Cody Marrs's concept of “transbellum literature” has urged critics to reconsider the position of the Civil War that neatly divides literary history into “antebellum” and “postbellum.” Marrs's idea encourages us to see both continuity and discontinuity between the postbellum and antebellum periods. Taking as a main subject of inquiry Herman Melville's “Lee in the Capitol” in Battle-Pieces, one of the poems written from the perspective of the South, I would like to inquire into what the South as a geographical and political entity meant to Melville after the Civil War. In this poem, Melville gets inside Robert E. Lee's inner psyche, ventriloquizing his suppressed emotions. By ventriloquizing Lee, Melville can be seen as doing violence to the alterity of the South in ways that conflict with his representation of others in his antebellum fiction. This essay interrogates how the Civil War changed Melville's approach to representing alterity by focussing on the presence of the South as a geographical other in Battle-Pieces. At the heart of this perceived change lies his concern with representing community rather than individuals. However, Melville ultimately finds himself othered from the southern individuals, thereby demonstrating less discontinuity than continuity in terms of his ethics of alterity.

This paper examines the impact of financially constrained intermediate inputs on within-industry total factor productivity loss. Utilizing exogenous tax reforms in China as a natural experiment, our difference-in-difference analysis reveals that reduced tax burdens lead to increased firm-level intermediate inputs, particularly among financially constrained firms. We incorporate financially constrained intermediate inputs into a partial equilibrium model of firm dynamics. Our calibration suggests that financially constrained intermediate inputs play a quantitatively more important role in accounting for misallocation than financially constrained capital. The presence of financially constrained intermediate inputs introduces a downward bias in the measurement of value-added productivity, especially for firms in the top decile of gross-output productivity. As a result, the average “efficient” levels of capital and labor for the top decile firms in the standard Hsieh and Klenow (2009) exercise are lower than what is truly efficient.

In her influential 1988 essay “Feminist Theory, Poststructuralism, and Performance,” American performance theorist Peggy Phelan documented her “most disturbingly interesting” exposure to what she calls “Eastern dance forms” at an international gathering of scholars, performers, and the like.1 The conference is said not only to have fostered strenuous discussions of the female role in such traditions as Balinese dance-drama, Indian kathakali, Japanese kabuki, and “Chinese opera,” but also to have featured the performance of a youthful male performer of female roles in the Indian odissi tradition. Astonished, if not disappointed, by the conference’s disengagement with the politics of representing female roles, Phelan asserts that “[s]uch classical female roles played by men or women do not, by definition and design, penetrate the ‘identity’ of any female; they are surface representations whose appeal exists precisely as surface.”2 And this “surface femininity” is said to hinge upon “immediate recognition of the comic artifice and reverent idealization of the form,” which “reminds the spectator of the absence of the female (the lack) rather than of her presence.”3

A growing body of literature proposes a climate-oriented monetary and financial policy for Central Banks (CBs). However, other literature defends a market-neutral monetary policy to keep CB independence and avoid addressing other than conventional objectives. However, if the CBs’ market-neutral policy is only targeting inflation rates and employment, it could amplify the macro impacts of negative economic externalities, while also neglecting positive externalities in the long-run. Even if climate-related policy goals appear advisable, the actions of CBs reveal significant delayed impacts on macro and climate-risk variables. We propose a non-linear dynamic macro model of finite horizon with multiple targets, including macro imbalances and climate risks arising from a trend in carbon emissions. This non-stationary emission dynamic has feedback effects on stationary and non-stationary macro variables and the multiple (possibly conflicting) objectives of the CBs. In this context, we first explore to what extent CBs can impact emission trends with and without delays. Second, given the mix of stationary and non-stationary dynamic variables, we explore the responses to policy and economic and financial shocks using a mixed Vector Error Correction Model (VECM) with stationary and non-stationary variables. Third, in the face of multiple objectives—and macroeconomic concerns that CBs face—we are motivated by Kaya and Maurer (2023) to construct a Pareto front that introduces weights for the multiple objectives and permits target prioritization.

Different participatory mechanisms for the representation of Indigenous peoples have been proposed across states. Since their creation in 1867, the Māori electorates in the national Parliament have led to dedicated representation for Māori (Indigenous peoples of New Zealand). However, only half of Māori choose to vote on the Māori roll, the remainder choosing to vote on the General roll, illustrating that roll choice is not based simply on group representation. This survey aimed to ask Māori (N = 1,958) in their own words why they made their roll choice. Through a deductive codebook thematic analysis, a range of codes were constructed around the reasoning behind roll choice. Māori on the Māori roll made their choice because they valued Māori representation; as an expression of their identity; to support the electorates; as a strategic choice; or they had been influenced by others or through education. Those on the General roll felt their roll was the default or a more familiar option; the Māori roll had less of an impact; it was a strategic choice, or they appreciated greater candidate variety; or they valued the smaller geographic electorate size. Some felt Māori no longer needed separate representation or felt less connected to their identity as Māori. The results have implications for both Māori and Indigenous representation through dedicated representational mechanisms.

In this paper, we prove a new uncertainty principle for functions with radial symmetry by differentiating a radial version of the Stein–Weiss inequality. The difficulty is to prove the differentiability in the limit of the best constant that unlike the general case it is not known. We provide also an integral alternative formula for the logarithmic weight $(\log|\xi|)$ in Fourier domain.

Through the colonial period in Sāmoa, Christian morality was embedded into Samoan culture. This transformed gender relations, introducing a new, well-disciplined figure of the Samoan woman. Because of this shift, we argue for the need to develop Samoan feminist thought, which is as much a development of new thinking as it is a return to and restoration of Samoan feminist thought already in existence within Indigenous Samoan cosmologies. We contextualize this thinking within a coalition of Pacific, Indigenous, Black, and women of color feminist thinkers. As feminist scholars have established, feminism doesn’t resonate or work with a simple copy and paste to culture and context. Rather, feminisms are contextual and subjective. It is thus imperative that those from within various contexts continue to broaden understandings and conceptualizations of feminism/s, which work toward demarcating spaces for feminist thought that illuminates multiple, diverse, and intersecting subjectivities and positionalities. As such, the task for us as Samoan women, people, and communities is to develop a feminist space that encompasses and fosters a by-us, for-us, with-us approach that challenges coloniality in Sāmoa and articulates feminist possibilities and futures.

In 2017, the European Union Emissions Trading System underwent a policy intervention that resulted in a surge in carbon prices. Using this setting as a quasi-natural experiment, we focus on employment, productivity, and emission outcomes among covered enterprises. Results show that emission-intensive private firms, particularly those with financial constraints, are more likely to downsize by divesting production assets, reducing both workforce and emissions. Smaller, cash-strapped listed firms are also prone to downsize by decreasing their operating leverage while maintaining emission output and asset levels. Positive productivity outcomes indicate that both private and listed firms become leaner postintervention.

The facilities where the livestock carry their production cycle must have as their main characteristic the control of the influence of variation of environmental factors on the animals, which can be controlled through the use of different ventilation systems. In this way, the objective of this research was to evaluate the influence of different conditioning systems in the swine farrowing house. Three treatments were tested in a farrowing house located in Parana, Brazil: refrigerated ventilation (T1), forced ventilation (T2) and natural ventilation (T3), on 12 females with 11 piglets each. The climatic parameters evaluated were temperature, velocity and relative humidity of the air. For the females were analysed the parameters: surface temperature (laser thermometer and thermal image), average weight and feed conversion at the end of lactation; and for the piglets: surface temperature (thermal image), average weight and weekly feed conversion. The data were interpreted statistically by analysis of variance and Tukey’s test with 5% probability of error, using the program SAS (2008). The use of the refrigerated ventilation system decreased the temperature of the air and the superficial temperature of the females, without affecting the comfort of the piglets. There was no difference in the productive indexes of the animals, thus other aspects of the production chain could be explored to reflect a higher financial gain.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Chile enacted three exceptional laws allowing withdrawals from affiliates’ pension accounts. We analyze how these withdrawals affected pension savings and the projected retirement income of affiliates and their households, finding that lower-income households withdrew a higher percentage of their savings. Simulations of worker contributions until retirement show an average reduction of 21% in contributory pensions, but increased non-contributory pension benefits reduce the average total income loss to 8%. Under a no-reform scenario, these withdrawals and higher non-contributory pensions may imply fiscal costs around 15.8% of the pre-pandemic gross domestic product (GDP). The current pension reform should reduce it to 12.4% of pre-pandemic GDP.

Consider, for any integer $n\ge 3$, the set $\operatorname {\mathrm {Pos}}_n$ of all n-periodic tree patterns with positive topological entropy and the set $\operatorname {\mathrm {Irr}}_n\subset \operatorname {\mathrm {Pos}}_n$ of all n-periodic irreducible tree patterns. The aim of this paper is to determine the elements of minimum entropy in the families $\operatorname {\mathrm {Pos}}_n$, $\operatorname {\mathrm {Irr}}_n$ and $\operatorname {\mathrm {Pos}}_n\setminus \operatorname {\mathrm {Irr}}_n$. Let $\unicode{x3bb} _n$ be the unique real root of the polynomial $x^n-2x-1$ in $(1,+\infty )$. We explicitly construct an irreducible n-periodic tree pattern $\mathcal {Q}_n$ whose entropy is $\log (\unicode{x3bb} _n)$. We prove that this entropy is minimum in $\operatorname {\mathrm {Pos}}_n$. Since the pattern $\mathcal {Q}_n$ is irreducible, $\mathcal {Q}_n$ also minimizes the entropy in the family $\operatorname {\mathrm {Irr}}_n$. We also prove that the minimum positive entropy in the set $\operatorname {\mathrm {Pos}}_n\setminus \operatorname {\mathrm {Irr}}_n$ (which is non-empty only for composite integers $n\ge 6$) is $\log (\unicode{x3bb} _{n/p})/p$, where p is the least prime factor of n.

In this paper, a polarization-reconfigurable antenna fed by a coplanar waveguide (CPW) using a stepped structure is presented. The main parts of the proposed antenna consist of a CPW-fed monopole and four branches. After studying and analyzing the structure and mechanism of the antenna, it was found that different polarizations can be generated by adjusting the antenna’s structure. Based on the mechanism, four PIN diodes are utilized and inserted between the four branches and the monopole for the switching. By controlling the ON/OFF states of the four PIN diodes, the antenna can switch among left-hand circular polarization (LHCP), right-hand circular polarization (RHCP), and linear polarization (LP). The optimized antenna has been fabricated and measured. Measured results indicate that the antenna’s −10-dB impedance bandwidth for LP is 15.93%, covering the frequency range from 2.3 to 2.71 GHz. The overlap bandwidth of −10-dB impedance and 3-dB axial ratio for the LHCP mode is 18.96%, covering frequencies from 2.1 to 2.54 GHz. For the RHCP mode, the overlap bandwidth is 20.5%, covering frequencies from 2 to 2.52 GHz. At all the three polarization modes, the antenna is capable of covering the 2.4-GHz WLAN band (2400–2480 MHz) as well as the LTE TD 2300 band (2300–2400 MHz).