An ethnobotanical study of traditional anti-inflammatory plants used by the Lohit community of Arunachal Pradesh, India

Aim of the study: Most people especially in rural areas depend on herbal medicines to treat many diseases including inflammation-related ailments such as rheumatism, muscle swelling, cut wound, accidental bone fracture, insect bites, pains and burn by fire and hot water. The objectives of this study were: to catalog ethno-medicinal plants of Lohit community, ecological status, indigenous folk medicinal uses, morphological parts used and to determine their reported pharmacological studies. Materials and methods: The ethnobotanical information on traditional medicinal plants exclusively used for management of inflammation-related ailments by the Khampti community of Arunachal Pradesh, India was based on first-hand field survey work through semi-structured interviews. Results and conclusion: A total of 34 species in 32 genera and 22 families were encountered during the field survey. Botanical families such as Asteraceae, Euphorbiaceae, Zingiberaceae and Lamiaceae were represented by the highest numbers of species reported in this study. Thirteen plant species, namely: Bombax ceiba, Canarium strictum, Chloranthus erectus, Xanthium indicum, Lycopodium clavatum, Coleus blumei, Batrachospermum atrum, Chlorella vulgaris, Marchantia palmata, Marchantia polymorpha, Eria pannea, Sterculia villosa and Alpinia galanga are reported for the first time for the treatment of inflammation-related diseases.

Animated Mise-en-scene and aesthetic harmony: An expansion of the traditional principles of animation to 3D computer animation

3D Computer Graphics (CG) has become the dominant medium for modern animated feature films. It is widely understood that traditional principles of animation developed in the 1930s at the Walt Disney Studio remain applicable to this new medium and heavily influence the range of aesthetic motion styles in contemporary animation. Via a frame-by-frame textual analysis of four animated feature films, this thesis tests and confirms the validity of the principles of animation and expands upon them by reinterpreting the Disney principle of appeal as aesthetic harmony, which delineates the way in which character posing and transitions between poses contribute to the animated motion styles that animators work in today.

Representations of the Natural World in Old English Poetry

Review of Representations of the Natural World in Old English Poetry, by Jennifer Neville (Cambridge UP, 1999).

The Protection of Traditional Knowledge Associated with Genetic Resources: The Role of Databases and Registers

"The Protection of Traditional Knowledge Associated with Genetic Resources: The Role of Databases and Registers" ABSTRACT Yovana Reyes Tagle The misappropriation of TK has sparked a search for national and international laws to govern the use of indigenous peoples knowledge and protection against its commercial exploitation. There is a widespread perception that biopiracy or illegal access to genetic resources and associated traditional knowledge (TK) continues despite national and regional efforts to address this concern. The purpose of this research is to address the question of how documentation of TK through databases and registers could protect TK, in light of indigenous peoples increasing demands to control their knowledge and benefit from its use. Throughout the international debate over the protection of TK, various options have been brought up and discussed. At its core, the discussion over the legal protection of TK comes down to these issues: 1) The doctrinal question: What is protection of TK? 2) The methodological question: How can protection of TK be achieved? 3) The legal question: What should be protected? And 4) The policy questions: Who has rights and how should they be implemented? What kind of rights should indigenous peoples have over their TK? What are the central concerns the TK databases want to solve? The acceptance of TK databases and registers may bring with it both opportunities and dangers. How can the rights of indigenous peoples over their documented knowledge be assured? Documentation of TK was envisaged as a means to protect TK, but there are concerns about how documented TK can be protected from misappropriation. The methodology used in this research seeks to contribute to the understanding of the protection of TK. The steps taken in this research attempt to describe and to explain a) what has been done to protect TK through databases and registers, b) how this protection is taking place, and c) why the establishment of TK databases can or cannot be useful for the protection of TK. The selected case studies (Peru and Venezuela) seek to illustrate the complexity and multidisciplinary nature of the establishment of TK databases, which entail not only legal but also political, socio-economic and cultural issues. The study offers some conclusions and recommendations that have emerged after reviewing the national experiences, international instruments, work of international organizations, and indigenous peoples perspectives. This thesis concludes that if TK is to be protected from disclosure and unauthorized use, confidential databases are required. Finally, the TK database strategy needs to be strengthened by the legal protection of the TK itself.

Words as Events : Cretan Mantinádes in Performance and Composition

Words as Events introduces the tradition of short, communicative rhyming couplets, the mantinádes, which are still sung and recited in a variety of performance situations on the island of Crete. The local focus on communicative economy and artistry is further examined in an in-depth analysis of the processes and ideals of composition. Short genres of oral poetry have been widely neglected in folklore research; however, their demand for structural and semantic coherence as well as their dialogic nature appeals to very different human needs from those of the longer poems. In contemporary Crete, poems also appear in written contexts, they are submitted to modern mass media, and people widely exchange them as text messages. By striving to understand the tradition during a period of change, this study analyzes the larger principles that ground the communication, self-expression and creativity in the genre. The aim of this research is thus twofold: to present this specific register of dialogic oral poetry as well as to create a theoretical approach sensitive to the creativity of such short registers. The study is based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Crete between the years 1997 2009. An important aspect of the methodology was to create long-term ties with a number of key-informants who composed mantinádes. The interdisciplinary theoretical and methodological basis for this analysis is in the contemporary Finnish and international research on oral poetry and on anthropological research on communicative speech genres. These theoretical insights are extended by addressing questions of spontaneity and individual agency. Since mantinádes are at the same time a model for composition and a reserve of poems in fixed form, the aesthetics and objectives of performance and composition are also plural. In a traditional singing event, the basic motivation for the singers is to provide a meaningful contribution to a selected theme, which is the shared topic of the poetic dialogue. Consequently, similar topics giving rise to poetic associations can be encountered during various moments of everyday life: the dialogic nature is embodied in the tradition to such degree that it also arises in the performances and composition of single poems and outside of any institutionalized performance arenas. Therefore, as this study discusses in detail, even the apparently non-contextualized poems recited between locals or occurring in the contemporary mass media arenas, are understood and evaluated as utterances that provide an individual perspective within a certain dialogue.

Traditional patterns and textures as values for meaningful automatization in music

This contribution focuses on the accelerated loss of traditional sound patterning in music, parallel to the exponential loss of linguistic and cultural variety in a world increasingly 'globalized' by market policies and economic liberalization, in which scientific or technical justification plays a crucial role. As a suggestion to an alternative trend, composers and music theorists are invited to explore the world of design and patterning by grammar rules from non-dominant cultures, and to make an effort to understand their contextual usage and its transformation, in order to appreciate their symbolism and aesthetic depth. Practical examples are provided.

Tibetan Written Images : A Study of Imagery in the Writings of Dhondup Gyal

Dhondup Gyal (Don grub rgyal, 1953 - 1985) was a Tibetan writer from Amdo (Qinghai, People's Republic of China). He wrote several prose works, poems, scholarly writings and other works which have been later on collected together into The Collected Works of Dhondup Gyal, in six volumes. He had a remarkable influence on the development of modern Tibetan literature in the 1980s. Examining his works, which are characterized by rich imagery, it is possible to notice a transition from traditional to modern ways of literary expression. Imagery is found in both the poems and prose works of Dhondup Gyal. Nature imagery is especially prominent and his writings contain images of flowers and plants, animals, water, wind and clouds, the heavenly bodies and other environmental elements. Also there are images of parts of the body and material and cultural images. To analyse the images, most of which are metaphors and similes, the use of the cognitive theory of metaphor provides a good framework for making comparisons with images in traditional Tibetan literature and also some images in Chinese, Indian and Western literary works. The analysis shows that the images have both traditional and innovative features. The source domains of images often appear similar to those found in traditional Tibetan literature and are slow to change. However, innovative shifts occur in the way they are mapped on their target domains, which may express new meanings and are usually secular in nature if compared to the religiosity which often characterizes traditional Tibetan literature. Dhondup Gyal's poems are written in a variety of styles, ranging from traditional types of verse compositions and poems in the ornate kāvya-style to modern free verse poetry. The powerful central images of his free verse poems and some other works can be viewed as structurally innovative and have been analysed with the help of the theory of conceptual blending. They are often ambiguous in their meaning, but can be interpreted to express ideas related to creativity, freedom and the need for change and development.

The Archaeometallurgical Implications of New Findings of Traditional Crafts of Making High Tin ‘Delta’ Bronze Mirrors and ‘Beta’ Bronze Vessels in Kerala State of South India

New metallurgical and ethnographic observations of the traditional manufacture of specular high-tin bronze mirrors in Kerala state of southern India are discussed, which is an exceptional example of a surviving craft practice of metal mirror-making in the world. The manufacturing process has been reconstructed from analytical investigations made by Srinivasan following a visit late in 1991 to a mirror making workshop and from her technical studies of equipment acquired by Glover in March 1992 from another group of mirror makers from Pathanamthita at an exhibition held at Crafts Museum, Delhi. Finished and unfinished mirror from two workshops were of a binary, copper-tin alloy of 33% tin which is close to the composition of pure delta phase, so that these mirrors are referred to here as ‘delta’ bronzes. For the first time, metallurgical and field observations were made by Srinivasan in 1991 of the manufacture of high-tin ‘beta’ bonze vessels from Palghat district, Kerala, i‥e of wrought and quenched 23% tin bronze. This has provided the first metallurgical record for a surviving craft of high-tin bronze bowl making which can be directly related to archaeological finds of high-tin bronze vessels from the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia. New analytical investigations are presented of high-tin beta bronzes from the Indian subcontinent which are some of the earliest reported worldwide. These coupled with the archaeometallurgical evidence suggests that these high-tin bronze techniques are part of a long, continuing, and probably indigenous tradition of the use of high-tin bronzes in the Indian subcontinent with finds reported even from Indus Valley sites. While the source of tin has been problematic, new evidence on bronze smelting slags and literary evidence suggests there may have been some sources of tin in South India.

SUSTAINABILITY IN TRADITIONAL HANDLOOMS

The handloom sector constitutes a distinct feature of the rich cultural heritage of India and plays a vital role in the economy and cultural identity of the country. It is an ancient industry and is source of livelihood for many villages in India. Its spread varies in style, practice and scale throughout the country - in certain regions it is has a proficient industry, while in others its establishment is localized, where it is a family-based activity. While, hand-woven fabrics are well-sought after both nationally and globally, weavers currently remain marginalized and often impoverished. The well-set power loom industry has further added to their woes. Given the progressive failure of centralized production and distribution ideologies, handlooms represent a decentralized distributed means of livelihood security, environmental consonance, employment generation, skill enhancement, cultural (diversity, identity and) integrity and sustainability. The fabrics and dyes used in the handloom industry are environment-friendly and often unique to a region (based on available skill and resources). The paper comprehensively evaluates and forecasts sustainability in the context of traditional handlooms in India. Results of the study and recommendations are presented in this paper.

La urna (1911) de Enrique Banchs : un cancionero argentino del siglo XX

Integran este número de la revista ponencias presentadas en Studia Hispanica Medievalia VIII : Actas de las X Jornadas Internacionales de Literatura Española Medieval, 2011, y de Homenaje al Quinto Centenario del Cancionero General de Hernando del Castillo.

De la lírica medieval a la moderna : tradicionalidad e individualidad en la poesía española

Integran este número de la revista ponencias presentadas en Studia Hispanica Medievalia VIII : Actas de las X Jornadas Internacionales de Literatura Española Medieval, 2011, y de Homenaje al Quinto Centenario del Cancionero General de Hernando del Castillo.