Journal articles on the topic 'Dragon's Eye'

Grapevine leafroll disease (GLD) is one of the most economically important diseases of cultivated grapevines (Vitis vinifera), causing decrease in yield, as well as decreasing the sugar levels and increasing the acidity of the berries (1). There are currently at least 10 serologically distinct viruses, referred to as grapevine leafroll-associated viruses (GLRaVs), from the family Closteroviridae that are associated with leafroll disease (4). China is one of the world's leading grape producers, and nearly 75% of the vineyards in China are located in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, and Hebei, Shandong, Gansu, Ningxia, and Yunnan provinces. Grapevine leafroll-associated virus 7 (GLRaV-7) isolates have been reported so far in Liaoning (GQ849392, GQ849393, and JF927943) and Henan (EF093187) provinces in China (3). The four Chinese isolates were isolated respectively from grape varieties, Cabernet Sauvignon (GQ849392, GQ849393), Centennial Seedless (JF927943), and Semillon (EF093187), and these grape varieties are introduced from abroad. Cow's Nipple and Dragon's Eye are old grape varieties native to China. Cow's nipple is extensively cultivated in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, while Dragon's Eye is widely planted in Heibei Province. To determine if GLRaV-7 was present in these two varieties, six samples (three per variety) were collected from six individual grapevines showing GLD-like symptoms in two vineyards in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region and Hebei Province, respectively, in September 2011. Total RNA extracts obtained from phloem scrapings of samples using the RNeasy plant mini kit (QIAGEN) were tested by reverse transcription (RT)-PCR with primers F1 (5′-TATATCCCAACGGAGATGGC-3′) and R1 (5′-ATGTTCCTCCACCAAAATCG-3′) (2) specific to the heat shock protein 70 homologue (HSP-70 gene) of GLRaV-7. All samples produced a single band of the expected size of 502 bp. One GLRaV-7-specific amplicon per variety was cloned into pMD 18-T simple vector (TaKaRa). Plasmid DNA was purified using Column Plasmid DNAOUT (TIANDZ, Beijing, China) from three individual clones and sequenced from both directions. The sequence of the two isolates (GenBank Accession Nos. JX494722 and JX494723) shared 97.81% identity at the nucleotide level and 100% identity at the amino acid level. A pairwise comparison of HSP-70 sequences of the two isolates from this report with nine corresponding sequences of GLRaV-7 isolates (including four previously reported Chinese isolates) showed nucleotide sequence identities ranging from 91.24% (EF093187) to 98.80% (GQ849392). These samples were further analyzed by double antibody sandwich (DAS)-ELISA using antibody specific to GLRaV-7 (NEOGEN Europe, Ayr, Scotland) according to the manufacturer's instructions, and the results confirmed the presence of the virus in these samples that were positive by RT-PCR. To our knowledge, this is the first report of GLRaV-7 occurring in native grape varieties in China. These results could be helpful in developing sound diagnostic systems for implementing efficient disease management strategies. References: (1) B. Akbas et al. Hort. Sci. 36:97, 2009. (2) E. Engel et al. Plant Dis. 92:1252, 2008. (3) X. Fan et al. Acta Hortic. Sinica 39:949, 2012. (4) G. P. Martelli. Extended Abstr. 16th Meet. International Council for the Study of Virus and Virus-like Diseases of Grapevines (ICVG). 15-23, 2009.

The article explores the creativity concept as self-creation in the context of the baroque idea of the artist-demiurge in prose by Valeriy Shevchuk. The writer’s creativity is seen as a postmodern palimpsest the various cultural fragments is «shining through»: numerous quotations, allusions, associations, «fragments» of other texts, concepts, signs, meanings and codes. The theme of creativity and formation of cultural in Valeriy Shevchuk's prose becomes the main subject of writer's musings. At that, this topic is not limited to the depiction of the psychology of the creator, but achieves the ontology and axiology of creativity generally, that is the philosophy of creative act as self-creative. And it is realized by the ways of the culture itself: endless borrowings and repeats, quotations and self-citations, allusions and reminiscences, doubling of the code, and using the structure of «text in text». So Shevchuk's prose appears as a «text of culture», a palimpsest. The author is a master of creating the illusion of cultural esotericism in his own texts. His work is a text iceberg, and it reads differently at different levels. An array of cultural allusions, signs, meanings, and associations never opens fully and thus gives the impression of secret writing, cryptotext of culture. Baroque, its ontology and axiology, aesthetics and poetics are the keys for reading for Shevchuk's texts. A number of Baroque concepts are through ones in the prose of the artist. It deduces that postmodernism of writer has the neo-Baroque essence. In particular, it is confirmed by the concept of creativity as self-creation and the idea of the artist-demiurge. Shevchuk explores a person's existence in culture, his or her existence in culture, the philosophy of creation and the psychology of perception of cultural values. His character is a «creative man» who emerges first of all as a subject of culture. According to Shevchuk, the only possible being is an existence in culture. The being outside of culture is impossible (in Shevchuk's model of world), because only through it the human life becomes meaningful. The origins of image of a «creative person» by Shevchuk arise out of the Baroque idea of the artist-demiurge, which is a well-founded alternative to the postmodern slogan «death of the author». The main motif that is manifested in most of Shevchuk's works is a semantic couple – a hero and a text. The last one must either be created or reproduced to self-define and achieve inner integrity, to comprehend own life and to fill it with meaning, to realize own complicity in cultural formation and in the sphere of the spiritual values, that is, to eternity. And the eternity is the higher purpose of man, which is an opposition to nothingness. This motif is analyzed in the novels «On a Humble Field», «The House on the Mountain», «The Path in the Grass», «Three Leaves behind the Window», «The Eye of the Chasm», and the tales «The Begginning of Horror», «To the Dragon's Jaws».

Channel children's fascination with imaginary creatures such as dragons, unicorns and mermaids into creating characterful artworks, including finger puppets and 2D artworks that they will be proud of.

Tonlesapia amnica, a new species of dragonet lacking a first dorsal fin, is described from the Mekong River delta in southern Vietnam. It can be distinguished from its sole congener, T. tsukawakii, in having the infraorbital canal extending beyond (vs. not reaching) ventral margin of orbit, a more slender body (7.2–13.5% SL vs. 14.3–15.0) and caudal peduncle (4.4–5.2% SL vs. 5.1–6.3), a smaller eye (6.5–8.3% SL vs. 8.7–9.2) and more dorsal-fin rays (9–10 vs. 8).

This article was intended to extract betacyanin from the peel of red dragon fruit (Hylocereus polyrhizus) and used it as a natural colorant. In this study, enzyme and ultrasound techniques for the extraction of betacyanin from dried dragon fruit peel were compared. The ultrasonic power and sonication time levels were varied between 0.5, 1.5, 2.5, 3.5, and W/g; and 2.5, 5.0, 7.5, 10.0, and 12.5 min. The enzyme concentrations were 0.25, 0.75, 1.25, 1.75, 2.25, and 2.75 %v/w. The results revealed that the maximum betacyanin content obtained by the optimal UAE condition (3.5 W/g and 7.5 min) was 0.3402 mg/g, and 9.47 % higher than that by the EAE method. The first- order kinetic extraction was used to describe the mechanism of extraction of betacyanin from red dragon fruit peels. The initial extraction rate (h) and extraction rate constant (k) of the UAE model were 30.80 and 27.81 % higher than those of the enzyme assisted extraction (EAE) model. The UAE treated only 5.0 min to obtain the highest level of betacyanin (0.323 mg/g), whereas the EAE took up to 20 min to achieve the maximal value (0.309 mg/g). The research clearly shows that the UAE method is a useful method for extracting betacyanin from dried red dragon fruit peel.

Dracaena cinnabari (D. cinnabari) is an endemic plant located in Socotra Island, Yemen. Deep red resin attained from different plant species including D. cinnabari is commonly known as dragon’s blood. In folk medicine, it is prescribed for the treatment of traumatic dermal, dental, and eye injuries as well as blood stasis, pain, and gastrointestinal diseases in humans. Numerous studies have investigated that this resinous medicine has antidiarrheal, antiulcer, antimicrobial, antiviral, antitumor, anti-inflammatory, analgesic, wound healing, and antioxidant activity. Several phytochemicals have been isolated from D. cinnabari, including the biflavonoid cinnabarone, triflavonoids, metacyclophanes, chalcones, chalcanes, dihydrochalcones, sterols, and terpenoids. The present review highlights the structures and bioactivities of main phytochemicals isolated from D. cinnabari regarding the botany and pharmacological effects of the resin derived from this plant.

Adenanthera pavonina, popularly known as red-bead tree, carolina, pigeon’s eye, and dragon’s eye, is a plant traditionally used in Brazil for the treatment of several diseases. The present study aimed at evaluating the activity of sulfated polysaccharide from theAdenanthera pavonina(SPLSAp) seeds against poliovirus type 1 (PV-1) in HEp-2 cell cultures. The SPLSAppresented a cytotoxic concentration (CC50) of 500 μg/mL in HEp-2 cell cultures, evaluated by the dimethylthiazolyl-diphenyltetrazolium bromide method (MTT). The SPLSApexhibited a significant antiviral activity, with a 50% inhibitory concentration (IC50) of 1.18 µg/mL, determined by plaque reduction assay and a high selectivity index (SI) of 423. The maximum inhibition (100%) of PV replication was found when the SPLSAptreatment was concomitant with viral infection (time 0 h), at all tested concentrations. The maximal inhibition was also found when the SPLSApwas used 1 h and 2 h postinfection, albeit at 50 μg/mL and 100 μg/mL. Therefore, we demonstrated that the SPLSApinhibited PV growth. We also suggested that SPLSApinhibited PV in more than one step of the replication, as the mechanism of antiviral action. We, therefore, selected the compound as a potential candidate for further development towards the control of the infection.

When long-time Floridian Piers Ikerd was looking to transition from the corporate world in the summer of 2018, he sought more independence and ideally the opportunity to take over and transform an existing business. His eye fell on a struggling bar, Aces N Eights, that he was planning to transform into a well-oiled business. His work on an initial business plan convinced him that the key to improved profitability would ultimately center on getting more customers in the door who stayed a while, had a good time, and would come back again soon. Could Piers and his team transform their new bar, rebranded into The Hungry Dragon Tavern, into a more popular and profitable establishment? What would be the best approach to take the establishment to the next level beyond initial changes made - tweaks to the food and beverage menu, remodeling the interior and changing the bar’s concept? Most importantly, how could Piers leverage marketing knowledge to assess the local market? Sticking to traditional marketing? Increasing social media presence and brand awareness? Utilizing market technology and tools to creatively capture potential customers? The new owner hoped to make the right marketing-related moves to breathe fire and profit into the Hungry Dragon.

O objetivo deste presente artigo é apontar as convergências entre alguns dos filmes de Hollywood com o Roleplaying Game Dungeons & Dragons, por meio da presença dos elementos do jogo, como elfos, fadas, guerreiros, masmorras, aventuras, monstros, entre outros e utilizar a jornada do herói apontando suas etapas uma a uma, como elo estrutural narrativo. A partir de uma revisão bibliográfica, utilizando os trabalhos dos autores: Monte Cook, Joseph Campbell, Christopher Vogler, Donaldo Schuler e Tzvetan Todorov, este trabalho pretende analisar a narrativa do filme Eragon, do diretor Stefen Fangmeier, detectando as semelhanças com o jogo. Através da análise de conteúdo foi confirmada a presença de muitas convergências. Entre elas: o herói representado pelos personagens que são interpretados pelos jogadores, a jornada que segundo Campbell nos parece então como consequência natural, o mito que no jogo Dungeons & Dragons é uma característica marcante, basta traduzir o próprio nome do jogo, o épico que é apresentado pelo herói que enfrenta forças maiores que ele, e por final, o maravilhoso que é apresentado por seres em que o herói luta e não existem em nosso dia-a-dia. Percebeu-se então que nem todas as etapas da Jornada do Herói estão presentes no filme. A ordem dos estágios também não foram as mesmas. Todavia, este artigo procurou demonstrar as convergências entre o jogo de Roleplaying Games Dungeons & Dragons e alguns filmes do cinema de Hollywood vistos e citou elementos do gênero épico da literatura e do gênero maravilhoso presentes no jogo e no cinema como condutores desta convergência.

This study aimed to analyze the business development strategies of dragon fruit cake in C.V. Aroma Dragon Fruit, Batam. The IFE matrix, EFE, SWOT and AHP were employed to formulate strategic priorities for the business. Results of processing matrices AHP showed that priority strategies are an improvement strategy of the management system and the quality of customer service (0,157), a market penetration strategy (0,157), an improvement vision and mission of the company (0.123), and a development of new products in accordance with the development of consumer preferences (0.117 ).

Resumo A redução de porte que o porta-enxerto Poncirus trifoliata var. monstrosa 'Flying dragon' confere às plantas sobre ele enxertadas pode facilitar os tratos culturais, permitir o adensamento de plantio e aumentar a eficiência produtiva, dependendo da cultivar e condições de cultivo. Para cultivares de laranjeiras, há pouca informação sobre o uso do 'Flying dragon' como porta-enxerto, principalmente no Estado do Rio de Janeiro. Assim, um experimento foi conduzido com o objetivo de avaliar o desempenho de laranjeiras doces e da limeira ácida 'Tahiti' enxertadas sobre o porta-enxerto 'Flying dragon', durante a fase de formação do pomar, tendo o limoeiro 'Cravo' como padrão de comparação. O experimento foi conduzido em sistema de cultivo irrigado, nas condições edafoclimáticas do Norte Fluminense. O delineamento experimental utilizado foi em blocos casualizados, em esquema fatorial 2 × 5, sendo avaliados os 2 porta-enxertos citados e 5 cultivares de copas. As cultivares de copas avaliadas foram a limeira ácida 'Tahiti' e as laranjeiras doces 'Natal', 'Bahia', 'Lima Sorocaba' e 'Pera'. Foram feitas avaliações biométricas para estimar o índice de vigor vegetativo (IVV), o volume de copa e as taxas de cobertura nas linhas e entrelinhas de cultivo, atingidas aos 36 meses após o plantio. Nas condições deste experimento, verificou-se que o porta-enxerto 'Flying dragon' reduziu a altura, o IVV, as taxas de cobertura na linha e na entrelinha e o volume de copa das plantas sobre ele enxertadas, quando comparado ao limoeiro 'Cravo', mas a intensidade de redução foi dependente da cultivar-copa.

The research aimed to identify internal factors that become strengths and weaknesses as well as external factors that become opportunities and threats, formulate alternative development strategies, and formulate priority strategies that can be applied in the development of organic dragon fruit agribusiness in Wonogiri Regency. The basic method used is descriptive and analytical. Determination of the location of the study was carried out purposively, namely the Beji Makmur Farmers Group Association in Beji Village, Nguntoronadi District, Wonogiri Regency, the method of determining the Key Informants was chosen purposively. The types of data used are primary data and secondary data. The analytical method used is internal and external factor analysis, IFE and EFE matrix, IE matrix, SWOT matrix, and Analytical Hierarchy Process. The results of the research concluded that (1) The main factors of internal strength, namely marketing of organic dragon fruit have reached exports to Germany while the main weakness is the absence of the Beji Makmur Farmers Group Association secretariat, the main opportunity external factors namely the demand for organic dragon fruit in the form of fresh fruit while the main threat is erratic weather changes, (2) The alternative strategies for developing organic dragon fruit in Wonogiri Regency are SO, WO, ST, and WT strategy. (3) The development strategy priorities that can be applied in developing the Beji Makmur Farmers Group Association is to innovate by using radiation technology in the cultivation of organic dragon fruit so that productivity is more optimal.Keywords: Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP), Development Strategy, Dragon Fruit, Organic, SWOT

Squalius janae, sp. nov., is described from the upper Dragonja River system in the Adriatic Sea basin in Slovenia. The new species is distinguished from other members of the S. cephalus species group by a combination of the following characters: a long head, head length, 29−32% SL, always markedly exceeding body depth; a pointed conical snout; a slightly subterminal mouth, with a clearly projecting upper jaw; a long straight mouth cleft; lower-jaw length 39−45% HL, always greater than caudal-peduncle depth; a large eye, its diameter 19−25% HL; a large triangular 5 th infraorbital; a marked discontinuity between the dorsal profile of the head and body; usually 44−47 total lateral-line scales; usually 9½ branched anal-fin rays; usually 44 total vertebrae (24+20 and 25+19); a strong silvery tint in colouration; scales easily lost; iris, pectoral, pelvic and anal-fin pigmentation with yellow shades; flank scales margined by a few black pigment dots along their free margin and intense pigments on scale pockets, forming vertically elongate black spots.

<p>Este texto relata la historia de la llegada de la minería de aluvión a la región del Medio Caquetá (Amazonia Colombiana). Es narrado desde la experiencia de uno de los líderes de la comunidad multiétnica del Quinché-Metá, que agrupaba indígenas de varias etnias y colonos que buscaban organizarse como un resguardo multiétnico a inicios del siglo XXI. El texto comienza con la narración de ese proceso organizativo y los avances que habían logrado. Luego se cuenta cómo la llegada de las primeras balsas mineras, junto con guerrilleros y narcotraficantes, comienza a erosionar rápidamente todo el proceso y se van escalando los atropellos y muertes. El texto también cuenta sobre otras experiencias con la minería en el río Taraira. Concluye con la “reconquista” del ejército de la zona y cómo diez años después, en 2012, de nuevo han vuelto a ingresar balsas mineras en el río Caquetá. </p>

Dracaena cinnabari Balf. f. (Dracaenaceae) is an important plant endemic to Soqotra Island, Yemen. Dragon’s blood (Dam Alakhwin) is the resin that exudes from the plant stem. The ethnobotanical survey was carried out by semi-structured questionnaires and open interviews to document the ethnobotanical data of the plant. According to the collected ethnobotanical data, the resin of D. cinnabari is widely used in the traditional folk medicine in Soqotra for treatment of dermal, dental, eye and gastrointestinal diseases in humans. The resin samples found on the local Yemeni markets were partly or totally substituted by different adulterants. Organoleptic properties, solubility and extractive value were demonstrated as preliminary methods to identify the authentic pure Soqotri resin as well as the adulterants. In addition, the resin extracts and its solution in methanol were investigated for their in vitro antifungal activities against six human pathogenic fungal strains by the agar diffusion method, for antioxidant activities using the DPPH assay and for cytotoxic activity using the neutral red uptake assay. The crude authentic resin dissolves completely in methanol. In comparison with different resin extracts, the methanolic solution of the whole resin showed the strongest biological activities. It showed strong antifungal activity, especially against Microsporum gypseum and Trichophyton mentagrophytes besides antioxidant activities and toxicity against FL-cells. These findings confirm and explain the traditional uses of the resin for the treatment of skin diseases and mouth fungal infections.

Abstract God's dramatic curse of Adam, Eve, and the serpent, as recorded in Genesis 3:14–15, contains a theological ambiguity that played out in the visual arts, literature, and, as this article contends, music of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Translations of this passage leave in doubt whether a male, a female, or both, will defeat sin by crushing Satan's head (“caput”). This issue lies at the heart of the three Caput masses by an anonymous Englishman, Johannes Ockeghem, and Jacob Obrecht, and the Caput Motet for the Virgin by Richard Hygons from the Eton Choirbook. Fifteenth-century discussions of the roles of Christ and Mary in confronting sin, often called the “head of the dragon,” help unravel the meaning of these works. The Caput masses are Christ-focused and emphasize the Savior or one of his surrogates suppressing the beast's head, as seen in illumination, rubric, and canon found in the masses. Folklorically based rituals and concepts of liturgical time are similarly built around the idea of the temporary reign of the Devil, who is ultimately trodden down by Christ. Hygons's motet appears after celebration of the Immaculate Conception was authorized in the late fifteenth century. This feast proclaimed Mary's conquest of sin through her own trampling on the dragon; the motet stresses Marian elements of the Caput theology, especially the contrast between the Virgin's spotlessness and Eve's corruption. Features of the Caput tradition mirror topics discussed in astrological and astronomical treatises and suggest that the composer of the original Caput Mass may also have been an astronomer. The disappearance of the Caput tradition signals its lasting influence through its progeny, which rise up in yet another renowned family of polyphonic masses. Together, the Caput masses and motet encompass the multifaceted doctrine of Redemption from the late middle ages under one highly symbolic Caput rubric.

System klasyfikacji wiekowej jest jednym ze sposobów ochrony małoletnich widzów przed nieadekwatnymi do ich wieku treściami, ale bardzo często przekłada się też na wyniki frekwencyjne filmów. Autor zwraca uwagę na ten drugi aspekt, a co za tym idzie – stara się odpowiedzieć na pytanie, czy klasyfikacja wiekowa wpływała na wyniki frekwencyjne w kinach w ostatniej dekadzie PRL. W pierwszej części artykułu opisuje problemy metodologiczne związane z badaniami frekwencji i kategorii wiekowych, a następnie wskazuje najważniejsze zależności między kategoriami wiekowymi a liczbą widzów kinowych. Uwagi te zostają uzupełnione o analizę jakościową, opartą na rozmaitych paratekstach (np. anonse reklamowe, plakaty, listy do redakcji czasopism oraz skargi do instytucji zajmujących się rozpowszechnianiem) odnoszących się do filmów takich jak: Wejście Smoka (Enter the Dragon, reż. Robert Clouse, 1973), Czułe miejsca (reż. Piotr Andrejew, 1980), Małżeństwo Marii Braun (Die Ehe der Maria Braun, reż. Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1979), Alabama (reż. Ryszard Rydzewski, 1984), Karate po polsku (reż. Wojciech Wójcik, 1983), Magiczne ognie (reż. Janusz Kidawa, 1983) czy Betty Blue (37°2 le matin, reż. Jean-Jacques Beineix, 1986).

Introduction. The article is devoted to analyzing the specific type of Byzantine phylacteries (amulets), which are a vivid manifestation of folk beliefs that combine pagan, magical and Christian components. The author talks about the so-called “coils” – pendants with the image of a head with reptiles instead of hair or simply in combination with snakes. Many of them have a magical inscription mentioning “hysteria” (uterus), which can be understood as this particular organ, as well as various harmful entities. For this reason, there is a problem of correlation of the image and the magic inscription. But the article attempts to interpret the serpentine composition in the context of its functional purpose. Methods. In historiography, there are many opinions about what the images could represent on this type of monuments. At different times, researchers saw in the image of a head with snakes Medusa Gorgon, the dragon-Satan, Russian Aphrodite – goddess Lada, Abrasax, Sophia of Ophites, Moses’ brazen serpent, Eve and the devil, the seven-headed serpent and seven deadly sins, sisters-Likhoradkas, the dragon from the Apocalypse, the serpent of Aesculapius transformed into Satan. In addition, the composition was recognized as a “portrait” of the demon and his machinations elevated to the image of Khnubis and was considered the personification of the hysterical uterus itself. Analysis. In the article, the meaning of the serpentine composition is considered in the comparative analysis with other images on amulets. This is possible due to the presence of stereotypes and general principles in the construction of magical drawings applied to the amulets, as well as the general meaning that is associated with the functional purpose of the phylacteries. In different types of the images on amulets, semantic emphasis is placed on reproducing the desired action. For this, phylacteries were made and used, and magical texts, signs, images of saints, the Mother of God and even Christ himself were applied to the amulet. Results. The symbolism of the serpentine composition is revealed within the same sign system. The drawing combining a head (face) and wriggling snakes clearly represents the desired effect – the outcome, the flight of illnesses or the forces of the evil symbolized by reptiles from a person.

The article examines the influence of V.S. Solovyov on the writers and poets of the Silver age. On the material of the works of Solovyov, related to the «сhinese theme»: the articles «Russia and Europe», «China and Europe», «Japan», «The enemy from the East»; the review of the first volume of works by E.E. Ukhtomsky; the poems «Panmongolizm» and «Dragon»;the tractate «The three conversations about war, progress and the end of world history»; the letter «About the recent events», – is evaluated his influence on D.S. Merezhkovsky's articles: «Yellow-faced positivists», «The coming ham», V.I. Ivanov's articles «Russia, England and Asia», «Inspiration of horror», V.M. Doroshevich's story «Goddess», V.V. Veresaev's story «Under the cedars»; «Chinese poems» and the articles of V.J. Bryusov. The political context of the works, the tradition of depicting China in Russian literature, literary and sinological works on this topic are taken into account. The comparative analysis of texts, the coincidence of a number of theoretical positions, and separate definitions and epithets are revealed. The numbers of Solovyov's positions are revealed, which are reflected in the works of Merezhkovsky and Ivanov: materialism and positivism of the Chinese, the «emptiness» of their philosophy, the denial of life and progress, the «yellow danger», the need for the Christianization of China (the last position in Merezhkovsky is not). Doroshevich's story, written at the height of the ikhetuan rebellion («boxer rebellion»), was influenced by the philosopher's eschatological prophecies. The negative image of China in the poetry of V.J. Bryusov is the textual confirmation of the influence of Solovyov, noted by modern literary criticism.

ASSESSMENT OF PARALLEL SIGNALING PATHWAYS IN UTERINE MYOCYTES STIMULATED WITH VARIOUS SMOOTH MUSCLE AGONISTS H.N. Aguilar, B.F. Mitchell 1 TRACTOGRAPHY: A NOVEL TECHNIQUE TO IMAGE FIBER TRACTS OF THE SPINAL CORD Fahad Alkherayf, Eve Tsai, Arturo Cardenas-Blanco, Alain Berthiaume, Brien Benoit, John Sinclair 1 MODULATION OF OSTEOCLASTOGENESIS IN INFLAMMATORY JOINT DISEASES H. Allard-Chamard, M. Durant, A.J. de Brum-Fernandes, G. Boire, S.V. Komarova, S.J. Dixon, S.M. Sims, R. Harison, M.F. Manolson 2 “THE RIGHT THING TO DO? A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF PUBLIC HEALTH ETHICS, RIGHTS DISCOURSE, AND THE EXPANSION OF ANTIRETROVIRAL THERAPY (ART)” Berkhout, SG, Anderson, S, Tyndall, MW 2 COST-EFFECTIVENESS OF IMMEDIATE BASELINE COMPUTED TOMOGRAPHY VS. MAGNETIC RESONANCE IMAGING OF ACUTE ISCHEMIC STROKE IN ONTARIO PATIENTS WHO PRESENT WITH SYMPTOMS SUGGESTIVE OF STROKE KR Burton, G. Mery 3 CHITOSAN-MEDIATED FGF18 DELIVERY FOR ASSISTED BONE REPAIR A. Carli, M. Lavertu, C. Gao, A. Merzouki, M.D. Buschmann, J.E. Henderson, E.J.Harvey 3 ACTIVE PI3K-AKT SIGNALING PROMOTES THE METASTATIC POTENTIAL OF ASCITES-DERIVED EPITHELIAL OVARIAN CANCER CELLS Correa RJM, Ramos-Valdes Y, Bertrand M, Lanvin D, Préfontaine M, Sugimoto AK, Lewis JD, Shepherd TG, DiMattia GE 4 MECHANISMS OF K65R, D67N, K103N, V106M AND M184V RESISTANCE DEVELOPMENT IN SUBTYPE-B AND C HIV-1 Dimitrios Coutsinos, Cedric F. Invernizzi, Daniela Moisi, Maureen Oliveira, Hongtao Xu, Bluma G. Brenner, Mark A. Wainberg 4 A MODEL TO DETERMINE FACTORS INVOLVED IN THE INDUCTION OF AN IN VIVO CTL RESPONSE Dissanayake D, Ohashi PS 5 P63 ANTAGONIZES P53 TO PROMOTE THE SURVIVAL OF EMBRYONIC NEURAL PRECURSOR CELLS Sagar B. Dugani, Annie Paquin, Masashi Fujitani, David R. Kaplan, Freda D. Miller 5 SPINAL LOCOMOTOR NETWORK MODULATION BY ENDOGENOUS SEROTONIN IN THE ISOLATED NEONATAL MOUSE SPINAL CORD Dunbar MJ, Whelan PJ 6 THE TUMOR PROMOTING AND REPRESSING EFFECTS OF INTEGRIN-LINKED KINASE ARE DIFFERENTIATED BY JNK1 IN HUMAN CANCER CELLS Adam David Durbin, Gregory Edward Hannigan, David Malkin 6 INCREASED EXCITATION IN MICE OVER-EXPRESSING NEUROLIGIN-1 IS ASSOCIATED WITH IMPAIRED LONG-TERM POTENTIATION AND LEARNING AND MEMORY Brennan D Eadie, Timal Kannangara, Regina Dalhaus, Rochelle M Hines, Yu-Tian Wang, Alaa El-Husseini, Brian R Christie 7 A NOVEL ROLE FOR CDK5/P35 IN MEDULLOBLASTOMA FORMATION Friesen AN, Shin J, Law V, Lee YS, Mckinnon P, Lee KY 7 ALTERED PSYCHOSOCIAL BEHAVIOUR AND STRESS RESPONSE FOLLOWING ‘MINOR’ STROKE IN THE RAT Krista Hewlett, Meighan Kelly, Dale Corbett 8 TUMOUR PATHOLOGY PREDICTS MICROSATELLITE INSTABILITY IN COLORECTAL CANCER AJ Hyde, D Fontaine, S Stuckless, RC Green, A Pollett, M Simms, P Parfrey, HB Younghusband 8 PROTEINASE-ACTIVATED RECEPTOR-2 (PAR2) IS A POTENTIAL TARGET FOR THE ANTI-INFLAMMATORY EFFECTS OF INSULIN Eric Hyun, Rithwick Ramachandran, Nicolas Cenac, Steeve Houle, Amit Saxena, Roland S. Liblau, Morley Hollenberg, Nathalie Vergnolle 9 CHEMOSENSITIVE PROPERTIES OF THE VENTRAL MEDULLA IN VITRO Kalf Daniel J, Wilson Richard JA 9 NOVEL DOPAMINE RECEPTOR-N TYPE CALCIUM CHANNEL INTERACTIONS: POTENTIAL THERAPEUTIC TARGETS FOR DISORDERS ASSOCIATED WITH ABERRANT DOPAMINERGIC SIGNALLING Alexandra E. Kisilevsky, Sean J. Mulligan, Christophe Altier, Mircea C. Iftinca, Diego Varela, Chao Tai, Lina Chen, Shahid Hameed, Jawed Hamid, Brian A. MacVicar, Gerald W. Zamponi 10 TRUNCATION OF THE C-TERMINAL DOMAIN OF CONNEXIN43 INCREASES INFARCT VOLUME DURING STROKE Kozoriz MG, Bechberger JF, Bechberger GR, Suen MWH, Moreno AP, Maass K, Willecke K, Naus CC 10 EVALUATION OF THE DELIVERABILITY AND TOLERABILITY OF INTENSIVE WEEKLY DOUBLET ADJUVANT CHEMOTHERAPY IN NON SMALL CELL LUNG CANCER M. Sara Kuruvilla, Lorraine Martelli-Reid, J. R. Goffin, A. Arnold, Peter M. Ellis 11 A POLICY-ORIENTED SYSTEMATIC REVIEW OF THE SAFETY AND EFFICACY OF ENDOSCOPIC THERAPIES FOR THE TREATMENT OF BARRETT’S ESOPHAGUS Lau D, Menon D, Stafinski T, Topfer LA, Walker J 11 THE SRC-LIKE ADAPTOR PROTEIN, SLAP, PLAYS A ROLE IN MONOCYTE-DERIVED DENDRITIC CELL MATURATION Larissa Liontos, L Dragone, A Weiss, C J McGlade 12 SWEET PEE: A NEW MOUSE MODEL FOR GLOMERULOCYSTIC KIDNEY DISEASE AND GLUCOSURIA J Ly, J Rossant, L Oxborne, C McKerlie, A Flenniken, S Quaggin 12 CARDIOGENIC SHOCK IN ASPHYXIATED NEONATE PIGLETS: IS COMBINATION INOTROPE THERAPY BETTER THAN HIGH-DOSE DOPAMINE? N. Manouchehri, P.-Y. Cheung, C. Joynt, T. Churchill, D. Bigam 13 THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN FLOW-MEDIATED DILATION, HYPEREMIC SHEAR STRESS, AND VARIOUS ANTHROPOMETRIC INDICES OF OBESITY Martin BJ, Title LM, Verma S, Charbonneau F, Buithieu J, Lonn EM, Anderson TJ 13 RAPID LOCALIZATION OF NEUTROPHILS TO SITES OF CELL DEATH BY MAC1-DEPENDENT ADHESION AND INTRAVASCULAR CRAWLING McDonald B, Menezes GB, Kubes P 14 THE ROLE OF SHIP-1 IN CEACAM1-MEDIATED HOST RESPONSES TO NEISSERIA GONORRHOEAE INFECTION Gordon G McSheffrey, S D Gray-Owen 14 USING VOLTAGE-SENSITIVE DYES TO RECORD BRAIN ACTIVITY IN NATURALLY MOVING MICE McVea DA, Mohajerani MH, Fingas M, Murphy TH 15 POTENTIAL MECHANICAL INFLUENCE IN MICROVASCULAR PATHOLOGY IN THE ACL DEFICIENT RABBIT KNEE Daniel Miller 15 OSTEOBLAST MECHANOSENSITIVITY: THE ROLE OF HYDROSTATIC PRESSURE Kenneth A. Myers, Timothy Douglas, Ricarda Hess, Justin Parreno, Jerome B. Rattner, Dieter Scharnweber, Nigel G. Shrive, David A. Hart 16 ENDOTHELIAL PROGENITOR CELLS FOR HEALING AND ANGIOGENESIS IN A SEGMENTAL BONE DEFECT MODEL: A COMPARISON WITH MESENCHYMAL STEM CELLS Nauth A, Li R, Schemitsch EH 16 DELAY OF DNA METHYLATION IN PERINATAL MALE GERM CELLS IN THE ABSENCE OF DNMT3L RESULTING IN INFERTILITY Kirsten Niles, Sophie La Salle, Christopher Oakes, Jacquetta Trasler 17 INVESTIGATING CRMP4 FUNCTION IN CNS NERVE REGENERATION S. Ong Tone, S. Kanagal, A. Wilson, Y.Z. Alabed, A. Di Polo, A.E. Fournier 17 A NOVEL, DNA DAMAGE-DEPENDENT REGULATORY PATHWAY FOR AKT IN VIVO Andrew J. Perrin, W. Brent Derry 18 CHOP AS A TARGET FOR PRESERVATION OF TRANSPLANTED ISLET GRAFT MASS Potter K, Dai L, Verchere CB 18 TREATMENT OF ACHILLES TENDINOPATHY R Ram, C Patel, D Wiseman, W Meeuwisse, JP Wiley 19 PLACENTAL LACTOGEN FUNCTION IN POST-IMPLANTATION MURINE PREGNANCY Saara M. Rawn, James C. Cross 19 DECODING NEURAL SIGNALS FROM MULTIELECTRODE ARRAYS IN THE PRIMATE DORSOLATERAL PREFRONTAL CORTEX Sachs A.J, Pieper F, Martinez-Trujillo J.C. 20 THE ROLE OF TRANSFORMING GROWTH FACTOR ALPHA IN A MOUSE MODEL OF OSTEOARTHRITIS Usmani S.E, Appleton C.T.G., Welch I.D, Beier F. 20 SKIN-DERIVED STEM CELLS ACT AS FUNCTIONAL SCHWANN CELLS WHEN TRANSPLANTED INTO LESIONED PERIPHERAL NERVE Sarah K. Walsh, Rajiv Midha 21 TLR4 MEDIATES SUSCEPTIBILITY TO STREPTOZOTOCIN-INDUCED DIABETES C Westwell-Roper, G Soukhatcheva, MJH Hutton, JP Dutz, CB Verchere 21 A FUSION OF GMCSF AND IL-21 (GIFT-21) POTENTLY INDUCES INFLAMMATION AND APOPTOSIS THROUGH SIGNALS DOWNSTREAM OF THE IL-21R ALPHA CHAIN Patrick Williams, Shala Yuan, Jessica Cuerquis, Elena Birman, Kathy Ann Forner, Jacques Galipeau 22

Although Ronnie James Dio is often parodied for his lyrical ruminations on dragons, demons, and other Dungeons and Dragons style phantasmagoria, he maintained a humor about himself and possessed a capacity for openness unique to heavy metal. He is known for popularizing the devil horn hand gesture (“malocchio”) at rock shows, though he said its history extended back to his Italian Grandmother who used it as a way of protecting against someone’s evil eye. Dio also said his Grandmother could use it as a curse when provoked. Thus, Dio linked the symbol of the devil horns to protection as much as provocation. Carter’s work likewise considers the polarities in Dio’s work that made him the formidable artist of Heaven and Hell.

AbstractEye colour and colour perception are excellent examples to use when teaching genetics as they encompass not simply the basic Mendelian genetics of dominant, recessive and X-linked disorders, but also many of the new concepts such as non-allelic diseases, polygenic disease, phenocopies, genome-wide association study (GWAS), founder effects, gene-environment interaction, evolutionary drivers for variations, copy number variation, insertions deletions, methylation and gene inactivation. Beyond genetics, colour perception touches on concepts involving optics, physics, physiology and psychology and can capture the imagination of the population, as we saw with social media trend of “#the dress”. Television shows such as Game of Thrones focused attention on the eye colour of characters, as well as their Dire-wolves and Dragons. These themes in popular culture can be leveraged as tools to teach and engage everyone in genetics, which is now a key component in all eye diseases. As the explosion of data from genomics, big data and artificial intelligence transforms medicine, ophthalmologists need to be genetically literate. Genetics is relevant, not just for Inherited Retinal Diseases and congenital abnormalities but also for the leading causes of blindness: age-related macular degeneration, glaucoma, myopia, diabetic retinopathy and cataract. Genetics should be part of the armamentarium of every practicing ophthalmologist. We need to ask every patient about their family history. In the near future, patients will attend eye clinics with genetic results showing they are at high risk of certain eye diseases and ophthalmologists will need to know how to screen, follow and treat these patients.

Following Edward Jenner’s research into cowpox, a wave of vaccination services emerged across England. Despite some resistance, these began to promote population prevention where variolation had failed. Sussex’s first vaccine institution has long been considered to be that of Sir Matthew Tierney (1776–1845). Founded in 1804, Tierney’s “Royal Sussex Jennerian Society for the Extermination of the Small-pox” comprised sixteen stations, including one in Kent. This article presents an earlier example: the 1803 “Brighton Royal Jennerian Institution”, founded by a “Mr Chambers” to serve “the indigent poor”. Given that both held royal and military appointments in Brighton, Tierney must have been aware of Chambers’ efforts in vaccination. It is unclear why Tierney’s 1804 plan for the Sussex Vaccine Institution makes no mention of Chambers. In 1803 Chambers also directed the establishment of Brighton’s first military hospital and is noted as “surgeon extraordinary” to the Prince Regent. Chambers is identified as William Chambers of the 10th Royal Dragoons, who served at Toulon (1793) as a surgeon’s mate. He is also documented at Corsica in 1794 where he examined Nelson’s injured eye following the siege of Calvi. Mr Chambers’ origin and more details of his biography remain unknown.

In this article, aspects of narrative critique, genre, editorial critique, the body and space are uniquely combined into a body-space framework. This spatial framework is used to examine the second episode of ‘Bel and the Dragon’, called ‘Daniel Dragonslayer’. It is postulated that the second episode of ‘Bel and the Dragon’ should be read in a reciprocal relationship with not only ‘Bel and the Dragon’, but also the larger Book of Daniel. Firstly, such an analysis indicates that the smaller episode is part of a larger clash of deities. Secondly, it shows that the editor /author utilises the episode to create a new cosmology. In this new cosmology, the Jewish deity is an almighty one, whilst other deities are seen as false and not real living gods. In his own way, the editor or author contributes to the way in which Jews regarded their God within the reality of the diaspora.Daniel Dragonslayer − Bel en die draak, Verse 23−27 (VAN/Die). In hierdie artikel word aspekte van narratiewe-kritiek, genre, redaksie-kritiek, die liggaam en ruimte op ’n unieke wyse gekombineer om ’n beliggaamde ruimteraamwerk te vorm. Hierdie beliggaamde ruimteraamwerk word gebruik om die tweede episode van ‘Bel en die Draak’, naamlik ‘Daniël, die Draakjagter’, te analiseer. Die artikel stel voor dat hierdie tweede episode van ‘Bel en die Draak’ in ’n resiproke verhouding met ‘Bel en die Draak’, sowel as met die boek Daniël gelees moet word. Indien die teks op hierdie voorgestelde wyse ontleed word, kom verskeie punte na vore. Eerstens word aangedui dat die kleiner episode deel van ’n groter gode-oorlog vorm. Tweedens, die skrywer/redakteur gebruik die kleiner episode as deel van ’n proses om ’n nuwe kosmologie te skep. Volgens hierdie nuwe kosmologie is die Joodse God ’n almagtige God, terwyl ander gode vals en nie ware lewende gode is nie. Op sy eie manier lewer die skrywer/redakteur ’n bydrae tot die ontwikkeling van die Jode se godsbeskouing tydens die diaspora.

Resumen El sitio Web es el principal espacio comunicativo online de las entidades del tercer sector, aun así no existe un patrón que facilite su almacenamiento para que las entidades puedan archivar y recuperar sus sitios Web, como tradicionalmente se llevaba a cabo con las publicaciones en papel. Este estudio presenta una propuesta para la sistematización, el archivo y la recuperación de los datos de los sitios Web de entidades del tercer sector. A partir de esta propuesta de sistematización el artículo expone el análisis comparativo de sitios Web de entidades de paz colombianas y catalanas. Para el estudio se utilizó una metodología mixta en base a entrevistas en profundidad y análisis de contenido. El testeo de la propuesta de análisis para sitios Web ha permitido comprobar que la Web se mantiene como el principal eje comunicativo de las entidades. Así, como que los aspectos propuestos permiten llevar a cabo un análisis global del sitio Web y dan respuesta a las condiciones de comunicación para el cambio y la transformación social indicadas por Gumucio Dragon, pertinentes para la muestra que se ha analizado.

The Garden of Eden is the original surveillance state. God creates the heavens and the earth, turns on the lights, inspects everything that he has made and, behold, finds it very good. But then the creation attempts to acquire the surveillant properties of the creator. In Genesis 3, a serpent explains to Eve the virtues of forbidden fruit: “Ye shall not die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil” (Genesis 3: 4–5). Adam’s and Eve’s eyes are certainly opened (sufficiently so to necessitate figleaves), but in the next verse, God’s superior surveillance system has found them out. The power relationship Genesis illustrates has prompted many – the Romantics in their seditious appropriations of Paradise Lost, for instance – to question whether Eden is all that “good” after all. Why was God so concerned for Eve and Adam not to see? For that matter, why was he not there to intercept the serpent, but so promptly on the scene of humanity’s crime? Various answers (that God planned the Fall because it would enable him to demonstrate supreme love through Jesus, that Eve and Adam were wilfully wrong to grasp for equality with the Creator of the Universe, that God could not intervene in the temptation because it would compromise humanity’s free will) do not alter the flaw in God’s perfect garden state. Consciousness of this imperfection surfaces repeatedly in Western utopian narratives. The very existence of such narratives points to a humanist distrust in God as social engineer; the fact that these secular Edens are themselves often flawed suggests both a parody of the original Eden and an admission that humans are not up to the task of social engineering either. Thomas More’s Utopia and Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner – one the ostensible depiction of a new Eden, the other an outright dystopic inferno – address the association of Eden (or the Creator) with surveillance, and so undermine the ideality of the prelapsarian Garden. The archetypal power relationship, that of All-Seeing Creator with always-seen creation, is reconfigured sans God: in Utopia, with society itself performing the work of a transcendent surveillance system; in Blade Runner, with the multi-planetary Tyrell corporation doing so. In both cases, the Omnisurveillant is stripped of the mitigating quality of being God, and so exposed as oppressive, unjust, an affront to the idea of perfection. Like Eden, the eponymous island of Thomas More’s Utopia is a surveillance state. Glass, we read, “is there much used” (More 55). Surveillance is decentralised and patriarchal: wives are expected to confess to their husbands, children to their mothers (More 65). Each year, every thirty families select a “syphogrant”, whose “chief and almost … only office … is to see and take heed that no man sit idle, but that every one apply his own craft with earnest diligence” (More 57). In the mess halls, “The Syphogrant and his wife sit in the midst of the high table … because from thence all the whole company is in their sight” (More 66). Elders are ranged amongst the young men so that “the sage gravity and reverence of the elders should keep the youngsters from wanton licence of words and behaviour. Forasmuch as nothing can be so secretly spoken or done at the table, but either they that sit on the one side or on the other must needs perceive it” (More 66). Not only are the Utopians subject to social surveillance, but also to a conviction of its inescapability. Believing that the dead move among them, the Utopians feel that they are being watched (even when they are not) and thus regulate their own behaviour. In his preface to The Panopticon, Jeremy Bentham extols the virtues of his surveillance machine: “Morals reformed – health preserved – industry invigorated instruction diffused – public burthens lightened – Economy seated, as it were, upon a rock – the gordian knot of the Poor-Laws are not cut, but untied – all by a simple idea in Architecture!” (Bentham 29). As Foucault points out in “Panopticism”, the Panopticon works so well because the prisoner can never know when she or he is being watched, and this uncertainty compels the prisoner into constant discipline. Atheist Bentham had created a transcendent surveillance system that would replace God in (he trusted) an increasingly secular society. Bentham’s catalogue of the Panopticon’s benefits is something of a Utopian manifesto in its own right, and his utilitarianism, based on the “greatest-happiness principle”, was prepared to embrace the surveillance system so long as that system maximised overall happiness. Perhaps Thomas More was a proto-utilitarian, prepared to take up the repressive aspects of panopticism in exchange for moral reform, health preservation, the invigoration of industry and the lightening of public burdens. On the other hand, Utopia is widely read as a deliberately ironic representation of the ideal state. Stephen Greenblatt has pointed out that More “remained ambivalent about many of his most intensely felt perceptions” in Utopia, and he offers the text’s various ironising elements (such as the name of More’s fictitious interlocutor, Hythlodaeus, “well learned in nonsense”) as evidence (Greenblatt 54). Even the text’s title undermines its Edenic vision: as Louis Marin argues, “Utopia” could derive equally from Greek ou-topos, no-place, or eu-topos, good-place (Marin 85). More’s ambivalence about Utopia – to the extent of attributing his account of No-place to a character called Nonsense – suggests his impatience with his own flawed social vision. While Utopia is ambivalent in its depiction of the perfect state, more recent utopian narratives – Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1931), for instance, or George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) – are unequivocally ironic about the subordination of the individual to the perfect state. The Bible’s account of human society begins with Eden and ends with Apocalypse, in which divine surveillance reaches its inevitable conclusion in divine judgement. The utopian genre has undergone a very similar trajectory, beginning with what seem to be sincere attempts to sketch the perfect state, briefly flourishing as Europeans became first aware of Cytherean islands in the South Pacific, and, more recently, representing outright apocalypse (as in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale [1986] and Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner [1992]), or at least responding pessimistically to human attempts at social engineering. Blade Runner’s dystopic inversion of biblical creation illustrates an enduring distrust in both human and divine attempts to establish Eden. The year is 2019 (only one year off 2020, perfect vision); the place is Los Angeles, the City of Angels. Corporate biomechanic Eldon Tyrell manufactures a race of robots, “replicants”, who are physically indistinguishable from humans, capable of developing emotional responses, but burdened with a four-year self-destruct mechanism. When the replicants rebel, their leader, Roy Batty, demands of Tyrell, “I want more life, Father”. Tyrell is not only “Father”, but “the god of biomechanics”; and Batty is simultaneously a reworking of Adam (the disaffected creation), Lucifer (the rebel angel) and Christ (as shown in the accompanying iconography of crucifixion and doves). The Bible’s leading actors are all present, but the City of Angels, 2019, is unmistakeably not Eden. It is a polluted, dank, flame-spewing dragon of a city, more Inferno than human habitation. The film’s oppressive film noir atmosphere relays the nausea induced by the Tyrell Corporation’s surveillance system. The Voight-Kamff test – a means of assessing emotional response (and thus determining whether an individual is human or replicant) by scanning the pupils – is a surveillance mechanism so intrusive it measures not only behaviour, but feelings. The optical imagery throughout the film reinforces the idea of permanent visibility. The result is a claustrophobic paranoia. Blade Runner is unambiguous in its pessimism about human attempts to regulate society (attempts which it shows to be reliant on surveillance, slavery and swift punishment). It seems unlikely that the God of Genesis is specifically targeted by this film’s parody of the Creator-creation power relationship – its critiques of capitalism and environmental mismanagement are much more overt – but by configuring its dramatis personae in biblical roles, Blade Runner demonstrates that the paradigm for omnisurveillant creators comes from the Bible. In turn, by placing Los Angeles, 2019, at such a distant aesthetic remove from Eden, the film portrays the omnisurveillant creator unrelieved by natural beauty. Foucault’s formulation of panopticism, that power is seeing without being seen, that being seen without seeing is disempowerment, informs all three texts – Genesis, Utopia and Blade Runner. What differentiates them, determines how perfect each text would have its world believed to be, is the extent to which its authors approve this power relationship. References Bentham, Jeremy. The Panopticon; or, The Inspection House (1787). In The Panopticon Writings. Ed. Miran Bozovic. London: Verso, 1995. 29-95. Foucault, Michel. “Panopticism”. In Discipline and Punish: the Birth of the Prison. Trans. Alan Sheridan (1977). New York: Vintage Books, 1995. 195–228. Greenblatt, Stephen. Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare. Chicago and London: U of Chicago P, 1980. Marin, Louis. Utopics: The Semiological Play of Textual Spaces. Trans. Robert A. Vollrath. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press International, 1990. More, Thomas. Utopia (1516). In Susan Brice, ed. Three Early Modern Utopias: Utopia, New Atlantis, The Isle of Pines. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1996. Scott, Ridley. Blade Runner: The Director’s Cut. United States, 1992. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Harley, Alexis. "Resurveying Eden: Panoptica in Imperfect Worlds." M/C Journal 8.4 (2005). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0508/02-harley.php>. APA Style Harley, A. (Aug. 2005) "Resurveying Eden: Panoptica in Imperfect Worlds," M/C Journal, 8(4). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0508/02-harley.php>.

As part of an effort to grapple with the meaning of violence, Hannah Arendt argued that it was curious how infrequently violence was taken up for special consideration in conversations of history and politics, remarking that “this shows to what an extent violence and its arbitrariness were taken for granted and therefore neglected; no one questions or examines what is obvious to all” (8). While we are not suggesting that violence has eluded the critical eye in the time since Arendt’s argument, there is something remarkably resonant about the idea that violence is taken-for-granted as part of human existence, and thus—for privileged citizens protected from its affects—invisible. In this issue, the contributors explore how violence continues to define and shape social, political, and cultural terrains. In what follows, we explore what it means to talk about violence and follow this with a general introduction to the pieces in this special issue that tease out the various locations of violence and its representations across different spaces. Defining Violence In general in western society, we think of violence in its most manifest forms: war, terrorism or massacres. But violence operates in many forms, some of them more subtle or latent and arguably more destructive given their structural and far-reaching character. Some forms of violence are easily recognised, others decontextualised and depoliticised through complex cultural processes of normalisation and denial (Brison). Violence can become a spectacle, an aestheticised representation, or it can be reduced to banality when its horror and trauma is refracted through everyday lives and spaces which are shaped by violent systems and ideologies (Arendt). Notions of trauma, spectatorship, testimony, and witnessing circulate through narratives of violence. Ideas of “civilisation” implicitly and explicitly reference competing discourses of violence and put them to work in damaging ways, often in the service of ideals (liberalism, for example) that mask the very violence that supports them. Even those discourses that claim most ardently to uphold principles of safety and inclusion (for example, multiculturalism) are impeded by or invested in systems of violence, and in fact they depend on it for their very legitimacy. For those of us living and working in white, patriarchal, settler states, it is inevitable that our cultural and material conditions are underpinned by a systemic and perpetual condition of violence. Even for those of us who feel generally safe, violence is all around us, shaping how we live, work, think, feel, and act. However, violence is not equally experienced throughout the world or within our own communities, nor is the absence of violence. Ultimately, feeling safe from violence is often a marker of privilege and safety often comes at the price of violence enacted upon others. What makes violence so powerful as a force with material and symbolic consequences is both this articulation with privilege and its resultant banal expression in everyday spaces. Projects of racial, gendered, sexed, classed and ableist exclusion and violence operate below the surface of conscious registration for those not immediately impacted by them, allowing violence to elude critical interrogation. In this respect, even the idea of safety is only possible through a guarantee of violence, a guarantee written into the lands themselves, the institutions of the state, and the discourse of Western liberal traditions. Both victims and perpetrators of violence differ in their visibility. In easily recognised forms of violence, there is usually an actor who is violent and a victim of that violence. However, even in the most obvious cases, there are examples of missing perpetrators. For example, domestic violence is often discussed using passive language that centres the victim and erases the perpetrator (Katz and Earp). Or in the case of police violence against minorities, even where there is compelling evidence of police brutality, legal systems fail to find and sentence perpetrators (e.g. Chernega; Waters). This process of erasure is itself a further act of violence that places blame on victims, leading outsiders to question why they didn’t take action to prevent their victimisation. However, increasing attention has been given to these subtle erasures; for example, Jane Gilmore’s book Fixed It: Violence and the Representation of Women in the Media calls the mainstream media to task for their representation of gender violence as a problem women experience, rather than a problem perpetrated by men. This issue of M/C Journal invited responses to the theme of “violence,” understood broadly, as it operates through various social, cultural, institutional, and affective domains. The articles included here demonstrate the complexity of different forms of violence. They cover terrain such as symbolic violence and the discursive, political and social domination that shapes contemporary or historical realities; pedagogical violence and the operation of power and control over the means of intellectual, social and cultural production in spaces of learning; physical violence and the attendant damages that this entails; technological violence and the ways in which media technologies facilitate or resist violence; and violence as a subject of public interest in forms including news media, true crime, and entertainment. This issue’s articles intersect in interesting ways which encourage readers to think about multiple aspects of violence. We explore some of the common themes below, and in doing so introduce readers to the rich collection of ideas included in this issue. Enacted Violence It is interesting to consider what we can learn from violence by thinking about the perspectives of those who perpetrate it, and those who experience it. As discussed above, sometimes these agents are easier to spot. Larissa Sexton-Finck’s contribution reminds us that the most visible forms of violence aren’t necessarily the most damaging. In her essay, she explores her experience of being in a car crash. The obvious perpetrator of violence is the driver of the car that caused the crash, but as we read through her experience we see that she was victimised in many ways by those who filmed her experience in order to sell it to the news. These ‘citizen journalists’ are likely to think of their work as important and not as enacting violence on others, but Sexton-Finck’s firsthand experience of being filmed highlights the violence of the act. Similarly, some practices are so commonplace that it is easy to overlook the violence inherent within them. Yirga Woldeyes gives us the example of museum collections, a taken-for-granted effect of colonisation, which perpetuates an ongoing violent epistemic power differential. This is another example of violence with an invisible perpetrator; museums consider themselves keepers of knowledge, protectors of culture and heritage. Where collecting is considered an act of violence, it is typically perceived as action from the past, rather than an ongoing act of violence with continuing experiences of victimisation. However, as Woldeyes’ article makes clear, the violence of the act reverberates for generations. For Ailie McDowall, violence works in subtle ways that are both unconscious or explicit. Exploring pre-service teacher engagements with an Indigenous education subject, McDowall speaks to the limits of intention (Milner) by highlighting how the good intentions of pre-service teachers can result in ideological violence through the bringing of Indigenous peoples and knowledges into Western epistemic comprehension as part of an effort to know. Further, while educators are often called to envision “preferred futures” (Hicks) in their teaching practice, McDowall shows us that ethical calls to teach and live responsibly and critically in the face of colonial logics results in a deferral of that responsibility to the future, what McDowall identifies as an act of violence. Representations of Violence Social understandings of violence are both shaped by, and influence, representations of violence in media, culture, and the arts. Such representations can themselves be forms of symbolic violence, that is, ”violence wielded with tacit complicity between its victims and its agents, insofar as both remain unconscious of submitting to or wielding it” (Bourdieu 17). As mechanisms for transmitting normalised ideas of politics and peoples, representations can effect such symbolic violence by disseminating hegemonic notions of exclusion/inclusion, safety/harm, and justifications and logics for violence. Indeed, as Dervin argues, “representations do have an ideological component and […] an exercise of power is always present in representations” (185). Yet, we are wise to remember that representations, the projection of power, and the ideological legitimation of symbolic violence that may inhere in representations can neither guarantee truth nor action as people exercise agency and speak and act back to and against those very representations of “truth”. The authors in this issue work within this tension, highlighting efforts by some to either create and deploy representation as an instrument of legitimating violence or critically engaging representations of violence as part of efforts to dismantle and surfaces the symbolic violence transmitted through various works. When considering the symbolic violence of media, it is crucial that we consider who is doing the representation, and how that representation is mediated. Social media (as discussed in the contribution by Milton and Petray), has different characteristics to products of the culture industry (Adorno) such as commercial news reporting (Sexton-Finck) or cinematic films (McKenzie-Craig). And these are different again in the literary genre of the autobiographical novel (Nile) or the form of the public testimony (Craven). Some representations of violence allow for more agency than others. Creative works by victims of violence, for example that discussed by Sexton-Finck, challenge viewers and draw our attention to the ways the commodification of the culture industry (Adorno) makes us complicit as spectators in acts of violence. In a similar way, creative representations of enacting violence can cause productive discomfort by going against stereotypes and norms about who perpetrates violence. Carolyn McKenzie-Craig's contribution compares representations of gender and violence that defy expectations. McKenzie-Craig considers the Swedish film Män som hatar kvinnor (released in English as The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) alongside work from non-binary artist, Cassils, and her own creative works. In all three of these works, women and non-binary agents enact violence in ways that unsettle viewers, forcing contemplation about the nature of violence. Likewise, literature provides a fruitful arena for examining violence as a cultural force. Indeed, post-colonial scholars have shown us that literature has been a tool of violence, and has, in contrast, also been used to “write back” to oppressive ideologies (Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffin, after Salman Rushdie). Richard Nile’s essay considers the power of violence to echo through families in cases of intergenerational trauma. In considering an autobiographical novel that takes the form of a family drama, Nile traces the reverberations of real wartime violence and family violence and shows how fictionalising such trauma can reveal new ways of looking at it, both for the author of such a work and for the historians and literary scholars who examine such work. In the article by Milton and Petray, the authors explore how violence mediates and regulates ideas of belonging as it is is represented through a lens of citizenship via social media. Through an exploration of a digital space, Milton and Petray highlight the bifurcation of people into us/them, a split predicated on desires to protect the sanctity of “us” and “our” citizenship through the use of violent discourse to normalise the divide. What is perhaps most striking is the reminder that categories of inclusion are powerfully framed through everything from the banality of seemingly mundane language and everyday languages of race (Billig; Hill) through to more abhorrent language and far reaching discourses of normalised violence. Through this, Milton and Petray draw our attention not just to the manifestation of violence online but also its use as a strategy for regulating inclusion into the deemed “legitimate” community through the very act of representing people as either legitimate citizens or not. As who counts as a citizen in need of state protection is contested, so is what counts as violence. In “The Last of the Long Takes: Feminism, Sexual Harassment, and the Action of Change”, Allison Craven reminds us that the naming of systemic violence remains a crucial early step in the fight against it, and goes some way toward dismantling its taken-for-grandness. In considering Lauren Berlant’s notion of the “diva citizen” in relation to Anita Hill’s 1991 testimony of sexual harassment, Craven reframes the #metoo movement as a call to action to which, crucially, the body politic must respond. Craven draws our attention to the fact that the second-wave feminist movement’s naming of workplace sexual harassment created the conditions for a public that would hear and witness these later testimonies. In naming violence where we see it and considering violence from various and multiple scholarly dimensions, the essays in this issue refuse to shelter it beneath the veil of the everyday, the arbitrary, the taken for granted. In explicitly naming violence, they bring it out into the open, and they allow us to consider alternatives. Creative works, for example, offer an opportunity to play with the meanings of violence, and to reimagine what it means to be an aggressor or a victim (McKenzie-Craig; Sexton-Finck). Through such explorations, these pieces collectively draw to our attention the possibility and need for futures different from the histories and present that we inherit and live within today. Together, the arguments, insights and calls for something different compel us to confront that which some seek not to discuss, that which some of us might take for granted as a condition of everyday life. Through such calls, we are asked to confront what it means to live and relate ethically together for something and somewhere different. References Adorno, Theodor W. “Culture Industry Reconsidered.” Media Studies. Eds. P. Marris and S. Thornham. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999. 31–7. Arendt, Hannah. On Violence. London: Harcourt, 1970. Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin. The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Postcolonial Literatures. London: Routledge, 1989. Billig, Michael. Banal Nationalism. Thousand Oaks: Sage, 1995. Bourdieu, Pierre. On Television and Journalism. London: Pluto Press, 1998. Chernega, Jennifer. “Black Lives Matter: Racialised Policing in the United States.” Comparative American Studies 14.3-4 (2016): 234-45. Dervin, Fred. “Cultural Identity, Representation and Othering.” The Routledge Handbook of Language and Intercultural Communication. Ed Jane Jackson. New York: Routledge, 2012. 181–94. Gilmore, Jane. Fixed It: Violence and the Representation of Women in the Media. Melbourne: Penguin Random House, 2019.Hicks, David. Lessons for the Future: The Missing Dimension in Education. New York: Routledge Falmer, 2002. Hill, Jane. The Everyday Language of White Racism. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2008. Katz, Jackson, and Jeremy Earp. Tough Guise. 2011. Milner, H. Richard. “But Good Intentions Are Not Enough: Doing What’s Necessary to Teach for Diversity.” White Teachers, Diverse Classrooms: Creating Inclusive Schools, Building on Students’ Diversity, and Providing True Educational Equity. Eds. Julie. Landsman and Chance Lewis. 2nd ed. Stirling, VA: Stylus Publishing, 2011. 56–74. Waters, Jeff. Gone for a Song: A Death in Custody on Palm Island. Sydney: Harper Collins, 2008.

I remember the first time I saw a dead body. I spawned just before dawn; around me engines were clattering into life, the dim silhouettes of tanks beginning to move out in a steady grinding rumble. I could dimly make out a few other people, the anonymity of their shadowy outlines belied by the names hanging over their heads in a comforting blue. Suddenly, a stream of tracers arced across the sky; explosions sounded nearby, then closer still; a tank ahead of me stopped, turned sluggishly, and fired off a couple of rounds, rocking slightly against the recoil. The radio was filled with talk of Germans in the town, but I couldn’t even see the town. I ran toward what looked like the shattered hulk of a building and dived into what I hoped was a doorway. It was already occupied by another Tommy and together we waited for it to get lighter, listening to the rattle of machine guns, the sharp ping as shells ricocheted off steel, the sickening, indescribable, but immediately recognisable sound when they didn’t. Eventually, the other soldier moved out, but I waited for the sun to peek over the nearby hills. Once I was able to see where I was going, I made straight for the command post on the edge of town, and came across a group of allied soldiers standing in a circle. In the centre of the circle lay a dead German soldier, face up. “Well I’ll be damned,” I said aloud; no one else said anything, and the body abruptly faded. I remember the first time I killed someone. I had barely got the Spit V up to 4000 feet when out of the corner of my eye I caught a glimpse of something below me. I dropped the left wing and saw a Stuka making a bee-line for the base. I made a hash of the turn, almost stalling, but he obviously had no idea I was there. I saddled-up on his six, dropping down low to avoid fire from his gunner, and opened up on him. I must have hit him at perfect convergence because he disintegrated, pieces of dismembered airframe raining down on the field below. I circled the field, putting all my concentration into making the landing that would make the kill count, then switched off the engine and sat in the cockpit for a moment, heart pounding. As you can tell, I’ve been in the wars lately. The first example is drawn from the launch of Cornered Rat Software’s WWII Online: Blitzkrieg (2001) while the second is based on a short stint playing Warbirds 3 (2002). Both games are examples of one of the most interesting recent developments in computer and video gaming: the increasing popularity and range of Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs); other notable examples of historical combat simulation MMOGs include HiTech Creations Aces High (2002) and Jaleco Entertainment’s Fighter Ace 3.5 (2002). For a variety of technical reasons, most popular multiplayer games—particularly first-person shooter (FPS) games such as Doom, Quake, and more recently Medal of Honor: Allied Assault (2002) and Return to Castle Wolfenstein (2001)—are played on player-organised servers that are usually limited to 32 or fewer players; terrain maps are small and rotated every couple of hours on average. MMOGs, by contrast, feature anywhere from hundreds to tens of thousands of players hosted on a handful of company-run servers. The shared virtual geography of these worlds is huge, extending across tens of thousands of square miles; these worlds are also persistent in that they respond dynamically to the actions of players and continue to do so while individual players are offline. As my opening anecdotes demonstrate, the experience of dealing and receiving virtual death is central to massively multiplayer simulations as it is to so many forms of computer games. Yet for an experience is that is so ubiquitous in computer games (and, some would say, even constitutes their experiential core) death is under-theorised. Mainstream culture tends to see computer and console game mayhem according to a rigid desensitisation argument: the experience of repeatedly killing other players online leads to a gradual erosion of the individual moral sense which makes players more likely to countenance killing people in the real world. Nowhere was this argument more in evidence that in the wake of the murder of fifteen students by Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado on April 20, 1999. The discovery that the two boys were enthusiastic players of Id Software’s Doom and Quake resulted in an avalanche of hysterical news stories that charged computer games with a number of evils: eroding kids’ ability to distinguish fantasy from reality, encouraging them to imitate the actions represented in the games, and immuring them to the real-world consequences of violence. These claims were hardly new, and had in fact been directed at any number of violent popular entertainment genres over the years. What was new was the claim that the interactive nature of FPS games rendered them a form of simulated weapons training. What was also striking about the discourse surrounding the Littleton shooting was just how little the journalists covering the story knew about computer, console and arcade games. Nevertheless, their approach to the issue encouraged readers to see games as having real life analogs. Media discussion of the event also reinforced the notion of a connection with military training techniques, making extensive use of Lt. Col. (ret) David Grossman, a former Army ranger and psychologist who led the charge in claiming that games were “mass-murder simulators” (Gittrich, AA06). This controversy over the role of violent computer games in the Columbine murders is part of a larger cultural discourse that adopts the logical fallacy characteristic of moral panics: coincidence equals causation. Yet the impoverished discussion of online death and destruction is also due in no small measure to an entrenched hostility toward popular entertainment as a whole, a hostility that is evident even in the work of some academic critics who study popular culture. Andrew Darley, for example, argues that, never has the flattening of meaning or depth in the traditional aesthetic sense of these words been so pronounced as in the action-simulation genres of the computer game: here, aesthetic experience is tied directly to the purely sensational and allied to tests of physical dexterity (143). In this view, the repeated experience of death is merely a part of the overall texture of a form characterised not so much by narrative as by compulsive repetition. More generally, computer games are seen by many critics as the pernicious, paradigmatic instance of the colonisation of individual consciousness by cultural spectacle. According to this Frankfurt school-influenced critique (most frequently associated with the work of Guy Debord), spectacle serves both to mystify and pacify its audience: The more the technology opens up narrative possibilities, the less there is for the audience to do. [. . .]. When the spectacle conceals the practice of the artists who create it, it [announces]…itself as an expression of a universe beyond human volition and effort (Filewood 24). In supposedly sapping its audience’s critical faculties by bombarding them with a technological assault whose only purpose is to instantiate a deterministic worldview, spectacle is seen by its critics as exemplifying the work of capitalist ideology which teaches people not to question the world around them by establishing, in Althusser’s famous phrase, an “imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of their existence” (162). The desensitisation thesis is thus part of a larger discourse that considers computer games paradoxically to be both escapist and as having real-world effects. With regard to online death, neo-Marxism meets neo-Freudianism: players are seen as hooked on the thrill not only of destroying others but also of self-destruction. Death is thus considered the terminus of all narrative possibility, and the participation of individuals in fantasy-death and mayhem is seen to lead inevitably to several kinds of cultural death: the death of “family values,” the death of community, the death of individual responsibility, and—given the characterisation of FPS games in particular as lacking in plot and characterisation—the death of storytelling. However, it is less productive to approach computer, arcade and console games as vehicles for force-feeding content with pre-determined cultural effects than it is to understand them as venues within and around which players stage a variety of theatrical performances. Thus even the bêtes noire of the mainstream media, first-person shooters, serve as vehicles for a variety of interactions ranging from the design of new sounds, graphics and levels, new “skins” for player characters, the formation of “tribes” or “clans” that fight and socialise together, and the creation of elaborate fan fictions. This idea that narrative does not simply “happen” within the immediate experience of playing the game, but is in fact produced by a dynamic interplay of interactions for which the game serves as a focus, also suggests a very different way of looking at the role of death online. Far from being the logical endpoint, the inevitable terminus of all narrative possibility, death becomes the indispensable starting point for narrative. In single-player games, for example, the existence of the simple “save game” function—differing from simply putting the game board to one side in that the save function allows the preservation of the game world in multiple temporal states—generates much of the narrative and dramatic range of computer games. Generally a player saves the game because he or she is facing an obstacle that may result in death; saving the game at that point allows the player to investigate alternatives. Thus, the ever-present possibility of death in the game world becomes the origin of all narratives based on forward investigation. In multiplayer and MMOG environments, where the players have no control over the save game state, it is nevertheless the possibility of a mode of forward projection that gives the experience its dramatic intensity. Flight simulation games in particular are notoriously difficult to master; the experience of serial death, therefore, becomes the necessary condition for honing your flying skills, trying out different tactics in a variety of combat situations, trying similar tactics in different aircraft, and so on. The experience of online death creates a powerful narrative impulse, and not only in those situations where death is serialised and guaranteed. A sizable proportion of the flight sim communities of both Warbirds and Aces High participate in specially designed scenario events that replicate a specific historical air combat event (the Battle of Britain, the Coral Sea, USAAF bomber operations in Europe, etc.) as closely as possible. What makes these scenarios so compelling for many players is that they are generally “one life” events: once the player is dead, they are out for the rest of the event and this creates an intense experience that is completely unlike flying in the everyday free-for-all arenas. The desensitisation thesis notwithstanding, there is little evidence that this narrative investment in death produces a more casual attitude toward real-life death amongst MMOG players. For example, when real-world death intrudes, simulation players often reach for the same rituals of comfort and acknowledgement that are employed offline. Recently, when an Aces High player died unexpectedly of heart failure at the age of 35, his squadron held an elaborate memorial event in his honor. Over a hundred players bailed out over an aerodrome—bailing out is the only way that a player in Aces High can acquire a virtual human body—and lined the edges of the runway as members of the dead player’s squad flew the missing man formation overhead (GrimmCAF). The insistence upon bodily presence in the context of a classic military ceremony marking irrecoverable absence suggests the way in which the connections between real and virtual worlds are experienced by players: as tensions, but also as points where identities are negotiated. This example does not seem to indicate that everyday familiarity with virtual death has dulled the players’ sensibilities to the sorrow and loss accompanying death in the real world. I began this article talking about death in simulation MMOGs for a number of reasons. In the first place, MMOGs are more commonly identified with their role-playing examples (MMORPGs) such as Ultima Online and Everquest, games that focus on virtual community-building and exploration in addition to violence and conquest. By contrast, simulation games tend to be seen as having more in common with first-person shooters like Quake, in the way in which they foreground the experience of serial death. Secondly, it is precisely the connection between simulation and death that makes games in general (as I demonstrated in relation to the media coverage of the Columbine murders) so problematic. In response, I would argue that one of the most interesting aspects of computer games recently has been the degree to which generic distinctions have been breaking down. MMORPGs, which had their roots in the Dungeons and Dragons gaming world, and the text-based world of MUDs and MOOs have since developed sophisticated third-person and even first-person representational styles to facilitate both peaceful character interactions and combat. Likewise, first-person shooters have begun to add role-playing elements (see, for example, Looking Glass Studios’ superb System Shock 2 (1999) or Lucasarts' Jedi Knight series). This trend has also been incorporated into simulation MMOGs: World War II Online includes a rudimentary set of character-tracking features, and Aces High has just announced a more ambitious expansion whose major focus will be the incorporation of role-playing elements. I feel that MMOGs in particular are all evolving towards a state that I would describe as “simulance:” simulations that, while they may be associated with a nominal representational reality, are increasingly about exploring the narrative possibilities, the mechanisms of theatrical engagement for self and community of simulation itself. Increasingly, none of the terms "simulation,” "role-playing" or indeed “game” quite captures the texture of these evolving experiences. In their complex engagement with both scripted and extemporaneous narrative, the players have more in common with period re-enactors; the immersive power of a well-designed flight simulator scenario produces a feeling in players akin to the “period rush” experienced by battlefield re-enactors, the frisson between awareness of playing a role and surrendering completely to the momentary power of its illusory reality. What troubles critics about simulations (and what also blinds them to the narrative complexity in other forms of computer games) is that they are indeed not simply examples of re-enactment —a re-staging of supposedly real events—but a generative form of narrative enactment. Computer games, particularly large-scale online games, provide a powerful set of theatrical tools with which players and player communities can help shape narratives and deepen their own narrative investment. Obviously, they are not isolated from real-world cultural factors that shape and constrain narrative possibility. However, we are starting to see the way in which the games use the idea of virtual death as the generative force for new storytelling frameworks based, in Filewood’s terms, on forward investigation. As games begin to move out of their incunabular state, they may contribute to the re-shaping of culture and consciousness, as other narrative platforms have done. Far from causing the downfall of civilisation, game-based narratives may bring with them a greater cultural awareness of simultaneous narrative possibility, of the past as sets of contingent phenomena, and a greater attention to practical, hands-on experimental problem-solving. It would be ironic, but no great surprise, if a form built around the creative possibilities inherent in serial death in fact made us more attentive to the rich alternative possibilities of living. Works Cited Aces High. HiTech Creations, 2002. http://www.bartleby.com/201/1.html Althusser, Louis. “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes Toward an Investigation).” Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays. By Louis Althusser, trans. Ben Brewster. New York, 1971. 127-86. Barry, Ellen. “Games Feared as Youths’ Basic Training; Industry, Valued as Aid to Soldiers, on Defensive.” The Boston Globe 29 Apr 1999: A1. LexisNexis. Feb. 7, 2003. Cornered Rat Software. World War II Online: Blitzkrieg. Strategy First, 2001. http://www.wwiionline.com/ Darley, Andrew. Visual Digital Culture: Surface Play and Spectacle in New Media Genres. London: Routledge, 2000. Debord, Guy. The Society of the Spectacle. Donald Nicholson-Smith. New York: Zone Books, 1994. 1967. Der Derian, James. “The Simulation Syndrome: From War Games to Game Wars.” Social Text 8.2 (1990): 187-92. Filewood, Alan. “C:\Games\Dramaturgy: The Cybertheatre of Computer Games.” Canadian Theatre Review 81 (Winter 1994): 24-28. Gittrich, Greg. “Expert Differs with Kids over Video Game Effects.” The Denver Post 27 Apr 1999: AA-06. LexisNexis. Feb. 7 2003. GrimmCAF. “MojoCAF’s Memorial Flight.” Aces High BB, 13 Dec. 2002. http://www.hitechcreations.com/forums/sh... IEntertainment Network. Warbirds III. Simon and Schuster Interactive, 2002.http://www.totalsims.com/index.php?url=w... Jenkins, Henry, comp. “Voices from the Combat Zone: Game Grrlz Talk Back.” From Barbie to Mortal Kombat: Gender and Computer Games. Ed. Justine Cassell and Henry Jenkins. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT P, 1998. 328-41. Lieberman, Joseph I. “The Social Impact of Music Violence.” Statement Before the Governmental Affairs Committee Subcommittee on Oversight, 1997. http://www.senate.gov/member/ct/lieberma... Feb. 7 2003. Murray, Janet H. Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace. New York: Free, 1997. Poole, Steven. Trigger Happy: Videogames and the Entertainment Revolution. New York: Arcade Publishing, 2000. Pyro. “AH2 FAQ.” Aces High BB, 29 Jan. 2003. Internet. http://www.hitechcreations.com/forums/sh... Feb. 8 2003. Links http://www.wwiionline.com/ http://www.idsoftware.com/games/doom/ http://www.hitechcreations.com/ http://www.totalsims.com/index.php?url=wbiii/content_home.php http://www.hitechcreations.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;threadid=77265 http://www.senate.gov/member/ct/lieberman/releases/r110697c.html http://www.idsoftware.com/games/wolfenstein http://www.idsoftware.com/games/quake/ http://www.ea.com/eagames/official/moh_alliedassault/home.jsp http://www.jaleco.com/fighterace/index.html http://www.bartleby.com/201/1.html http://www.hitechcreations.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;threadid=72560 Citation reference for this article Substitute your date of access for Dn Month Year etc... MLA Style Mullen, Mark. "It Was Not Death for I Stood Up…and Fragged the Dumb-Ass MoFo Who'd Wasted Me" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 6.1 (2003). Dn Month Year < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0302/03-itwasnotdeath.php>. APA Style Mullen, M., (2003, Feb 26). It Was Not Death for I Stood Up…and Fragged the Dumb-Ass MoFo Who'd Wasted Me. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture, 6,(1). Retrieved Month Dn, Year, from http://www.media-culture.org.au/0302/03-itwasnotdeath.html

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