The Reception of Byzantium in European Culture since 1500

Studies on the reception of the classical tradition are an indispensable part of classical studies. Understanding the importance of ancient civilization means also studying how it was used subsequently. This kind of approach is still relatively rare in the field of Byzantine Studies. This volume, which is the result of the range of interests in (mostly) non-English-speaking research communities, takes an important step to filling this gap by investigating the place and dimensions of ‘Byzantium after Byzantium’.
This collection of essays uses the idea of ‘reception-theory’ and expands it to show how European societies after Byzantium have responded to both the reality, and the idea of Byzantine Civilisation. The authors discuss various forms of Byzantine influence in the post-Byzantine world from architecture to literature to music to the place of Byzantium in modern political debates (e.g. in Russia). The intentional focus of the present volume is on those aspects of Byzantine reception less well-known to English-reading audiences, which accounts for the inclusion of Bulgarian, Czech, Polish and Russian perspectives. As a result this book shows that although so-called 'Byzantinism' is a pan-European phenomenon, it is made manifest in local/national versions.
The volume brings together specialists from various countries, mainly Byzantinists, whose works focus not only on Byzantine Studies (that is history, literature and culture of the Byzantine Empire), but also on the influence of Byzantine culture on the world after the Fall of Constantinople.

Extracting Policy Positions from Political Texts Using words as Data

We present a new way of extracting policy positions from political texts that treats texts not as discourses to be understood and interpreted but rather, as data in the form of words. We compare this approach to previous methods of text analysis and use it to replicate published estimates of the policy positions of political parties in Britain and Ireland, on both economic and social policy dimensions. We “export” the method to a non-English-language environment, analyzing the policy positions of German parties, including the PDS as it entered the former West German party system. Finally, we extend its application beyond the analysis of party manifestos, to the estimation of political positions from legislative speeches. Our “language-blind” word scoring technique successfully replicates published policy estimates without the substantial costs of time and labor that these require. Furthermore, unlike in any previous method for extracting policy positions from political texts, we provide uncertainty measures for our estimates, allowing analysts to make informed judgments of the extent to which differences between two estimated policy positions can be viewed as significant or merely as products of measurement error.

'A Romanian Perspective on Brian Friel's Translations'

Based on the premise that the history of the representation in drama of the Ulster "Troubles" has been characterised by a move from direct to metaphorical engagement, this paper seeks to explore the signficance of Brian Friel's Translations as a "Troubles Drama" with reference to a production of the play I directed for the Hungarian Theater of Cluj in the Fall of 2001. Interpreting a play about language in a language other than the one in which it was originally written proved to have many implications for the rehearsal process and led me to experiment with the image theatre techniques of Augusto Boal. The nature of Cluj/Kolozsvar as a bi-lingual city added to the complexities of the process, as did my own status as an English-speaking director in a Hungarian-speaking environment. The extraordinary neautre of the wider geopolitical context at the time of the production proved to be the final ingredient in what became an exceptional empirical process of discovery. The discussion of the particular production is placed in the wider context of an exposition of a theory of "cultural gravity" as an alternative to "liminality" in helping to assess the cultural signficance of geopolitical boundaries.

Transcending cultural differences: the role of language in migrants' integration

This research seeks to contribute to current debates on migration by examining the role of language in the process of migrants’ integration. It will consider how migrant workers living in an area with little history of international immigration navigate their way within a new destination to cope with language difference. The paper is based on empirical research (interviews and focus groups) conducted in Northern Ireland, an English speaking region with a small proportion of Irish-English bilinguals (10.3 percent of population had some knowledge of Irish in the 2001 Census). Much of the research to date, while acknowledging the importance of culture and language for migrants’ positive integration, has only begun to unpack the way in which cultural difference such as language is dealt with at an individual, family or societal level. Several themes emerge from the research including the significance of social and civil structures and the role of individual agents as new culture is created through the celebration of difference.

N1, P2 and T-complex of the auditory brain event-related potentials to tones with varying rise times in adults with and without dyslexia

Dyslexia is a learning difficulty affecting the acquisition of fluent reading and spelling skills due to poor phonological processing. Underlying deficits in processing sound rise time have also been found in children and adults with dyslexia. However, the neural basis for these deficits is unknown. In the present study event-related potentials were used to index neural processing and examine the effect of rise time manipulation on the obligatory N1. T-complex and P2 responses in English speaking adults with and without dyslexia. The Tb wave of the T-complex showed differences between groups, with the amplitudes for Tb becoming less negative with increased rise time for the participants with dyslexia only. Frontocentral N1 and P2 did not show group effects. Enhanced Tb amplitude that is modulated by rise time could indicate altered neural networks at the lateral surface of the superior temporal gyrus in adults with dyslexia. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Streets for people, or why we should reuse buildings in the city centre

Cities are constantly changing, and city centres are the pinnacle of that change. In the last hundred years these changes have been dramatic, transforming city centres from a complex combination of uses into exclusively retail and leisure areas. Meanwhile, most residents of city centres fled to the suburbs, removing much of the livelihood of central areas. These transformations has been stronger in Northern Europe and especially in English speaking countries, where zoning policies were instrumental in urban development since the 1960s. This process along with the rise of shopping malls left many city centre streets lifeless, which in turn caused the dereliction and demolition of significant heritage areas and buildings. Belfast is no exception, where the broad process of suburbanization and zoning since the 1970s produced a city centre for either retail or dereliction, where much built heritage has been lost or is at risk of being lost.

A methodological review of the Short Form Health Survey 36 (SF-36) and its derivatives among breast cancer survivors

Purpose: A systematic review of the validity, reliability and sensitivity of the Short Form (SF) health survey measures among breast cancer survivors.
Methods: We searched a number of databases for peer-reviewed papers. The methodological quality of the papers was assessed using the COnsenus-based Standards for the selection of health Measurement INstruments (COSMIN).
Results: The review identified seven papers that assessed the psychometric properties of the SF-36 (n = 5), partial SF-36 (n = 1) and SF-12 (n = 1) among breast cancer survivors. Internal consistency scores for the SF measures ranged from acceptable to good across a range of language and ethnic sub-groups. The SF-36 demonstrated good convergent validity with respective subscales of the Functional Assessment of Cancer Treatment—General scale and two lymphedema-specific measures. Divergent validity between the SF-36 and Lymph-ICF was modest. The SF-36 demonstrated good factor structure in the total breast cancer survivor study samples. However, the factor structure appeared to differ between specific language and ethnic sub-groups. The SF-36 discriminated between survivors who reported or did not report symptoms on the Breast Cancer Prevention Trial Symptom Checklist and SF-36 physical sub-scales, but not mental sub-scales, discriminated between survivors with or without lymphedema. Methodological quality scores varied between and within papers.
Conclusion: Short Form measures appear to provide a reliable and valid indication of general health status among breast cancer survivors though the limited data suggests that particular caution is required when interpreting scores provided by non-English language groups. Further research is required to test the sensitivity or responsiveness of the measure.

Children’s essentialist reasoning about language and race

Across four studies, we directly compared children’s essentialist reasoning about the stability of race and language throughout an individual’s lifespan. Monolingual English-speaking children were presented with a series of images of children who were either White or Black; each face was paired with a voice clip in either English or French. Participants were asked which of two adults each target child would grow up to be – one who was a ‘match’ to the target child in race but not language, and the other a ‘match’ in language but not race. Nine- to 10-year-old European American children chose the race-match, rather than the language-match. In contrast, 5–6-year-old European American children in both urban, racially diverse, and rural, racially homogeneous environments chose the language-match, even though this necessarily meant that the target child would transform racial categories. Although surprising in light of adult reasoning, these young children demonstrated an intuition about the relative stability of an individual’s language compared to her racial group membership. Yet, 5–6-year-old African American children, similar to the older European American children, chose the race-match, suggesting that membership in a racial minority group may highlight children’s reasoning about race as a stable category. Theoretical implications for our understanding of children’s categorization of human kinds are discussed.

Multidimensional rehabilitation programmes for adult cancer survivors

Background: Multidimensional rehabilitation programmes (MDRPs) have developed in response to the growing number of people living with and surviving cancer. MDRPs comprise a physical component and a psychosocial component. Studies of the effectiveness of these programmes have not been reviewed and synthesised.

Objectives: To conduct a systematic review of studies examining the effectiveness of MDRPs in terms of maintaining or improving the physical and psychosocial well-being of adult cancer survivors.

Search methods: We conducted electronic searches in the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL), MEDLINE, EMBASE, CINAHL and PsychINFO up to February 2012.

Selection criteria: Selection criteria focused on randomised controlled trials (RCTs) of multidimensional interventions for adult cancer survivors. Interventions had to include a physical component and a psychosocial component and to have been carried out on two or more occasions following completion of primary cancer treatment. Outcomes had to be assessed using validated measures of physical health and psychosocial well-being. Non-English language papers were included.

Data collection and analysis: Pairs of review authors independently selected trials, rated their methodological quality and extracted relevant data. Although meta-analyses of primary and secondary endpoints were planned there was a high level of study heterogeneity and only one common outcome measure (SF-36) could be statistically synthesised. In addition, we conducted a narrative analysis of interventions, particularly in terms of inspecting and identifying intervention components, grouping or categorising interventions and examining potential common links and outcomes.

Main results: Twelve RCTs (comprising 1669 participants) met the eligibility criteria. We judged five studies to have a moderate risk of bias and assessed the remaining seven as having a high risk of bias. It was possible to include SF-36 physical health component scores from five studies in a meta-analysis. Participating in a MDRP was associated with an increase in SF-36 physical health component scores (mean difference (MD) 2.22, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.12 to 4.31, P = 0.04). The findings from the narrative analysis suggested that MDRPs with a single domain or outcome focus appeared to be more successful than programmes with multiple aims. In addition, programmes that comprised participants with different types of cancer compared to cancer site-specific programmes were more likely to show positive improvements in physical outcomes. The most effective mode of service delivery appeared to be face-to-face contact supplemented with at least one follow-up telephone call. There was no evidence to indicate that MDRPs which lasted longer than six months improved outcomes beyond the level attained at six months. In addition, there was no evidence to suggest that services were more effective if they were delivered by a particular type of health professional.

Authors' conclusions: There is some evidence to support the effectiveness of brief, focused MDRPs for cancer survivors. Rigorous and methodologically sound clinical trials that include an economic analysis are required.

Debating Darwin at the Cape

This paper focuses attention on the fortunes of Darwin's theory among the English-speaking community in Cape Colony during the latter part of the nineteenth century. The paper begins with a review of early encounters with Darwin dwelling particularly on the response of figures like Roderick Noble - professor and editor of the Cape Monthly Magazine, the geologist John Shaw, and Sir Henry Barkly, governor of the colony. Besides these more theoretical responses, Darwin's ideas were also mobilised in a range of scientific inquiries on such subjects as birds and butterflies. But most conspicuous was the use of evolutionary thought-forms in the work of the eminent philologist Wilhelm Bleek, cousin of Darwin's leading German apologist, Ernst Haeckel. The prevailing sense is of a liberal intelligentsia calmly interacting with a novel theory with all due deference. During the 1870s, an address by Langham Dale at the South African Public Library injected new energy into the Darwin discussion. Dale expressed disquiet over some of the anthropological implications of evolution as well as its apparent reductionism, and this stimulated a range of reactions. Several anonymous commentators responded but the most sustained evaluation of Dale's position emanated from the Queenstown physician and later politician, Sir William Bisset Berry. Then, in 1874, copious extracts from John Tyndall's infamous 'Belfast Address' were printed in the Cape Monthly and this added yet further impetus to the debate. Tyndall's seeming materialism bothered a number of readers, not least Hon William Porter, former attorney-general of Cape Colony. To figures like these the materialist extrapolations of radical Darwinians such as Haeckel were deeply disturbing, not just for religious reasons, but because they seemed to destabilise the moral and pedagogic progressivism that lay at the heart of their civilising credo. While reservations about Darwin's proposals were certainly audible, taken in the round Darwinian conversations among the English-speaking literati at the Cape were conducted with liberal sentiments, not least when evolutionary science approached questions of race. For Darwin's writings were seen to confirm a monogenetic account of the origin and unity of the human race, and could readily be called upon to justify the paternalistic ideology that governed colonial affairs.

Designing Bare Essentials: Aldi, Lidle and the architectures of cheapness

They’re cheap. They’re in every settlement of significance in Britain, Ireland and elsewhere. We all use them but perhaps do not always admit to it. Especially, if we are architects.
Over the past decades Aldi/Lidl low cost supermarkets have escaped from middle Europe to take over large tracts of the English speaking world remaking them according to a formula of mass-produced sheds, buff-coloured cobble-lock car parks, logos in primary colours, bare-shelves and eclectic special offers. Response within architectural discourse to this phenomenon has been largely one of indifference and such places remain, perhaps reiterating Pevsner’s controversial insights into the bicycle shed, on the peripheries of what we might term architecture. This paper seeks to explore the spatial complexities of the discount supermarket and in doing so open up a discussion on the architecture of cheapness. As a road-map, it takes former managing director Dieter Brandes’ treatise on the Aldi formula, Bare Essentials: the Aldi Way to Retailing, and investigates the strategies through which economic exigencies manifest themselves in a series of spatial tactics which involve building. Central to this is the idea of architecture as system rather than form and, in Aldi/Lidl’s case, the result of a spatial network of flows. To understand the architecture of the supermarket, then, it is necessary to measure the times and spaces of supply across the scales of intersection between global and local.
Evaluating the energy, economy and precision of such systems challenges the liminal position of the commercial, the placeless and especially the cheap within architectural discourse. As is well known, architectures of mass-production and prefabrication and their origins exercised modernist thinkers such as Sigfried Giedion and Walter Gropius in the early twentieth century and has undergone a resurgence in recent times. Meanwhile, the mapping of the hitherto overlooked forms and iconography of commerce in Learning from Las Vegas (1971) was extended by Rem Koolhaas et al into an investigation of the technologies, systems and precedents of retail in the Harvard Design School Guide to Shopping, thirty years later in 2001. While obviously always a criteria for building, to find writings on architecture which explicitly celebrate cheapness as a design virtue or, indeed, even iterate the word cheap is more difficult. Walter Gropius’ essay ‘How can we build cheaper, better, more attractive houses?’ (1927), however, situates the cheap within the discussions – articulated, amongst others, by Karl Teige and Bruno Taut – surrounding the minimal dwelling and the moral benefits of absence of the 1920s and 30s.
In our contemporary age of heightened consumption, it is perhaps fitting that an architecture of bare essentials is defined in retail rather than in housing, a commercial existenzminimum where the Miesian paradox of ‘less is more’ is resold as a paradigm of ‘more for less’ in the ubiquitous yet overlooked architectures of the discount supermarket.

Men’s depression and suicide literacy: A nationally representative Canadian survey

Background: Male suicide prevention strategies include diagnosis and effective management of men’s depression. Fundamental to suicide prevention efforts is public awareness, which in turn, is influenced by literacy levels about men’s depression and suicide.

Aim: To examine sex differences in mental health literacy with respect to men’s depression and suicide among a cohort of Canadian respondents.

Methods: 901 English-speaking Canadian men and women completed online survey questionnaires to evaluate mental health literacy levels using 10-item D-Lit and 8-item LOSS questionnaires, which assess factual knowledge concerning men’s depression and suicide. Statistical tests (chi-square, z-test) were used to identify significant differences between sex sub-groups at 95% confidence.

Results: Overall, respondents correctly identified 67% of questions measuring literacy levels about male depression. Respondents’ male suicide literacy was significantly poorer at 53.7%. Misperceptions were especially evident in terms of differentiating men’s depressive symptoms from other mental illnesses,
estimating prevalence and identifying factors linked to male suicide. Significant sex differences highlighted that females had higher literacy levels than men in regard to male depression.

Conclusions: Implementing gender sensitive and specific programs to target and advance literacy levels about men’s depression may be key to ultimately reducing depression and suicide among men in Canada.

Supporting an ethnic minority woman's choice for pain relief in labour: a reflection

Despite professional expectations for midwives to provide care to women that is founded in equality and recognises diversity (Nursing and Midwifery Council, 2015), women from ethnic minority populations consistently suggest that they are not heard (Briscoe and Lavender, 2009; Tobin et al, 2014). This article reflects upon a situation where a Portuguese woman with limited English speaking ability was denied access to epidural anaesthesia as the midwife felt that she could not give valid consent to the procedure without the presence of an interpreter. The midwife’s role within this situation will be reflected upon and implications for midwifery practice identified.