An insect’s-eye view

This article is concerned with representations of insects and insect habitats in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Dutch art and print culture. It adopts an eco-critical approach, with an eye toward multispecies studies. The article considers the ecologically conceived image of bees, butterflies, and other insects gathering pollen from a wide range of flowering plant life in Theo van Hoytema’s lithograph announcing the Biological Exhibition: the Life of Plants and Animals held in 1910 at the Royal Zoological Botanical Gardens in The Hague. This closely observed water’s-edge environment is considered in the context of the wider body of works on paper done by Van Huitema especially during the seminal period of the 1890s, and within the growing print culture surrounding the Dutch naturalist and environmental movements in the early years of the twentieth century.

Developing Digital Photomicroscopy

(1) The need for efficient ways of recording and presenting multicolour immunohistochemistry images in a pioneering laboratory developing new techniques motivated a move away from photography to electronic and ultimately digital photomicroscopy. (2) Initially broadcast quality analogue cameras were used in the absence of practical digital cameras. This allowed the development of digital image processing, storage and presentation. (3) As early adopters of digital cameras, their advantages and limitations were recognised in implementation. (4) The adoption of immunofluorescence for multiprobe detection prompted further developments, particularly a critical approach to probe colocalization. (5) Subsequently, whole-slide scanning was implemented, greatly enhancing histology for diagnosis, research and teaching.

Incorporating Movements for Racial Justice into Planning and Management of U.S. National Parks

The National Park Service (NPS) is the federal land management agency responsible for 423 units across the United States. Many of these parks are considered iconic cultural and environmental landscapes. However, scholarship from a number of disciplinary approaches has positioned the national parks and their management as problematic, particularly from Indigenous and racial justice concerns. National parks, like many cultural landscapes in the U.S., are infused with racial relations, with unpleasant histories and contemporary experiences that have both subtle instances of marginalization and explicit episodes of material violence. Recent developments in racial justice movements raise fundamental questions for the social and political maintenance, stewardship, and sustainability of the NPS. In a critical approach that centers whiteness as a lens of institutional critique, we consider the ways that the NPS could more critically engage with racial justice approaches in its planning and management. After acknowledging that histories of U.S. national parks as spaces designed for White, upper class people led to the displacement and marginalization of Indigenous and people of color, we look to contemporary avenues for increased racial justice. Through both local, small-scale initiatives and agency-wide, national policies, we consider how racial justice movements are both expectant and galvanized in this moment, providing a setting for the NPS to redress and make amends for previous harms and missed opportunities. Specifically, we identify recent federal and institutional policy and legislation as promising mandates for progress. We identify specific place-based tactics used by individual NPS units, such as renaming parks and geographic features, or interpretation that is both more accurate and more inclusive of marginalized populations. Our research examines planning and management as potential strategic practices that can more fully highlight and progress racial justice. We offer a range of specific questions that might guide more inclusive planning and management work in the NPS. Finally, we encourage the NPS, as an institution, as well as individual park units, to support contemporary racial justice movements, while simultaneously adhering to the agency’s historical dual mandate.

Narrating New Normal: Graduate Student Symposium Report

This article summarizes the events at Narrating New Normal: Graduate Student Symposium, held virtually on May 17–18, 2021. The symposium was organized by a number of graduate students from the School of Communication and Film (previously named the School of Communication) and was supported by Global Storytelling: Journal of Digital and Moving Images and the School of Communication and Film. It was attended by an international roster of graduate students hailing from academic institutions and think tanks in different countries. The presentations focused on the usage of the phrase new normal, a popular term during crises, in various geopolitical, geocultural, and historical contexts. The essay discusses first the background and theoretical framework that informs the symposium. Conceived during the COVID-19 pandemic, a global crisis that has seen the use of the phrase new normal in describing the shifts in our daily lives or imaginations of a postcrisis future. Taking a critical approach, the symposium aims to interrogate how the phrase is used by different social institutions, corporations, and individuals in various crises, considering how it normalizes precarity. This essay also summarizes the keynote lecture delivered by professor Michal Krzyzanowski (Uppsala University) on the discursive strategies of normalization and mainstreaming. It also covers the papers and discussions across four panels that examined the different aspects of normalization and of new normal in its various incarnations: geopolitics, networked media spaces, normalization and precarity, and popular culture. The article ends by offering a synthesis of the major threads that tie the presentations and addresses together. It proposes that while the phrase new normal normalizes and obfuscates precarity, it also suggests that there are pockets of optimism during crises where we can witness human resilience and individual agency.

Protocols and safety measurements used in intubation of COVID-19 patients

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced many countries to pose an emergency to contain the contamination and prevent the further spread of the infection. In this context, many societies and research papers were published to optimize guidelines and protocols for patients undergoing surgery and subsequent intubation. Accordingly, infection control is a critical approach to reduce the rate of contamination and risk of catching infections for suspected and confirmed COVID-19 patients. As a result, various guidelines were discussed in the current literature review, including guidelines to the patient, healthcare workers, operating room, anesthesia equipment, and patient transportation. For instance, healthcare workers can protect themselves from catching infections by wearing personal protective equipment and conducting adequate disinfection measures following each operation, in addition to the proper disposal of the contaminated objects. Strictly following these protocols should be done to reduce the risk of contamination in the operating room and enhance the outcomes of the patients and healthcare workers.

Can Marketization Improve Sustainable Development in Northeastern China? Evidence from the Perspective of Coupling Coordination Degree Model

With the acquisition of sustainable development, pursuing the coordinated development of social economy and ecological environment has been a critical approach of Northeastern China. Since the reform and opening-up, marketization has profoundly affected the regional social economy. However, what role will marketization play in regional sustainable development? Can marketization improve sustainable development measured by the coupling coordination degree? This paper adopts the coupling coordination degree model (CCDM) to estimate the coupling coordination degree and further explore the impact of marketization on the coupling coordination degree in Northeastern China from 1994 to 2019. The results show that the average values of the static coupling degree (SCD), dynamic coupling degree (DCD), and coupling coordination degree (CCD) remained in a tiny coordinated state, which indicated that the level of sustainable development in Northeastern China is presented still primary from 1990 to 2019. Marketization has a significant negative impact on the coupling coordination degree, which indicates that marketization should be considered in the process of sustainable development in Northeastern China.

Human rights education as a framework for transmitting religion as cultural heritage

The child’s right to freedom of religion and belief and fundamental principles such as equality and non-discrimination constitute an international frame for religious education (RE). However, these rights might be challenged when RE is allocated a major role in transmitting the majority religion as national cultural heritage and national identity. This article will explore and discuss this issue. It is based on an analysis of the transmission of Christianity as cultural heritage in the national RE curriculum for primary and lower secondary schools in Denmark. The article argues that principles from human rights education could provide a basis for a more pluralistic, objective, and critical approach to RE, thus enabling the classroom to function as a community of disagreement.