Journal articles on the topic 'Goat-creation'

Main breeding objective in improvement of goat production is realization of increase of number of animals and production and creation of constant highly productive goat breeding on private farms of individual producers. For economically efficient goat production, size and number of goats in the herd are of great importance. Considering that goats of greater body mass should realize higher production, body mass of head can serve as one of the parameters in selection. Objective of this research was to determine optimal body masses of heads in population of Serbian White goat, in hilly-mountainous region of Stara Planina Mountain, in semiintensive rearing system (pasture-stable) and in relation to realized production. Based on results of research it can be concluded that optimal body mass of investigated heads in population of Serbian White goat in regard to observed parameters of production is between 40-47 kg.

Goat farming is important for the livelihood of millions of rural people because it contributes to food security and creation of assets. However, infection of goats withToxoplasma gondiicould be a source of parasite transmission to humans. The information onT. gondiiinfection of goat was not reported yet in Myanmar. A total of 119 goat serum samples were collected from three cities in the central region of Myanmar forT. gondiiantibody survey. With the occurrence value obtained in this first study, a second one, more complete, with larger number (162) of animals and properties, was carried out and the risk factors and prevalence were determined. In both studies the samples were analyzed by the LAT. Of these, 32 (11.4%) samples were showed to be positive. The infection was associated with the presence of cats at the farm (odds ratio [OR] = 4.66, 95% confidential interval [CI] = 1.03–21.06), farming with different animal species (sheep, cattle, and pigs) (OR = 4.33, 95% CI = 1.57–11.94), and farming without good management practices (OR = 0.23, 95% CI = 0.06–0.83). This is the firstT. gondiiprevalence study in goats in the country.

Zoonotic pathogens are frequently hypothesized as emerging with the origins of farming, but evidence of this is elusive in the archaeological records. To explore the potential impact of animal domestication on zoonotic disease dynamics and human infection risk, we developed a model simulating the transmission of Brucella melitensis within early domestic goat populations. The model was informed by archaeological data describing goat populations in Neolithic settlements in the Fertile Crescent, and used to assess the potential of these populations to sustain the circulation of Brucella . Results show that the pathogen could have been sustained even at low levels of transmission within these domestic goat populations. This resulted from the creation of dense populations and major changes in demographic characteristics. The selective harvesting of young male goats, likely aimed at improving the efficiency of food production, modified the age and sex structure of these populations, increasing the transmission potential of the pathogen within these populations. Probable interactions between Neolithic settlements would have further promoted pathogen maintenance. By fostering conditions suitable for allowing domestic goats to become reservoirs of Brucella melitensis , the early stages of agricultural development were likely to promote the exposure of humans to this pathogen.

Small ruminant is an important and integral part of livestock in Ethiopia. Especially, goats are attractive to people of Ethiopia because of the ability to resist challenges, easily adapt to different ecological regions, and need small land to rearing and small initial capital in which poor people can engaged in the production system. In spite of the presence of large number of goat population in Ethiopia, it fails to utilize expected productivity due to many factors. Among the factors, which limit the economic returns of goats, diseases stand frontline. Tuberculosis is one the diseases that affect goats’ health and production in Ethiopia. Goat tuberculosis is a chronic disease, which is characterized by the development of granulomas, essentially in the respiratory tract and related lymph nodes, from which the mycobacteria are discharged and contaminate other susceptible animals. Goat tuberculosis has a public health implication in Ethiopia because of the farmers’ habit of consuming raw goat milk and its products, and they do have consistent or day-to-day contact with their goats. The etiological agents also transmitted to humans through the aerogenous route from those animals with active cases in the herd. The infection has been reported from several parts of different areas of the country dependent on the abattoir inspections. Therefore, attention should be given towards the control of tuberculosis in livestock; public health education on zoonotic importance of the disease or awareness creation and the national tuberculosis control needs to consider the one health approach, and further epidemiological studies should be undertaken.

Purpose The purpose of this study is to explore how value creation and transformative service research (TSR) are interconnected at the base of the pyramid (BoP). To do so, the study seeks consumers’ perceptions of changes in well-being from value creation and the means by which these changes become transformative. Design/methodology/approach A qualitative, longitudinal design was used, involving a community education project in Indonesia. Data collection consisted of interviews with Etawa goat farmers and village leaders after one year (n = 21), and a further three years (n = 10). Findings Findings from the study are used to advance a model for value creation and TSR at the BoP, which identifies three critical change periods within consumers. These periods suggest that creating improvements in well-being of consumers requires their initial recognition of value outcomes, realisation of agency and a new vision for the future. Research limitations/implications Research in other contexts is warranted to confirm the model, to further explore well-being from service at the BoP and to identify issues that diminish consumers’ confidence and stall transformation. Methodological challenges at the BoP also present avenues for insightful work. Practical implications Transformative service at BoP requires an emphasis on suitable structures, collaborative processes and management skills to facilitate consumers gaining agency and control, so that they can use their new and existing resources effectively and/or differently. Social implications Participants highlighted positive changes to well-being at both individual and collective levels. Notably, some changes were not directly related to initial service provision but reflected improvements, such as employment for women, and better hygiene, health and education of families. Originality/value By exploring the interconnection between transformative service and value creation, this study addresses the issue of when value creation becomes transformative and vital for poverty alleviation at the BoP. The proposed model incorporates TSR, service logic and other literature, illustrates a process moving from value determination to value expansion and highlights three critical intrasubjective change periods within actors.

SummaryThis paper describes and analyses the process of implementing participatory community-based management (CBM) towards sustainable management of goat genetic resources in two rural communities in Southern Benin from November 2005 to February 2007. The process started with the selection of the communities. This was followed by a participatory situation analysis, identification of problems and of possible solutions, and the provisionof relevant information and training to interested farmers. It was facilitated by a multidisciplinary research team composed of a specialist in livestock production systems, a socio-economist and an agronomist. The interaction between the research team and the farmers aimed to develop and implement community led strategies towards better management and conservation of the local resources of goat. The approach adopted to facilitate the creation of representative, accountable and legal local institutions and the efforts made in ensuring their empowerment are described. It has been shown that once local people recognise the benefits of such community-based activities and are offered the relevant information and technical support, they can organize themselves effectively and take appropriate actions to better manage and conserve their local resources. The interactive nature of thisapproach allows its rapid adjustment to different local conditions and thus its replication elsewhere.

Abstract Specific environmental conditions and local livestock management systems resulted in creation of valuable native breeds. The timely monitoring of genetic diversity within native breeds based on using high-throughput DNA arrays will prevent their irreparable loss. In this regard, we aimed to assess genome-wide diversity and to study demographic history of Russian native goat breeds (Altai Mountain, Orenburg, Soviet Mohair, Dagestan Milk, Dagestan Local, Dagestan Fluff and Karachaev) based on SNP-data. A total of 200 goats were genotyped using Goat 50K SNP BeadChip (Illumina, USA). Quality control and SNP-filtering were performed in PLINKv1.9. R package ‘diveRsity’ was used to calculate observed heterozygosity (Ho), expected heterozygosity (He), and inbreeding coefficient (Fis). Effective population sizes (Ne) were estimated in SneP software. Observed heterozygosity was high and exceeded 0.402 in five out of seven breeds. Orenburg, Soviet Mohair, Dagestan Milk, and Karachaev breeds showed slight excess of heterozygotes varied from 0.6% (Fis= -0.015) in Orenburg to 1.7% (Fis= -0.04) in Karachaev breed. The traces of insignificant inbreeding were found in Dagestan Local (Fis=0.005) and Dagestan Fluff (Fis= 0.01) breeds. The recent effective population sizes estimated for four generations ago varied from 140 in Karachaev to 472 in Orenburg breed. Analysis of historical trends in effective population sizes estimated for sixty generations ago revealed obvious decrease ranging from 10.25% in Dagestan Local to 34.65% in Orenburg breed. However, recent effective sizes in Russian native goats are higher than critical threshold (Ne= 100) that is essential to breed maintenance in the future. Our research findings provide an evidence that Russian native goat breeds are not in endangered status, but development of the effective utilization programs is highly recommended. The genotyping of 96 goats was funded by RSF No. 19-76-20006. The reported study was funded by RFBR according to the research project № 18-316-20006.

The domestic goat (Capra aegagrus hircus), a mammalian species with high genetic merit for production of milk and meat, can be a tremendously valuable tool for transgenic research. This research is focused on the production and multiplication of genetically engineered or genome-edited cloned specimens by applying somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT), which is a dynamically developing assisted reproductive technology (ART). The efficiency of generating the SCNT-derived embryos, conceptuses, and progeny in goats was found to be determined by a variety of factors controlling the biological, molecular, and epigenetic events. On the one hand, the pivotal objective of our paper was to demonstrate the progress and the state-of-the-art achievements related to the innovative and highly efficient solutions used for the creation of transgenic cloned does and bucks. On the other hand, this review seeks to highlight not only current goals and obstacles but also future challenges to be faced by the approaches applied to propagate genetically modified SCNT-derived goats for the purposes of pharmacology, biomedicine, nutritional biotechnology, the agri-food industry, and modern livestock breeding.

Large-scale changes in subtidal reef habitats have occurred within the Leigh Marine Reserve (New Zealand) since its establishment in 1976. To determine the extent of habitat change within Goat Island Bay, video transects positioned by a radio acoustic positioning telemetry (RAPT) system were used to map habitats within a Geographic Information System (GIS) framework. This map was compared to a map of the same area constructed 22 years earlier in 1978. Visual categorisation of habitats was consistent with the quantification of habitat-forming species within quadrats, justifying the creation of a map based on visually interpreted video footage. Furthermore, the large-scale changes in habitats were consistent with smaller-scale changes in community structure identified at permanent sites located in the study area. The most obvious changes were the total disappearance of ‘urchin barrens’ across all depths and the recovery of kelp forest in water <8 m, caused by a trophic cascade related to predator recovery. In water > 12 m, the extent of kelp forest and sponge flats was found to decrease by 25 and 33%, respectively, while turfing algal habitat had increased by 50%. This increase in turfing algal habitat had not been previously documented due to the spatial scale of traditional sampling methods.

In publications of Russian folklore, along with authentic texts there are a number of literary stylizations based on folklore. The article traces the history of one such pseudo-folkloric text—a carol which was first published by Ivan Petrovich Sakharov (1807 to 1863) in 1837. It has been established that this carol is a montage of two texts: the first is a carol, printed in 1817 by I.E. Sreznevsky in the Ukrainian Bulletin, and the second is a song included in the Tale of Brother Ivanushka and his Sister Alyonushka (SUS 450). Such contamination is unique and is found only in this one text, which was later reprinted many times. Taking into account Sakharov’s reputation as a falsifier of folklore, there is no reason to doubt that it was he who composed this carol; such contamination of works belonging to different folkloric genres is also characteristic of other of Sakharov’s publications. The carol that Sakharov published attracted the particular interest of researchers of Slavic mythology due to the fact that it described how an old man was going to sacrifice a goat. Several generations of historians saw in this pseudo-folkloric text a description of a ritual that pagan Slavs performed in ancient times. Considering the carol as an historical document, researchers of mythology built their interpretations based on the supposed time of its appearance, the nature of its genre, plot, and individual details. Thus, Sakharov’s pseudo-folkloric creation found an eager audience among scholars, and it stimulated their imagination in picturing the life of pagan Rus’.

Background: Leptospirosis and brucellosis are zoonosis worldwide distributed that have great economic importance, especially in goats. This study aimed to carry out a cross-sectional study to determine the prevalence of anti-Leptospira spp. and anti-Brucella abortus antibodies and to determine epidemiological variables associated to infection by these ethiological agents in goats.Materials, Methods & Results: Serum samples were collected from 1055 goats of 95 properties distributed in 18 regional centers of Paraná State from April to August of 2010. Collected samples were submitted to microscopic agglutination test (MAT) for the detection of anti-Leptospira spp. antibodies with 22 reference serovars: Australis, Bratislava, Autumnalis, Butembo, Castellonis, Bataviae, Canicola, Fortbragg, Whitcombi, Cynopteri, Grippotyphosa, Hebdomadis, Copenhageni, Icterohaemorrhagiae, Panama, Pomona, Pyrogenes, Hardjo, Wolffi, Shermani, Tarassovi and Londrina 1 (L1). The samples were also submitted to buffered acidified plate antigen test (BAPA) and 2-mercaptoethanol test (2-ME) to detect anti-Brucella abortus antibodies. The results obtained from epidemiological and serological study were analysed by Epi Info 3.5.3. We observed 9.9% (104/1055) of goats reagents in at least one serovar of Leptospira spp. and no reagent animal to Brucella abortus. The variables that were statistically significant with leptospirosis were: production type meat, sewer destination in dry sump, frequent abortion, shared use of pastures, slaughter of animals on the property, the presence of pigs and wild animals such as deer and capybaras on the property.Discussion: This was the first study about antibodies prevalence against Leptospira spp. and Brucella abortus in goat herds from Paraná State. The presence of both animal species were statiscally associated to risk of leptospirosis. It is necessary avoid the acess of these animals in herds, decreasing the dissemination of the agent. The production type meat is a form of creation in which the animals have no care of zookeepers and continuous veterinary care. The final destination of sewage was statistically associated to risk of leptospirosis in goats and this is a big problem in rural properties, requiring greater attention of authorities for proper disposal of this wastewater, reducing water and food contamination. Among the variables related to management, the herds that used rented pasture or shared pastures also were statistically associated to risk of leptospirosis in goats; with the sharing of pastures a greater flow of animals transiting in the pickets occurs, allowing not only flocks of goats, but other species also, to use the same pastures and become more exposed to certain diseases. The slaughter of pigs, sheep, cattle and goats on the property is a problem for animal and human health due to lack of sanitary inspection. Abortion is one of the main clinical signs of leptospirosis in farm animals, particularly goats. The knowledge of these results will be useful to develop control programs for the disease in Paraná State herds. The absence of circulating anti-Brucella abortus antibodies in goat herds has also been reported in other Brazilian States.

Ethiopia is believed to have the largest livestock population in Africa. An estimate indicates that the country is a home for about 54 million cattle, 25.5 million sheep and 24.06 million goats. Therefore, this study was conducted in three selected districts of Gambelia regional state with the objective to assess the production potentials and preservation methods of hide and skin. As a secondary product of the meat consumption, the supply of hides & skins depends on the demand for meat, the rearing, management and slaughtering of animals, with little response to change in price and demand for the products. Hides and skins could be obtained from fish, birds and reptiles as well as wild and domesticated animals. The sample size of the study was estimated to be 384 (128 from Gambella zuria, 128 from Godare and 128 from Lare) using the formula stated in Thrust field. The quantitative data was organized, summarized and encoded on excel sheet and analyzed with the help of Statistical Analysis System (SAS) 9.2 version 2008.Qualitative data derived from direct observations and key informants was examined and presented in form of discussions. In the study areas, for all the three species, the mean annual slaughter at household level ranges between 0.07,1.66 and 1.73 cattle, sheep and goat annually, respectively in the study area. Of the 384 respondents interviewed, (94.01%) used the preservation methods of ground air dry and 6.25% use salt preservation for hide and skin preservation, respectively. Generally, production potential and preservation methods variations were observed among the Hide and skin producers, which suggest that there is an opportunity for improvement through awareness creation.

Today, dairy products are a significant part of falsified food. Of all types of falsifications, it is most difficult to establish intermodal substitution. There are cases of dilution of sheep and goat milk to cow. The most accurate test for the species of milk and dairy products is the polymerase chain reaction. However, this method is expensive and time-consuming. Proceeding from this, the aim of this work was to determine the concentration of total cholesterol and triacylglycerol in milk of cows, sheep and goats, which in the future can be used as the theoretical basis for the creation of informative diagnostic tests for interspecific milk falsification. For research, 7 samples of milk from cows, sheep and goats were selected. In the test samples, the content of triacylglycerol and total cholesterol was determined. The test system “Philitis-Diagnostics” was used. The obtained digital material indicates that the highest level of triacylglycerol is recorded in the milk of sheep, and the lowest – cows. Thus, in sheep's milk, the level of triacylglycerol was 3.4 times higher (P < 0.01), compared with milk of cows, and 1.5 times as compared with milk of goats. In milk of cows, this indicator was 2.2 times lower than that of goat meat. The level of total cholesterol in sheep's milk was higher by 5.7 times (P < 0.01), compared with milk of goats and 4.5 times (P < 0.01) with milk of cows. Its level in milk of cows was higher by 1.2 times, compared with the content of goats milk. The statistical analysis of the results showed a strong negative correlation between the total cholesterol and triacylglycerol content in goat's milk (r = -0.7) and sheep (r = -0.8). In milk of cows such correlation dependence is not established (r = 0.4). It should be noted that significant individual variations of the studied parameters within a single species of animals. This may be due to the season of the year, feeding, the period of lactation, the age of the animal, the state of the health of the mammary gland, as indicated by other researchers. It has been established that the level of total cholesterol and triacylglycerol in animal milk is unstable. However, the level of triacylglycerol in sheep's milk is significantly higher than in milk of cows and goats, and the level of total cholesterol is lower in milk of goats compared with milk from cows and sheep. Such results suggest the promising use of triacylglycerol and total cholesterol in animal milk as an informative complement to existing interspecific falsification tests. In further studies, attention will be focused on the peculiarities of the fractional composition of milk lipids and the study of the level of triacylglycerol and total cholesterol in products made from falsified and unfertilized milk.

Sorghum farming group in South Africa is divided into the smallholder and business ranchers attributable to the distinctions in cultivar sizes, utility creation and production strategies. Sorghum is utilized primarily for sustenance and refreshments in Ga-Masemola (GM) town. Smallholder sorghum farmers in the town utilize some portion of their wage for recreation, goat and cows' compost are utilized as manures to enhance soil fruitfulness and increment sorghum yield, they rely upon precipitation water for the water system and they have no entrance to expansion administrations. The study distinguish and depict the socioeconomic characteristics of smallholder sorghum farmers in Ga-Masemola town; it looks at the causes of technical efficiency among smallholder sorghum ranchers in the town, and it recognizes and portrays difficulties confronted by smallholder sorghum farmers in the town. Essential information was gathered utilizing organized surveys and an example size of 48 smallholder sorghum farmers in the town was chosen. Cobb Douglas model was utilized to analyze the information or data gotten.The socioeconomic characteristics of smallholder sorghum farmers were:farming experience, age, sexual orientation, instructive level and family unit measure. The study indicates that the determinants of technical efficiency among smallholder sorghum farmers in Ga-Masemola town that were observed to be huge are the measure of land dedicated and the amount of seeds utilized. Farmers are confronting difficulties, for example, sicknesses, low capital, pests, separation to the homestead, absence of water and atmosphere (i.e. climate) changes.The study suggested and recommended that smallholder sorghum farmers in Ga-Masemola (GM) town require arable land to expand their production; they additionally require agriculture extension officers for training and spreading or disseminating information about inputs allocation. Besides, the smallholder farmers should be encouraged to utilize enhanced seeds varieties in order to expand their technical efficiency.

There is a general view that is developing among the jurists' that zakat is a mahdhah worship which contains the side of mu'amalh maliyah ijtima'iyyah. As a mahdhah worship, zakat is ta'abbudi. At this point, submission and obedience are put forward so that there is no room for innovation and creation. While in its position as mu'amalh maliyah ijtima'iyyah it is ta'aqquli, so it is possible to make innovations and creations, both regarding the object of zakat, miqdar zakat (nishab and percentage of zakat), or other things that surround the zakat. The data used in this research is secondary data which is collected and obtained from literature studies, documents and other scientific publications. While the data analysis method used is a qualitative descriptive method, which is intended to comprehensively explain and analyze the position of zakat as mahdhah worship which contains mu'amalah maliyyah ijtima'iyyah which cannot be separated from the socio-economic aspects. Although it is understood that zakat mal contains aspects of mu'amalah maliyah ijtima'yyah, in addition to aspects of mahdhah worship which are ritual nuances and are ta'aqquli in nature, in practice the nuances of worship are more dominant, both at the theoretical-normative and practical-policy level. This is evident from the lack of progressive ijtihad to develop zakat miqdar (nishab and zakat percentage), zakat objects, and state policies. So far, the object of zakat has almost no development other than what the jurists have discussed in fiqh books which usually only revolves around a few commodities / business fields, such as zakat on gold and silver, zakat on livestock (usually limited to camels, cows, and goat), zakat on agriculture and certain fruits, zakat on commerce, and zakat for mining goods and hidden assets.

T-2 toxin is one of the most common and toxic trichothecene mycotoxins – secondary metabolites of molds that develop on cereals and some other crops. This article discusses the development stage of a test system for the determination of T-2 toxin based on enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), which uses an enzyme label – a conjugate of anti-rabbit goat antibodies with peroxidase. An important step in the creation of any ELISA-based test system is the preliminary titration of reaction components. The aim of the work was to determine the optimal concentration of the conjugate of antispecies antibodies in an indirectly competitive enzyme-linked immunosorbent enzyme immunoassay with the indication of T-2 toxin. A number of dilutions of the antivirus conjugate were examined: 1 : 1000; 1 : 2000; 1 : 3000; 1 : 4000; 1 : 5000; 1 : 7500; 1 : 10000; 1 : 12 500; 1 : 15,000; 1 : 17,500; 1 : 20,000; 1 : 30 000. In the ELISA staging protocol, calibration solutions of T-2 toxin at concentrations of 0.0 were used; 2.5; 5, 10, 20, 40, 80, 160 ng/ml and specific polyclonal rabbit antibodies to the T-2-BSA conjugate. Based on the average optical density values, calibration plots were constructed using the percentage of signal absorption from the zero standard. When evaluating the results of the study, the criterion for choosing the dilution of the conjugate of anti-species antibodies was considered the greatest, at which the best linearity of the grading plot is achieved and the level of its non-specific reaction with the zero standard would be the lowest. It was established that the optimal variants of dilutions of the conjugate of anti-species antibodies under the same experimental conditions tested were 1: 4000, 1 : 5000 and 1 : 12 500. Dose-dependent signal absorption was observed in all concentrations of anti-species antibodies. Dilutions of the conjugate of anti-species antibodies 1 : 1000–1 : 3000 and 1 : 17 500–1 : 30 000 were not taken into account, since the optical density of most wells was higher than the optimal boundaries in the first case (> 3.9) and lower in the second (< 0.4). Based on the foregoing, optimal dilution of the conjugate of anti-species antibodies was selected 1 : 12 500.

Aim. To study the polymorphism of the genes calpastatin (CAST), somatotropin (GH) and differential growth factor (GDF9) of sheep of the Dagestan mountain breed.Material and Methods. Studies on the genetic typing of Dagestan mountain sheep according to CAST, GH and GDF9 genes were carried out in conditions of distant pasture farming in the Republic of Dagestan by the Genetics and Breeding Laboratory of the Federal Agrarian Scientific Centre of the Republic of Dagestan, an accredited laboratory of immunogenetics and DNA technologies of the All-Russian Research Institute of Sheep and Goat Breeding and a branch of the North Caucasus Federal Scientific Agrarian Centre. These investigations were undertaken by the PCR-RFLP method (polymyrase chain reaction - restriction fragment length polymorphism) on a Tersik four-channel programmable thermal cycler from DNA-Technologia (Russia) using specific primers synthesized in the SYNTHOL research and production laboratory (Moscow).Results. Carrying out PCR-RFLP revealed breed-specific alleles with different frequency of occurrence, which was: in the locus of the CAST gene - allele CASTN - 0.03; allele CASTM - 0.97; at the GH gene locus - GHA allele - 100.0, GHB allele - 0; in the locus of the GDF9 gene - the GDF9A allele - 0.25, the GDF9G allele - 0.75, which determined the frequency of occurrence of the homo- and heterozygous genotypes: CASTNN, CASTMM and CASTNM - 93.0; 0 and 7.0%; GHAA, GHBB and GHAB - 100.0 and 0%; GDF9AA, GDF9GG and GDF9АG- 16.0, 66.0 and 19.0%, respectively.Conclusion. The regularity revealed can be considered as an ecological factor that optimizes the adaptive functions of the sheep's organism, on the one hand, an evolutionary selection process that contributes to the creation of a specific way of genetic structures in the population, on the other. The assumption is made that the information obtained can serve as the beginning of a more in-depth study of the unique gene pool of sheep of the Dagestan rock breed for its further improvement. Variants of genetic marker profiles of parental pairs are proposed for accumulation in breeding herds bred in different ecological-geographical zones and genotypes of carriers of selection-significant genetic structures.

ABSTRACTThis research is to create an animation as a vehicle for relief from animal stories, especially goats and elephants in Sojiwan Temple to be applied as character education for children. The animation model based on the reliefs of animal stories at Sojiwan Temple is useful for reviving story reliefs that are not recognized by children as local wisdom of the nation's culture. By transforming animal story reliefs into animation, it is hoped that the message of character education can be disseminated to the younger generation.Methods of creation and presentation: (1) exploration of ideas and ideas for creating animated creations based on relief of animal stories; (2) designing a model to find an animation design with a transfer approach; and (3) presenting the results of creating animated characters to facilitate the delivery of character education messages for children to strengthen the character of the younger generation. The results of this study indicate that 1) the reliefs of Sojiwan Temple are mostly in the form of potential animals to be used as references for animation creations and are loaded with good moral values for children's education; 2) the design of the animated characters of Gaga and Bingo, which originates from the form of an elephant and a goat, looks its uniqueness. Keywords: vehicle transfer, animal relief, animation, character, Sojiwan. ABSTRAK Penelitian ini untuk menciptakan animasi sebagai alih wahana dari relief cerita binatang khususnya kambing dan gajah di Candi Sojiwan untuk diterapkan sebagai pendidikan budi pekerti bagi anak. Model animasi berbasis relief cerita binatang di Candi Sojiwan bermanfaat untuk menghidupkan kembali relief cerita yang sudah tidak dikenali oleh anak-anak sebagai kearifan lokal budaya bangsa. Dengan mengalihwahanakan relief cerita binatang ke dalam bentuk animasi maka pesan pendidikan budi pekerti diharapkan dapat didesiminasikan kepada generasi muda.Metode penciptaan dan penyajian: (1) eksplorasi ide dan gagasan untuk penciptaan kreasi animasi berbasis relief cerita binatang; (2) perancangan model untuk menemukan desain animasi dengan pendekatan alihwahana; dan (3) penyajian hasil penciptaan karakter animasi guna mempermudah penyampaian pesan pendidikan budi pekerti bagi anak untuk memperkuat karakter generasi muda. Hasil penelitian ini menunjukkan bahwa 1) relief Candi Sojiwan yang mayoritas berbentuk binatang potensial untuk dijadikan referensi bagi kreasi animasi dan sarat dengan nilai moral yang bagus untuk edukasi anak-anak; 2) desain karakter animasi tokoh Gaga dan Bingo yang bersumber dari bentuk gajah dan kambing tampak kekhasannya. Kata kunci: alih wahana, relief binatang, animasi, budi pekerti, Sojiwan.

Introduction and statement of the problem. Before the revolution of 1917, artists, writers, musicians and teachers created a rich literary fund that could be the basis for professional musical children’s theater in Ukraine. That is why there is a need to study the children’s musical and dramatic heritage of the past, which is an inexhaustible treasury of cultural and educational ideas that can be creatively developed and successfully applied in modern conditions. The process of creative development of the genre of children’s musical performance is today one of the most pressing problems of professional theater for children, take in account its growing popularity, both in the world and in Ukrainian musical culture. The lack of scientific research that fully and comprehensively cover the scientific and practical significance of musical children’s plays by Marko Kropyvnytskyi for the development of musical children’s theater in Ukraine indicates the need for more in-depth researching of the chosen topic. In our research, we rely on the works and articles of authoritative experts – in particular, I. Franko (1910), M. Voronyi (1913), D. Antonovich (1925), P. Rulin (1929), I. Mar’ianenko (1953), P. Kyrychok (1985), N. Yosipenko (1958), P. Perepelitsa (1956), A. Novikov (2007; 2011), L. Moroz (1990). The vast majority of researchers noted the great merits of the artist to the national drama in particular and Ukrainian culture in general. Among the scientific works devoted to Kropyvnytskyi as a children’s playwright, one can distinguish the research by A. Novikov (2007), which focuses on the history of creation of the first children’s troupe in the country, which had no analogues in the history of the world theater, since the actors in it were peasant children. In mentioned critical and scientific works, the innovative features of the playwright’s creative heritage are outlined, attention is focused on the specifics of the genre and problem-thematic range, literary-aesthetic, socio-political, and pedagogical views. The literary and theatrical activity of M. Kropyvnytskyi has been thoroughly studied. However, there is still no work that comprehensively reveal his musical and dramatic creativity for children. The purpose of the article is to show the significant role of M. Kropyvnytskyi in the development of children’s musical theater in Ukraine based on the research of children’s musical and dramatic creativity by the artist. The research methodology is integrative. The work uses knowledge of various fields of art history and related sciences: history and theory of theater, music theory, music and theater psychology, vocal and theater pedagogy. Presentation of the main material. A great pride of the playwright is the foundation by him on the territory of his village Zatyshok of the children’s theater, “actors” in which were his own and peasant children. This event was and remains unprecedented, since nothing like this has been observed in the history of Ukrainian and European culture. The troupe consisted of peasant children aged 10–13. For performances, Kropyvnytskyi assigned the largest room (hall) in the old house, where, as in a real theater, the stage was equipped. The first performance, “Goat-Dereza” (“Koza-dereza”), took place on Christmas day, 1906. The playwright drew the scenery himself, and prepared the costumes together with the children. The play was a great success. A few days later, the children’s troupe was invited to a “tour” in the neighboring village, and the entire theater with the scenery on five carts went on a journey of six versts (Novikov, 2007: 33). In the children’s repertoire at that time, there was, in fact, only one work – the opera by M. Lysenko “Goat-Dereza” (“Koza-dereza”) (libretto by Dniprova Chaika). Ukrainian children’s repertoire did not exist at that time, and in 1907, Kropyvnytskyi created two plays for young performers based on folk tales – “Ivasyk-Telesyk” and “At the behest of the pike” (“Po shchuchomu velinniu”). The performances included vocal numbers composed by M. Kropyvnytskyi on the themes of Ukrainian folk melodies. In a letter to his good friend entrepreneur A. Suslov in January 1908, the writer, in particular, notes: “I have assembled a troupe of peasant children and I am staging in the villages: Goat-dereza, IvasykTelesyk, and At the behest of the pike (the latter both are my)” (Kropyvnytskyi, 1960: 530). Based on the plot of folk tales of the same name, he wrote original musical and dramatic works for children of great educational value. The plays are quite simple in meaning and clearly depict the images of all the negative and positive characters. The first represent such social vices as lies and insincerity, and the second are carriers of eternal positive qualities – sincerity, candor, hard work. The plays are written in an exquisite Ukrainian language, close to the oral poetic creativity. All this, as M. Yosypenko rightly notes, is evidence of “a serious approach of M. Kropyvnytskyi to the business of writing plays for children, a deep knowledge of the psychology of the young audience and its cultural and educational needs and demands” (Yosypenko, 1958: 265). The performances require participation of music, which organic include into the language range of the play itself. Music explains and complements the true meaning of the situation to the young audience. Ukrainian musical folklore material formed the basis of the musical solution of M. Kropyvnytskyi’s children’s performances. Most often, folk songs served as a means to create the image and were introduce before the dramatic action mainly by the method of self-presentation: performing a particular song, the characters showed certain traits of their nature. The songs help to reveal the inner world of the characters, to express their state of mind and moods; often they contributed to the creation of the necessary stage atmosphere: festivities, fun and jokes. A significant part of the characters could not be imagined without songs. Using some folk melodies, Kropyvnytskyi mainly wrote original music, close in melody to the folk-song sources. Solo numbers, ensembles, and choirs are organically woven into the dramaturgy of these plays. A clear reflection of the integrity and unity of the musical and dramatic process is the principle of end-to-end development of the main musical idea of performances. In preparation for productions of his children’s plays, Kropyvnytskyi wrote an orchestration for them also. Intending to put these plays on the professional stage, Kropyvnytskyi wrote down advice to future directors regarding the production of their children’s plays. He began to think of broader horizons for them. In the spring of 1910, small artists had to show their art to the audience of the neighboring county town Kupyansk. However, the premature death of the Ukrainian playwright did not allow this plan to be realized. The children’s troupe soon ceased to exist. Kropyvnytskyi children’s troupe and the repertoire he created for it became a prologue to the development of the Ukrainian theater’s creativity for young viewers. In nowadays from the repertoire do not go off the pearls of drama for children “Ivasik-Telesik’ and “At the behest of the pike”. Conclusions. Marko Kropyvnytskyi’s creative heritage and practical activities wrote the gold pages to the history of Ukrainian musical children’s drama and Ukrainian children’s theater. Children’s musical and dramatic works of the writer based on song folklore are the effective mean to educate positive attitude of young Ukrainians to folk tradition as well as to form positive nature traits: generosity, hospitality, goodwill, charity.

Leading researcher of the laboratory of biotechnology of reproduction of the Institute of animal breeding and genetics nd. a. M.V.Zubets of NAAS Stepan Demchuk on November 27, 2019 turned 70 years old. He was born in the village. Pripyat of Lyuboml district of Volyn region. After graduating from Shatsk secondary school he entered the Ukrainian Agricultural Academy, which he graduated in 1971 with a major in Veterinary Science. He then worked as a veterinarian for the "Chervona zirka" state farm, then as a chief veterinarian of the state farms. Comintern and "Bolshevik" Baryshevsky district of Kyiv region, and from 1976 to 1978 – in the Pereyaslav-Khmelnitsky state plant at the post of senior zootechnic breeder. From 1978 to 1994 he worked at the Ukrainian Research Institute for breeding and artificial insemination of cattle as a junior researcher. In 1994–1996 he was a leading researcher at the "Vorzel" research station. Since 1996 he has been working as a senior scientist and since 2000 – a leading researcher at the Institute of animal breeding and genetics nd. a. M.V.Zubets of NAAS. In 1997, he defended his dissertation for the Candidate of Agricultural Sciences degree on “Restoration of reproductive function in cows of Ukrainian meat breed in connection with the course of childbirth”. The scientific creativity of a scientist exceeds 100 published works in Ukraine and abroad, including books, methodical recommendations, patents and instructions on reproduction and breeding of cattle. In particular, he co-authored books on the Strategy for the Development of Meatbreeding in Ukraine in the Context of National Food Security (Kyiv, 2005), The Scientific Principles of Breeding Livestock of Meat Breeds (Kyiv, 2017), "Breeding, genetic and biotechnological methods for improving and preserving the gene pool of breeds of farm animals" (Kyiv, 2018), articles in scientific publications of Belarus, the Russian Federation, Moldova and Ukraine. For a long time, Stepan Yukhimovich has been providing advisory and practical assistance to farms, has been actively involved in the creation of high-performance dairy and beef cattle herds, in the training and retraining of livestock specialists, and has repeatedly been a judge of All-Ukrainian artificial insemination operators competitions. Under his scientific guidance, K. J. Skoryk defended his dissertation for the degree of Candidate of Agricultural Sciences on "Economic and biological features of goat breeders of foreign breeding in Ukraine". High professionalism, deep knowledge in the field of biotechnology of breeding animals, butchery, humanity, modesty and honesty have formed in the staff of the institute and scientific community of Ukraine Stepan Yukhimovich deserved authority. The staff of the institute, where the jubilee has been working for over 40 years, sincerely congratulates the dear Stepan Yukhimovich and wishes him good health, further creative success, scientific and human longevity!

Background and Aim: Mastitis has been identified as the most prevalent and economically imperative disease among dairy animals. Thus, understanding its common bacterial pathogens and risk factors is necessary to improve udder health at herd, region, or country level. However, scientific research on caprine mastitis, especially on Beetal breed, has remained to be insufficient in Pakistan. Therefore, this study aimed to evaluate the epidemiology and antibiogram assay of common mastitis-causing bacterial agents, that is, Staphylococcus, Streptococcus, and Escherichia coli, in dairy goats. Materials and Methods: In total, 500 Beetal goats, irrespective of age and those that were not treated with any kind of antimicrobial agents during the past 120 h, were screened using California Mastitis Test in Pattoki, Kasur District, whereas epidemiological factors were recorded. The milk samples of mastitic goats were then collected and processed using standard methods. Each sample was primarily cultured on nutrient agar. Using a specific medium, each bacterial colony was separated using several streak methods. Six antibiotic disks belonging to different antibiotic groups were used for antibiogram profiling of bacterial isolates. Chi-square test was used to assess the association of baseline characteristics and mastitis occurrence. Meanwhile, multivariable logistic regression (p<0.001) was utilized to determine the risk factors associated with positive and negative dichotomous outcome of mastitis. Results: The results revealed that the overall prevalence of goat mastitis was 309 (61.8%), in which 260 (52%) and 49 (9.8%) cases were positive for subclinical mastitis (SCM) and clinical mastitis (CM), respectively. Streptococcus and E. coli were found to be the predominant isolates causing SCM and CM, respectively (p<0.001). It was observed that amoxicillin+clavulanic acid was highly sensitive to isolates of Staphylococcus and Streptococcus and ceftiofur sodium to isolates of Streptococcus and E. coli, while enrofloxacin was found to be sensitive to isolates of Streptococcus and E. coli. Risk factors such as herd structure, deworming, vaccination, presence of ticks, use of teat dip and mineral supplements, feeding type, age, parity, housing, blood in the milk, milk leakage, milk taste, and milk yield were found to have the strongest association with mastitis occurrence, while ease of milking has moderate association. Conclusion: In the area examined, cases of SCM were found to be higher compared with that of CM, and ceftiofur sodium has been identified as the preferred treatment in both clinical and subclinical forms of caprine mastitis in Beetal goats. Risk factors for mastitis that was identified in this study can form the basis for the creation of an udder health control program specific for dairy goats. We hope our findings could raise awareness of the risk factors and treatment approaches for common mastitis-causing bacterial agents.

One article describes the writings of Uldis Bērziņš, one of the most prominent Latvian poets and translators (and also a dissident) who made his debut in the 1960s. It focuses on the aspect of time and space. The 20th century is a time of re-evaluation of values and of a search for new ways of self-expression. Entrenched mythical notions experience transformation and renaissance. Hystorical myths as a source of instigation for Latvian literature (also in folklore) reach their climax in the 1920-40s and 1960-80s, i.e. in a period when problems of ethnic identity were emphasized more than ever. Uldis Bērziņš in his poetry successfully blends trends of modernism (and some of postmodernism) with mythical reality. He thereby refreshes the message of Latvian life, as well as reinforces particular trends common for whole humankind, which the author accomplishes with the help of cultural signs densely introduced into the texts. The objective of the paper is therefore to identify and emphasize dominant details of mythical time and space in the following anthologies by the Uldis Bērziņš: „Piemineklis kazai” („A Goat’s Monument”, 1980), „Poētisms baltkrievs” („The Poetism Belarussian”, 1984), „Nenotikuši atentāti” („Assassinations which never took place”, 1990), „Laiks” („Time”, together with Juris Kronbergs, 1994) and „Nozagti velosipēdi” („Stolen bicycles”, 1999). For the more detailed description of the peculiarities of the author’s works and for understanding the connection between the linguistic elements and the ethnical specifics of thinking, it was decided to use methods which are new to Latvian literary theory and are not so commonly referred to. Namely, a philological method was used for the in-depth text analysis (Николина 2007), and a linguo-culturological one for researching the connection of language and culture (Хороленко 2006). Speaking about U. Bērziņš’ notion of mythical time and space, it is referred to as an „eternal now” situation, which also includes details of historical and psychological time and space. However, mythical time and space is dominant: texts of the poems contain a very dense layer of mythologems (Odin, Odysseus, Thor), images (trees, mountains, wheels) and mythical concepts. This layer very often merges with the layers of folklore and religion which are introduced into the texts by means of stylization and reminiscences or allusions. The paper is organized according to the three dominant features of myths in the texts of Uldis Bērziņš – dichotomy, cyclicity, and syncretism. These are revealed with the help of particularly rich micro details and cultural signs and the transformation of folklore motives. Dichotomy as a disclosure of two aspects of one whole is carried out in the artistic space within the oppositions here and there, on the top and on the bottom, center and periphery, or insider and alien. These are characterized by symbolic notions of a mountain or a bridge, images of Riga and the Daugava, as well as the introduction of a mediator (a goat, bird or a ghost), which reach over the borders of time and space. Thereby the poet emphasizes fundamental ontological aspects which are concentrated in the semantic meanings of the notions of time, eternity and lifetime. In turn, by means of linguistic elements (not only semes, but also syntactical structure and pragmatic elements) Uldis Bērziņš pays attention to the multifunctionality and uniqueness of a language, and is trying to reach the level of a parent language. Within these dichotomies, the images, motives and signs also actualize a historic time and space. Thereby, a background for the disclosure of subtextual layers is organized, and simultaneously a point of view for several artistic chronotopes is expressed, which is interpreted as a symbiotic process in the poetry of Uldis Bērziņš. The search of oneself in the context of eternity is expressed with the help of the cyclicity principle. This is at the same time a tool for the illustration of different time spaces, which creates a synthesized model of an artistic world with a polyphony of linguistic elements. The cyclicity indicators in the poetry of Uldis Bērziņš are the images of a wheel, mill, and ball, as well as the interaction of the change of cycles of nature and human life. Special attention is paid to the points of intersection of time, thereby marking the Latvian year and the course of human life. In addition, the acknowledgment that the cycle is never-ending and repetitive, makes us look for interconnections with the philosophy of existentialism and a possible fulfillment of the meaning of life. Syncretism, on the contrary, as a combination of several different traditions, allows Uldis Bērziņš to emphasize features of cultural, linguistic and ethnic identity. In the united whole, i.e. in the interpretations of a sign, motive, image or myth, there is an accumulation of a few notions that create a peculiar effect of surrealism in a poetic text. For Bērziņš, syncretism is discovered in an image of a city, a sound, personal names (Peteris, Juris), religious characters (Jesus Christ, Krishna), and myths of the creation of the world. To find features of syncretism in a text, a reader does not only have to have some knowledge of mythology, religion, or culturology, but also needs associative thinking, since the poet often plays with phonemes and facts by linking them in rhythmically symbolic combinations. To sum up Uldis Bērziņš’ notions of mythical time and space, it can be concluded that the poet successfully uses the means of language, its meanings, its peculiar functions and associative nets in order to create a synthesized model of the mythical, historical, and psychological time space. This requires additional attention from a reader, because each poem is a subtextually dense discloser of a cultural heritage and an indicator of the search of oneself.

<p><strong>Abstract.</strong> For a long time <i>Lençóis Maranhenses</i> region in Northeastern Brazil, has been calling attention for being an area of extreme contrasts, not only under the physical-geographical and climatic point-of-view, but also because of the great contradictions and social conflicts that can be found there. A big part of the territory has been officially declared a National Park on June 2nd, 1981 (BRASIL, 1981), although the Region of <i>Lençóis</i> and <i>Pequenos Lençóis</i> (Little Lençóis) extends beyond the area protected by the National Park (TSUJI, 2002). Communities established inside the National Park are supplied with electricity, while others, just a few kilometres away; lack this resource, even being located within the official perimeter (SOUZA, 2007). The consequences of these expressions of spatial injustice can be considered terrible: severe health problems, serious conflicts between tourism activities and the traditional ways of production, among others.</p><p> The region (Figure 1) has never been object of a multidisciplinary and organized study in the form of an atlas, in spite of being very popular and attractive under the touristic point-of-view. For this reason, the research intends to elaborate the Social-Environmental Atlas of <i>Lençóis Maranhenses</i> in its wholeness, and, in a later stage, proceed with its publication in paper and digital form. This atlas will have about 200 pages and, initially, 13 sections have been defined. In view of its thematic and territorial content, it can be classified in the category of special regional atlas (SALITCHEV, 1979).</p><p> Therefore, the proposed atlas will focus not only on the National Park but also on its surroundings. Thus, we intend to study all the geographical space, categories of land use and forms of occupation by society as a whole, with emphasis on the traditional communities which dwell in the area. This region is characterized by an environment unfit for most farming crops, not only because of its sandy soil, but also because of moving dunes and of the hydric regime, sometimes with rain in excess, other times with long drought periods (Figure 2). All these factors, associated to the difficult access to the area, contribute to a most vulnerable population, causing an obvious influence on their ways of life. Nevertheless, people who live there have found ways to produce and provide for themselves. Fishing and fruit collecting, vegetal fibres and other natural products are among the usual sustenance activities. Many turn to breed small herds of goat, sheep and cattle, or work little parcels of land; they may also devote themselves to craftsmanship and various activities related directly or indirectly to tourism. Therefore, we feel that the use of the methodology called Cybercartography (TAYLOR AND LAURIAULT, 2014) will help us to understand the flows and habits in this region, thus contributing to improve the life quality of local communities.</p><p> Even if this location is known virtually since the beginning of European occupation, and there exists a National Park established by law in 1981 (BRASIL, 1981), up to this moment there has never been an atlas devoted exclusively to this part of the state of Maranhão. This is, therefore, the first scientific challenge: to create, compile and present maps and texts specifically dedicated to Lençóis Maranhenses, and organized in form of a special regional atlas, showing the socio-environmental dynamics of the place.</p><p> Moreover, there is the issue of employing techniques of Cybercartography, specifically of the Nunaliit Cybercartography Atlas Framework (TAYLOR e CAQUARD, 2006). We intend to use this technological platform, designed to create apps of interactive mapping in the internet, using different sources of data and multimedia, which allow users a high degree of participation. By default, the Nunaliit Framework employs a simple and flexible database, founded on documents to store any graphic objects or descriptive attributes (texts). As it happens, virtually in all the directly affected area, and of interest for the atlas project, the regular access to Internet is much reduced or virtually inexistent, even if considering the mobile phone nets.</p><p> For this reason, the atlas will be devised in simultaneous versions: a traditional one, in paper print, and also a complementary version created in the Framework for Cybercartographic Atlas. Moreover, the team that developed the Nunaliit platform, led by Professor Fraser Taylor, from the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies and Director of Research Center in Geomatics and Cartography of Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, has kindly offered to collaborate in this project, supporting the creation of the cybercartographic version, also developing specific apps that allow the elaboration of maps in PDF off-line, which will be then incorporated to the framework of the traditional printed version.</p><p> We believe that the availability of the digital version (Cybercartographic) of the Atlas of Lençóis Maranhenses will definitely contribute to the digital inclusion of local communities. With the results reached by this project, we understand that it will be possible to know better the distribution of the communities in the region, their kinds of use and means of production, with emphasis on the handling of natural resources and cultural aspects. Thus, with a better knowledge about the actors in the territory, it is intended to stimulate regional and local actions with respect to environmental education and initiatives of social inclusion.</p><p> Therefore, and important objective is to divulge the work and methodology proposed, to incorporate and encourage participation not only of the academic-scientific sector, but also of managers and local population, especially those who live within Lençóis Maranhenses and its area of influence. Thus, this methodological research may be applied to other places in Brazil, for example, with indigenous population, communities of “<i>quilombolas</i>” (descendants of former slaves), “<i>caiçaras</i>” (sea shoreline population) and others.</p>

Every year, more than 55,000 people in the world die of rabies, which is confirmed by the data of the WHO expert committee. Up to 40% of victims, from bites sick or suspected of rabies animals are children under the age of 15 years. The source of the rabies agent in 99% of human deaths was dogs. More than 15 million people around the world receive anti-rabies vaccinations after contact with sick or rabies-pets. According to experts, this prevents 327 thousand deaths from rabies a year. The susceptibility to skeletal infection of various species of animals, involvement in the epizootic chain, in addition to wildlife, also in domestic and farm animals, has become an extremely high risk for humans, and the lack of means for treating rabies - determine its special place among all contagious diseases. In the current situation, a rabie must be viewed as an international rather than a local or national problem, so it describes the disease as a global scale noseau [17]. After all, according to the statistics of the International Office of Epizootics (MEB) of the governing body of the World Organization for Animal Health (WHO) cases of rabies recorded in more than 150 countries of the world. Rabies free are only the countries of Oceania and the United Kingdom, and in other countries the sporadic cases of this deadly disease are recorded. In Europe, this infection in the 50s has become epizootic. The "eradication" of the rabies virus in different countries of Europe during 2008-2015 was conducted in accordance with the developed and implemented Program, where the best results were received in Germany and Switzerland, in these countries the oral immunization of wild carnivores is used (without restrictions on funding). At the end of the last century, the epicenter of the rabies began to move from Eastern Europe to the territory of Poland (2001-2002), Croatia (2003) and then to the east - to the Russian Federation, the Republic of Belarus, Latvia and Ukraine. The conducted monitoring of the rabies epizootology have shown that the entire territory of Ukraine is a zone of stable disadvantage of this disease. The peak of epizootics in Ukraine, over the past 65 years, has fallen to 2007 (2393 cases). Since 2008 there were registered from one to two thousand cases of rabies. In 2017 there were registered 1356 cases of animals that were sick on rabies, despite the fact those more than 4.2 million anti-rabies vaccinations of domestic animals. The analysis of the situation shows that from year to year in Ukraine new natural fires of rabies are formed and new types of reservoir animals appear, which leads to an increase in the number of outbreaks of this disease. The main pledge of successful prevention of rabies around the world is the use of effective anti-rabies vaccines. Despite the regular implementation of planned antiepizootic measures in the southern region of Ukraine (including in the Skadovsk district), there is a tendency to spread the rabies. From year to year, a significant number of rabies in wildlife, domestic and farm animals are recorded on this territory, which is a real threat to the occurrence of the disease among humans. Investigations of the territory of the Skadovsky district of the Kherson region during the period from 2013 to 2017 showed that 25 cases of rabies were recorded in 15 settlements. To the zone with high tenseness of the epizootic situation, five settlements can be attributed, in which 15 cases of rabies were registered, namely in the villages: Krasnoye and Mykolaivka for four outbreaks, Tarasivtsi three, Ptakovtsi and Blagodatnyi for two. To the zone with low tensity epizootic situation still belongs to 10 settlements, where one case of rabies is registered. If in 2013 and 2016 there were three rabies outbreaks in four settlements, in 2014 - five cases in 5 villages, and in 2015 - 4 cases in 4 settlements, then in 2017 - 10 outbreaks communicable infection in eight villages of the district. The peak of this epizootic occurred in 2017. The conducted monitoring showed that the skeletal infection was registered in 38.5% of the Skadovsky district (in 15 out of 39 available settlements). The cases of rabies in different years are interrelated, since repeated outbreaks of this disease are recorded in previously unsuccessful places (Nikolaevka, Tarasivka, Red and Ptahovka), indicating the presence of a constant source and reservoir of communicable infection in this area. It is alarming that in 2017 cases of rabies were first recorded in 6 settlements (Blagodatnoy, Grushivtsi, Oleksandrivka, Petropavlivtsi, Zeleny and Mikhailovna), which testifies to the uncontrolled epizootic situation and the further spread of this infection in the Skadovsky district. Thus, during the last 5 years, the activity of manifestation of the epizootic process on the territory of Skadovsky area was not marked by stability, there were observed two periods of lifting epizootics of rabies - in 2014 and 2017. The permanent disadvantages of certain areas of Skadovsky district can be explained, first of all, by the presence of natural cells of the common infection, especially in the steppe part where there are bushes, empty garbage and garbage. Such conditions ensure the existence of a wide variety of wild populations (wolves, red foxes), homeless dogs and stray cats, which promotes the spread of rabies epizootics in this area. Not the timely destruction of wild animals, the catching of homeless animals that are dangerous to humans, their sterilization, the creation of shelters and proper conditions for maintenance, and in the last three years, not even the holding of oral inoculations of wild animals, has led to the emergence of new anthropological cells feline infections in this region. Monitoring surveys of all reported cases of rabies in Skadovsk district for 2013-2017 showed that in this area, the source of the rabies was different species of animals - wild, domestic and agricultural. According to the observations of many scholars, rabies does not belong to seasonal diseases, but in Skadovsk district 20 were recorded in the winter and spring months, namely: 4 outbreaks of this infection were registered in November, December, February and March, 1 in January and 2 in October. From April to August - 5 outbreaks of rabies. Seasonal cases of rabies coincide with the period of racing of foxes. In the summer, the number of diseases is minimal, because the foxes are busy raising babies, and therefore their mobility is limited. In the autumn, due to young individuals, the population density increases, and accordingly there is a proliferation and new growth of this epizootic. By increasing the population of wolves and foxes, the number of rabies cases among stray dogs and stray cats increases as a result of their contacts. In the disadvantaged areas of the district, over the past 5 years, 27 cases were diagnosed with rabies animals. Monitoring studies have shown that in 2013 the rabies virus is allocated from 4 diseased animals, in 2014 from 5, in 2015 - 4, in 2016 - 3 and in 2017 - 11 diseased rabies animals. Significant increase in the morbidity rate of animals was noted in 2017. It is known that different species of animals are susceptible to the rabies virus [1, 2, 6–9, 16, 34]. The conducted studies showed that in the Skadovsky area, the circulation of the virus of cutaneous infection is possible among different animals, because the source of the pathogen was six of their species: foxes, wolves, dogs, cats, large and small cattle. In the structure of the morbidity of animals in rabies, foxes and cats occupy the leading place with 33.3%, dogs - 14.8%, wolves and cattle - by 7.5% and DRH - 3.7%. Of the total number of ill in 41% of cases, the source of the rabies virus were wild animals, and 48% were domesticated. The analysis showed that rabies in Skadovsk district was more often registered among domestic animals - 48% (9 cats and 4 dogs). Among wild animals, patients with rabies were - 41% (11 heads, of which 9 foxes and 2 wolves), and agricultural - 11% (cow, calf and goat). Thus, the statistical data of this region confirm that the source and reservoir of the rabies agent are wild (foxes) and domestic predatory animals (dogs and cats) belonging to the class of mammals. The epizootic situation in the Skadovsk district from rabies is not catastrophic, but in recent years requires more attention and strengthening measures to combat this problem, because in 2016, the density of fox in the district was 3 heads for 1000 hectares of land; in the norm for example - 0,5 - 1 a goal for 1000 hectares of land. Rating of wolves has not been conducted here, although cases of rabies among this species of animals, for the last 5 years, were recorded twice. The increased morbidity of dogs, cats and farm animals for scarcity is a sign of epizootic malaise among wildlife. Contributes to the complication of the situation of growth in settlements of the number of homeless dogs and cats, incomplete coverage of preventive vaccinations of domestic animals, violation of the rules for keeping domestic animals by their owners. All this is a prerequisite for the formation of city-type rabies cells, which we observe in Sadovsky district of the Kherson region. In connection with the deterioration of the epizootic situation from rabies, the threat of the onset and spread of this infection among the population increases. Given that the Skadovsk district of the Kherson region is in the resort zone, and a significant number of Ukrainian and foreign citizens may come to rest on the sea, they must be aware of the epizootic rabies situation in the area in order to protect themselves from the deadly infection. Key words: contagious infection, dogs, cats, red foxes, wolves, epizootic well-being, morbidity, seasonal manifestations.

Specific local environmental and sociocultural conditions have led to the creation of various goat populations in Russia. National goat diversity includes breeds that have been selected for down and mohair production traits as well as versatile local breeds for which pastoralism is the main management system. Effective preservation and breeding programs for local goat breeds are missing due to the lack of DNA-based data. In this work, we analyzed the genetic diversity and population structure of Russian local goats, including Altai Mountain, Altai White Downy, Dagestan Downy, Dagestan Local, Karachaev, Orenburg, and Soviet Mohair goats, which were genotyped with the Illumina Goat SNP50 BeadChip. In addition, we addressed genetic relationships between local and global goat populations obtained from the AdaptMap project. Russian goats showed a high level of genetic diversity. Although a decrease in historical effective population sizes was revealed, the recent effective population sizes estimated for three generations ago were larger than 100 in all studied populations. The mean runs of homozygosity (ROH) lengths ranged from 79.42 to 183.94 Mb, and the average ROH number varied from 18 to 41. Short ROH segments (&lt;2 Mb) were predominant in all breeds, while the longest ROH class (&gt;16 Mb) was the least frequent. Principal component analysis, Neighbor-Net graph, and Admixture clustering revealed several patterns in Russian local goats. First, a separation of the Karachaev breed from other populations was observed. Moreover, genetic connections between the Orenburg and Altai Mountain breeds were suggested and the Dagestan breeds were found to be admixed with the Soviet Mohair breed. Neighbor-Net analysis and clustering of local and global breeds demonstrated the close genetic relations between Russian local and Turkish breeds that probably resulted from past admixture events through postdomestication routes. Our findings contribute to the understanding of the genetic relationships of goats originating in West Asia and Eurasia and may be used to design breeding programs for local goats to ensure their effective conservation and proper management.

In previous discussions about technological change, appropriate technologies emerged as one of the alternatives to the modernizing technology transfer model that prevailed for many years in Latin America. However, despite the time elapsed since its conceptual creation, it is not easy to find studies assessing interventions carried out with this type of approach. This paper addresses this subject by analyzing a technology transfer experience using goat manure as a fertilizer for household crops in Santiago del Estero (Argentina). Despite having an appropriate a priori design, the technology was not replicated by all the experimenters. A quantitative and qualitative two-stage approach was used to address it: the first approach explored structure variables used by each experimenter and correlated these with the times that he/she repeated the practice; and in the second one, an analysis of the farm operations through case studies was carried out. The results indicate that a particular farm structure did not guarantee a result in terms of adoption of an appropriate technology, and that the operation and the survival strategy (or peasant strategy) of each family gave the farm an individual dynamic that often was decisive in adopting the proposal. In addition, at least for the current experience, technology design using locally controlled resources and the presentation of a unique proposal for all the experimenters was not enough. The multiple adjustments used by peasants suggest the need to investigate local innovation processes.

Transmedia storytelling, as defined by Henry Jenkins in 2006 in his book Convergence Culture, highlights a production strategy that aims to augment the narration of a cultural work by scattering it across several media platforms—digital or non-digital. The term is certainly quite recent, but the practices are not new and allow us to understand the evolution of the cultural industries and the creation of a new media ecosystem. As Matthew Freeman states, transmedia storytelling always relies on industrial changes, the narration adapting itself to new media synergies and novelties to create engaging and coherent storyworlds.Producers of American TV shows, showrunners, and networks are more and more eager to develop narrative universes on other media platforms in order to target new audiences and to give food for thought to fans, as well as reward them for their intellectual and emotional investment. Ancillary content and tie-ins sometimes take the form of novelisations or comic books, highlighting the fact that strategies of transmedia storytelling can be deployed on non-digital platforms and still enhance the narrative aspects of the show. For example, Twin Peaks (1990) developed The Diary of Laura Palmer (1990), a journal written by the character Laura Palmer who gave insights on her life and details about her relationships with other characters before she was murdered at the beginning of the series. How I Met Your Mother (2005-2014) published The BroCode (2008), first seen on episode “The Goat” (season 3 episode 17), and The Playbook (2012), first seen in an episode entitled “The Playbook” (season 5 episode 8). They are bibles written by character Barney Stinson that contain rules or advice for picking up women. For instance, The BroCode contains 150 articles, a glossary of terms, a definition of “a bro,” history of the code, amendments, violations, and approved punishments, all invented by Barney; some of these components were talked about on the show, while others were original additions for the book.Another way to create transmedia storytelling around TV shows is by developing comic books. This article will explore this specific media form in relation to transmedia strategies and will try to underline how comic books can make a narrative richer by focusing on parts of the plot, characters, times, or locations. First, I will focus on the importance of seriality from a historical perspective, because seriality appears to be one of the main principles of transmedia storytelling. Yet, is this narrative continuity always coherent and always canon when it comes to the publication of comic books? I will then propose a typology of the narratives comic books exploit to augment the storytelling of a show. I will give examples to illustrate how comic books can enrich the narrative universe of a given show and how characters can smoothly move from one platform to the other.A Transmedia World: Television and Comic Books Hand in HandSeriality is one of the main pillars of transmedia storytelling, and, according to Jenkins, “it is about breaking things down into chapters which are satisfying on their own terms, but which motivate us to come back for more” (“Transmedia”). These characteristics are already present in the way TV series are written, produced, and broadcast, and in the way comic books are created. They rely on episodes for TV shows and on issues for comic books that usually end with suspense and a suspension in the narrative continuity, commonly known as a cliff-hanger. For comic books, this narrative continuity took root in the early comic strips of the 18th and 19th century (Maigret and Stefanelli), which played a huge part in what we now know as comic books. As Pagello explains:The extensive practice of narrative serialisation played a major role in this context: the creative process, the industrial production and distribution, the editorial practices and, finally, the experience of comics readers all underwent dramatic changes when comics started to develop an identity distinguished from satirical cartoons, illustrated books and the various forms of children’s picture stories.According to Derek Johnson, these evolutions, in terms of production and reception, are closely linked to the widespread use of the franchise model in media industries. Johnson explains thatcomic books, video games, and other markets once considered ancillary now play increasingly significant and recentered roles in the production and consumption of everyday film and television properties such as Heroes, Transformers, and the re-envisioned Star Trek in ways that only very few innovators (such as George Lucas and his carefully elaborated and expanded Star Wars empire) had previously conceived in the twentieth century.The creation of transmedia strategies that capitalize on narrative continuity and seriality call for some synergies between media and for a “gatekeeper” of the stories who will ensure that all is coherent in the storyworld. Thus, “in 2006, the management of Heroes, for example, became a job for a professional ‘Transmedia Team’ charged with implementing creative coordination across television, comics, and the Internet” (Johnson).Another principle of transmedia storytelling, closely linked to seriality and the essence of the definition, is the creation of a narrative universe, that is “world-building,” in which plots and characters develop, and which will lay the foundations for the story. These foundations will be written in what is called a Bible, a document containing all the narrative elements in order to ensure coherence. In the notion of world-building, a matrix of possibilities is deployed, since stories can potentially become threads to weave, and re-weave. This rhizomatic world can be extended to infinity in a canonical way (by the official production) and in a non-canonical one (by the creations of fans). For Mark Wolf, these narrative worlds work like dynamic entities, and are transformative, transmedial, and transauthorial, which are similar to the notions and possibilities of transmedia storytelling, and media and cultural convergence. Stories that cannot be contained within the “real” of a single medium will be expended and developed on another or several other ones, creating a rich storyworlds. Comic books can be one of these tie-in media.New Term, Old Creations: An Historical OverviewMatthew Freeman wrote in his latest book Historicising Transmedia Storytelling that these transmedia practices do have a past and existed long before the introduction of the term due to new technologies, production strategies, and reception tactics. Comic books were often an option to enrich storylines and further develop the characters. For example, L. Frank Baum created a storyworld around The Wizard of Oz made of mock newspapers, conferences, billboards, novels, musicals, and comic strips in order to “appeal to a migratory audience” (Jenkins, “I Have”) and to deepen the characters, introduce new ones, and discover the land of Oz as if it were a real location. The author used techniques of advertising to promote and above all to expand his storyworld. As newspaper comic strips were quite popular at the time, Baum created several tie-in extensions in the newspapers and in a novel format. As Jason Scott underlines, “serial narratology enhances the possibilities of advertising and exploitation through the established market for the second and subsequent instalment” (14). The series of comic strips entitled Queer Visitor from the Marvellous Land of Oz (1904-1905) picked up, in terms of narration, just after the end of the book, offering a new temporality and life for the characters. As Freeman notes, this choice follows an economic logic:The era’s newspaper comic strips and their institutional tendency to prioritize recurring characters as successful advertising mechanisms (as witnessed in the cross-media dispersion of Buster Brown) had in fact influenced Baum to return to the series’ more familiar faces of Dorothy, the Scarecrow, and the Tin Woodman (2371).Here, the beloved characters are moving from one medium to the next, giving new insights on their life after the end of the book, and enhancing their stories beyond its pages.A Typology of Comic Books and Tie-in Extensions of TV SeriesBefore diving into a tentative typology, I want to look at the definition of canon in a transmedia storyworld. There is a strong debate in academic discussions around the issues of canonicity, and here I understand canonicity as the production of official texts around a given cultural content. That is because of precisely what is qualified as an official text or an official extension, and what is not. In the book I co-edited with Benjamin W.L. Derhy Kurtz (Derhy Kurtz and Bourdaa), we respond by coining the term “transtexts,” which includes officially produced texts and fantexts in the same narrative universe. The dichotomy between both kinds of texts is thus diminished. Nonetheless, in production and transmedia strategies, canonicity is hard to evaluate because “few television series have attempted to create transmedia extensions that offer such a (high level of) canonic integration, with interwoven story events that must be consumed across media for full comprehension” (Mittell 298). He follows by proposing a typology of two possible transmedia extensions based on a canon perspective versus a non-canon one: “what is extensions” extend the storyworld canonically and in a coherent way, whereas “what if extensions” “pose(s) hypothetical possibilities rather than canonical certainties, inviting viewers to imagine alternate stories and approaches to storytelling that are distinctly not to be treated as potential canon” (Mittell 298). Mark Wolf refers to the term growth to qualify canonical materials which are going to expand a given storyworld and which nourish the stories. As argued by Gabriel et al., “Wolf’s definition of ‘growth’ makes it clear that, for him, a transmedial product can only be considered to contribute to a world’s growth if it adds new ‘canonical’ material, i.e. material that presents new pieces of information that are “true” for the fictional world” (Gabriel et al. 169). This notion of “truth” to the diegesis can be opposed in this context to the notion of alternate stories and alternate versions of the characters.My attempted typology lays its foundation upon this opposition between what is seen as an official extension and what is seen as an unofficial extension, but offers alternate perspectives to expand the storyworld using new characters, locations, or universes. The first category will look at canonical extensions and how they can deepen characters’ development and temporalities. The second category will deal with “canon divergent” (to use fans’ language) extensions and how they can offer new entries into the stories by creating new characters or presenting new locations.Canonical Extensions: CharactersTie-in extensions in the form of comic books help to deepen the characters, especially supporting characters, by delving into their motivations and psychology, or by giving them backstories and origin stories. According to Paolo Bertetti, “the transmedia character is a fictional hero whose adventures are told on several media platforms, each providing details about the character's life” (2344). Actually, motivated characters are the quintessential element of the narration of the classic Hollywood era, which was then reused in the narration of TV series, which were then penned into comic books. In her definition of transmedia superstructures, Marsha Kinder based her analysis on how characters moved from one medium to the next, making them the centre of the narrative universe and the element audiences would follow.For example, Fringe (2008), in a deal with DC comics, extended its stories and its characters in comic books, which were an integral part of the storyworld, and which included canon materials by offering Easter Eggs to fans and rewarding them for their investment in the narrative universe. Each issue of the second series dealt with a major or recurring character from the show, deepening them by giving them backgrounds. That way, audiences can discover the backstories of Agent Broyles, Nina Sharp, the CEO of Massive Dynamic, or even Gene, Walter’s cow, all of which are featured in the series but not well developed.Written by actor Tim Rozon (who plays Doc Holliday on the show) and author Beau Smith, Wynonna Earp Season Zero (2017) focuses on the past of main character Wynonna Earp when she was an outlaw and before she comes back to her hometown, Purgatory. The past comes to life on the pages, while it was only hinted at in the show. It is a good introduction to the main character before the show, since Wynonna comes back to Purgatory by bus at the beginning of the very first episode and there are no flashback episode relating her story earlier. Because the two authors of this comic book are part of the creative crew of the show, an actor and a writer, they ensure a sense of coherence in the extensions they write.In collaboration with Dynamite Entertainment, an American comic book company, NBC Universal launched a series of comic book issues entitled Origins (2008) as an ancillary text to Battlestar Galactica (2004). “Origin stories” are a specific genre related to superhero franchises. M.J. Clarke underlines that,the use of Origins Stories is influenced by the economic structure of the comic book industry, which continues to produce stories over years and decades. ... By remaining faithful to the Origins (which are frequently modified in their consistency), readers can discover a story without having to navigate in more than 400 numbers of commix. (54)The goal of these comic books is to create a "past" for the human characters that appeared in the series. The collection of comic books thus focuses on five main characters in 11 issues, spread out over a year: William Adama, Zarek, Gaius Baltar, Kara "Starbuck” Thrace, and Karl "Helo" Agathon. These issues are collected in an eponymous Omnibus. Likewise, Orphan Black (2011) also offered backstories for its “clone club” without disrupting the pace of the show. The stories, tied to the events of the series, focus on the opportunity to better understand the emotions, thoughts, and feelings that exemplify the characters of the show.It is interesting to note that the authors of these comic book extensions were in close contact with Ronald D. Moore and David Eick, showrunners of the Battlestar Galactica series, which guaranteed coherence and canonicity to the newly created material. In a personal interview, Robert Napton, writer of Origins, explained the creative process:so every week we would watch episodes and make sure our stories matched as closely as possible to what the television series was doing …we tried to make it feel like it was very much part of the series, so they were untold adventures and we tried to fit it into the continuity of the series as much as possible.Brandon Jerwa, writer for Battlestar Galactica comic book series Season Zero and Ghosts (2009), confirmed that, “It is my understanding that the comics were passed through Mr. Moore’s office, and they were certainly vetted by Syfy and Universal.” Jerwa also added an interesting input on perception of canonicity versus non-canonicity by fans who can be picky about the ancillary contents and added materials that extend a storyworld:Most comic tie-ins have a hard time being considered a legitimate part of the canon, and that is simply beyond the control of the creative team. I worked very hard to make sure that I was writing material that adhered to the continuity of the show as closely as humanly possible. I don’t believe in writing a licensed property in such a way as to put forward ‘my vision’ of the universe; I believe very firmly that it is my responsibility to serve the source material above all else.Canonical Extensions: TemporalitiesComic books as a licensed product can expand the temporalities of the show and tell stories before the beginning of the series and after it ended, as well as fill time voids and ellipses. For example, now in its 11th season in comic books, Joss Whedon managed to keep Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-2003) alive and to attract new fans without alienating its original fanbase. Blogger and web entrepreneur Keith McDuffee felt that reading Buffy as a comic book after seeing it on television for seven years was strange, but the new format was a good sign because: “the medium lets creativity go completely wild without budget worries.” The comic books focus on the famous characters and created a life for them after the end of the show, making them jump from the screen onto the pages. Sometimes, the comic books told original stories that might seem out-of-character, like the issue in which Buffy sleeps with a woman. That kind of storyline wasn’t explored in the TV show, and comics offer one way to go deeper into the characters’ backgrounds and psychology. Sometimes, the tie-ins do not strictly follow the continuity and become non-canon regarding the stories of the TV shows. For example, DC/Wildstorm presented comic book issues around The X-Files (1993-) that were set in continuity of the show but failed to refer to main plot events (for example, Scully’s pregnancy). “Rather than offering ‘additive comprehension’ to a pre-existing television and film narrative, Spotnitz chose to write licensed comics on their own terms” (Pillai 112).DC is familiar with offering new adventures for its superhero characters in the form of comic books (which are first published online), going back to the basics. Of course, in this case, the relationship between the comic book medium and the television medium is more intricate, as the TV series are based on comic book characters whose stories are then extended again in comic books, which are created specifically to extend the TV shows’ storyworlds. The creation of the comic book series The Flash Season Zero (2015) set the stories between the episodes of the first season of The Flash and focus on the struggles of Barry Allen as he juggles between his job as a CSI, his love for Iris West, his childhood sweetheart, and his new identity as a vigilante with superpowers. This allows viewers to better understand a part of Barry Allen’s life that was not well developed in the show, adding temporal layers to the stories. The Adventures of Supergirl vol. 1 (2016) also depict the battles of the girl of steel between episodes, as well as her life with her sister, Alex (who is also a new addition in the comic book), and her co-workers at the DEO. For Arrow,the digital tie-ins offer producers [opportunities] to explore side stories they are unable to cover on screen. In the case of Season 2.5, the 22-chapter comic enabled the producers to fill in the blanks in between the seasons, thus offering more opportunities to explore the dynamics of fan-favorite characters such as Felicity and Diggle. (Bourdaa and Chin 183)These DC comic books are examples of giving life to a TV show beyond the TV screen, enhancing the timeframe of the stories and providing new content. The characters pass through the screen to live new adventures in comic books. In some cases, the involvement of the series' actor and writer in comic book scripting confirms the desire for consistency in the extensions of the series, whatever the medium used and whatever the objectives.Canon Divergent Extensions or the Real PossibilitiesFinally, comic books can deploy stories that will display a new point of view on the canon: a “multiplicity” (Jenkins, “La Licorne”) or a “what-if story” (Mittell), which will explore new possibilities and new characters.The second series of Orphan Black comic book tie-ins entitled Helsinki (2016) dealt with clones in the capital of Finland. The readers discover the lives of other clones, how they deal with the discovery of their “condition,” and that they have a caretaker. The comics are written by John Fawcett, who is also a showrunner for the series. The narrative universe is stretched into new possibilities, seen with new eyes, and shown from the perspective of new clones. The introduction of new characters gives opportunities to tell new stories and diverge from the canonical content, especially in terms of the characters’ development and depth.Battlestar Galactica, after the show ended, partnered once again with Dynamite Entertainment, to publish a new set of comic books entitled BSG: Ghosts (2009), which tells the story of new characters surviving the Cylon genocide. Writer Brandon Jerwa asks in BSG: Ghosts: "And if a squadron of secret agents had also survived Cylon Attack?" For him, comic books are a good opportunity to relaunch the narrative universe by introducing new characters in a well-known storyworld.The comic books will definitely have to evolve in order to survive because at some point we will end up exhausting the interest of the readers on the narrative continuity. Projects like Ghosts are definitely a good way to test public reaction to new ideas in a familiar environment. (Jerwa)Conclusion: From One Medium to the Next, From Narrative Extensions to MarketingThis article offers an overview of how comic books are used as tie-in products to extend TV series’ narrative universe. The ambition was not to give an exhaustive panorama but to propose a typology with some examples. I showed that characters’ development, temporalities, and new points of view are narrative angles exploited in comic books to give depth to a storyworld. Of course, this raises issues of labour, authorship, and canon content, which are already discussed elsewhere (see, for example: Clarke, Pillai, Scott). Yet, comic books are an integral part of transmedia storytelling and capitalise on notions of seriality, offering readers new stories, continuity, depth, and character motivations in order to enrich storylines and make them live beyond the screen. However, Robert Napton, in our interview, underlines an interesting opposition between licensing and marketing: “Frankly, comic books are considered licensing and marketing, not official canon. The only TV comic that is canon is Buffy Season 8 and 9 because Joss Whedon says they are, but that is not the normal situation.” He clearly draws a line between what he considers to be a licensed product, in this article what I describe as canonical content, and a marketing product, which could be understood in this article as a canon divergent tie-in. The debate here is clearly on, since understandings of transmedia vary between the perspectives of production companies, which are trying to gain profit by providing new content, the perspectives of fans, who know the storyworlds and the characters extensively and could be very possessive of them, and the perspectives of extension authors, who “have very strict story guidelines” (Jerwa) and have to make their stories fit within the narrative universe as it is told onscreen.ReferencesBertetti, Paolo. “Towards a Typology of Transmedia Characters.” International Journal of Communication 8 (2014): 2344-2361.Boni, Marta. World Building: Transmedia, Fans, Industries. Amsterdam: Amsterdam UP, 2017.Bourdaa, Mélanie. “Transmedia Storytelling: Entre Narration Augmentée et Logiques Immersives.” InaGlobal (2012). 16 December 2017 <http://www.inaglobal.fr/numerique/article/le-transmedia-entre-narration-augmentee-et-logiques-immersives>.Bourdaa, Mélanie, and Bertha Chin. “World and Fandom Building: Extending the Universe of Arrow in Arrow 2.5.” Arrow and Superhero Television: Essays on Themes and Characters of the Series. Eds. James F. Iaccino, Cory Barker, and Myc Wiatrowski. Jefferson: MacFarland, 2017.Clarke, M.J. Transmedia Television: New Trends in Network Serial Production. New York: Continuum Publishing, 2013.Derhy Kurtz, WL Benjamin, and Mélanie Bourdaa. The Rise of Transtexts: Challenges and Opportunities. London: Routledge, 2016.Freeman, Matthew. Historicising Transmedia Storytelling: Early Twentieth-Century Transmedia Story Worlds. London: Routledge, 2017.Gabriel, Nicole, Bogna Kazur, and Kai Matuszkiewicz. “Reconsidering Transmedia(l) Worlds.” Convergence Culture Reconsidered: Media—Participation—Environments. Eds. Claudia Georgi and Brigitte Johanna Glaser. Göttingen: Universitätsverlag Göttingen, 2015.Gillan, Jennifer. Television and New Media: Must-Click TV. New York: Routledge, 2010.Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: NYU Press, 2006.Jenkins, Henry. “I Have Seen the Future of Entertainment… And It Works.” Confessions of an Aca-Fan, 2008. <http://henryjenkins.org/blog/2008/10/i_have_seen_the_futures_of_ent.html>.Jenkins, Henry. “Transmedia Education: The 7 Principles Revisited.” Confessions of an Aca-Fan, 2010. <http://henryjenkins.org/blog/2010/06/transmedia_education_the_7_pri.html>.Jenkins, Henry. “La Licorne Origami Contre-attaque: Réflexions Plus Poussées sur le transmedia storytelling.” Terminal 10-11 (2013): 11-28. <http://journals.openedition.org/terminal/455>.Jerwa, Brandon. Personal Correspondence. 2013.Johnson, Derek. “A History of Transmedia Entertainment.” Spreadable Media: Web Exclusive Essays. <http://spreadablemedia.org/essays/johnson/#.Wo6g24IiGgQ>.Maigret, Eric, and Matteo Stefanelli. La Bande Dessinée: Une Médiaculture. Paris: Armand Colin, 2012.McDuffee, Keith. Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Long Way Home, Part 1. Season premiere. 2007. <http://www.aoltv.com/2007/03/16/buffy-the-vampire-slayer-the-long-way-home-season-premiere/.>.Mittell, Jason. Complex TV: The Poetics of Contemporary Television Storytelling. New York: NYU Press, 2015.Napton, Robert. Personal Correspondence. 2013.Pagello, Federico. “Before the Comics: On Seriality of Graphic Narratives during the Nineteenth Century.” Belphégor 14 (2016). <http://journals.openedition.org/belphegor/810>.Pillai, Nicolas. “What Am I Looking at Mulder?: Licensed Comics and Freedoms of Transmedia Storytelling.” Science Fiction and Television 6.1 (2013): 101-117.Scott, Jason. “The Character-Orientated Franchise: Promotion and Exploitation of Pre-Sold Characters in American Film, 1913–1950.” Scope: An Online Journal of Film and Television Studies (2009): 10–28.

Literature—at least serious literature—is something that we work at. This is especially true within the academy. Literature departments are places where workers labour over texts carefully extracting and sharing meanings, for which they receive monetary reward. Specialised languages are developed to describe professional concerns. Over the last thirty years, the productions of mass culture, once regarded as too slight to warrant laborious explication, have been admitted to the academic workroom. Gothic studies—the specialist area that treats fearful and horrifying texts —has embraced the growing acceptability of devoting academic effort to texts that would once have fallen outside of the remit of “serious” study. In the seventies, when Gothic studies was just beginning to establish itself, there was a perception that the Gothic was “merely a literature of surfaces and sensations”, and that any Gothic of substantial literary worth had transcended the genre (Thompson 1). Early specialists in the field noted this prejudice; David Punter wrote of the genre’s “difficulty in establishing respectable credentials” (403), while Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick hoped her work would “make it easier for the reader of ‘respectable’ nineteenth-century novels to write ‘Gothic’ in the margin” (4). Gothic studies has gathered a modicum of this longed-for respectability for the texts it treats by deploying the methodologies used within literature departments. This has yielded readings that are largely congruous with readings of other sorts of literature; the Gothic text tells us things about ourselves and the world we inhabit, about power, culture and history. Yet the Gothic remains a production of popular culture as much as it is of the valorised literary field. I do not wish to argue for a reintroduction of the great divide described by Andreas Huyssen, but instead to suggest that we have missed something important about the ways in which popular Gothics—and perhaps other sorts of popular text—function. What if the popular Gothic were not a type of work, but a kind of play? How might this change the way we read these texts? Johan Huizinga noted that “play is not ‘ordinary’ or ‘real’ life. It is rather a stepping out of ‘real’ life into a temporary sphere of activity with a disposition all of its own. Every child knows perfectly well he is ‘only pretending’, or that it was ‘only for fun’” (8). If the Gothic sometimes offers playful texts, then those texts might direct readers not primarily towards the real, but away from it, at least for a limited time. This might help to account for the wicked spectacle offered by Dennis Wheatley’s The Devil Rides Out, and in particular, its presentation of the black mass. The black mass is the parody of the Christian mass thought to be performed by witches and diabolists. Although it has doubtless been performed on rare occasions since the Middle Ages, the first black mass for which we have substantial documentary evidence was celebrated in Hampstead on Boxing Day 1918, by Montague Summers; it is a satisfying coincidence that Summers was one of the Gothic’s earliest scholars. We have record of Summer’s mass because it was watched by a non-participant, Anatole James, who was “bored to tears” as Summers recited tracts of Latin and practiced homosexual acts with a youth named Sullivan while James looked on (Medway 382-3). Summers claimed to be a Catholic priest, although there is some doubt as to the legitimacy of his ordination. The black mass ought to be officiated by a Catholic clergyman so the host may be transubstantiated before it is blasphemed. In doing so, the mass de-emphasises interpretive meaning and is an assault on the body of Christ rather than a mutilation of the symbol of Christ’s love and sacrifice. Thus, it is not conceived of primarily as a representational act but as actual violence. Nevertheless, Summers’ black mass seems like an elaborate form of sexual play more than spiritual warfare; by asking an acquaintance to observe the mass, Summers formulated the ritual as an erotic performance. The black mass was a favourite trope of the English Gothic of the nineteen-sixties and seventies. Dennis Wheatley’s The Devil Rides Out features an extended presentation of the mass; it was first published in 1934, but had achieved a kind of genre-specific canonicity by the nineteen-sixties, so that many Gothics produced and consumed in the sixties and seventies featured depictions of the black mass that drew from Wheatley’s original. Like Summers, Wheatley’s mass emphasised licentious sexual practice and, significantly, featured a voyeur or voyeurs watching the performance. Where James only wished Summers’ mass would end, Wheatley and his followers presented the mass as requiring interruption before it reaches a climax. This version of the mass recurs in most of Wheatley’s black magic novels, but it also appears in paperback romances, such as Susan Howatch’s 1973 The Devil on Lammas Night; it is reimagined in the literate and genuinely eerie short stories of Robert Aickman, which are just now thankfully coming back into print; it appears twice in Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast books. Nor was the black mass confined to the written Gothic, appearing in films of the period too; The Kiss of the Vampire (1963), The Witches (1966), Satan’s Skin, aka Blood on Satan’s Claw (1970), The Wicker Man (1973), and The Satanic Rites of Dracula (1974) all feature celebrations of the Sabbat, as, of course do the filmed adaptations of Wheatley’s novels, The Devil Rides Out (1967) and To the Devil a Daughter (1975). More than just a key trope, the black mass was a procedure characteristic of the English Gothic of the sixties; narratives were structured so as to lead towards its performance. All of the texts mentioned above repeat narrative and trope, but more importantly, they loosely repeat experience, both for readers and the characters depicted. While Summers’ black mass apparently made for tiresome viewing, textual representations of the black mass typically embrace the pageant and sensuality of the Catholic mass it perverts, involving music, incense and spectacle. Often animalistic sex, bestiality, infanticide or human sacrifice are staged, and are intended to fascinate rather than bore. Although far from canonical in a literary sense, by 1969 Wheatley was an institution. He had sold 27 million books worldwide and around 70 percent of those had been within the British market. All of his 55 books were in print. A new Wheatley in hardcover would typically sell 30,000 copies, and paperback sales of his back catalogue stood at more than a million books a year. While Wheatley wrote thrillers in a range of different subgenres, at the end of the sixties it was his ‘black magic’ stories that were far and away the most popular. While moderately successful when first published, they developed their most substantial audience in the sixties. When The Satanist was published in paperback in 1966, it sold more than 100,000 copies in the first ten days. By 1973, five of these eight black magic titles had sold more than a million copies. The first of these was The Devil Rides Out which, although originally published in 1934, by 1973, helped by the Hammer film of 1967, had sold more than one and a half million copies, making it the most successful of the group (“Pooter”; Hedman and Alexandersson 20, 73). Wheatley’s black magic stories provide a good example of the way that texts persist and accumulate influence in a genre field, gaining genre-specific canonicity. Wheatley’s apparent influence on Gothic texts and films that followed, coupled with the sheer number of his books sold, indicate that he occupied a central position in the field, and that his approach to the genre became, for a time, a defining one. Wheatley’s black magic stories apparently developed a new readership in the sixties. The black mass perhaps became legible as a salacious, nightmarish version of some imaginary hippy gathering. While Wheatley’s Satanists are villainous, there is a vaguely progressive air about them; they listen to unconventional music, dance in the nude, participate in unconventional sexual practice, and glut themselves on various intoxicants. This, after all, was the age of Hair, Oh! Calcutta! and Oz magazine, “an era of personal liberation, in the view of some critics, one of moral anarchy” (Morgan 149). Without suggesting that the Satanists represent hippies there is a contextual relevancy available to later readers that would have been missing in the thirties. The sexual zeitgeist would have allowed later readers to pornographically and pleasurably imagine the liberated sexuality of the era without having to approve of it. Wheatley’s work has since become deeply, embarrassingly unfashionable. The books are racist, sexist, homophobic and committed to a basically fascistic vision of an imperial England, all of which will repel most casual readers. Nor do his works provide an especially good venue for academic criticism; all surface, they do not reward the labour of careful, deep reading. The Devil Rides Out narrates the story of a group of friends locked in a battle with the wicked Satanist Mocata, “a pot-bellied, bald headed person of about sixty, with large, protuberant, fishy eyes, limp hands, and a most unattractive lisp” (11), based, apparently, on the notorious occultist Aleister Crowley (Ellis 145-6). Mocata hopes to start a conflict on the scale of the Great War by performing the appropriate devilish rituals. Led by the aged yet spry Duke de Richleau and garrulous American Rex van Ryn, the friends combat Mocata in three substantial set pieces, including their attempt to disrupt the black mass as it is performed in a secluded field in Wiltshire. The Devil Rides Out is a ripping story. Wheatley’s narrative is urgent, and his simple prose suggests that the book is meant to be read quickly. Likewise, Wheatley’s protagonists do not experience in any real way the crises and collapses that so frequently trouble characters who struggle against the forces of darkness in Gothic narratives. Even when de Richlieu’s courage fails as he observes the Wiltshire Sabbat, this failure is temporary; Rex simply treats him as if he has been physically wounded, and the Duke soon rallies. The Devil Rides Out is remarkably free of trauma and its sequelæ. The morbid psychological states which often interest the twentieth century Gothic are excluded here in favour of the kind of emotional fortitude found in adventure stories. The effect is remarkable. Wheatley retains a cheerful tone even as he depicts the appalling, and potentially repellent representations become entertainments. Wheatley describes in remarkable detail the actions that his protagonists witness from their hidden vantage point. If the Gothic reader looks forward to gleeful blasphemy, then this is amply provided, in the sort of sardonic style that Lewis’ The Monk manages so well. A cross is half stomped into matchwood and inverted in the ground, the Christian host is profaned in a way too dreadful to be narrated, and the Duke informs us that the satanic priests are eating “a stillborn baby or perhaps some unfortunate child that they have stolen and murdered”. Rex is chilled by the sound of a human skull rattling around in their cauldron (117-20). The mass offers a special quality of experience, distinct from the everyday texture of life represented in the text. Ostensibly waiting for their chance to liberate their friend Simon from the action, the Duke and Rex are voyeurs, and readers participate in this voyeurism too. The narrative focus shifts from Rex and de Richlieu’s observation of the mass, to the wayward medium Tanith’s independent, bespelled arrival at the ritual site, before returning to the two men. This arrangement allows Wheatley to extend his description of the gathering, reiterating the same events from different characters’ perspectives. This would be unusual if the text were simply a thriller, and relied on the ongoing release of new information to maintain narrative interest. Instead, readers have the opportunity to “view” the salacious activity of the Satanists a second time. This repetition delays the climactic action of the scene, where the Duke and Rex rescue Simon by driving a car into the midst of the ritual. Moreover, the repetition suggests that the “thrill” on offer is not necessarily related to plot —it offers us nothing new —but instead to simply seeing the rite performed. Tanith, although conveyed to the mass by some dark power, is delayed and she too becomes a part of the mass’ audience. She saw the Satanists… tumbling upon each other in the disgusting nudity of their ritual dance. Old Madame D’Urfé, huge-buttocked and swollen, prancing by some satanic power with all the vigour of a young girl who had only just reached maturity; the Babu, dark-skinned, fleshy, hideous; the American woman, scraggy, lean-flanked and hag-like with empty, hanging breasts; the Eurasian, waving the severed stump of his arm in the air as he gavotted beside the unwieldy figure of the Irish bard, whose paunch stood out like the grotesque belly of a Chinese god. (132) The reader will remember that Madame D’Urfé is French, and that the cultists are dancing before the Goat of Mendes, who masquerades as Malagasy, earlier described by de Richlieu as “a ‘bad black’ if ever I saw one” (11). The human body is obsessively and grotesquely racialized; Wheatley is simultaneously at his most politically vile and aesthetically Goya-like. The physically grotesque meshes with the crudely sexual and racist. The Irishman is typed as a “bard” and somehow acquires a second racial classification, the Indian is horrible seemingly because of his race, and Madame D’Urfé is repulsive because her sexuality is framed as inappropriate to her age. The dancing crone is defined in terms of a younger, presumably sexually appealing, woman; even as she is denigrated, the reader is presented with a contrary image. As the sexuality of the Satanists is excoriated, titillation is offered. Readers may take whatever pleasure they like from the representations while simultaneously condemning them, or even affecting revulsion. A binary opposition is set up between de Richlieu’s company, who are cultured and moneyed, and the Satanists, who might masquerade as civilised, but reveal their savagery at the Sabbat. Their race becomes a further symptom of their lack of civilised qualities. The Duke complains to Rex that “there is little difference between this modern Satanism and Voodoo… We might almost be witnessing some heathen ceremony in an African jungle!” (115). The Satanists become “a trampling mass of bestial animal figures” dancing to music where, “Instead of melody, it was a harsh, discordant jumble of notes and broken chords which beat into the head with a horrible nerve-racking intensity and set the teeth continually on edge” (121). Music and melody are cultural constructions as much as they are mathematical ones. The breakdown of music suggests a breakdown of culture, more specifically, of Western cultural norms. The Satanists feast, with no “knives, forks, spoons or glasses”, but instead drink straight from bottles and eat using their hands (118). This is hardly transgression on the scale of devouring an infant, but emphasises that Satanism is understood to represent the antithesis of civilization, specifically, of a conservative Englishness. Bad table manners are always a sign of wickedness. This sort of reading is useful in that it describes the prejudices and politics of the text. It allows us to see the black mass as meaningful and places it within a wider discursive tradition making sense of a grotesque dance that combines a variety of almost arbitrary transgressive actions, staged in a Wiltshire field. This style of reading seems to confirm the approach to genre text that Fredric Jameson has espoused (117-9), which understands the text as reinforcing a hegemonic worldview within its readership. This is the kind of reading the academy often works to produce; it recognises the mass as standing for something more than the simple fact of its performance, and develops a coherent account of what the mass represents. The labour of reading discerns the work the text does out in the world. Yet despite the good sense and political necessity of this approach, my suggestion is that these observations are secondary to the primary function of the text because they cannot account for the reading experience offered by the Sabbat and the rest of the text. Regardless of text’s prejudices, The Devil Rides Out is not a book about race. It is a book about Satanists. As Jo Walton has observed, competent genre readers effortlessly grasp this kind of distinction, prioritising certain readings and elements of the text over others (33-5). Failing to account for the reading strategy presumed by author and audience risks overemphasising what is less significant in a text while missing more important elements. Crucially, a reading that emphasises the political implications of the Sabbat attributes meaning to the ritual; yet the ritual’s ability to hold meaning is not what is most important about it. By attributing meaning to the Sabbat, we miss the fact of the Sabbat itself; it has become a metaphor rather than a thing unto itself, a demonstration of racist politics rather than one of the central necessities of a black magic story. Seligman, Weller, Puett and Simon claim that ritual is usually read as having a social purpose or a cultural meaning, but that these readings presume that ritual is interested in presenting the world truthfully, as it is. Seligman and his co-authors take exception to this, arguing that ritual does not represent society or culture as they are and that ritual is “a subjunctive—the creation of an order as if it were truly the case” (20). Rather than simply reflecting history, society and culture, ritual responds to the disappointment of the real; the farmer performs a rite to “ensure” the bounty of the harvest not because the rite symbolises the true order of things, but as a consolation because sometimes the harvest fails. Interestingly, the Duke’s analysis of the Satanists’ motivations closely accords with Seligman et al.’s understanding of the need for ritual to console our anxieties and disappointments. For the cultists, the mass is “a release of all their pent-up emotions, and suppressed complexes, engendered by brooding over imagined injustice, lust for power, bitter hatred of rivals in love or some other type of success or good fortune” (121). The Satanists perform the mass as a response to the disappointment of the participant’s lives; they are ugly, uncivil outsiders and according to the Duke, “probably epileptics… nearly all… abnormal” (121). The mass allows them to feel, at least for a limited time, as if they are genuinely powerful, people who ought to be feared rather than despised, able to command the interest and favour of their infernal lord, to receive sexual attention despite their uncomeliness. Seligman et al. go on to argue ritual “must be understood as inherently nondiscursive—semantic content is far secondary to subjunctive creation.” Ritual “cannot be analysed as a coherent system of beliefs” (26). If this is so, we cannot expect the black mass to necessarily say anything coherent about Satanism, let alone racism. In fact, The Devil Rides Out tends not to focus on the meaning of the black mass, but on its performance. The perceivable facts of the mass are given, often in instructional detail, but any sense of what they might stand for remains unexplicated in the text. Indeed, taken individually, it is hard to make sense or meaning out of each of the Sabbat’s components. Why must a skull rattle around a cauldron? Why must a child be killed and eaten? If communion forms the most significant part of the Christian mass, we could presume that the desecration of the host might be the most meaningful part of the rite, but given the extensive description accorded the mass as a whole, the parody of communion is dealt with surprisingly quickly, receiving only three sentences. The Duke describes the act as “the most appalling sacrilege”, but it is left at that as the celebrants stomp the host into the ground (120). The action itself is emphasised over anything it might mean. Most of Wheatley’s readers will, I think, be untroubled by this. As Pierre Bourdieu noted, “the regularities inherent in an arbitrary condition… tend to appear as necessary, even natural, since they are the basis of the schemes of perception and appreciation through which they are apprehended” (53-4). Rather than stretching towards an interpretation of the Sabbat, readers simply accept it a necessary condition of a “black magic story”. While the genre and its tropes are constructed, they tend to appear as “natural” to readers. The Satanists perform the black mass because that is what Satanists do. The representation does not even have to be compelling in literary terms; it simply has to be a “proper” black mass. Richard Schechner argues that, when we are concerned with ritual, “Propriety”, that is, seeing the ritual properly executed, “is more important than artistry in the Euro-American sense” (178). Rather than describing the meaning of the ritual, Wheatley prefers to linger over the Satanist’s actions, their gluttonous feasting and dancing, their nudity. Again, these are actions that hold sensual qualities for their performers that exceed the simply discursive. Through their ritual behaviour they enter into atavistic and ecstatic states beyond everyday human consciousness. They are “hardly human… Their brains are diseased and their mentality is that of the hags and the warlocks of the middle ages…” and are “governed apparently by a desire to throw themselves back into a state of bestiality…” (117-8). They finally reach a state of “maniacal exaltation” and participate in an “intoxicated nightmare” (135). While the mass is being celebrated, the Satanists become an undifferentiated mass, their everyday identities and individuality subsumed into the subjunctive world created by the ritual. Simon, a willing participant, becomes lost amongst them, his individual identity given over to the collective, subjunctive state created by the group. Rex and the Duke are outside of this subjunctive world, expressing revulsion, but voyeuristically looking on; they retain their individual identities. Tanith is caught between the role played by Simon, and the one played by the Duke and Rex, as she risks shifting from observer to participant, her journey to the Sabbat being driven on by “evil powers” (135). These three relationships to the Sabbat suggest some of the strategies available to its readers. Like Rex and the Duke, we seem to observe the black mass as voyeurs, and still have the option of disapproving of it, but like Simon, the act of continuing to read means that we are participating in the representation of this perversity. Having committed to reading a “black magic story”, the reader’s procession towards the black mass is inevitable, as with Tanith’s procession towards it. Yet, just as Tanith is compelled towards it, readers are allowed to experience the Sabbat without necessarily having to see themselves as wanting to experience it. This facilitates a ludic, undiscursive reading experience; readers are not encouraged to seriously reflect on what the Sabbat means or why it might be a source of vicarious pleasure. They do not have to take responsibility for it. As much as the Satanists create a subjunctive world for their own ends, readers are creating a similar world for themselves to participate in. The mass—an incoherent jumble of sex and violence—becomes an imaginative refuge from the everyday world which is too regulated, chaste and well-behaved. Despite having substantial precedent in folklore and Gothic literature (see Medway), the black mass as it is represented in The Devil Rides Out is largely an invention. The rituals performed by occultists like Crowley were never understood by their participants as being black masses, and it was not until the foundation of the Church of Satan in San Francisco in the later nineteen-sixties that it seems the black mass was performed with the regularity or uniformity characteristic of ritual. Instead, its celebration was limited to eccentrics and dabblers like Summers. Thus, as an imaginary ritual, the black mass can be whatever its writers and readers need it to be, providing the opportunity to stage those actions and experiences required by the kind of text in which it appears. Because it is the product of the requirements of the text, it becomes a venue in which those things crucial to the text are staged; forbidden sexual congress, macabre ceremony, violence, the appearance of intoxicating and noisome scents, weird violet lights, blue candle flames and the goat itself. As we observe the Sabbat, the subjunctive of the ritual aligns with the subjunctive of the text itself; the same ‘as if’ is experienced by both the represented worshippers and the readers. The black mass offers an analogue for the black magic story, providing, almost in digest form, the images and experiences associated with the genre at the time. Seligman et al. distinguish between modes that they term the sincere and the ritualistic. Sincerity describes an approach to reading the world that emphasises the individual subject, authenticity, and the need to get at “real” thought and feeling. Ritual, on the other hand, prefers community, convention and performance. The “sincere mode of behavior seeks to replace the ‘mere convention’ of ritual with a genuine and thoughtful state of internal conviction” (103). Where the sincere is meaningful, the ritualistic is practically oriented. In The Devil Rides Out, the black mass, a largely unreal practice, must be regarded as insincere. More important than any “meaning” we might extract from the rite is the simple fact of participation. The individuality and agency of the participants is apparently diminished in the mass, and their regular sense of themselves is recovered only as the Duke and Rex desperately drive the Duke’s Hispano into the ritual so as to halt it. The car’s lights dispel the subjunctive darkness and reduce the unified group to a gathering of confused individuals, breaking the spell of naughtily enabling darkness. Just as the meaningful aspect of the mass is de-emphasised for ritual participants, for readers, self and discursive ability are de-emphasised in favour of an immersive, involving reading experience; we keep reading the mass without pausing to really consider the mass itself. It would reduce our pleasure in and engagement with the text to do so; the mass would be revealed as obnoxious, unpleasant and nonsensical. When we read the black mass we tend to put our day-to-day values, both moral and aesthetic, to one side, bracketing our sincere individuality in favour of participation in the text. If there is little point in trying to interpret Wheatley’s black mass due to its weakly discursive nature, then this raises questions of how to approach the text. Simply, the “work” of interpretation seems unnecessary; Wheatley’s black mass asks to be regarded as a form of play. Simply, The Devil Rides Out is a venue for a particular kind of readerly play, apart from the more substantial, sincere concerns that occupy most literary criticism. As Huizinga argued that, “Play is distinct from ‘ordinary’ life both as to locality and duration… [A significant] characteristic of play [is] its secludedness, its limitedness” (9). Likewise, by seeing the mass as a kind of play, we can understand why, despite the provocative and transgressive acts it represents, it is not especially harrowing as a reading experience. Play “lies outside the antithesis of wisdom and folly, and equally outside those of truth and falsehood, good and evil…. The valuations of vice and virtue do not apply...” (Huizinga 6). The mass might well offer barbarism and infanticide, but it does not offer these to its readers “seriously”. The subjunctive created by the black mass for its participants on the page is approximately equivalent to the subjunctive Wheatley’s text proposes to his readers. The Sabbat offers a tawdry, intoxicated vision, full of strange performances, weird lights, queer music and druggy incenses, a darkened carnival apart from the real that is, despite its apparent transgressive qualities and wretchedness, “only playing”. References Bourdieu, Pierre. The Logic of Practice. Trans. Richard Nice. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1990. Ellis, Bill. Raising the Devil: Satanism, New Religions, and the Media. Lexington: The UP of Kentucky, 2000. Hedman, Iwan, and Jan Alexandersson. Four Decades with Dennis Wheatley. DAST Dossier 1. Köping 1973. Huyssen, Andreas. After the Great Divide: Modernism, Mass Culture, Postmodernism. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana UP, 1986. Jameson, Fredric. The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act. London: Routledge, 1989. Huizinga, J. Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture. International Library of Sociology. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1949. Medway, Gareth J. The Lure of the Sinister: The Unnatural History of Satanism. New York: New York UP, 2001. “Pooter.” The Times 19 August 1969: 19. Punter, David. The Literature of Terror: A History of Gothic Fictions from 1765 to the Present Day. London: Longman, 1980. Schechner, Richard. Performance Theory. Revised and Expanded ed. New York: Routledge, 1988. Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. The Coherence of Gothic Conventions. 1980. New York: Methuen, 1986. Seligman, Adam B, Robert P. Weller, Michael J. Puett and Bennett Simon. Ritual and Its Consequences: An Essay on the Limits of Sincerity. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2008. Thompson, G.R. Introduction. “Romanticism and the Gothic Imagination.” The Gothic Imagination: Essays in Dark Romanticism. Ed. G.R. Thompson. Pullman: Washington State UP, 1974. 1-10. Wheatley, Dennis. The Devil Rides Out. 1934. London: Mandarin, 1996.