increasingly appealing approach to the search. Modern accelerator designs can provide higher and higher beam currents, achieving high luminosities without the need for thick targets, unlocking new experimental avenues. Energy Recovery Linacs (ERLs) at the sub-GeV scale are a particularly exciting emerging platform, with a series of machines at various levels of development, including the planned upgrade for ARIEL, the MESA accelerator complex currently under construction, and the planned PERLE facility. The articles in these proceedings showcase the experimental avenues now being explored, or which could be undertaken at ARIEL and similar-scale accelerators, as well as theoretical studies in these regimes, and the status of accelerators that will enable these and future experiments that aim to address current anomalies and outstanding questions in particle and nuclear physics. The workshop was funded by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, to which the organizing committee give their sincere thanks. Jan Bernauer (CFNS, Stony Brook University and RIKEN BNL Research Center) Ross Corliss (CFNS, Stony Brook University) Michael Hasinoff (University of British Columbia) Rituparna Kanungo (Saint Mary’s University) Jeffery Martin (University of Winnipeg) Richard Milner (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) Katherine Pachal (TRIUMF) Stanley Yen (TRIUMF)

Introduction The past decade has seen a burgeoning new field titled “night studies” or “darkness studies” (Gwiazdzinski, Maggioli, and Straw). Key theorists Straw, Shaw, Dunn, and Edensor have spearheaded this new field, publishing a recent flurry of books and other scholarly work dedicated to various aspects of the night. Topics range, for instance, from the history of artificial lighting (Shaw), atmospheres of urban light and darkness (Sumartojo, Edensor, and Pink), street music and public space at night (Reia), the experience of eating in the dark (Edensor and Falconer), walking at night (Morris; Dunn), gendered experiences of the city at night (Hardley; Hardley and Richardson “Mobile Media”, “Mistrust”), and women’s solo experiences of the wilderness at night. Contributing to this new field, this article considers some of the embodied ways mobile media have been deployed in the urban night. To date, this topic has not received much attention within the fields of mobile media or night studies. The research presented in this article draws on a qualitative research project conducted in Australia from 2016-2020. The project focussed on participants’ use of mobile media in urban spaces at night and conducted a specific analysis of pertinent gendered differences. Throughout my iterative and longitudinal research process, I engaged various phases of data collection to explore participants’ night-time mobile media practices, as well as to consider how darkness and the night impact networked practices in ways that speak to the postphenomenological concept of multistability (Ihde Postphenomenology and Technoscience). I highlight the empirical findings through a series of participant stories, exploring salient insights into embodied perceptions of darkness and various ways of co-opting mobile media practices in the urban night. Methods: Data Collection, Interpretation, and Representation My research took place in Perth and Melbourne from 2016-2020. A total of 98 individuals, aged 19 to 67 years, participated. Participants came from diverse backgrounds, including urban and rural Australia, Sweden, America, Ethiopia, Italy, Argentina, USA, and England. They were students, teachers, chefs, unemployed, stay-at-home-parents, miners, small business owners, retired, doctors, and government scientists. They identified across the sexuality and gender identity spectrums. My techniques for data collection were grouped into four main phases: (i) an initial survey; (ii) home visits, which included interviews, haptic experiments, observations, and my own situatedness in participants’ homes; (iii) geo-locative tracking and text messaging; and (iv) online follow-up interviews. The study was open to anyone who lived in Perth or Melbourne, was over 18 years old, and used a smartphone. All phases of the data collection were conducted during the day or at night, depending on participant availability. My focus on darkness and the night, in relation to mobile media, evolved over time. The first question regarding mobile media and the night was posed in 2016 during initial data collection, using an online survey to cast a wide net to gather insights on networked functionality afforded by mobile phones and perceptions of safety and risk in urban and domestic space. Participants frequently referred to the differences between day and night. During home visits and face-to-face interviews in 2017, as well as online interviews in 2020, I sought to gain deeper insights into participants’ sensory experiences of darkness and the night. My interpretation and representation of the data adopts a similar approach as vignettes, which are described by Berry in her book on creative practice and mobile media. For Berry, vignettes are a way of “braiding” (xv) accounts of participant experience together. My particular use of this approach has been published in detail elsewhere (Hardley and Richardson “Digital Placemaking”). Postphenomenology, Multistability, and Mobile Media Throughout this article I frame engagement with mobile media as a particular kind of body-technology relation. As the founder of postphenomenology, Ihde, writes, “technologies transform our experience of the world and our perceptions and interpretations of our world, and we in turn become transformed in this process” (Postphenomenology and Technoscience 44). Ihde adapted phenomenology (from Merleau-Ponty, Husserl, and Heidegger) by shifting away from an essentialist body-subject to non-essentialist contextualisation. As Ihde explains (he uses archery longbows and arrows to make his point), all tools are the “same” in an abstract sense; however, “radically different practices fit differently into various contexts” (Postphenomenology and Technoscience 16). In other words, tools (including mobile media) are never neutral and are always multiple and variable depending on context and practice. All tools are therefore situated and embodied in culturally specific ways. Postphenomenological scholarship can, thus, be said to capture the cultural specificity of all human-technology relations. The following examples help illustrate this defining characteristic of postphenomenology, as distinct from phenomenology. It could be argued that Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological description of the blind man with his cane is an essentialist notion of what it’s like to experience blindness. On the other hand, Wellner’s postphenomenological description of using a mobile phone describes how the same technology can be used by different people in multiple ways, as people assign different meanings to the technology. This notion is best captured by the term multistability, which suggests each technology has numerous uses, applications and purposes. As Irwin explains, the term multistability—one of Ihde’s central concepts within postphenomenology—conveys the inherent adaptability and mutability of both bodies and media engagement, depending on the context or situatedness of a tool’s use. In the following sections, I first explore embodied perceptions of darkness and the night, and then explore how mobile media have modified participants’ embodied perception of darkness and how it informs their situated awareness of their urban surroundings. In terms of my research, this concerns how mobile media users embody their devices in an array of different ways, especially at night. “Feeling” the Night: Embodied Perceptions of Darkness Darkness, and the night, are not simply about the lack of vision. Indeed, while sensory perception in the dark, such as obscured vision and the heightening of other senses, comes into play, we also encounter the night through an enmeshed cultural relationship of darkness and danger. Shaw describes this relationship in the following way: darkness has been equated with danger: the night was a time when demons, criminals and others who presented a threat were imagined to be present in the landscape. Darkness was thus imagined as a space in which both real and mythical dangers were present. (“Controlling Darkness” 5) Chris, a young gay man living in a medium-sized town close to Melbourne, leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes, and laughed when I asked him if he has ever been scared of the dark. He responded: [Silence] Yeah! I have! Wow, what a funny question. [Laughter] I remember always checking my closet as a child before getting into bed. And the door had to be closed. I could not sleep if the closet door was open. When asked what he thought might be in the closet at night, he laughed again and shared: I have no idea. I don’t think I ever thought it was a person, just the unknown. How funny to think about that now—as a gay man I was scared of what might come out of the closet! [Laughter] Chris’s observation of his habitual childhood behaviour illustrates an embodied cultural imagery of darkness and the role of fear, anxieties and the unknown in the dark. He also spoke of “growing out of” his fantastical fear of the dark as he entered adulthood. This contrasts with what many women in my study described, noting their transition from childhood “fears of the dark” to very real and “felt” experiences of darkness and danger. This opened up a major finding in my research, and uncovered navigational and connectivity strategies often deployed by women in urban spaces at night (Hardley and Richardson “Mistrust”). For instance, Leah (a woman in her late 40s living in Perth), revealed her peripatetic engagement with the (sub)urban night when she described her cycling routes with her 8-year-old daughter. While talking with me via Zoom in 2020, she explained: I have an electric bike—it’s great. I can zip around the city and I have a kid’s seat on the back for my daughter. Sometimes I feel like a hybrid pedestrian—I can switch quickly between being on the road or the footpath. Recently, my daughter asked why we always take the long way home at night. I had to think quickly to come up with a response because I think she’s too young to know the truth. I told her that parks are often empty at night, so if something happens to us then there will be no one to help. In a way that’s true, but really, it’s because as a woman and a child it’s safer for us to remain on well-lit streets. Leah’s experience of the city and her mobility at night are distinctly gendered; she reflects on her experience as a “hybrid pedestrian” in relation to what could happen to her and her daughter if they were to ride through the park at night instead of remaining on the well-lit bike path. Overwhelmingly, the men who participated in my study did not share similar experiences or reflections. Introducing the embodiment of darkness and the night, along with associated fears and anxieties, in a general sense sets the atmospheric scene for a postphenomenological analysis of embodied experiences of the urban night and how users co-opt mobile media functionalities to manage their embodied experiences of the dark. Chris and Leah’s stories both suggest how we “feel” at night has important implications for the practical way(s) in which we engage, navigate and curate our experiences of the dark. In the following section, I consider how mobile devices are literally “handled”, particularly by women in the urban context, to mitigate fears and anxieties of the night. I contend that our embodied experience of the urban night is mediated by, and through, our collective and individual fears, anxieties and perceptions of danger in the dark. Co-opting Mobile Media: Multistable Experiences of the Urban Night Reflecting on his own practices of walking at night, Dunn writes, walking at night, however, offers something different, having the capacity to alter our ingrained, seemingly natural predispositions towards the urban surroundings, and our perceptions along with it. (9) Indeed, the night can offer a “capacity to alter”; however, I suggest that it can also reinforce anxieties and fears of the dark (both real and imagined). As such, walking at night can also reinforce “ingrained, seemingly natural predispositions”. Postphenomenology is useful here, as it offers a way to think through practices of what Ihde calls “amplification” and “reduction” of the corporeal schema. Through both actions, mobile media users habituate themselves or take up residence in the urban night by and through their use of smartphone functionalities, as well as their sense of networked connectivity. In the context of this article, the corporeal schema undergoes an amplification and reduction via the co-opting of mobile media, such as an embodied sense of networked connectivity or a tactile prop, to generate a “tele-cocoon” (Habuchi), “shield” (Verhoeff), or “bubble” (Bull Sounding). The corporeal schema can be understood as our lived experience of the world (Merleau-Ponty), whereby our “perceptual reach and bodily boundaries, is always-already extendible through artifacts and technologies” (Hardley and Richardson “Mistrust”). The digital cocoon afforded by mobile media is often gendered and overtly concerned with issues of personal safety and privacy, especially at night. For many women, generating an imagined boundary between the self and others in shared urban spaces is an important function of mobile media. As one Perth participant reflected, my phone’s a good distraction when I’m alone in a public place, especially at night if I’m waiting for someone. Sometimes guys will come up and try to start a conversation—it’s so annoying. If I focus on my phone, it’s like telling them to leave me alone. This tactical use of mobile media to carve out one’s own space in crowded social places was especially common among the women I interviewed. Yet, such practices are also deployed by men, albeit for different reasons. In Melbourne, Dane described the strategic use of his mobile phone as both a creative tool of connection and a means of communicating—especially to women at night—that he was non-threatening. As a proud late-adopter of smartphones, he explained to me that his main reason for buying one had been the camera function; he refers to his smartphone as “a camera that rings”. He particularly enjoys taking photos at night, during which time his familiar streets become “moody and strange”. He spends many hours walking in his neighbourhood, capturing shadows and uploading the images to his public Instagram account. Referring to his dark skin and shaved head, he joked, “I’d look great in a line-up” and added: sometimes I feel a bit self-conscious on the bus or train, particularly late at night, I think maybe I could seem like a threat or something. So, I’ll play a game or chat to friends about my photos via Instagram. I figure it works both ways—I don’t notice anyone and people don’t notice me. As these participant stories reveal, the personal privacy bubble offered by our mobile devices is co-opted differently. Turning to Ihde’s notion of multistability, these examples can be analysed and understood as mobile technologies’ potential variabilities with multiple outcomes (Ihde Postphenomenology and Technoscience). To explore and explain this further, I consider the following participant story in which Britta, an American living in Melbourne, reflected on her night-time pedestrian practices across two cities, sharing: at night, in Australia, my phone would be in my bra. In Philadelphia, it would be in my hand. It's totally different because of safety. When at University in the U.S., I would always talk to a friend while walking from one place to the next. It doesn't even cross my mind to do that in Australia. In Philadelphia, I would call one of the girls I lived with and if someone approached me, I could say, "Oh shit, I'm about to get mugged, this is where I am” and they could call the cops. It's a sense of being on guard. I would never walk using headphones in Philadelphia. In Australia, if I go running at night I listen to music with one earphone in. In this vignette, Britta has habituated an acute awareness of her corporeal schema. As Wellner suggests, “the world is always a negotiation between humans and their tools, their artifacts, their technology, and their devices” (5). In this context, Britta has an amplified awareness of her situatedness, and uses her mobile phone to listen to music in different ways depending on her geographical location. There is a direct connection to her use of headphones to listen to music and her embodied perception of personal safety at night. Turning to Ihde, this participant story can be explained through the term “non-neutrality”, which describes how “no technology is ‘one thing,’ nor is it incapable of belonging to multiple contexts” (Ihde Technology and Prognostic 47). Such an example points to the non-neutrality of mobile media, and how “our perception and environment are mediated by the technology” (Wellner 15). This analysis can be extended further to consider the use of headphones (as an extension of the mobile phone) and geographical location in relation to the concept of multistability—that is, the specificity of use. As Irwin writes, “how is it to be an earbudded body in the world? ... Earbuds are non-neutral and they are becoming deeply imbedded in daily life” (81). Indeed, Bull’s influential work on how personal stereos and iPods change users’ experiences of public spaces (Sound Moves) is useful here in understanding the background of what Irwin refers to as “keeping sound in and sound out” (81). It is, according to Irwin, “about privacy and isolation” (81); however, as Britta’s vignette shows, mobile media practices of privacy and isolation in urban spaces can be impacted by geographical location and urban darkness, and are also distinctly gendered. Applying the concept of multistability allows me to consider how, in some instances, mobile phones are often deployed as a proxy Do Not Disturb sign when alone in public (Hardley and Richardson “Mistrust”). While, in other instances, one’s embodied experience of being an earbudded body in the world can increase their perceptual sense of risk based on various factors, such as geographical location. Beyond this, it also speaks to the relational ontology between body and technology and the mutability of perception. In Britta’s example, her corporeal schema in the urban night is amplified by and through her personal and situated embodiment of mobile media use, particularly her decision to use headphones in specific ways depending on her geographical location. In 2017, I conducted a home visit with Dominique, a woman in her 30s living in Perth. During this visit, she reflected on her use of a Bluetooth earpiece, especially at night, sharing: I use a Bluetooth earpiece to talk over the phone. I also sometimes wear it at night even if I'm not on the phone or expecting a call as I can quickly request that Siri call someone for me without having to actually dig out my phone, unlock it and make the call. I prefer having my hands free. It can make me feel safer at night. Dominique’s description of having her mobile phone on standby can be understood as a habituated practice to overcome her anxieties of being alone at night in urban space, as well as to apprehend her sensory experience of the urban night by remaining “hands free”. Similar to Britta, Dominique’s embodiment in the urban night had become habituated and sedimented over time—or, in other words, “[a] force of habit” (Rosenberger and Verbeek 25). In this way, Dominique’s embodiment is configured depending on her contextual specificity, such as being alone in public spaces at night. Conclusion This article contributes to the emerging interdisciplinary field of “night studies” and “darkness studies” by focusing on the relationship between mobile media practices and the urban night. I based my methods, including data collection, interpretation and representation, in a postphenomenological framework, and detailed how this framework is useful in reflecting deeply and critically on mobile media use at night. Drawing from the framework’s key concept of multistability, I suggest a particular analysis of how users co-opt mobile media functionalities in situationally unique and personal ways in the urban night. The ways in which users co-opt these functionalities are often gendered. I unpacked how some of my research participants deploy mobile media functions as a means of managing their fears and anxieties of darkness and the urban night, and suggest that such uses are always dependent on the users specific situatedness, both within urban spaces and toward other city dwellers. 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Every act of art is able to reveal, balance and revive the relations between a territory and its inhabitants (François Davin, Southern Forest Sculpture Walk Catalogue)Introducing the Understory Art in Nature TrailIn February 2015, a colossal wildfire destroyed 98,300 hectares of farm and bushland surrounding the town of Northcliffe, located 365 km south of Perth, Western Australia (WA). As the largest fire in the recorded history of the southwest region (Southern Forest Arts, After the Burn 8), the disaster attracted national attention however the extraordinary contribution of local knowledge in saving a town considered by authorities to be “undefendable” (Kennedy) is yet to be widely appreciated. In accounting for a creative scene that survived the conflagration, this case study sees culture mobilised as a socioeconomic resource for conservation and the healing of community spirit.Northcliffe (population 850) sits on a coastal plain that hosts majestic old-growth forest and lush bushland. In 2006, Southern Forest Arts (SFA) dedicated a Southern Forest Sculpture Walk for creative professionals to develop artworks along a 1.2 km walk trail through pristine native forest. It was re-branded “Understory—Art in Nature” in 2009; then “Understory Art in Nature Trail” in 2015, the understory vegetation layer beneath the canopy being symbolic of Northcliffe’s deeply layered caché of memories, including “the awe, love, fear, and even the hatred that these trees have provoked among the settlers” (Davin in SFA Catalogue). In the words of the SFA Trailguide, “Every place (no matter how small) has ‘understories’—secrets, songs, dreams—that help us connect with the spirit of place.”In the view of forest arts ecologist Kumi Kato, “It is a sense of place that underlies the commitment to a place’s conservation by its community, broadly embracing those who identify with the place for various reasons, both geographical and conceptual” (149). In bioregional terms such communities form a terrain of consciousness (Berg and Dasmann 218), extending responsibility for conservation across cultures, time and space (Kato 150). A sustainable thematic of place must also include livelihood as the third party between culture and nature that establishes the relationship between them (Giblett 240). With these concepts in mind I gauge creative impact on forest as place, and, in turn, (altered) forest’s impact on people. My abstraction of physical place is inclusive of humankind moving in dialogic engagement with forest. A mapping of Understory’s creative activities sheds light on how artists express physical environments in situated creative practices, clusters, and networks. These, it is argued, constitute unique types of community operating within (and beyond) a foundational scene of inspiration and mystification that is metaphorically “rising from the ashes.” In transcending disconnectedness between humankind and landscape, Understory may be understood to both culturalise nature (as an aesthetic system), and naturalise culture (as an ecologically modelled system), to build on a trope introduced by Feld (199). Arguably when the bush is cultured in this way it attracts consumers who may otherwise disconnect from nature.The trail (henceforth Understory) broaches the histories of human relations with Northcliffe’s natural systems of place. Sub-groups of the Noongar nation have inhabited the southwest for an estimated 50,000 years and their association with the Northcliffe region extends back at least 6,000 years (SFA Catalogue; see also Crawford and Crawford). An indigenous sense of the spirit of forest is manifest in Understory sculpture, literature, and—for the purpose of this article—the compilation CD Canopy: Songs for the Southern Forests (henceforth Canopy, Figure 1).As a cultural and environmental construction of place, Canopy sustains the land with acts of seeing, listening to, and interpreting nature; of remembering indigenous people in the forest; and of recalling the hardships of the early settlers. I acknowledge SFA coordinator and Understory custodian Fiona Sinclair for authorising this investigation; Peter Hill for conservation conversations; Robyn Johnston for her Canopy CD sleeve notes; Della Rae Morrison for permissions; and David Pye for discussions. Figure 1. Canopy: Songs for the Southern Forests (CD, 2006). Cover image by Raku Pitt, 2002. Courtesy Southern Forest Arts, Northcliffe, WA.Forest Ecology, Emotion, and ActionEstablished in 1924, Northcliffe’s ill-founded Group Settlement Scheme resulted in frontier hardship and heartbreak, and deforestation of the southwest region for little economic return. An historic forest controversy (1992-2001) attracted media to Northcliffe when protesters attempting to disrupt logging chained themselves to tree trunks and suspended themselves from branches. The signing of the Western Australian Regional Forest Agreement in 1999 was followed, in 2001, by deregulation of the dairy industry and a sharp decline in area population.Moved by the gravity of this situation, Fiona Sinclair won her pitch to the Manjimup Council for a sound alternative industry for Northcliffe with projections of jobs: a forest where artists could work collectively and sustainably to reveal the beauty of natural dimensions. A 12-acre pocket of allocated Crown Land adjacent to the town was leased as an A-Class Reserve vested for Education and Recreation, for which SFA secured unified community ownership and grants. Conservation protocols stipulated that no biomass could be removed from the forest and that predominantly raw, natural materials were to be used (F. Sinclair and P. Hill, personal interview, 26 Sep. 2014). With forest as prescribed image (wider than the bounded chunk of earth), Sinclair invited the artists to consider the themes of spirituality, creativity, history, dichotomy, and sensory as a basis for work that was to be “fresh, intimate, and grounded in place.” Her brief encouraged artists to work with humanity and imagination to counteract residual community divisiveness and resentment. Sinclair describes this form of implicit environmentalism as an “around the back” approach that avoids lapsing into political commentary or judgement: “The trail is a love letter from those of us who live here to our visitors, to connect with grace” (F. Sinclair, telephone interview, 6 Apr. 2014). Renewing community connections to local place is essential if our lives and societies are to become more sustainable (Pedelty 128). To define Northcliffe’s new community phase, artists respected differing associations between people and forest. A structure on a karri tree by Indigenous artist Norma MacDonald presents an Aboriginal man standing tall and proud on a rock to become one with the tree and the forest: as it was for thousands of years before European settlement (MacDonald in SFA Catalogue). As Feld observes, “It is the stabilizing persistence of place as a container of experiences that contributes so powerfully to its intrinsic memorability” (201).Adhering to the philosophy that nature should not be used or abused for the sake of art, the works resonate with the biorhythms of the forest, e.g. functional seats and shelters and a cascading retainer that directs rainwater back to the resident fauna. Some sculptures function as receivers for picking up wavelengths of ancient forest. Forest Folk lurk around the understory, while mysterious stone art represents a life-shaping force of planet history. To represent the reality of bushfire, Natalie Williamson’s sculpture wraps itself around a burnt-out stump. The work plays with scale as small native sundew flowers are enlarged and a subtle beauty, easily overlooked, becomes apparent (Figure 2). The sculptor hopes that “spiders will spin their webs about it, incorporating it into the landscape” (SFA Catalogue).Figure 2. Sundew. Sculpture by Natalie Williamson, 2006. Understory Art in Nature Trail, Northcliffe, WA. Image by the author, 2014.Memory is naturally place-oriented or at least place-supported (Feld 201). Topaesthesia (sense of place) denotes movement that connects our biography with our route. This is resonant for the experience of regional character, including the tactile, olfactory, gustatory, visual, and auditory qualities of a place (Ryan 307). By walking, we are in a dialogue with the environment; both literally and figuratively, we re-situate ourselves into our story (Schine 100). For example, during a summer exploration of the trail (5 Jan. 2014), I intuited a personal attachment based on my grandfather’s small bush home being razed by fire, and his struggle to support seven children.Understory’s survival depends on vigilant controlled (cool) burns around its perimeter (Figure 3), organised by volunteer Peter Hill. These burns also hone the forest. On 27 Sept. 2014, the charred vegetation spoke a spring language of opportunity for nature to reassert itself as seedpods burst and continue the cycle; while an autumn walk (17 Mar. 2016) yielded a fresh view of forest colour, patterning, light, shade, and sound.Figure 3. Understory Art in Nature Trail. Map Created by Fiona Sinclair for Southern Forest Sculpture Walk Catalogue (2006). Courtesy Southern Forest Arts, Northcliffe, WA.Understory and the Melody of CanopyForest resilience is celebrated in five MP3 audio tours produced for visitors to dialogue with the trail in sensory contexts of music, poetry, sculptures and stories that name or interpret the setting. The trail starts in heathland and includes three creek crossings. A zone of acacias gives way to stands of the southwest signature trees karri (Eucalyptus diversicolor), jarrah (Eucalyptus marginata), and marri (Corymbia calophylla). Following a sheoak grove, a riverine environment re-enters heathland. Birds, insects, mammals, and reptiles reside around and between the sculptures, rendering the earth-embedded art a fusion of human and natural orders (concept after Relph 141). On Audio Tour 3, Songs for the Southern Forests, the musician-composers reflect on their regionally focused items, each having been birthed according to a personal musical concept (the manner in which an individual artist holds the totality of a composition in cultural context). Arguably the music in question, its composers, performers, audiences, and settings, all have a role to play in defining the processes and effects of forest arts ecology. Local musician Ann Rice billeted a cluster of musicians (mostly from Perth) at her Windy Harbour shack. The energy of the production experience was palpable as all participated in on-site forest workshops, and supported each other’s items as a musical collective (A. Rice, telephone interview, 2 Oct. 2014). Collaborating under producer Lee Buddle’s direction, they orchestrated rich timbres (tone colours) to evoke different musical atmospheres (Table 1). Composer/Performer Title of TrackInstrumentation1. Ann RiceMy Placevocals/guitars/accordion 2. David PyeCicadan Rhythmsangklung/violin/cello/woodblocks/temple blocks/clarinet/tapes 3. Mel RobinsonSheltervocal/cello/double bass 4. DjivaNgank Boodjakvocals/acoustic, electric and slide guitars/drums/percussion 5. Cathie TraversLamentaccordion/vocals/guitar/piano/violin/drums/programming 6. Brendon Humphries and Kevin SmithWhen the Wind First Blewvocals/guitars/dobro/drums/piano/percussion 7. Libby HammerThe Gladevocal/guitar/soprano sax/cello/double bass/drums 8. Pete and Dave JeavonsSanctuaryguitars/percussion/talking drum/cowbell/soprano sax 9. Tomás FordWhite Hazevocal/programming/guitar 10. David HyamsAwakening /Shaking the Tree /When the Light Comes guitar/mandolin/dobro/bodhran/rainstick/cello/accordion/flute 11. Bernard CarneyThe Destiny Waltzvocal/guitar/accordion/drums/recording of The Destiny Waltz 12. Joel BarkerSomething for Everyonevocal/guitars/percussion Table 1. Music Composed for Canopy: Songs for the Southern Forests.Source: CD sleeve and http://www.understory.com.au/art.php. Composing out of their own strengths, the musicians transformed the geographic region into a living myth. As Pedelty has observed of similar musicians, “their sounds resonate because they so profoundly reflect our living sense of place” (83-84). The remainder of this essay evidences the capacity of indigenous song, art music, electronica, folk, and jazz-blues to celebrate, historicise, or re-imagine place. Firstly, two items represent the phenomenological approach of site-specific sensitivity to acoustic, biological, and cultural presence/loss, including the materiality of forest as a living process.“Singing Up the Land”In Aboriginal Australia “there is no place that has not been imaginatively grasped through song, dance and design, no place where traditional owners cannot see the imprint of sacred creation” (Rose 18). Canopy’s part-Noongar language song thus repositions the ancient Murrum-Noongar people within their life-sustaining natural habitat and spiritual landscape.Noongar Yorga woman Della Rae Morrison of the Bibbulmun and Wilman nations co-founded The Western Australian Nuclear Free Alliance to campaign against the uranium mining industry threatening Ngank Boodjak (her country, “Mother Earth”) (D.R. Morrison, e-mail, 15 July 2014). In 2004, Morrison formed the duo Djiva (meaning seed power or life force) with Jessie Lloyd, a Murri woman of the Guugu Yimidhirr Nation from North Queensland. After discerning the fundamental qualities of the Understory site, Djiva created the song Ngank Boodjak: “This was inspired by walking the trail […] feeling the energy of the land and the beautiful trees and hearing the birds. When I find a spot that I love, I try to feel out the lay-lines, which feel like vortexes of energy coming out of the ground; it’s pretty amazing” (Morrison in SFA Canopy sleeve) Stanza 1 points to the possibilities of being more fully “in country”:Ssh!Ni dabarkarn kooliny, ngank boodja kookoorninyListen, walk slowly, beautiful Mother EarthThe inclusion of indigenous language powerfully implements an indigenous interpretation of forest: “My elders believe that when we leave this life from our physical bodies that our spirit is earthbound and is living in the rocks or the trees and if you listen carefully you might hear their voices and maybe you will get some answers to your questions” (Morrison in SFA Catalogue).Cicadan Rhythms, by composer David Pye, echoes forest as a lively “more-than-human” world. Pye took his cue from the ambient pulsing of male cicadas communicating in plenum (full assembly) by means of airborne sound. The species were sounding together in tempo with individual rhythm patterns that interlocked to create one fantastic rhythm (Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Composer David Pye). The cicada chorus (the loudest known lovesong in the insect world) is the unique summer soundmark (term coined by Truax Handbook, Website) of the southern forests. Pye chased various cicadas through Understory until he was able to notate the rhythms of some individuals in a patch of low-lying scrub.To simulate cicada clicking, the composer set pointillist patterns for Indonesian anklung (joint bamboo tubes suspended within a frame to produce notes when the frame is shaken or tapped). Using instruments made of wood to enhance the rich forest imagery, Pye created all parts using sampled instrumental sounds placed against layers of pre-recorded ambient sounds (D. Pye, telephone interview, 3 Sept. 2014). He takes the listener through a “geographical linear representation” of the trail: “I walked around it with a stopwatch and noted how long it took to get through each section of the forest, and that became the musical timing of the various parts of the work” (Pye in SFA Canopy sleeve). That Understory is a place where reciprocity between nature and culture thrives is, likewise, evident in the remaining tracks.Musicalising Forest History and EnvironmentThree tracks distinguish Canopy as an integrative site for memory. Bernard Carney’s waltz honours the Group Settlers who battled insurmountable terrain without any idea of their destiny, men who, having migrated with a promise of owning their own dairy farms, had to clear trees bare-handedly and build furniture from kerosene tins and gelignite cases. Carney illuminates the culture of Saturday night dancing in the schoolroom to popular tunes like The Destiny Waltz (performed on the Titanic in 1912). His original song fades to strains of the Victor Military Band (1914), to “pay tribute to the era where the inspiration of the song came from” (Carney in SFA Canopy sleeve). Likewise Cathie Travers’s Lament is an evocation of remote settler history that creates a “feeling of being in another location, other timezone, almost like an endless loop” (Travers in SFA Canopy sleeve).An instrumental medley by David Hyams opens with Awakening: the morning sun streaming through tall trees, and the nostalgic sound of an accordion waltz. Shaking the Tree, an Irish jig, recalls humankind’s struggle with forest and the forces of nature. A final title, When the Light Comes, defers to the saying by conservationist John Muir that “The wrongs done to trees, wrongs of every sort, are done in the darkness of ignorance and unbelief, for when the light comes the heart of the people is always right” (quoted by Hyams in SFA Canopy sleeve). Local musician Joel Barker wrote Something for Everyone to personify the old-growth karri as a king with a crown, with “wisdom in his bones.”Kevin Smith’s father was born in Northcliffe in 1924. He and Brendon Humphries fantasise the untouchability of a maiden (pre-human) moment in a forest in their song, When the Wind First Blew. In Libby Hammer’s The Glade (a lover’s lament), instrumental timbres project their own affective languages. The jazz singer intended the accompanying double bass to speak resonantly of old-growth forest; the cello to express suppleness and renewal; a soprano saxophone to impersonate a bird; and the drums to imitate the insect community’s polyrhythmic undercurrent (after Hammer in SFA Canopy sleeve).A hybrid aural environment of synthetic and natural forest sounds contrasts collision with harmony in Sanctuary. The Jeavons Brothers sampled rustling wind on nearby Mt Chudalup to absorb into the track’s opening, and crafted a snare groove for the quirky eco-jazz/trip-hop by banging logs together, and banging rocks against logs. This imaginative use of percussive found objects enhanced their portrayal of forest as “a living, breathing entity.”In dealing with recent history in My Place, Ann Rice cameos a happy childhood growing up on a southwest farm, “damming creeks, climbing trees, breaking bones and skinning knees.” The rich string harmonies of Mel Robinson’s Shelter sculpt the shifting environment of a brewing storm, while White Haze by Tomás Ford describes a smoky controlled burn as “a kind of metaphor for the beautiful mystical healing nature of Northcliffe”: Someone’s burning off the scrubSomeone’s making sure it’s safeSomeone’s whiting out the fearSomeone’s letting me breathe clearAs Sinclair illuminates in a post-fire interview with Sharon Kennedy (Website):When your map, your personal map of life involves a place, and then you think that that place might be gone…” Fiona doesn't finish the sentence. “We all had to face the fact that our little place might disappear." Ultimately, only one house was lost. Pasture and fences, sheds and forest are gone. Yet, says Fiona, “We still have our town. As part of SFA’s ongoing commission, forest rhythm workshops explore different sound properties of potential materials for installing sound sculptures mimicking the surrounding flora and fauna. In 2015, SFA mounted After the Burn (a touring photographic exhibition) and Out of the Ashes (paintings and woodwork featuring ash, charcoal, and resin) (SFA, After the Burn 116). The forthcoming community project Rising From the Ashes will commemorate the fire and allow residents to connect and create as they heal and move forward—ten years on from the foundation of Understory.ConclusionThe Understory Art in Nature Trail stimulates curiosity. It clearly illustrates links between place-based social, economic and material conditions and creative practices and products within a forest that has both given shelter and “done people in.” The trail is an experimental field, a transformative locus in which dedicated physical space frees artists to culturalise forest through varied aesthetic modalities. Conversely, forest possesses agency for naturalising art as a symbol of place. Djiva’s song Ngank Boodjak “sings up the land” to revitalise the timelessness of prior occupation, while David Pye’s Cicadan Rhythms foregrounds the seasonal cycle of entomological music.In drawing out the richness and significance of place, the ecologically inspired album Canopy suggests that the community identity of a forested place may be informed by cultural, economic, geographical, and historical factors as well as endemic flora and fauna. Finally, the musical representation of place is not contingent upon blatant forms of environmentalism. The portrayals of Northcliffe respectfully associate Western Australian people and forests, yet as a place, the town has become an enduring icon for the plight of the Universal Old-growth Forest in all its natural glory, diverse human uses, and (real or perceived) abuses.ReferencesAustralian Broadcasting Commission. “Canopy: Songs for the Southern Forests.” Into the Music. Prod. Robyn Johnston. Radio National, 5 May 2007. 12 Aug. 2014 <http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/intothemusic/canopy-songs-for-the-southern-forests/3396338>.———. “Composer David Pye.” Interview with Andrew Ford. The Music Show, Radio National, 12 Sep. 2009. 30 Jan. 2015 <http://canadapodcasts.ca/podcasts/MusicShowThe/1225021>.Berg, Peter, and Raymond Dasmann. “Reinhabiting California.” Reinhabiting a Separate Country: A Bioregional Anthology of Northern California. Ed. Peter Berg. San Francisco: Planet Drum, 1978. 217-20.Crawford, Patricia, and Ian Crawford. Contested Country: A History of the Northcliffe Area, Western Australia. Perth: UWA P, 2003.Feld, Steven. 2001. “Lift-Up-Over Sounding.” The Book of Music and Nature: An Anthology of Sounds, Words, Thoughts. Ed. David Rothenberg and Marta Ulvaeus. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan UP, 2001. 193-206.Giblett, Rod. People and Places of Nature and Culture. Bristol: Intellect, 2011.Kato, Kumi. “Addressing Global Responsibility for Conservation through Cross-Cultural Collaboration: Kodama Forest, a Forest of Tree Spirits.” The Environmentalist 28.2 (2008): 148-54. 15 Apr. 2014 <http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10669-007-9051-6#page-1>.Kennedy, Sharon. “Local Knowledge Builds Vital Support Networks in Emergencies.” ABC South West WA, 10 Mar. 2015. 26 Mar. 2015 <http://www.abc.net.au/local/stories/2015/03/09/4193981.htm?site=southwestwa>.Morrison, Della Rae. E-mail. 15 July 2014.Pedelty, Mark. Ecomusicology: Rock, Folk, and the Environment. Philadelphia, PA: Temple UP, 2012.Pye, David. Telephone interview. 3 Sep. 2014.Relph, Edward. Place and Placelessness. London: Pion, 1976.Rice, Ann. Telephone interview. 2 Oct. 2014.Rose, Deborah Bird. Nourishing Terrains: Australian Aboriginal Views of Landscape and Wilderness. Australian Heritage Commission, 1996.Ryan, John C. Green Sense: The Aesthetics of Plants, Place and Language. Oxford: Trueheart Academic, 2012.Schine, Jennifer. “Movement, Memory and the Senses in Soundscape Studies.” Canadian Acoustics: Journal of the Canadian Acoustical Association 38.3 (2010): 100-01. 12 Apr. 2016 <http://jcaa.caa-aca.ca/index.php/jcaa/article/view/2264>.Sinclair, Fiona. Telephone interview. 6 Apr. 2014.Sinclair, Fiona, and Peter Hill. Personal Interview. 26 Sep. 2014.Southern Forest Arts. Canopy: Songs for the Southern Forests. CD coordinated by Fiona Sinclair. Recorded and produced by Lee Buddle. Sleeve notes by Robyn Johnston. West Perth: Sound Mine Studios, 2006.———. Southern Forest Sculpture Walk Catalogue. Northcliffe, WA, 2006. Unpaginated booklet.———. Understory—Art in Nature. 2009. 12 Apr. 2016 <http://www.understory.com.au/>.———. Trailguide. Understory. Presented by Southern Forest Arts, n.d.———. After the Burn: Stories, Poems and Photos Shared by the Local Community in Response to the 2015 Northcliffe and Windy Harbour Bushfire. 2nd ed. Ed. Fiona Sinclair. Northcliffe, WA., 2016.Truax, Barry, ed. Handbook for Acoustic Ecology. 2nd ed. Cambridge Street Publishing, 1999. 10 Apr. 2016 <http://www.sfu.ca/sonic-studio/handbook/Soundmark.html>.

Introduction Almost all industries in Australia today have adopted digital media in some way. However, uses in large scale activities such as mining may seem to be different from others. This article looks at mining practices with a media studies approach, and concludes that, just as many other industries, mining and media have converged. Many Australian mine sites are adopting new media for communication and control to manage communication, explore for ore bodies, simulate forces, automate drilling, keep records, and make transport and command robotic. Beyond sharing similar digital devices for communication and computation, new media in mining employ characteristic digital media operations, such as numerical operation, automation and managed variability. This article examines the implications of finding that some of the most material practices have become mediated by new media. Mining has become increasingly mediated through new media technologies similar to GPS, visualisation, game remote operation, similar to those adopted in consumer home and mobile digital media. The growing and diversified adoption of digital media championed by companies like Rio Tinto aims not only ‘improve’ mining, but to change it. Through remediating practices of digital mining, new media have become integral powerful tools in prospective, real time and analytical environments. This paper draws on two well-known case studies of mines in the Pilbara and Western NSW. These have been documented in press releases and media reports as representing changes in media and mining. First, the West Angelas mines in the Pilbara is an open cut iron ore mine introducing automation and remote operation. This mine is located in the remote Pilbara, and is notable for being operated remotely from a control centre 2000km away, near Perth Airport, WA. A growing fleet of Komatsu 930E haul trucks, which can drive autonomously, traverses the site. Fitted with radars, lasers and GPS, these enormous vehicles navigate through the open pit mine with no direct human control. Introducing these innovations to mine sites become more viable after iron ore mining became increasingly profitable in the mid-2000s. A boom in steel building in China drove unprecedented demand. This growing income coincided with a change in public rhetoric from companies like Rio Tinto. They pointed towards substantial investments in research, infrastructure, and accelerated introduction of new media technologies into mining practices. Rio Tinto trademarked the term ‘Mine of the future’ (US Federal News Service 1), and publicised their ambitious project for renewal of mining practice, including digital media. More recently, prices have been more volatile. The second case study site is a copper and gold underground mine at Northparkes in Western NSW. Northparkes uses substantial sensing and control, as well as hybrid autonomous and remote operated vehicles. The use of digital media begins with prospecting, and through to logistics of transportation. Engineers place explosives in optimal positions using computer modelling of the underground rock formations. They make heavy use of software to coordinate layer-by-layer use of explosives in this advanced ‘box cut’ mine. After explosives disrupt the rock layer a kilometre underground, another specialised vehicle collects and carries the ore to the surface. The Sandvik loader-hauler-dumper (LHD) can be driven conventionally by a driver, but it can also travel autonomously in and out of the mine without a direct operator. Once it reaches a collection point, where the broken up ore has accumulated, a user of the surface can change the media mode to telepresence. The human operator then takes control using something like a games controller and multiple screens. The remote operator controls the LHD to fill the scoop with ore. The fully-loaded LHD backs up, and returns autonomously using laser senses to follow a trail to the next drop off point. The LHD has become a powerful mediator, reconfiguring technical, material and social practices throughout the mine. The Meanings of Mining and Media Are Converging Until recently, mining and media typically operated ontologically separately. The media, such as newspapers and television, often tell stories about mining, following regular narrative scripts. There are controversies and conflicts, narratives of ecological crises, and the economics of national benefit. There are heroic and tragic stories such as the Beaconsfield mine collapse (Clark). There are new industry policies (Middelbeek), which are politically fraught because of the lobbying power of miners. Almost completely separately, workers in mines were consumers of media, from news to entertainment. These media practices, while important in their own right, tell nothing of the approaching changes in many other sectors of work and everyday life. It is somewhat unusual for a media studies scholar to study mine sites. Mine sites are most commonly studied by Engineering (Bellamy & Pravica), Business and labour and cultural histories (McDonald, Mayes & Pini). Until recently, media scholarship on mining has related to media institutions, such as newspapers, broadcasters and websites, and their audiences. As digital media have proliferated, the phenomena that can be considered as media phenomena has changed. This article, pointing to the growing roles of media technologies, observes the growing importance that media, in these terms, have in the rapidly changing domain of mining. Another meaning for ‘media’ studies, from cybernetics, is that a medium is any technology that translates perception, makes interpretations, and performs expressions. This meaning is more abstract, operating with a broader definition of media — not only those institutionalised as newspapers or radio stations. It is well known that computer-based media have become ubiquitous in culture. This is true in particular within the mining company’s higher ranks. Rio Tinto’s ambitious 2010 ‘Mine of the Future’ (Fisher & Schnittger, 2) program was premised on an awareness that engineers, middle managers and senior staff were already highly computer literate. It is worth remembering that such competency was relatively uncommon until the late 1980s. The meanings of digital media have been shifting for many years, as computers become experienced more as everyday personal artefacts, and less as remote information systems. Their value has always been held with some ambivalence. Zuboff’s (387-414) picture of loss, intimidation and resistance to new information technologies in the 1980s seems to have dissipated by 2011. More than simply being accepted begrudgingly, the PC platform (and variants) has become a ubiquitous platform, a lingua franca for information workers. It became an intimate companion for many professions, and in many homes. It was an inexpensive, versatile and generalised convergent medium for communication and control. And yet, writers such as Gregg observe, the flexibility of networked digital work imposes upon many workers ‘unlimited work’. The office boundaries of the office wall break down, for better or worse. Emails, utility and other work-related behaviours increasingly encroach onto domestic and public space and time. Its very attractiveness to users has tied them to these artefacts. The trail that leads the media studies discipline down the digital mine shaft has been cleared by recent work in media archaeology (Parikka), platform studies (Middelbeek; Montfort & Bogost; Maher) and new media (Manovich). Each of these redefined Media Studies practices addresses the need to diversify the field’s attention and methods. It must look at more specific, less conventional and more complex media formations. Mobile media and games (both computer-based) have turned out to be quite different from traditional media (Hjorth; Goggin). Kirschenbaum’s literary study of hard drives and digital fiction moves from materiality to aesthetics. In my study of digital mining, I present a reconfigured media studies, after the authors, that reveals heterogeneous media configurations, deserving new attention to materiality. This article also draws from the actor network theory approach and terminology (Latour). The uses of media / control / communications in the mining industry are very complex, and remain under constant development. Media such as robotics, computer modelling, remote operation and so on are bound together into complex practices. Each mine site is different — geologically, politically, and economically. Mines are subject to local and remote disasters. Mine tunnels and global prices can collapse, rendering active sites uneconomical overnight. Many technologies are still under development — including Northparkes and West Angelas. Both these sites are notable for their significant use of autonomous vehicles and remote operated vehicles. There is no doubt that the digital technologies modulate all manner of the mining processes: from rocks and mechanical devices to human actors. Each of these actors present different forms of collusion and opposition. Within a mining operation, the budgets for computerised and even robotic systems are relatively modest for their expected return. Deep in a mine, we can still see media convergence at work. Convergence refers to processes whereby previously diverse practices in media have taken on similar devices and techniques. While high-end PCs in mining, running simulators; control data systems; visualisation; telepresence, and so on may be high performance, ruggedised devices, they still share a common platform to the desktop PC. Conceptual resources developed in Media Ecology, New Media Studies, and the Digital Humanities can now inform readings of mining practices, even if their applications differ dramatically in size, reliability and cost. It is not entirely surprising that some observations by new media theorists about entertainment and media applications can also relate to features of mining technologies. Manovich argues that numerical representation is a distinctive feature of new media. Numbers have always already been key to mining engineering. However, computers visualise numerical fields in simulations that extend out of the minds of the calculators, and into visual and even haptic spaces. Specialists in geology, explosives, mechanical apparatuses, and so on, can use plaftorms that are common to everyday media. As the significance of numbers is extended by computers in the field, more and more diverse sources of data provide apparently consistent and seamless images of multiple fields of knowledge. Another feature that Manovich identifies in new media is the capacity for automation of media operations. Automation of many processes in mechanical domains clearly occurred long before industrial technologies were ported into new media. The difference with new media in mine sites is that robotic systems must vary their performance according to feedback from their extra-system environments. For our purposes, the haul trucks in WA are software-controlled devices that already qualify as robots. They sense, interpret and act in the world based on their surroundings. They evaluate multiple factors, including the sensors, GPS signals, operator instructions and so on. They can repeat the path, by sensing the differences, day after day, even if the weather changes, the track wears away or the instructions from base change. Automation compensates for differences within complex and changing environments. Automation of an open-pit mine haulage system… provides more consistent and efficient operation of mining equipment, it removes workers from potential danger, it reduces fuel consumption significantly reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and it can help optimize vehicle repairs and equipment replacement because of more-predictable and better-controlled maintenance. (Parreire and Meech 1-13) Material components in physical mines tend to become modular and variable, as their physical shape lines up with the logic of another of Manovich’s new media themes, variability. Automatic systems also make obsolete human drivers, who previously handled those environmental variations, for better or for worse, through the dangerous, dull and dirty spaces of the mine. Drivers’ capacity to control repeat trips is no longer needed. The Komatsu driverless truck, introduced to the WA iron ore mines from 2008, proved itself to be almost as quick as human drivers at many tasks. But the driverless trucks have deeper advantages: they can run 23 hours each day with no shift breaks; they drive more cautiously and wear the equipment less than human drivers. There is no need to put up workers and their families up in town. The benefit most often mentioned is safety: even the worst accident won’t produce injuries to drivers. The other advantage less mentioned is that autonomous trucks don’t strike. Meanwhile, managers of human labour also need to adopt certain strategies of modulation to support the needs and expectations of their workers. Mobile phones, televisions and radio are popular modes of connecting workers to their loved ones, particularly in the remote and harsh West Angelas site. One solution — regular fly-in-fly out shifts — tends also to be alienating for workers and locals (Cheshire; Storey; Tonts). As with any operations, the cost of maintaining a safe and comfortable environment for workers requires trade-offs. Companies face risks from mobile phones, leaking computer networks, and espionage that expose the site to security risks. Because of such risks, miners tend be subject to disciplinary regimes. It is common to test alcohol and drug levels. There was some resistance from workers, who refused to change to saliva testing from urine testing (Latimer). Contesting these machines places the medium, in a different sense, at the centre of regulation of the workers’ bodies. In Northparkes, the solution of hybrid autonomous and remote operation is also a solution for modulating labour. It is safer and more comfortable, while also being more efficient, as one experienced driver can control three trucks at a time. This more complex mode of mediation is necessary because underground mines are more complex in geology, and working environments to suit full autonomy. These variations provide different relationships between operators and machines. The operator uses a games controller, and watches four video views from the cabin to make the vehicle fill the bucket with ore (Northparkes Mines, 9). Again, media have become a pivotal element in the mining assemblage. This combines the safety and comfort of autonomous operation (helping to retain staff) with the required use of human sensorimotor dexterity. Mine systems deserve attention from media studies because sites are combining large scale physical complexity with increasingly sophisticated computing. The conventional pictures of mining and media rarely address the specificity of subjective and artefactual encounters in and around mine sites. Any research on mining communication is typically within the instrumental frames of engineering (Duff et al.). Some of the developments in mechanical systems have contributed to efficiency and safety of many mines: larger trucks, more rock crushers, and so on. However, the single most powerful influence on mining has been adopting digital media to control, integrate and mining systems. Rio Tinto’s transformative agenda document is outlined in its high profile ‘Mine of the Future’ agenda (US Federal News Service). The media to which I refer are not only those in popular culture, but also those with digital control and communications systems used internally within mines and supply chains. The global mining industry began adopting digital communication automation (somewhat) systematically only in the 1980s. Mining companies hesitated to adopt digital media because the fundamentals of mining are so risky and bound to standard procedures. Large scale material operations, extracting and processing minerals from under the ground: hardly to be an appropriate space for delicate digital electronics. Mining is also exposed to volatile economic conditions, so investing in anything major can be unattractive. High technology perhaps contradicts an industry ethos of risk-taking and masculinity. Digital media became domesticated, and familiar to a new generation of formally educated engineers for whom databases and algorithms (Manovich) were second nature. Digital systems become simultaneously controllers of objects, and mediators of meanings and relationships. They control movements, and express communications. Computers slide from using meanings to invoking direct actions over objects in the world. Even on an everyday scale, computer operations often control physical processes. Anti-lock Braking Systems regulate a vehicle’s braking pressure to avoid the danger when wheels lock-up. Or another example, is the ATM, which involves both symbolic interactions, and also exchange of physical objects. These operations are examples of the ‘asignifying semiotic’ (Guattari), in which meanings and non-meanings interact. There is no operation essential distinction between media- and non-media digital operations. Which are symbolic, attached or non-consequential is not clear. This trend towards using computation for both meanings and actions has accelerated since 2000. Mines of the Future Beyond a relatively standard set of office and communications software, many fields, including mining, have adopted specialised packages for their domains. In 3D design, it is AutoCAD. In hard sciences, it is custom modelling. In audiovisual production, it may be Apple and Adobe products. Some platforms define their subjectivity, professional identity and practices around these platforms. This platform orientation is apparent in areas of mining, so that applications such as the Gemcom, Rockware, Geological Database and Resource Estimation Modelling from Micromine; geology/mine design software from Runge, Minemap; and mine production data management software from Corvus. However, software is only a small proportion of overall costs in the industry. Agents in mining demand solutions to peculiar problems and requirements. They are bound by their enormous scale; physical risks of environments, explosive and moving elements; need to negotiate constant change, as mining literally takes the ground from under itself; the need to incorporate geological patterns; and the importance of logistics. When digital media are the solution, there can be what is perceived as rapid gains, including greater capacities for surveillance and control. Digital media do not provide more force. Instead, they modulate the direction, speed and timing of activities. It is not a complete solution, because too many uncontrolled elements are at play. Instead, there are moment and situations when the degree of control refigures the work that can be done. Conclusions In this article I have proposed a new conception of media change, by reading digital innovations in mining practices themselves as media changes. This involved developing an initial reading of the operations of mining as digital media. With this approach, the array of media components extends far beyond the conventional ‘mass media’ of newspapers and television. It offers a more molecular media environment which is increasingly heterogeneous. It sometimes involves materiality on a huge scale, and is sometimes apparently virtual. The mining media event can be a semiotic, a signal, a material entity and so on. It can be a command to a human. It can be a measurement of location, a rock formation, a pressure or an explosion. The mining media event, as discussed above, is subject to Manovich’s principles of media, being numerical, variable and automated. In the mining media event, these principles move from the aesthetic to the instrumental and physical domains of the mine site. The role of new media operates at many levels — from the bottom of the mine site to the cruising altitude of the fly-in-fly out aeroplanes — has motivated significant changes in the Australian industry. When digital media and robotics come into play, they do not so much introduce change, but reintroduce similarity. This inversion of media is less about meaning, and more about local mastery. Media modulation extends the kinds of influence that can be exerted by the actors in control. In these situations, the degrees of control, and of resistance, are yet to be seen. Acknowledgments Thanks to Mining IQ for a researcher's pass at Mining Automation and Communication Conference, Perth in August 2012. References Bellamy, D., and L. 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Taylor & Francis, 2008. Kirschenbaum, M.G. Mechanisms: New Media and the Forensic Imagination. Campridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2008. Latimer, Cole. “Fair Work Appeal May Change Drug Testing on Site.” Mining Australia 2012. 3 May 2013 ‹http://www.miningaustralia.com.au/news/fair-work-appeal-may-change-drug-testing-on-site›. Latour, B. Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. Maher, J. The Future Was Here: The Commodore Amiga. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2012. Manovich, Lev. The Language of New Media. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2001. McDonald, P., R. Mayes, and B. Pini. “Mining Work, Family and Community: A Spatially-Oriented Approach to the Impact of the Ravensthorpe Nickel Mine Closure in Remote Australia.” Journal of Industrial Relations 2012. Middelbeek, E. “Australia Mining Tax Set to Slam Iron Ore Profits.” Metal Bulletin Weekly 2012. Montfort, N., and I. Bogost. Racing the Beam: The Atari Video Computer System. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2009. Parikka, J. What Is Media Archaeology? London: Polity Press, 2012. Parreira, J., and J. Meech. “Autonomous vs Manual Haulage Trucks — How Mine Simulation Contributes to Future Haulage System Developments.” Paper presented at the CIM Meeting, Vancouver, 2010. 3 May 2013 ‹http://www.infomine.com/library/publications/docs/parreira2010.pdf›. Storey, K. “Fly-In/Fly-Out and Fly-Over: Mining and Regional Development in Western Australia.” Australian Geographer 32.2 (2010): 133–148. Storey, K. “Fly-In/Fly-Out: Implications for Community Sustainability.” Sustainability 2.5 (2010): 1161–1181. 3 May 2013 ‹http://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/2/5/1161›. Takayama, L., W. Ju, and C. Nas. “Beyond Dirty, Dangerous and Dull: What Everyday People Think Robots Should Do.” Paper presented at HRI '08, Amsterdam, 2008. 3 May 2013 ‹http://www-cdr.stanford.edu/~wendyju/publications/hri114-takayama.pdf›. 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The concept of transmedia storyworlds unfolding across complex serial narrative structures has become increasingly important to the study of modern media industries and audience communities. Yet, the precise connections between transmedia networks, serial structures, and narrative processes often remain underdeveloped. The dispersion of potential story elements across a diverse collection of media platforms and technologies prompts questions concerning the function of seriality in the absence of fixed instalments, the meaning of narrative when plot is largely a personal construction of each audience member, and the nature of storytelling in the absence of a unifying author, or when authorship itself takes on a serial character. This special issue opens a conversation on the intersection of these three concepts and their implications for a variety of disciplines, artistic practices, and philosophies. By re-thinking these concepts from fresh perspectives, the collection challenges scholars to consider how a wide range of academic, aesthetic, and social phenomena might be productively thought through using the overlapping lenses of transmedia, seriality, and narrativity. Thus, the collection gathers scholars from life-writing, sport, film studies, cultural anthropology, fine arts, media studies, and literature, all of whom find common ground at this fruitful crossroads. This breadth also challenges the narrow use of transmedia as a specialized term to describe current developments in corporate mass media products that seek to exploit the affordances of hybrid digital media environments. Many prominent scholars, including Marie-Laure Ryan and Henry Jenkins, acknowledge that a basic definition of transmedia as stories with extensions and reinterpretations in numerous media forms includes the oldest kinds of human expression, such as the ancient storyworlds of Arthurian legend and The Odyssey. Yet, what Jenkins terms “top-down” transmedia—that is, pre-planned and often corporate transmedia—has received a disproportionate share of scholarly attention, with modern franchises like The Matrix, the Marvel universe, and Lost serving as common exemplars (Flanagan, Livingstone, and McKenny; Hadas; Mittell; Scolari). Thus, many of the contributions to this issue push the boundaries of what has commonly been studied as transmedia as well as the limits of what may be considered a serial structure or even a story. For example, these papers imagine how an autobiography may also be a digital concept album unfolding in reverse, how participatory artistic performances may unfold in unpredictable instalments across physical and digital space, and how studying sports fandom as a long series of transmedia narrative elements encourages scholars to grapple with the unique structures assembled by audiences of non-fictional story worlds. Setting these experimental offerings into dialogue with entries that approach the study of transmedia in a more established manner provides the basis for building bridges between such recognized conversations in new media studies and potential collaborations with other disciplines and subfields of media studies.This issue builds upon papers collected from four years of the International Transmedia Serial Narration Seminar, which I co-organized with Dr. Claire Cornillon, Assistant Professor (Maîtresse de Conférences) of comparative literature at Université de Nîmes. The seminar held sessions in Paris, Le Havre, Rouen, Amsterdam, and Utrecht, with interdisciplinary speakers from the USA, Australia, France, Belgium, and the Netherlands. As a transnational, interdisciplinary project intended to cross both theoretical and physical boundaries, the seminar aimed to foster exchange between academic conversations that can become isolated not only within disciplines, but also within national and linguistic borders. The seminar thus sought to enhance academic mobility between both people and ideas, and the digital, open-access publication of the collected papers alongside additional scholarly interlocutors serves to broaden the seminar’s goals of creating a border-crossing conversation. After two special issues primarily collecting the French language papers in TV/Series (2014) and Revue Française des Sciences de l’Information et de la Communication (2017), this issue seeks to share the Transmedia Serial Narration project with a wider audience by publishing the remaining English-language papers, accompanied by several other contributions in dialogue with the seminar’s themes. It is our hope that this collection will invite a broad international audience to creatively question the meaning of transmedia, seriality, and narrativity both historically and in the modern, rapidly changing, global and digital media environment.Several articles in the issue illuminate existing debates and common case studies in transmedia scholarship by comparing theoretical models to the much more slippery reality of a media form in flux. Thus, Mélanie Bourdaa’s feature article, “From One Medium to the Next: How Comic Books Create Richer Storylines,” examines theories of narrative complexity and transmedia by scholars including Henry Jenkins, Derek Johnson, and Jason Mittell to then propose a new typology of extensions to accommodate the lived reality expressed by producers of transmedia. Because her interviews with artists and writers emphasize the co-constitutive nature of economic and narrative considerations in professionals’ decisions, Bourdaa’s typology can offer researchers a tool to clarify the marketing and narrative layers of transmedia extensions. As such, her classification system further illuminates what is particular about forms of corporate transmedia with a profit orientation, which may not be shared by non-profit, collective, and independently produced transmedia projects.Likewise, Radha O’Meara and Alex Bevan map existing scholarship on transmedia to point out the limitations of deriving theory only from certain forms of storytelling. In their article “Transmedia Theory’s Author Discourse and Its Limitations,” O’Meara and Bevan argue that scholars have preferred to focus on examples of transmedia with a strong central author-figure or that they may indeed help to rhetorically shore up the coherency of transmedia authorship through writing about transmedia creators as auteurs. Tying their critique to the established weaknesses of auteur theory associated with classic commentaries like Roland Barthes’ “Death of the Author” and Foucault’s “What is an Author?”, O’Meara and Bevan explain that this focus on transmedia creators as authority figures reinforces hierarchical, patriarchal understandings of the creative process and excludes from consideration all those unauthorized transmedia extensions through which audiences frequently engage and make meaning from transmedia networks. They also emphasize the importance of constructing academic theories of transmedia authorship that can accommodate collaborative forms of hybrid amateur and professional authorship, as well as tolerate the ambiguities of “authorless” storyworlds that lack clear narrative boundaries. O’Meara and Bevan argue that such theories will help to break down gendered power hierarchies in Hollywood, which have long allowed individual men to “claim credit for the stories and for all the work that many people do across various sectors and industries.”Dan Hassler-Forest likewise considers existing theory and a corporate case study in his examination of analogue echoes within a modern transmedia serial structure by mapping the storyworld of Twin Peaks (1990). His article, “‘Two Birds with One Stone’: Transmedia Serialisation in Twin Peaks,” demonstrates the push-and-pull between two contemporary TV production strategies: first, the use of transmedia elements that draw viewers away from the TV screen toward other platforms, and second, the deployment of strategies that draw viewers back to the TV by incentivizing broadcast-era appointment viewing. Twin Peaks offers a particularly interesting example of the manner in which these strategies intertwine partly because it already offered viewers an analogue transmedia experience in the 1990s by splitting story elements between TV episodes and books. Unlike O’Meara and Bevan, who elucidate the growing prominence of transmedia auteurs who lend rhetorical coherence to dispersed narrative elements, Hassler-Forest argues that this older analogue transmedia network capitalized upon the dilution of authorial authority, due to the distance between TV and book versions, to negotiate tensions between the producers’ competing visions. Hassler-Forest also notes that the addition of digital soundtrack albums further complicates the serial nature of the story by using the iTunes and TV distribution schedules to incentivize repeated sequential consumption of each element, thus drawing modern viewers to the TV screen, then the computer screen, and then back again.Two articles offer a concrete test of these theoretical perspectives by utilizing ethnographic participant-observation and interviewing to examine how audiences actually navigate diffuse, dispersed storyworlds. For example, Céline Masoni’s article, “From Seriality to Transmediality: A Socio-narrative Approach of a Skilful and Literate Audience,” documents fans’ highly strategic participatory practices. From her observations of and interviews with fans, Masoni theorizes the types of media literacy and social as well as technological competencies cultivated through transmedia fan practices. Olivier Servais and Sarah Sepulchre’s article similarly describes a long-term ethnography of fan transmedia activity, including interviews with fans and participant-observation of the MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game) Game of Thrones Ascent (2013). Servais and Sepulchre find that most people in their interviews are not “committed” fans, but rather casual readers and viewers who follow transmedia extensions sporadically. By focusing on this group, they widen the existing research which often focuses on or assumes a committed audience like the skilful and literate fans discussed by Masoni.Servais and Sepulchre’s results suggest that these viewers may be less likely to seek out all transmedia extensions but readily accept and adapt unexpected elements, such as the media appearances of actors, to add to their serial experiences of the storyworld. In a parallel research protocol observing the Game of Thrones Ascent MMORPG, Servais and Sepulchre report that the most highly-skilled players exhibit few behaviours associated with immersion in the storyworld, but the majority of less-skilled players use their gameplay choices to increase immersion by, for example, choosing a player name that evokes the narrative. As a result, Servais and Sepulchre shed light upon the activities of transmedia audiences who are not necessarily deeply committed to the entire transmedia network, and yet who nonetheless make deliberate choices to collect their preferred narrative elements and increase their own immersion.Two contributors elucidate forms of transmedia that upset the common emphasis on storyworlds with film or TV as the core property or “mothership” (Scott). In her article “Transmedia Storyworlds, Literary Theory, Games,” Joyce Goggin maps the history of intersections between experimental literature and ludology. As a result, she questions the continuing dichotomy between narratology and ludology in game studies to argue for a more broadly transmedia strategy, in which the same storyworld may be simultaneously narrative and ludic. Such a theory can incorporate a great deal of what might otherwise be unproblematically treated as literature, opening up the book to interrogation as an inherently transmedial medium.L.J. Maher similarly examines the serial narrative structures that may take shape in a transmedia storyworld centred on music rather than film or TV. In her article “You Got Spirit, Kid: Transmedial Life-Writing Across Time and Space,” Maher charts the music, graphic novels, and fan interactions that comprise the Coheed and Cambria band storyworld. In particular, Maher emphasizes the importance of autobiography for Coheed and Cambria, which bridges between fictional and non-fictional narrative elements. This interplay remains undertheorized within transmedia scholarship, although a few have begun to explicate the use of transmedia life-writing in an activist context (Cati and Piredda; Van Luyn and Klaebe; Riggs). As a result, Maher widens the scope of existing transmedia theory by more thoroughly connecting fictional and autobiographical elements in the same storyworld and considering how serial transmedia storytelling structures may differ when the core component is music.The final three articles take a more experimental approach that actively challenges the existing boundaries of transmedia scholarship. Catherine Lord’s article, “Serial Nuns: Michelle Williams Gamaker’s The Fruit Is There to Be Eaten as Serial and Trans-serial,” explores the unique storytelling structures of a cluster of independent films that traverse time, space, medium, and gender. Although not a traditional transmedia project, since the network includes a novel and film adaptations and extensions by different directors as well as real-world locations and histories, Lord challenges transmedia theorists to imagine storyworlds that include popular history, independent production, and spatial performances and practices. Lord argues that the main character’s trans identity provides an embodied and theoretical pivot within the storyworld, which invites audiences to accept a position of radical mobility where all fixed expectations about the separation between categories of flora and fauna, centre and periphery, the present and the past, as well as authorized and unauthorized extensions, dissolve.In his article “Non-Fiction Transmedia: Seriality and Forensics in Media Sport,” Markus Stauff extends the concept of serial transmedia storyworlds to sport, focusing on an audience-centred perspective. For the most part, transmedia has been theorized with fictional storyworlds as the prototypical examples. A growing number of scholars, including Arnau Gifreu-Castells and Siobhan O'Flynn, enrich our understanding of transmedia storytelling by exploring non-fiction examples, but these are commonly restricted to the documentary genre (Freeman; Gifreu-Castells, Misek, and Verbruggen; Karlsen; Kerrigan and Velikovsky). Very few scholars comment on the transmedia nature of sport coverage and fandom, and when they do so it is often within the framework of transmedia news coverage (Gambarato, Alzamora, and Tárcia; McClearen; Waysdorf). Stauff’s article thus provides a welcome addition to the existing scholarship in this field by theorizing how sport fans construct a user-centred serial transmedia storyworld by piecing together narrative elements across media sources, embodied experiences, and the serialized ritual of sport seasons. In doing so, he points toward ways in which non-fiction transmedia may significantly differ from fictional storyworlds, but he also enriches our understanding of an audience-centred perspective on the construction of transmedia serial narratives.In his artistic practice, Robert Lawrence may most profoundly stretch the existing parameters of transmedia theory. Lawrence’s article, “Locate, Combine, Contradict, Iterate: Serial Strategies for PostInternet Art,” details his decades-long interrogation of transmedia seriality through performative and participatory forms of art that bridge digital space, studio space, and public space. While theatre and fine arts have often been considered through the theoretical lens of intermediality (Bennett, Boenisch, Kattenbelt, Vandsoe), the nexus of transmedia, seriality, and narrative enables Lawrence to describe the complex, interconnected web of planned and unplanned extensions of his hybrid digital and physical installations, which often last for decades and incorporate a global scope. Lawrence thus takes the strategies of engagement that are perhaps more familiar to transmedia theorists from corporate viral marketing campaigns and turns them toward civic ends (Anyiwo, Bourdaa, Hardy, Hassler-Forest, Scolari, Sokolova, Stork). As such, Lawrence’s artistic practice challenges theorists of transmedia and intermedia to consider the kinds of social and political “interventions” that artists and citizens can stage through the networked possibilities of transmedia expression and how the impact of such projects can be amplified through serial repetition.Together, the whole collection opens new pathways for transmedia scholarship, more deeply explores how transmedia narration complicates understandings of seriality, and constructs an international, interdisciplinary dialogue that brings often isolated conversations into contact. In particular, this issue enriches the existing scholarship on independent, artistic, and non-fiction transmedia, while also proposing some important limitations, exceptions, and critiques to existing scholarship featuring corporate transmedia projects with a commercial, top-down structure and a strong auteur-like creator. These diverse case studies and perspectives enable us to understand more inclusively the structures and social functions of transmedia in the pre-digital age, to theorize more robustly how audiences experience transmedia in the current era of experimentation, and to imagine more broadly a complex future for transmedia seriality wherein professionals, artists, and amateurs all engage in an iterative, inclusive process of creative and civic storytelling, transcending artificial borders imposed by discipline, nationalism, capitalism, and medium.ReferencesAnyiwo, U. Melissa. "It’s Not Television, It’s Transmedia Storytelling: Marketing the ‘Real’World of True Blood." True Blood: Investigating Vampires and Southern Gothic. Ed. Brigid Cherry. New York: IB Tauris, 2012. 157-71.Barthes, Roland. "The Death of the Author." Image, Music, Text. Trans. Stephen Heath. Basingstoke: Macmillian, 1988. 142-48.Bennett, Jill. "Aesthetics of Intermediality." 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"verbiage very thinly sliced and plated up real nice" (Barrett 1)IntroductionMany of us share in an obsessive collecting of cookbooks and recipes. Torn or cut from newspapers and magazines, recipes sit swelling scrapbooks with bloated, unfilled desire. They’re non-hybrid seeds, peas under the mattress, an endless cycle of reproduction. Desire and narrative are folded into each other in our drive, as humans, to create meaning. But what holds us to narrative is good writing. And what can also drive desire is image—literal as well as metaphorical—the visceral pleasure of the gaze, or looking and viewing the sensually aesthetic and the work of the imagination. Creative WritingCooking, winemaking, and food and wine writing can all be considered art. For example, James Halliday (31), the eminent Australian wine critic, posed the question “Is winemaking an art?,” answering: “Most would say so” (31). Cookbooks are stories within stories, narratives that are both factual and imagined, everyday and fantastic—created by both writer and reader from where, along with its historical, cultural and publishing context, a text gets its meaning. Creative writing, in broad terms of genre, is either fiction (imagined, made-up) or creative nonfiction (true, factual). Genre comes from the human taxonomic impulse to create order from chaos through cataloguing and classification. In what might seem overwhelming infinite variety, we establish categories and within them formulas and conventions. But genres are not necessarily stable or clear-cut, and variation in a genre can contribute to its de/trans/formation (Curti 33). Creative nonfiction includes life writing (auto/biography) and food writing among other subgenres (although these subgenres can also be part of fiction). Cookbooks sit within the creative nonfiction genre. More clearly, dietary or nutrition manuals are nonfiction, technical rather than creative. Recipe writing specifically is perhaps less an art and more a technical exercise; generally it’s nonfiction, or between that and creative nonfiction. (One guide to writing recipes is Ostmann and Baker.) Creative writing is built upon approximately five, more or less, fundamentals of practice: point of view or focalisation or who narrates, structure (plot or story, and theme), characterisation, heightened or descriptive language, setting, and dialogue (not in any order of importance). (There are many handbooks on creative writing, that will take a writer through these fundamentals.) Style or voice derives from what a writer writes about (their recurring themes), and how they write about it (their vocabulary choice, particular use of imagery, rhythm, syntax etc.). Traditionally, as a reader, and writer, you are either a plot person or character person, but you can also be interested primarily in ideas or language, and in the popular or literary.Cookbooks as Creative NonfictionCookbooks often have a sense of their author’s persona or subjectivity as a character—that is, their proclivities, lives and thus ideology, and historical, social and cultural place and time. Memoir, a slice of the author–chef/cook’s autobiography, is often explicitly part of the cookbook, or implicit in the nature of the recipes, and the para-textual material which includes the book’s presentation and publishing context, and the writer’s biographical note and acknowledgements. And in relation to the latter, here's Australian wine educator Colin Corney telling us, in his biographical note, about his nascent passion for wine: “I returned home […] stony broke. So the next day I took a job as a bottleshop assistant at Moore Park Cellars […] to tide me over—I stayed three years!” (xi). In this context, character and place, in the broadest sense, are inevitably evoked. So in conjunction with this para-textual material, recipe ingredients and instructions, visual images and the book’s production values combine to become the components for authoring a fictive narrative of self, space and time—fictive, because writing inevitably, in a broad or conceptual sense, fictionalises everything, since it can only re-present through language and only from a particular point of view.The CookbooksTo talk about the art of cookbooks, I make a judgmental (from a creative-writer's point of view) case study of four cookbooks: Lyndey Milan and Colin Corney’s Balance: Matching Food and Wine, Sean Moran’s Let It Simmer (this is the first edition; the second is titled Let It Simmer: From Bush to Beach and Onto Your Plate), Kate Lamont’s Wine and Food, and Greg Duncan Powell’s Rump and a Rough Red (this is the second edition; the first was The Pig, the Olive & the Squid: Food & Wine from Humble Beginnings) I discuss reading, writing, imaging, and designing, which, together, form the nexus for interpreting these cookbooks in particular. The choice of these books was only relatively random, influenced by my desire to see how Australia, a major wine-producing country, was faring with discussion of wine and food choices; by the presence of discursive text beyond technical presentation of recipes, and of photographs and purposefully artful design; and by familiarity with names, restaurants and/or publishers. Reading Moran's cookbook is a model of good writing in its use of selective and specific detail directed towards a particular theme. The theme is further created or reinforced in the mix of narrative, language use, images and design. His writing has authenticity: a sense of an original, distinct voice.Moran’s aphoristic title could imply many things, but, in reading the cookbook, you realise it resonates with a mindfulness that ripples throughout his writing. The aphorism, with its laidback casualness (legendary Australian), is affectively in sync with the chef’s approach. Jacques Derrida said of the aphorism that it produces “an echo of really curious, indelible power” (67).Moran’s aim for his recipes is that they be about “honest, home-style cooking” and bringing “out a little bit of the professional chef in the home cook”, and they are “guidelines” available for “sparkle” and seduction from interpretation (4). The book lives out this persona and personal proclivities. Moran’s storytellings are specifically and solely highlighted in the Contents section which structures the book via broad categories (for example, "Grains" featuring "The dance of the paella" and "Heaven" featuring "A trifle coming on" for example). In comparison, Powell uses "The Lemon", for example, as well as "The Sheep". The first level of Contents in Lamont’s book is done by broad wine styles: sparkling, light white, robust white and so on, and the second level is the recipe list in each of these sections. Lamont’s "For me, matching food and wine comes down to flavour" (xiii) is not as dramatic or expressive as Powell’s "Wine: the forgotten condiment." Although food is first in Milan and Corney’s book’s subtitle, their first content is wine, then matching food with colour and specific grape, from Sauvignon Blanc to Barbera and more. Powell claims that the third of his rules (the idea of rules is playful but not comedic) for choosing the best wine per se is to combine region with grape variety. He covers a more detailed and diversified range of grape varieties than Lamont, systematically discussing them first-up. Where Lamont names wine styles, Powell points out where wine styles are best represented in Australian states and regions in a longish list (titled “13 of the best Australian grape and region combos”). Lamont only occasionally does this. Powell discusses the minor alternative white, Arneis, and major alternative reds such as Barbera and Nebbiolo (Allen 81, 85). This engaging detail engenders a committed reader. Pinot Gris, Viognier, Sangiovese, and Tempranillo are as alternative as Lamont gets. In contrast to Moran's laidbackness, Lamont emphasises professionalism: "My greatest pleasure as a chef is knowing that guests have enjoyed the entire food and wine experience […] That means I have done my job" (xiii). Her reminders of the obvious are, nevertheless, noteworthy: "Thankfully we have moved on from white wine/white meat and red wine/red meat" (xiv). She then addresses the alterations in flavour caused by "method of cooking" and "combination of ingredients", with examples. One such is poached chicken and mango crying "out for a vibrant, zesty Riesling" (xiii): but where from, I ask? Roast chicken with herbs and garlic would favour "red wine with silky tannin" and "chocolatey flavours" (xiii): again, I ask, where from? Powell claims "a different evolution" for his book "to the average cookbook" (7). In recipes that have "a wine focus", there are no "pretty […] little salads, or lavish […] cakes" but "brown" albeit tasty food that will not require ingredients from "poncy inner-city providores", be easy to cook, and go with a cheap, budget-based wine (7). While this identity-setting is empathetic for a Powell clone, and I am envious of his skill with verbiage, he doesn’t deliver dreaming or desire. Milan and Corney do their best job in an eye-catching, informative exemplar list of food and wine matches: "Red duck curry and Barossa Valley Shiraz" for example (7), and in wine "At-a-glance" tables, telling us, for example, that the best Australian regions for Chardonnay are Margaret River and the Adelaide Hills (53). WritingThe "Introduction" to Moran’s cookbook is a slice of memoir, a portrait of a chef as a young man: the coming into being of passion, skill, and professionalism. And the introduction to the introduction is most memorable, being a loving description of his frugal Australian childhood dinners: creations of his mother’s use of manufactured, canned, and bottled substitutes-for-the-real, including Gravox and Dessert Whip (1). From his travel-based international culinary education in handmade, agrarian food, he describes "a head of buffalo mozzarella stuffed with ricotta and studded with white truffles" as "sheer beauty", "ambrosial flavour" and "edible white 'terrazzo'." The consonants b, s, t, d, and r are picked up and repeated, as are the vowels e, a, and o. Notice, too, the comparison of classic Italian food to an equally classic Italian artefact. Later, in an interactive text, questions are posed: "Who could now imagine life without this peppery salad green?" (23). Moran uses the expected action verbs of peel, mince, toss, etc.: "A bucket of tiny clams needs a good tumble under the running tap" (92). But he also uses the unexpected hug, nab, snuggle, waltz, "wave of garlic" and "raining rice." Milan and Corney display a metaphoric-language play too: the bubbles of a sparkling wine matching red meat become "the little red broom […] sweep[ing] away the […] cloying richness" (114). In contrast, Lamont’s cookbook can seem flat, lacking distinctiveness. But with a title like Wine and Food, perhaps you are not expecting much more than information, plain directness. Moran delivers recipes as reproducible with ease and care. An image of a restaurant blackboard menu with the word "chook" forestalls intimidation. Good quality, basic ingredients and knowledge of their source and season carry weight. The message is that food and drink are due respect, and that cooking is neither a stressful, grandiose nor competitive activity. While both Moran and Lamont have recipes for Duck Liver Pâté—with the exception that Lamont’s is (disturbingly, for this cook) "Parfait", Moran also has Lentil Patties, a granola, and a number of breads. Lamont has Brioche (but, granted, without the yeast, seeming much easier to make). Powell’s Plateless Pork is "mud pies for grown-ups", and you are asked to cook a "vat" of sauce. This communal meal is "a great way to spread communicable diseases", but "fun." But his passionately delivered historical information mixed with the laconic attitude of a larrikin (legendary Australian again) transform him into a sage, a step up from the monastery (Powell is photographed in dress-up friar’s habit). Again, the obvious is noteworthy in Milan and Corney’s statement that Rosé "possesses qualities of both red and white wines" (116). "On a hot summery afternoon, sitting in the sun overlooking the view … what could be better?" (116). The interactive questioning also feeds in useful information: "there is a huge range of styles" for Rosé so "[g]rape variety is usually a good guide", and "increasingly we are seeing […] even […] Chambourcin" (116). Rosé is set next to a Bouillabaisse recipe, and, empathetically, Milan and Corney acknowledge that the traditional fish soup "can be intimidating" (116). Succinctly incorporated into the recipes are simple greyscale graphs of grape "Flavour Profiles" delineating the strength on the front and back palate and tongue (103).Imaging and DesigningThe cover of Moran’s cookbook in its first edition reproduces the colours of 1930–1940's beach towels, umbrellas or sunshades in matt stripes of blue, yellow, red, and green (Australian beaches traditionally have a grass verge; and, I am told (Costello), these were the colours of his restaurant Panoroma’s original upholstery). A second edition has the same back cover but a generic front cover shifting from the location of his restaurant to the food in a new subtitle: "From Bush to Beach and onto Your Plate". The front endpapers are Sydney’s iconic Bondi Beach where Panoroma restaurant is embedded on the lower wall of an old building of flats, ubiquitous in Bondi, like a halved avocado, or a small shallow elliptic cave in one of the sandstone cliff-faces. The cookbook’s back endpapers are his bush-shack country. Surfaces, cooking equipment, table linen, crockery, cutlery and glassware are not ostentatious, but simple and subdued, in the colours and textures of nature/culture: ivory, bone, ecru, and cream; and linen, wire, wood, and cardboard. The mundane, such as a colander, is highlighted: humbleness elevated, hands at work, cooking as an embodied activity. Moran is photographed throughout engaged in cooking, quietly fetching in his slim, clean-cut, short-haired, altar-boyish good-looks, dressed casually in plain bone apron, t-shirt (most often plain white), and jeans. While some recipes are traditionally constructed, with the headnote, the list of ingredients and the discursive instructions for cooking, on occasion this is done by a double-page spread of continuous prose, inviting you into the story-telling. The typeface of Simmer varies to include a hand-written lookalike. The book also has a varied layout. Notes and small images sit on selected pages, as often as not at an asymmetric angle, with faux tape, as if stuck there as an afterthought—but an excited and enthusiastic afterthought—and to signal that what is informally known is as valuable as professional knowledge/skill and the tried, tested, and formally presented.Lamont’s publishers have laid out recipe instructions on the right-hand side (traditional English-language Western reading is top down, left to right). But when the recipe requires more than one item to be cooked, there is no repeated title; the spacing and line-up are not necessarily clear; and some immediate, albeit temporary, confusion occurs. Her recipes, alongside images of classic fine dining, carry the implication of chefing rather than cooking. She is photographed as a professional, with a chef’s familiar striped apron, and if she is not wearing a chef’s jacket, tunic or shirt, her staff are. The food is beautiful to look at and imagine, but tackling it in the home kitchen becomes a secondary thought. The left-hand section divider pages are meant to signal the wines, with the appropriate colour, and repetitive pattern of circles; but I understood this belatedly, mistaking them for retro wallpaper bemusedly. On the other hand, Powell’s bog-in-don’t-wait everyday heartiness of a communal stewed dinner at a medieval inn (Peasy Lamb looks exactly like this) may be overcooked, and, without sensuousness, uninviting. Images in Lamont’s book tend toward the predictable and anonymous (broad sweep of grape-vined landscape; large groups of people with eating and drinking utensils). The Lamont family run a vineyard, and up-market restaurants, one photographed on Perth’s river dockside. But Sean's Panoroma has a specificity about it; it hasn’t lost its local flavour in the mix with the global. (Admittedly, Moran’s bush "shack", the origin of much Panoroma produce and the destination of Panoroma compost, looks architect-designed.) Powell’s book, given "rump" and "rough" in the title, stridently plays down glitz (large type size, minimum spacing, rustic surface imagery, full-page portraits of a chicken, rump, and cabbage etc). While not over-glam, the photography in Balance may at first appear unsubtle. Images fill whole pages. But their beautifully coloured and intriguing shapes—the yellow lime of a white-wine bottle base or a sparkling wine cork beneath its cage—shift them into hyperreality. White wine in a glass becomes the edge of a desert lake; an open fig, the jaws of an alien; the flesh of a lemon after squeezing, a sea anemone. The minimal number of images is a judicious choice. ConclusionReading can be immersive, but it can also hover critically at a meta level, especially if the writer foregrounds process. A conversation starts in this exchange, the reader imagining for themselves the worlds written about. Writers read as writers, to acquire a sense of what good writing is, who writing colleagues are, where writing is being published, and, comparably, to learn to judge their own writing. Writing is produced from a combination of passion and the discipline of everyday work. To be a writer in the world is to observe and remember/record, to be conscious of aiming to see the narrative potential in an array of experiences, events, and images, or, to put it another way, "to develop the habit of art" (Jolley 20). Photography makes significant whatever is photographed. The image is immobile in a literal sense but, because of its referential nature, evocative. Design, too, is about communication through aesthetics as a sensuous visual code for ideas or concepts. (There is a large amount of scholarship on the workings of image combined with text. Roland Barthes is a place to begin, particularly about photography. There are also textbooks dealing with visual literacy or culture, only one example being Shirato and Webb.) It is reasonable to think about why there is so much interest in food in this moment. Food has become folded into celebrity culture, but, naturally, obviously, food is about our security and survival, physically and emotionally. Given that our planet is under threat from global warming which is also driving climate change, and we are facing peak oil, and alternative forms of energy are still not taken seriously in a widespread manner, then food production is under threat. Food supply and production are also linked to the growing gap between poverty and wealth, and the movement of whole populations: food is about being at home. Creativity is associated with mastery of a discipline, openness to new experiences, and persistence and courage, among other things. We read, write, photograph, and design to argue and critique, to use the imagination, to shape and transform, to transmit ideas, to celebrate living and to live more fully.References Allen, Max. The Future Makers: Australian Wines for the 21st Century. Melbourne: Hardie Grant, 2010. Barratt, Virginia. “verbiage very thinly sliced and plated up real nice.” Assignment, ENG10022 Writing from the Edge. Lismore: Southern Cross U, 2009. [lower case in the title is the author's proclivity, and subsequently published in Carson and Dettori. Eds. Banquet: A Feast of New Writing and Arts by Queer Women]Costello, Patricia. Personal conversation. 31 May 2012. Curti, Lidia. Female Stories, Female Bodies: Narrative, Identity and Representation. UK: Macmillan, 1998.Derrida, Jacques. "Fifty-Two Aphorisms for a Foreword." Deconstruction: Omnibus Volume. Eds. Andreas Apadakis, Catherine Cook, and Andrew Benjamin. New York: Rizzoli, 1989.Halliday, James. “An Artist’s Spirit.” The Weekend Australian: The Weekend Australian Magazine 13-14 Feb. (2010): 31.Jolley, Elizabeth. Central Mischief. Ringwood: Viking/Penguin 1992. Lamont, Kate. Wine and Food. Perth: U of Western Australia P, 2009. Milan, Lyndey, and Corney, Colin. Balance: Matching Food and Wine: What Works and Why. South Melbourne: Lothian, 2005. Moran, Sean. Let It Simmer. Camberwell: Lantern/Penguin, 2006. Ostmann, Barbara Gibbs, and Jane L. Baker. The Recipe Writer's Handbook. Canada: John Wiley, 2001.Powell, Greg Duncan. Rump and a Rough Red. Millers Point: Murdoch, 2010. Shirato, Tony, and Jen Webb. Reading the Visual. Crows Nest: Allen & Unwin, 2004.

As a specialist in culture and communication studies, teaching in a school of business, I realised that the notion of interdisciplinarity is usually explored in the comfort of one's own discipline. Meanwhile, the practice of interdisciplinarity is something else. The very notion of disciplinarity implies a regime of discursive practices, but in the zone between disciplines, there is often no adequate language. This piece of writing is a brief analysis of an example of the language of business studies when business studies thinks about culture. It looks at how business studies approaches cultural difference in context of intercultural contact. Geert Hofstede's Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind (1991) This article is a brief and very selective critique of Geert Hofstede's notion of culture in Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind. Hofstede has been publishing his work on cross-cultural management since the 1960s. His work is routinely used in reference to cross/multi/intercultural issues in business studies (a term I use to include commerce, finance, management, and marketing). Before I begin, I must insist that Hofstede's Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind is a very useful text for business studies students, as it introduces them to useful concepts in relation to culture, like culture shock, acculturation (not enculturation -- I suppose managers are repatriated before that happens), and training for successful cross-cultural communication. It is worth including here a brief note on the subtitle of Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind. This "software of the mind" is clearly analogous to computer programming. However, Hofstede disavows the analogy, which is central to his thesis, saying that people are not programmed the way computers are. So they are, but not really. Hofstede claims that in order to learn something different, one "must unlearn ... (the) ... patterns of thinking, feeling, and potential acting which were learned throughout (one's) lifetime". And it is this thinking/feeling/acting function he calls the "software of the mind" (4). So, is the body the hardware? Thinking and feeling are abstract and could, with a flight of fancy, be seen as "software". However, acting is visible, tangible, and often visceral. I am suggesting that "acting" either represents or is just about all we have as culture. Acting (in the fullest sense, including speech, gesture, manners, textual production, etc.) is not evidence of culture, it is culture. Also, computer technology, like every other technology, is part of culture, as evident in this journal. Culture I share Clifford Geertz's concept of culture as a semiotic one, where interpretation is a search for meaning, and where meaning lies in social relations. Geertz writes that to claim that culture consists in brute patterns of behaviour in some identifiable community is to reduce it (the community and the notion of culture). Human behaviour is symbolic action. Culture is not just patterned conduct, a frame of mind which points to some sort of ontological status. Culture is public, social, relational, and contextual. To quote Geertz: "culture is not a power, something to which social events, behaviours, institutions, or processes can be causally attributed; it is a context" (14). Culture is not an ontological essence or set of behaviours. Culture is made up of webs of relationships. That Hofstede locates culture in the mind is probably the most problematic aspect of his writing. Culture is difficult for any discipline to describe because different disciplines have their own view of social reality. They operate in their own paradigms. Hofstede uses a behaviourist psychological approach to culture, which looks at what he calls national character and typical behaviours. Even though Hofstede is aware of being, as an observer of human behaviour, an integral part of his object of analysis (other cultures), he nevertheless continuously equates the observed behaviour to particular kinds of national thinking and feeling where national is often collapsed into cultural. Hofstede uses an empirical behaviourist paradigm which measures certain behaviours, as if the observer is outside the cultural significance attributed to behaviours, and attributes them to culture. Hofstede's Notion of Culture Hofstede's work is based on quantitative data gathered from questionnaires administered to IBM corporation employees in various countries. He looked at 72 national subsidiaries, 38 occupations, 20 languages, and at two points in time (1968 and 1972), and continued his commentary on that data into the 1990s. He claims that because the entire sample has a common corporate culture, the only thing that can account for systematic and consistent differences between national groups within a homogeneous multinational organisation is nationality itself. It is as if corporate culture is outside, has nothing to do with, national culture (itself a complex and dynamic concept). Hofstede's work does not account for the fact that IBM is an American multinational corporation and, as such, whatever attributes are used to measure cultural difference, those found in American corporate culture will set the benchmark for whatever other cultures are measured. This view is supported in business studies in general where American management practices are seen as universal and normal, even when they are described as 'Western'. The areas Hofstede's IBM survey looked at are: 1. Social inequality, including the relationship with authority (also described as power distance); 2. The relationship between the individual and the group (also described as individualism versus collectivism); 3. Concepts of masculinity and femininity: the social implications of having been born as a boy or a girl (also described as masculinity versus femininity); 4. Ways of dealing with uncertainty, relating to the control of aggression and the expression of emotions (also described as uncertainty avoidance). These concepts are in themselves culturally specific and have become structurally embedded in organisational theory. Hofstede writes that these four dimensions of culture are aspects of culture that can be measured relative to other cultures. What these four dimensions actually do is not to combine to give us a four-dimensional (complex?) appreciation of culture. Rather, they map onto each other and reinforce a politically conservative, Eurocentric view of culture. Hofstede does admit to having had "a 'Western' way of thinking", but he inevitably goes back to "the mind" as a place or goal. He refers to a questionnaire composted by "Eastern', in this case Chinese minds ... [which] ... are programmed according to their own particular cultural framework" (171). So there is this constant reference to culturally programmed minds that determine certain behaviours. In his justification of using typologies to categorise people and their behaviour (minds?) Hofstede also admits that most people / cultures are hybrids. And he admits that rules are made arbitrarily in order to classify people / cultures (minds?). However, he insists that the statistical clusters he ends up with are an empirical typology. Such a reduction of "culture" to this kind of radical realism is absolutely anatomical and enumerative. And, the more Hofstede is quoted as an authority on doing business across cultures, the more truth value his work accrues. The sort of language Hofstede uses to describe culture attributes intrinsic meanings and, as a result, points to difference rather than diversity. Languages of difference are based on binaristic notions of masculine/feminine, East/West, active/passive, collective/individual, and so on. In this opposition of activity and passivity, the East (feminine, collectivist) is the weaker partner of the West (masculine, individualist). There is a nexus of knowledge and power that constructs cultural difference along such binaristic lines. While a language of diversity take multiplicity as a starting point, or the norm, Hofstede's hegemonic and instrumentalist language of difference sees multiplicity as problematic. This problem is flagged at the very start of Cultures and Organizations. 12 Angry Men: Hofstede Interprets Culture and Ignores Gender In the opening page of Cultures and Organizations there is a brief passage from Reginald Rose's play 12 Angry Men (1955). (For a good review of the film see http://www.film.u- net.com/Movies/Reviews/Twelve_Angry.html. The film was recently remade.) Hofstede uses it as an example of how twelve different people with different cultural backgrounds "think, feel and act differently". The passage describes a confrontation between what Hofstede refers as "a garage owner" and "a European-born, probably Austrian, watchmaker". Such a comparison flags, right from the start, a particular way of categorising and distinguishing between two people, in terms of visible and audible signs and symbols. Both parties are described in terms of their occupation. But then the added qualification of one of the parties as being "European-born, probably Austrian" clearly indicates that the unqualified party places him in the broad category "American". In other words, the garage owner's apparently neutral ethnicity implies a normative "American", against which all markers of cultural difference are measured. Hofstede is aware of this problem. He writes that "cultural relativism does not imply normlessness for oneself, nor for one's society" (7). However, he still uses the syntax of binaristic classification which repeats and perpetuates the very problems he is apparently addressing. One of the main factors that makes 12 Angry Men such a powerful drama is that each man carries / inscribes different aspects of American culture. And American culture is idealised in the justice system, where rationality and consensus overcomes prejudice and social pressure. Each man has a unique make-up, which includes class, occupation, ethnicity, personality, intelligence, style and experience. But 12 Angry Men is also an interesting exploration of masculinity. Because Hofstede has included a category of "masculine/feminine" in his study of national culture, it is an interesting oversight that he does not comment on this powerful element of the drama. People identify along various lines, in terms of ethnicities, languages, histories, sexuality, politics and nationalism. Most people do have multiple and varied aspects to their identity. However, Hofstede sees multiple lines of identification as causing "conflicting mental programs". Hofstede claims that identification on the gender level of his hierarchy is determined "according to whether a person was born as a girl or as a boy" (10). Hofstede misses the crucial point that whilst whether one is born female or male determines one's sex, whether one is enculturated as and identifies as feminine or masculine indicates one's gender. Sex and gender are not the same thing. Sex is biological (natural) and gender is ideological (socially constructed and naturalised). This sort of blindness to the ideological component of identity is a fundamental flaw in Hofstede's thesis. Hofstede takes ideological constructions as given, as natural. For example, in endnote 1 of Chapter 4, "He, she, and (s)he", he writes "My choice of the terms (soft feminine and hard masculine) is based on what is in virtually all societies, not on what anybody thinks should be (107, his italics). He reinforces the notion of gendered essences, or essences which constitute national identity. Indeed, the world is not made up of entities or essences that are masculine or feminine, Western or Eastern, active or passive. And the question is not so much about empirical accuracy along such lines, but rather what are the effects of always reinscribing cultures as Western or Eastern, masculine or feminine, collectivist or individualist. In an era of globalism and mass, interconnected communication, identities are multiple, and terms like East and West, masculine and feminine, active and passive, should be used as undecidable codes that, at the most, flag fragments of histories and ideologies. Identity East and West are concepts that did not come out of a political or cultural vacuum. They are categories, or concepts, that originated and flourished with European expansionism from the 17th century. They underwrote imperialism and colonisation. They are not inert labels that merely point to something "out there". East and West, like masculine and feminine or any other binary pair, indicate an imaginary relationship that prioritises one of the pair over the other. People and cultures cannot be separated into static Western and Eastern essences. Culture itself is always diverse and dynamic. It is marked by migration, diaspora, and exile, not to mention historical change. There are no "original" cultures. The sort of discourse Hofstede uses to describe cultures is based on an ontological and epistemological distinction made between East and West. Culture is not something invisible or intangible. Culture is not something obscure that is in the mind (whatever or wherever that is) which manifests itself in peculiar behaviours. Culture is what and how we communicate, whether that takes the form of speech, gestures, novels, plays, architecture, style, or art. And, as such, communication includes the objects we produce and exchange and the symbols to which we give meaning. So, when Hofstede writes that the Austrian watchmaker acts the way he does because he cannot behave otherwise. After many years in his new home country, he still behaves the way he was raised. He carries within himself an indelible pattern of behaviour he is attributing a whole range of qualities which are frequently given by dominant cultures to their cultural "others" (1). Hofstede attributes politeness, tradition, and, above all, stasis, to the European-Austrian watchmaker. The phrase "after many years in his new home country" is contradictory. If so many years have passed, why is "home" still "new"? And, indeed, the watchmaker might still behave the way he was raised, but it would be safe to assume that the garage owner also behaves the way he was raised. One of the main points made in 12 Angry Men is that twelve American men are all very different to each other in terms of values and behaviour. All this is represented in the dialogue and behaviour of twelve men in a closed room. If we are concerned with different kinds of social behaviour, and we are not concerned with pathological behaviour, then how can we know what anyone carries within themselves? Why do we want to know what anyone carries within themselves? From a cultural studies perspective, the last question is political. However, from a business studies perspective, that question is naïve. The radical economic rationalist would want to know as much as possible about cultural differences so that we can better target consumer groups and be more successful in cross-cultural negotiations. In colonial days, foreigners often wielded absolute power in other societies and they could impose their rules on it [sic]. In these postcolonial days, foreigners who want to change something in another society will have to negotiate their interventions. (7) Those who wielded absolute power in the colonies were the non-indigenous colonisers. It was precisely the self-legitimating step of making a place a colony that ensured an ongoing presence of the colonising power. The impetus behind learning about the Other in the colonial times was a combination of spiritual salvation (as in the "mission civilisatrice") and economic exploitation (colonies were seen as resources for the benefit of the European and later American centres). And now, the impetus behind learning about cultural difference is that "negotiation is more likely to succeed when the parties concerned understand the reasons for the differences in viewpoints" (7). Culture as Commerce What, in fact, happens, is that business studies simultaneously wants to "do" components of cross-cultural studies, as it is clearly profitable, while shunning the theoretical discipline of cultural studies. A fundamental flaw in a business studies perspective, which is based on Hofstede's work, is a blindness to the ideological and historical component of identity. Business studies has picked up just enough orientalism, feminism, marxism, deconstruction and postcolonialism to thinly disavow any complicity with dominant (and dominating) discourses, while getting on with business-as-usual. Multiculturalism and gender are seen as modern categories to which one must pay lip service, only to be able to get on with business-as-usual. Negotiation, compromise and consensus are desired not for the sake of success in civil processes, but for the material value of global market presence, acceptance and share. However, civil process and commercial interests are not easily separable. To refer to a cultural economy is not just to use a metaphor. The materiality of business, in the various forms of commercial transactions, is itself part of one's culture. That is, culture is the production, consumption and circulation of objects (including less easily definable objects, like performance, language, style and manners). Also, culture is produced and consumed socially (in the realm of the civil) and circulates through official and unofficial social and commercial mechanisms. Culture is a material and social phenomenon. It's not something hidden from view that only reveals itself in behaviours. Hofstede rightly asserts that culture is learned and not inherited. Human nature is inherited. However, it is very difficult to determine exactly what human nature is. Most of what we consider to be human nature turns out to be, upon close inspection, ideological, naturalised. Hofstede writes that what one does with one's human nature is "modified by culture" (5). I would argue that whatever one does is cultural. And this includes taking part in commercial transactions. Even though commercial transactions (including the buying and selling of services) are material, they are also highly ritualistic and highly symbolic, involving complex forms of communication (verbal and nonverbal language). Culture as Mental Programming Hofstede's insistent ontological reference to 'the sources of one's mental programs' is problematic for many reasons. There is the constant ontological as well as epistemological distinction being made between cultures, as if there is a static core to each culture and that we can identify it, know what it is, and deal with it. It is as if culture itself is a knowable essence. Even though Hofstede pays lip service to culture as a social phenomenon, saying that "the sources of one's mental programs lie within the social environments in which one grew up and collected one's life experiences" (4), and that past theories of race have been largely responsible for massive genocides, he nevertheless implies a kind of biologism simply by turning the mind (a radical abstraction) into something as crude as computer software, where data can be stored, erased or reconfigured. In explaining how culture is socially constructed and not biologically determined, Hofstede says that one's mental programming starts with the family and goes on through the neighbourhood, school, social groups, the work place, and the community. He says that "mental programs vary as much as the social environments in which they were acquired", which is nothing whatsoever like computer software (4-5). But he carries on to claim that "a customary term for such mental software is culture" (4, my italics). Before the large-scale changes which took place in the second half of the twentieth century in disciplines like anthropology, history, linguistics, and psychology, culture was seen to be a recognisable, determined, contained, consistent way of living which had deep psychic roots. Today, any link between mental processes and culture (formerly referred to as "race") cannot be sustained. We must be cautious against presuming to understand the relationship between mental process and social life and also against concluding that the content of the mind in each racial (or, if you like, ethnic or cultural) group is of a peculiar kind, because it is this kind of reductionism that feeds stereotypes. And it is the accumulation of knowledge about cultural types that implies power over the very types that are thus created. Conclusion A genuinely interdisciplinary approach to communication, commerce and culture would make business studies more theoretical and more challenging. And it would make cultural studies take commerce more seriously, beyond a mere celebration of shopping. This article has attempted to reveal some of the cracks in how business studies accounts for cultural diversity in an age of global commercial ambitions. It has also looked at how Hofstede's writings, as exemplary of the business studies perspective, papers over those cracks with a very thin layer of pluralist cultural relativism. This article is an invitation to open up a critical dialogue which dares to go beyond disciplinary traditionalisms in order to examine how meaning, communication, culture, language and commerce are embedded in each other. References Carothers, J.C. Mind of Man in Africa. London: Tom Stacey, 1972. Degabriele, Maria. Postorientalism: Orientalism since "Orientalism". Ph.D. Thesis. Perth: Murdoch University, 1997. Geertz, Clifford. The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays. New York: Basic Books, 1973. Hofstede, Geert. Cultures and Organisations: Software of the Mind. Sydney: McGraw-Hill, 1991. Moore, Charles A., ed. The Japanese Mind: Essentials of Japanese Philosophy and Culture. Honolulu: East-West Centre, U of Hawaii, 1967. Patai, Raphael. The Arab Mind. New York: Scribner, 1983. Toffler, Alvin. Future Shock: A Study of Mass Bewildernment in the Face of Accelerating Change. Sydney: Bodley Head, 1970. 12 Angry Men. Dir. Sidney Lumet. Orion-Nova, USA. 1957. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Maria Degabriele. "Business as Usual: How Business Studies Thinks Culture." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3.2 (2000). [your date of access] Chicago style: Maria Degabriele, "Business as Usual: How Business Studies Thinks Culture," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3, no. 2 (2000), ([your date of access]). APA style: Maria Degabriele. (2000) Business as usual: how business studies thinks culture. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3(2). ([your date of access]).

IntroductionCirque du Soleil, the largest live entertainment company in the world, has eight standing shows in Las Vegas alone, KÀ, Love, Mystère, Zumanity, Believe, Michael Jackson ONE, Zarkana and O. Close to 150 million spectators have seen Cirque du Soleil shows since the company’s beginnings in 1984 and it is estimated that over 15 million spectators will see a Cirque du Soleil show in 2014 (Cirque du Soleil). The Cirque du Soleil concept of circus as a form of theatre, with simple, often archetypal, narrative arcs conveyed without words, virtuoso physicality with the circus artists presented as characters in a fictional world, cutting-edge lighting and visuals, extraordinary innovative staging, and the uptake of new technology for special effects can all be linked back to an early form of circus which is sometimes termed illegitimate circus. In the late 18th century and early 19th century, in the age of Romanticism, only two theatres in London, Covent Garden and Drury Lane, plus the summer theatre in the Haymarket, had royal patents allowing them to produce plays or text-based productions, and these were considered legitimate theatres. (These theatres retained this monopoly until the Theatre Regulation Act of 1843; Saxon 301.) Other circuses and theatres such as Astley’s Amphitheatre, which were precluded from performing text-based works by the terms of their licenses, have been termed illegitimate (Moody 1). Perversely, the effect of licensing venues in this way, instead of having the desired effect of enshrining some particular forms of expression and “casting all others beyond the cultural pale,” served instead to help to cultivate a different kind of theatrical landscape, “a theatrical terrain with a new, rich and varied dramatic ecology” (Reed 255). A fundamental change to the theatrical culture of London took place, and pivotal to “that transformation was the emergence of an illegitimate theatrical culture” (Moody 1) with circus at its heart. An innovative and different form of performance, a theatre of the body, featuring spectacle and athleticism emerged, with “a sensuous, spectacular aesthetic largely wordless except for the lyrics of songs” (Bratton 117).This writing sets out to explore some of the strong parallels between the aesthetic that emerged in this early illegitimate circus and the aesthetic of the Montreal-based, multi-billion dollar entertainment empire of Cirque du Soleil. Although it is not fighting against legal restrictions and can in no way be considered illegitimate, the circus of Cirque du Soleil can be seen to be the descendant of the early circus entrepreneurs and their illegitimate aesthetic which arose out of the desire to find ways to continue to attract audiences to their shows in spite of the restrictions of the licenses granted to them. BackgroundCircus has served as an inspiration for many innovatory theatre productions including Peter Brook’s Midsummer Night’s Dream (1970) and Tom Stoppard’s Jumpers (1972) as well as the earlier experiments of Meyerhold, Eisenstein, Mayakovsky and other Soviet directors of the 1920’s (Saxon 299). A. H. Saxon points out, however, that the relationship between circus and theatre is a long-standing one that begins in the late 18th century and the early 19th century, when circus itself was theatre (Saxon 299).Modern circus was founded in London in 1768 by an ex-cavalryman and his wife, Philip and Patty Astley, and consisted of spectacular stunt horse riding taking place in a ring, with acts from traditional fairs such as juggling, acrobatics, clowning and wire-walking inserted to cover the changeovers between riding acts. From the very first shows entry was by paid ticket only and the early history of circus was driven by innovative, risk-taking entrepreneurs such as Philip Astley, who indeed built so many new amphitheatres for his productions that he became known as Amphi-Philip (Jando). After years of legal tussles with the authorities concerning the legal status of this new entertainment, a limited license was finally granted in 1783 for Astley’s Amphitheatre. This license precluded the performing of plays, anything text-based, or anything which had a script that resembled a play. Instead the annual license granted allowed only for “public dancing and music” and “other public entertainments of like kind” (St. Leon 9).Corporeal Dramaturgy and TextIn the face of the ban on scripted text, illegitimate circus turned to the human body and privileged it as a means of dramatic expression. A resultant dramaturgy focusing on the expressive capabilities of the performers’ bodies emerged. “The primacy of rhetoric and the spoken word in legitimate drama gave way […] to a corporeal dramaturgy which privileged the galvanic, affective capacity of the human body as a vehicle of dramatic expression” (Moody 83). Moody proposes that the “iconography of illegitimacy participated in a broader cultural and scientific transformation in which the human body began to be understood as an eloquent compendium of visible signs” (83). Even though the company has the use of text and dramatic dialogue freely available to it, Cirque du Soleil, shares this investment in the bodies of the performers and their “galvanic, affective capacity” (83) to communicate with the audience directly without the use of a scripted text, and this remains a constant between the two forms of circus. Robert Lepage, the director of two Cirque du Soleil shows, KÀ (2004) and more recently Totem (2010), speaking about KÀ in 2004, said, “We wanted it to be an epic story told not with the use of words, but with the universal language of body movement” (Lepage cited in Fink).In accordance with David Graver’s system of classifying performers’ bodies, Cirque du Soleil’s productions most usually present performers’ ‘character bodies’ in which the performers are understood by spectators to be playing fictional roles or characters (Hurley n/p) and this was also the case with illegitimate circus which right from its very beginnings presented its performers within narratives in which the performers are understood to be playing characters. In Cirque du Soleil’s shows, as with illegitimate circus, this presentation of the performers’ character bodies is interspersed with acts “that emphasize the extraordinary training and physical skill of the performers, that is which draw attention to the ‘performer body’ but always within the context of an overall narrative” (Fricker n.p.).Insertion of Vital TextAfter audience feedback, text was eventually added into KÀ (2004) in the form of a pre-recorded prologue inserted to enable people to follow the narrative arc, and in the show Wintuk (2007) there are tales that are sung by Jim Comcoran (Leroux 126). Interestingly early illegitimate circus creators, in their efforts to circumvent the ban on using dramatic dialogue, often inserted text into their performances in similar ways to the methods Cirque du Soleil chose for KÀ and Wintuk. Illegitimate circus included dramatic recitatives accompanied by music to facilitate the following of the storyline (Moody 28) in the same way that Cirque du Soleil inserted a pre-recorded prologue to KÀ to enable audience members to understand the narrative. Performers in illegitimate circus often conveyed essential information to the audience as lyrics of songs (Bratton 117) in the same way that Jim Comcoran does in Wintuk. Dramaturgical StructuresAstley from his very first circus show in 1768 began to set his equestrian stunts within a narrative. Billy Button’s Ride to Brentford (1768), showed a tailor, a novice rider, mounting backwards, losing his belongings and being thrown off the horse when it bucks. The act ends with the tailor being chased around the ring by his horse (Schlicke 161). Early circus innovators, searching for dramaturgy for their shows drew on contemporary warfare, creating vivid physical enactments of contemporary battles. They also created a new dramatic form known as Hippodramas (literally ‘horse dramas’ from hippos the Attic Greek for Horse), a hybridization of melodrama and circus featuring the trick riding skills of the early circus pioneers. The narrative arcs chosen were often archetypal or sourced from well-known contemporary books or poems. As Moody writes, at the heart of many of these shows “lay an archetypal narrative of the villainous usurper finally defeated” (Moody 30).One of the first hippodramas, The Blood Red Knight, opened at Astley’s Amphitheatre in 1810.Presented in dumbshow, and interspersed with grand chivalric processions, the show featured Alphonso’s rescue of his wife Isabella from her imprisonment and forced marriage to the evil knight Sir Rowland and concluded with the spectacular, fiery destruction of the castle and Sir Rowland’s death. (Moody 69)Another later hippodrama, The Spectre Monarch and his Phantom Steed, or the Genii Horseman of the Air (1830) was set in China where the rightful prince was ousted by a Tartar usurper who entered into a pact with the Spectre Monarch and received,a magic ring, by aid of which his unlawful desires were instantly gratified. Virtue, predictably won out in the end, and the discomforted villain, in a final settling of accounts with his dread master was borne off through the air in a car of fire pursued by Daemon Horsemen above THE GREAT WALL OF CHINA. (Saxon 303)Karen Fricker writes of early Cirque du Soleil shows that “while plot is doubtless too strong a word, each of Cirque’s recent shows has a distinct concept or theme, that is urbanity for Saltimbanco; nomadism in Varekai (2002) and humanity’s clownish spirit for Corteo (2005), and tend to follow the same very basic storyline, which is not narrated in words but suggested by the staging that connects the individual acts” (Fricker n/p). Leroux describes the early Cirque du Soleil shows as following a “proverbial and well-worn ‘collective transformation trope’” (Leroux 122) whilst Peta Tait points out that the narrative arc of Cirque du Soleil “ might be summarized as an innocent protagonist, often female, helped by an older identity, seemingly male, to face a challenging journey or search for identity; more generally, old versus young” (Tait 128). However Leroux discerns an increasing interest in narrative devices such as action and plot in Cirque du Soleil’s Las Vegas productions (Leroux 122). Fricker points out that “with KÀ, what Cirque sought – and indeed found in Lepage’s staging – was to push this storytelling tendency further into full-fledged plot and character” (Fricker n/p). Telling a story without words, apart from the inserted prologue, means that the narrative arc of Kà is, however, very simple. A young prince and princess, twins in a mythical Far Eastern kingdom, are separated when a ceremonial occasion is interrupted by an attack by a tribe of enemy warriors. A variety of adventures follow, most involving perilous escapes from bad guys with flaming arrows and fierce-looking body tattoos. After many trials, a happy reunion arrives. (Isherwood)This increasing emphasis on developing a plot and a narrative arc positions Cirque as moving closer in dramaturgical aesthetic to illegitimate circus.Visual TechnologiesTo increase the visual excitement of its shows and compensate for the absence of spoken dialogue, illegitimate circus in the late 18th and early 19th century drew on contemporaneous and emerging visual technologies. Some of the new visual technologies that Astley’s used have been termed pre-cinematic, including the panorama (or diorama as it is sometimes called) and “the phantasmagoria and other visual machines… [which] expanded the means through which an audience could be addressed” (O’Quinn, Governance 312). The panorama or diorama ran in the same way that a film runs in an analogue camera, rolling between vertical rollers on either side of the stage. In Astley’s production The Siege and Storming of Seringapatam (1800) he used another effect almost equivalent to a modern day camera zoom-in by showing scenic back drops which, as they moved through time, progressively moved geographically closer to the battle. This meant that “the increasing enlargement of scale-each successive scene has a smaller geographic space-has a telescopic event. Although the size of the performance space remains constant, the spatial parameters of the spectacle become increasingly magnified” (O’Quinn, Governance 345). In KÀ, Robert Lepage experiments with “cinematographic stage storytelling on a very grand scale” (Fricker n.p.). A KÀ press release (2005) from Cirque du Soleil describes the show “as a cinematic journey of aerial adventure” (Cirque du Soleil). Cirque du Soleil worked with ground-breaking visual technologies in KÀ, developing an interactive projected set. This involves the performers controlling what happens to the projected environment in real time, with the projected scenery responding to their movements. The performers’ movements are tracked by an infra-red sensitive camera above the stage, and by computer software written by Interactive Production Designer Olger Förterer. “In essence, what we have is an intelligent set,” says Förterer. “And everything the audience sees is created by the computer” (Cirque du Soleil).Contemporary Technology Cutting edge technologies, many of which came directly from contemporaneous warfare, were introduced into the illegitimate circus performance space by Astley and his competitors. These included explosions using redfire, a new military explosive that combined “strontia, shellac and chlorate of potash, [which] produced […] spectacular flame effects” (Moody 28). Redfire was used for ‘blow-ups,’ the spectacular explosions often occurring at the end of the performance when the villain’s castle or hideout was destroyed. Cirque du Soleil is also drawing on contemporary military technology for performance projects. Sparked: A Live interaction between Humans and Quadcopters (2014) is a recent short film released by Cirque du Soleil, which features the theatrical use of drones. The new collaboration between Cirque du Soleil, ETH Zurich and Verity Studios uses 10 quadcopters disguised as animated lampshades which take to the air, “carrying out the kinds of complex synchronized dance manoeuvres we usually see from the circus' famed acrobats” (Huffington Post). This shows, as with early illegitimate circus, the quick theatrical uptake of contemporary technology originally developed for use in warfare.Innovative StagingArrighi writes that the performance space that Astley developed was a “completely new theatrical configuration that had not been seen in Western culture before… [and] included a circular ring (primarily for equestrian performance) and a raised theatre stage (for pantomime and burletta)” (177) joined together by ramps that were large enough and strong enough to allow horses to be ridden over them during performances. The stage at Astley’s Amphitheatre was said to be the largest in Europe measuring over 130 feet across. A proscenium arch was installed in 1818 which could be adjusted in full view of the audience with the stage opening changing anywhere in size from forty to sixty feet (Saxon 300). The staging evolved so that it had the capacity to be multi-level, involving “immense [moveable] platforms or floors, rising above each other, and extending the whole width of the stage” (Meisel 214). The ability to transform the stage by the use of draped and masked platforms which could be moved mechanically, proved central to the creation of the “new hybrid genre of swashbuckling melodramas on horseback, or ‘hippodramas’” (Kwint, Leisure 46). Foot soldiers and mounted cavalry would fight their way across the elaborate sets and the production would culminate with a big finale that usually featured a burning castle (Kwint, Legitimization 95). Cirque du Soleil’s investment in high-tech staging can be clearly seen in KÀ. Mark Swed writes that KÀ is, “the most lavish production in the history of Western theatre. It is surely the most technologically advanced” (Swed). With a production budget of $165 million (Swed), theatre designer Michael Fisher has replaced the conventional stage floor with two huge moveable performance platforms and five smaller platforms that appear to float above a gigantic pit descending 51 feet below floor level. One of the larger platforms is a tatami floor that moves backwards and forwards, the other platform is described by the New York Times as being the most thrilling performer in the show.The most consistently thrilling performer, perhaps appropriately, isn't even human: It's the giant slab of machinery that serves as one of the two stages designed by Mark Fisher. Here Mr. Lepage's ability to use a single emblem or image for a variety of dramatic purposes is magnified to epic proportions. Rising and falling with amazing speed and ease, spinning and tilting to a full vertical position, this huge, hydraulically powered game board is a sandy beach in one segment, a sheer cliff wall in another and a battleground, viewed from above, for the evening's exuberantly cinematic climax. (Isherwood)In the climax a vertical battle is fought by aerialists fighting up and down the surface of the sand stone cliff with defeated fighters portrayed as tumbling down the surface of the cliff into the depths of the pit below. Cirque du Soleil’s production entitled O, which phonetically is the French word eau meaning water, is a collaboration with director Franco Dragone that has been running at Las Vegas’ Bellagio Hotel since 1998. O has grossed over a billion dollars since it opened in 1998 (Sylt and Reid). It is an aquatic circus or an aquadrama. In 1804, Charles Dibdin, one of Astley’s rivals, taking advantage of the nearby New River, “added to the accoutrements of the Sadler’s Wells Theatre a tank three feet deep, ninety feet long and as wide as twenty-four feet which could be filled with water from the New River” (Hays and Nickolopoulou 171) Sadler’s Wells presented aquadramas depicting many reconstructions of famous naval battles. One of the first of these was The Siege of Gibraltar (1804) that used “117 ships designed by the Woolwich Dockyard shipwrights and capable of firing their guns” (Hays and Nickolopoulou 5). To represent the drowning Spanish sailors saved by the British, “Dibdin used children, ‘who were seen swimming and affecting to struggle with the waves’”(5).O (1998) is the first Cirque production to be performed in a proscenium arch theatre, with the pool installed behind the proscenium arch. “To light the water in the pool, a majority of the front lighting comes from a subterranean light tunnel (at the same level as the pool) which has eleven 4" thick Plexiglas windows that open along the downstage perimeter of the pool” (Lampert-Greaux). Accompanied by a live orchestra, performers dive into the 53 x 90 foot pool from on high, they swim underwater lit by lights installed in the subterranean light tunnel and they also perform on perforated platforms that rise up out of the water and turn the pool into a solid stage floor. In many respects, Cirque du Soleil can be seen to be the inheritors of the spectacular illegitimate circus of the 18th and 19th Century. The inheritance can be seen in Cirque du Soleil’s entrepreneurial daring, the corporeal dramaturgy privileging the affective power of the body over the use of words, in the performers presented primarily as character bodies, and in the delivering of essential text either as a prologue or as lyrics to songs. It can also be seen in Cirque du Soleil’s innovative staging design, the uptake of military based technology and the experimentation with cutting edge visual effects. Although re-invigorating the tradition and creating spectacular shows that in many respects are entirely of the moment, Cirque du Soleil’s aesthetic roots can be clearly seen to draw deeply on the inheritance of illegitimate circus.ReferencesBratton, Jacky. “Romantic Melodrama.” The Cambridge Companion to British Theatre 1730-1830. Eds. Jane Moody and Daniel O'Quinn. Cambridge: Cambridge University, 2007. 115-27. Bratton, Jacky. “What Is a Play? Drama and the Victorian Circus in the Performing Century.” Nineteenth-Century Theatre’s History. Eds. Tracey C. Davis and Peter Holland. Hampshire, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. 250-62.Cavendish, Richard. “Death of Madame Tussaud.” History Today 50.4 (2000). 15 Aug. 2014 ‹http://www.historytoday.com/richard-cavendish/death-madame-tussaud›.Cirque du Soleil. 2014. 10 Sep. 2014 ‹http://www.cirquedusoleil.com/en/home/about-us/at-a-glance.aspx›.Davis, Janet M. The Circus Age: Culture and Society under the American Big Top. Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 2002. Hays, Michael, and Anastasia Nikolopoulou. Melodrama: The Cultural Emergence of a Genre. 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