50 research outputs found
“But the skin of the earth is seamless”: Liberating Symbols of Nature in "Borderlands/The New Mestiza" by Gloria Anzaldúa
No full text“Build bridges, not walls!” Recently, this old slogan has boldly resounded in the streets of America. One of the greatest advocates of that belief was certainly Gloria Anzaldúa, author of Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (1987) and co-author of This Bridge We Call Home (2002), among others. In Borderlands she offered a dramatic and revolutionary view on the life in the borderlands, nourishing with new life-blood the Latino, Feminist e Post-colonial studies. Being herself a Chicana grown up in the Texas-Mexico border area, Anzaldúa denounces the “terrorism” practiced by the U.S. government but also shows a possible path to follow in order to positively re-think the complex border identity: “I am participating in the creation of yet another culture, a new story to explain the world and our participation in it, a new value system with images and symbols that connect us to each other and to the planet” (81). Anzaldúa goes beyond the rationally cold, artificially created citizenship identity, towards a conception of the self more linked to the truth of being simply humans living on a planet whose surface is “seamless”. Nature is indeed central in her “new value system” and an endless source of symbols for her discourse. The aim of this article is to bring out the meanings attributed to Nature by Anzaldúa, proposing a close-reading of three poems included in Borderlands, where Nature (concreted in both natural space and animal life), becomes a symbol of the fight for liberation. “Horse”, “Wind tugging at my sleeve”, and “Dead”, are representative of the three main meanings we believe Anzaldúa ascribed to Nature: Nature as the strength we should – but frequently don’t - find in ourselves to fight oppression; Nature as the rebellion to the untruthful duality imposed by the border; Nature as the possibility of rebirth in a new identity
Relative influence of hypoxemia and anemia on the measurement of central venous oxygen saturation
No full textItaly: Legal Response to Covid-19
No full textScholarly report and analysis of national legal responses to Covid-19 around the world. The Compendium is composed of reports by country teams, headed by one or more Country or Territory Rapporteurs, who coordinate the production and updating of the relevant Country Reports. The reports are written by reference to a comprehensive Author Guidance Code (AGC). The AGC covers five topics:
I. Introduction
II. Applicable Legal Framework
III. Institutions and Oversight
IV. Public Health Measures, Enforcement and Compliance
V. Social and Employment Protection Measures
VI. Human Rights of Vulnerable Group
And Not Or, Kim Schoenstadt’s Composition for a Large Room in Three Parts
No full textThis essay focuses on the the relationship between spectator and art object as a Modernist dichotomy of author and viewer.https://digitalcommons.chapman.edu/art_books/1007/thumbnail.jp
L’autografia d'autore: Cambiamenti nella realizzazione e nella concezione del libro dal XII secolo all’invenzione della stampa
No full textIt is generally believed that the invention of printing triggered a cultural change, marking the passage between the medieval idea of the book and the modern one. It should be noted, though, that there was an important evolution through the Late Middle Ages, and that the printing revolution, however crucial, must be placed inside the wider process that from the XIIth century onwards transformed the use and function of writing, of reading and, consequently, the book itself, both theoretically and physically. The aim of this study is to track the cultural roots of the changes in the practices of intellectual work and, viceversa, to determine whether and how such changes may have influenced, through the literary production, late medieval culture. I have focused on the phenomenon of literary autography which, very unusual in the Early Middle Ages, is attested by a new and uninterrupted series of examples from the XIth-XIIth centuries onwards. The cultural landscape of the end of the Middle Ages appears therefore marked by the tension between a recurring drive towards an individualisation of the relation between an author and his work and a strict control by the author over the final product (both philologically and graphically) and an opposite trend leading to the loosening of the author's control over his work, as a natural result of the circulation of the texts but also of a different idea of the authorial role
Surgical strategy in treatment of metopic synostosis in a single centre experience: technical note and quantitative analysis of the outcomes.
No full textTrigonocephaly is the most common craniosynostosis involving orbits. Although some degree of agreement has been reached regarding surgical timing and indications for treatment, there is no consensus regarding the ideal operative technique to guarantee an optimal morphological outcome. The purpose of this study is to describe both strategies and to compare morphological outcomes by means of morphological surface analysis obtained from three-dimensional (3D) stereophotogrammetry, with two different techniques. We retrospectively investigated 43 patients with metopic synostosis surgically treated between 2004 and 2020. Two different techniques were applied, addressed as technique A and B. Ten patients undergone postoperative 3d stereophotogrammetry were enrolled, and cephalometric measurements were taken and compared to a cohort of unaffected patients matched by age and gender. Comparison of the groups demonstrated a hypercorrection of the metopic angle of the second technique, associated with a slightly lower correction of the interfrontoparietal diameter. The metopic angle showed to be significantly undercorrected with the first method. Alternated barrel staving technique appears to be a quick and satisfactory method in cranial remodelling for metopic synostosis. It guarantees an optimal aesthetic result in the first years after surgery. [Abstract copyright: © 2024. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.
Early Clinical and Subclinical Visual Evoked Potential and Humphrey's Visual Field Defects in Cryptococcal Meningitis.
No full textCryptococcal induced visual loss is a devastating complication in survivors of cryptococcal meningitis (CM). Early detection is paramount in prevention and treatment. Subclinical optic nerve dysfunction in CM has not hitherto been investigated by electrophysiological means. We undertook a prospective study on 90 HIV sero-positive patients with culture confirmed CM. Seventy-four patients underwent visual evoked potential (VEP) testing and 47 patients underwent Humphrey's visual field (HVF) testing. Decreased best corrected visual acuity (BCVA) was detected in 46.5% of patients. VEP was abnormal in 51/74 (68.9%) right eyes and 50/74 (67.6%) left eyes. VEP P100 latency was the main abnormality with mean latency values of 118.9 (±16.5) ms and 119.8 (±15.7) ms for the right and left eyes respectively, mildly prolonged when compared to our laboratory references of 104 (±10) ms (p<0.001). Subclinical VEP abnormality was detected in 56.5% of normal eyes and constituted mostly latency abnormality. VEP amplitude was also significantly reduced in this cohort but minimally so in the visually unimpaired. HVF was abnormal in 36/47 (76.6%) right eyes and 32/45 (71.1%) left eyes. The predominant field defect was peripheral constriction with an enlarged blind spot suggesting the greater impact by raised intracranial pressure over that of optic neuritis. Whether this was due to papilloedema or a compartment syndrome is open to further investigation. Subclinical HVF abnormalities were minimal and therefore a poor screening test for early optic nerve dysfunction. However, early optic nerve dysfunction can be detected by testing of VEP P100 latency, which may precede the onset of visual loss in CM
Multi-scale modelling of bioreactor–separator system for wastewater treatment with two-dimensional activated sludge floc dynamics
No full textA simple “first generation” multi-scale computational model of the formation of activated sludge flocs at micro-scale and reactor performance at macro-scale is proposed. The model couples mass balances for substrates and biomass at reactor scale with an individual-based approach for the floc morphology, shape and micro-colony development. Among the novel model processes included are the group attachment/detachment of micro-flocs to the core structure and the clustering of nitrifiers. Simulation results qualitatively describe the formation of micro-colonies of ammonia and nitrite oxidizers and the extracellular polymeric substance produced by heterotrophic microorganisms, as typically observed in fluorescence in situ hybridization images. These results are the first step towards realistic multi-scale multispecies models of the activated sludge wastewater treatment systems and a generic modelling strategy that could be extended to other engineered biological systems.BT/BiotechnologyApplied Science
Condiscipuli Sumus
No full textThis chapter addresses the place of horizontal learning in monastic
culture. Firstly, it focuses on the relation between theoretical instances
of horizontal learning and the evidence for horizontal learning practices
in monastic everyday life. On the basis of this, it proposes a reflection
on the extent to which horizontal learning can be associated with the
monastic world in comparison to other contexts, first and foremost the
world of secular clerics and canon regulars. While there can be no doubt
that horizontal learning is not unique to the monastic world, an evaluation
of the complex balance between horizontal learning and vertical learning
must always consider that much depends on the individual author, his or
her social and religious status, the kind of community, and the specific
contents and contexts of learning
Violence work: policing and power
No full textPresent ad hoc outcries about police excesses such as shootings of young black men on the streets and mass incarceration miss the point about the nature and role of the police, argues the author. Coining her own counter-category, ‘violence work’, she shows how the police carry out violence work for the state; policing being the quintessential translation of state power. In a considered argument taking in the history of colonial policing, the development of racial capitalism and US foreign intervention, the article discusses a number of fallacies about policing: that it is civilian and distinguishable from the military; that it is a public service rather than a private endeavour; and that it is locally based and municipally controlled. Policing is in fact the human-scale expression of the state. She discusses a number of state theorists from Adam Smith, to Poulantzas, Foucault, Agamben and Hall and contemplates the role of the state to the market. The piece lifts the assumptions about public safety, state/private sector, place and scale to reveal the ideological landscape that legitimates state-market violence.</jats:p
