42 research outputs found
Early hominin paleoecology
No full textEdited by Matt Sponheimer, Julia A. Lee-Thorp, Kaye E. Reed, and Peter Ungar.Includes bibliographical references and index.Pt. 1. Paleoclimate and paleoenvironment -- pt. 2. Hominin adaptations and behavior -- pt. 3. Analogies and models
Interview with George Collins by Roger Kaye
No full textOral history interview with George Collins. Interviewed by Roger Kaye. Reference to National Park Service and Alaska.
George Collins helped to establish the Arctic Refuge
Name: George Collins
Keywords: History, Biography, Law enforcement, Wildlife refuges, National Park ServiceINTERVIEW WITH GEORGE COLLINS BY ROGER KAYE
PHOENIX, ARIZONA MARCH 28, 1993
MR. KAYE: George, could you tell me a little about your background, your
history, where you were born?
MR. COLLINS: All right. I was born on May 31, 1903 in St. Paul,
Minnesota. And my father’s name was Lynne, L-Y-double N-E Collins. My
mother was Emma Lincoln Walker. My father was in the newspaper business
in St. Paul, with the “St. Paul Pioneer Press.” He was a machinist in the
composing room. My mother was a proofreader and junior editor for the
West Publishing Company in Midway. I don’t know where their business
offices were exactly, but somewhere between St. Paul and Minneapolis, and
we called it Midway.
MR. KAYE: How did you happen to work for the Park Service?
MR. COLLINS: The Park Service? Well, when my parents and my brother and
I, with them, of course, moved to California about 1908, or so, we settled
in the upper Sacramento Valley. And in 1914, 15 or 16, a Congressman from
that district in California was a friend of Steven T. Mather and Horace
Albright who were the first two Directors. Mr. Mather was the first
Director of the National Park Service. And he was the man who conceived
the idea of having a National Park Service. And the Secretary of the
Interior at the time was very friendly toward Mr. Mather, and he said,
“you know so much about it, and like it so well, you go run it.” So
that’s how Mr. Mather became the first Director of the National Park
Service. And Mr. Albright had graduated in Mining Law from the University
of California at Berkley, where Mr. Mather had gone to school himself. So
while Horace Albright wanted to get into the mining business, Mr. Mather
prevailed upon him to become his assistant in the new National Park
Service. So naturally, when Mr. Mather had to retire because of illness
and age, why, Mr. Albright succeeded him as Director of the Service.
Well, my parents and our family up there in northern California knew
Mather pretty well and my brother went into the Park Service, and so did
I. We just sort of followed along with those people. And I worked odd
times in the summer, when I was going to school in Berkley. And finally,
what I did at the time was be a Summer Ranger, or worked as a laborer or
something for the Park Service. Then I took the Park Service Ranger
Examination about 1929, and was appointed to the Grand Canyon. I spent a
little time at Yosemite, and lots of time up at Lassen before the time I
went into the Service permanently. My first permanent job in the Service
was in 1930, at Grand Canyon, as a Ranger. I became not an Assistant
Superintendent, but Assistant to the Superintendent, for Grand Canyon
National Park. There is a lot of difference between those two titles.
See, when I finished going to school, and my folks thought I was never
going to quit going to school, and wondered what I was going to do, I
became a landscape architect, professionally. And they didn’t have any
jobs open for landscape architects, and I liked the Ranger work. I liked
the idea of being a Ranger, and I had passed the Ranger Examination at the
Civil Service, and, as I say, had a couple of little jobs, one at
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Yosemite, and one at Lassen. Then I moved to Arizona, and was a Ranger
there at Grand Canyon National Park. I spent most of my time as the North
Rim Ranger. In those days we didn’t have a road all the way out, that is,
a good road for tourists.
[tape stops and begins again]
Representation in Alaska improved. We had Sitka, and we had Mt. McKinley,
and the big one at Katmi.. Those where rather remote places in those
days. McKinley was on the railroad, but not a lot of people got there. I
think the first time I went up there, it had a big season, about 900
people or something like that. Anyway, it was about 1949 or 1950 that Mr.
Connie Wirth who later became Park Service Director, he was then Chief of
Lands, he ran into me in San Diego where I was running an exhibition of
Interior Department activities. And he said, “what the hell are you doing
here?” I told him and he said, “you go on back to the Grand Canyon, I’ve
got other work for you, more in line with what I want you to be doing.”
So it was Connie who sent me to Alaska. The idea was to make a recreation
survey of the entire territory. And I went everywhere you could get with
an airplane and a boat. I went everywhere I thought I ought to go. So I
covered that territory and I found that most Alaskans, except for those
who fly, professional aviators, and so on, most of them know a lot about
their own little part of Alaska, but they don’t know very much of anything
about the rest of it. I found that they didn’t even see the thing in
their mind’s eye in its full proportion. From down in the southeastern
end of the territory, clear up to the islands of the chain and up north to
St. George, and St. . . .the names go out of my mind, up in the Bering
Sea. Well, I went to all of those places and got a tremendous perspective
of the territory. Of course, I just fell in love with that whole country.
It was country that I could feel at home in. I liked the people, the
wildlife and all that. I was married, with family, and I was torn between
Alaska and California where I had my family. At the time, I couldn’t
think of taking my wife and children up to Alaska. Because they were in
school, they had their home, and that’s where my home was. I felt at the
time like I shouldn’t do that, and I believe today that I made up my mind
in the right direction.
[tape stops and begins]
Around the top of the world, there were in Lapland, which is pretty well
settled, over in Siberia, and elsewhere, in Sweden, and Norway, and so on.
There were only four, five or six, nations that had very much to do in the
Artic. There was not a whole lot of activity nationally amount nations
that had responsibilities in the Arctic. Well, Canada was pretty
outstanding, they took it seriously. They had lot of people, not a lot,
the population of Canada, even today, isn’t all that big, but there were a
lot of people, Indians, Eskimos, and others. There was also an amazing
configuration of lakes and rivers flowing into the Arctic Ocean. That
always fascinated me. Also, as I went into northeastern Alaska, the first
river was very impressive because it started in Alaska, and wandered
around, and it too emptied into the Artic Ocean! The way I was raised,
where I went to school, and all, we never thought of any rivers that
didn’t go south and flow into the Gulf of Mexico, or into the Pacific or
Atlantic Oceans or something. Geographically, it was an amazing
3
revelation to me, to realize that there was an Arctic orientation to a
great deal of the country that the United States was responsible for. I
won’t say, “owned.” We don’t “own” anything. But we were fortunate
enough to have been given responsibility over that part of the world that
is up in the Arctic. And we know of it as Alaska, at least the north
coast of it.
[tape stops and begins]
My partner in most of the work that I did in Alaska and other activities
is dead now. But Lowell Sumner and I thought that we ought to recommend a
Conservation Area. We didn’t necessarily think it should be a National
Park, because you had native people living there who had established
themselves and their own ways. They had gotten firearms finally, and some
of them still used bows and arrows and spears and so on, and maybe they
still do today. I guess they do. But anyway, we didn’t want any of that
to change. And we thought that the best thing in the world for that
northeastern part of Alaska and the northern Yukon would be a great
international conservation area. It would be established for the purpose
of simply protecting it, and letting it alone, as it was.
And that was our recommendation.
MR. KAYE: Did you make this before you went up in 1952, or after?
MR. COLLINS: No, after we’d been there and seen a lot of it. We flew all
of the time.
MR. KAYE: You made two trips to the Arctic Refuge in the 1950s didn’t
you? Didn’t you spend two Sumners there?
MR. COLLINS: At least, I think I made more than that.
MR. KAYE: Your first trip, was that to Peters Schrader Lake area?
MR. COLLINS: We went to Schrader Lake from Barrow. We didn’t know
anything about the country. And John Reed didn’t know anything about that
part of the world, except that he had been in northeast Alaska, and a
little bit of the upper end of the Yukon. But he knew enough to realize
that what we were interested in from the standpoint of scenery,
configuration, and wildlife and all that, was best exemplified over in
that region.
MR. KAYE: The northeast?
MR. COLLINS: Yeah.
MR. KAYE: Now, Reed is with the U. S. Geological Survey isn’t he?
MR. COLLINS: Yes, that’s right.
MR. KAYE: Did he want you to stay east of the Canning River, to be away
from his area?
4
MR. COLLINS: He said, “your National Park.” He never did get over
referring to my interests up there in other than National Park terms. I
explained to him time and time again, in Washington, and up there in
Alaska and everywhere else, that I didn’t give a damn what they called it.
But I thought that a Conservation area wouldn’t fit particularly well into
the National Park Service system of protection area. And that we’d just
have to let people who were more concerned about things like that than I
was, decide, in the department, what to do. And my work was at the
department level, not any particular organization of the department,
except the Secretary’s office.
MR. KAYE: The Interior Department?
MR. COLLINS: Yeah, so I looked at this whole thing from a departmental
standpoint. The Secretary’s office, not from the National Park Service,
the U.S. Geological Survey or any of the rest of them. Well that was
good, to take that stand, that attitude. It was the only way to do good
land use planning. If you started out from a National Park Service
viewpoint, or from Fish and Wildlife, or Land Management, or USGS, you
would miss an awful lot. So I had to hold a general thought of Arctic
land use and conservation in my mind. And right away, I started going
over into the Yukon because it’s all one country. If you stop at the
international borders, you miss half of it. So, I went to Whitehorse, and
the Commissioner of the Yukon Territory was named “Collins.” That was a
peculiar thing to me. There was absolutely no blood relationship that
either one of us could imagine. He was an intelligent fellow, except that
he was drunk all of the time! He was as drunk as a skunk, most of the
time whenever I saw him! And the few times that I got his attention well
enough so that he understood what I was talking about, he was fine. And I
did more good for our interests in the Arctic by sitting in Whitehorse and
help write things for him to sign than I think I did anywhere else. But
we got along fine as representatives of the two countries. And the
interest in…[unintelligible town name] one of those pretty good sized
towns over there, where I used to go and stay, the name won’t come to my
mind right now. But, those people could never think of anything except
mining, and what you could get out of the ground, what you could sell or
convert into money. I didn’t find a good solid conservation thinker in
that whole country over there for a long time. I think there are a number
of them now, who are conservation minded. In the sense that you preserve
and protect something that is an important part of the ethical concept of
your country. You don’t have to do anything with it, just see that it’s
let alone. That’s the way that “Doc”[Sumner] and I felt about that whole
thing up there. It hadn’t been ruined, and why should it be? Well, it
should be because more and more traffic was increasing along the Arctic
coast between the Canadian outposts and Barrow, and those places, and
others in between.
[tape stops and begins again]
Our recommendations were more in line with Fish and Wildlife Service. The
head of that organization in Alaska was Clarence Rhode. I had known
Clarence for a long time, and we were very good friends. He said, “well,
you’ve got to put this in the hands of some outfit to take care it,
5
somebody had to be responsible.” And Clarence wasn’t unhappy, because we
both agreed that it should be U. S. Fish and Wildlife. And I think we
made the right decision. I don’t think that it was utterly National Park
in caliber. And there’s nothing like it and nothing in the National Park
system up there in the Arctic. In fact if I could have justified, in
fact, I wrote justifications, in my own mind, that maybe I should
recommend a National Park, but I fought against that. I didn’t think that
that was the proper attitude to have. I think I was right. I think today
that this was one of the best decisions in land use management terms that
I ever made in my own mind. Which was to keep a National Park out of
there.
MR. KAYE: Why was that George?
MR. COLLINS: Because, right off of the bat, if you have a National Park,
based on the popular concept of what parks are for, you would have to
endorse the idea of all kinds of people going up there. And I didn’t want
that. I didn’t think that there should be a whole lot of people from San
Francisco and Los Angeles running around up there. I thought that you
ought to preserve what was there, whether or not anybody ever got to see
it anymore than they did then. I always felt I was right about that. And
Conrad Worth did too. He is a landscape architect himself, and he said,
“I’ll go along with what you recommend.” So, we would have gotten a
National Park if any one of half a dozen other guys had been in the
position I was in, at that time. Because a lot of people think that
National Park means money. What “Doc” Sumner and I were after wasn’t
going to make any money for anybody.
MR. KAYE: What vision did you and “Doc” Sumner have for the future of
what’s in the Arctic Refuge? What did you see for it?
MR. COLLINS: Only to make sure that the Canadian people saw conservation
in that region pretty much as we did, and would agree that the great thing
about it was to let it alone. The international line divided it in half,
you might say, and we thought that it should be a common bond between the
two nations there, in terms of policy and practice in conserving that
whole region. We did a boundary that reached over on the Canadian side,
and not many years later, they came out with their own boundary on the
Canadian side, and it put ours to shame. They had a much better boundary
than we did.
MR. KAYE: You mean a better park?
MR. COLLINS: They did lean towards the park thing. I’m not sure but I
believe it is a park now. It was an established singular boundary with
provisions for expansion to the south. That surprised us, it surprised
me, but I didn’t raise any questions about it. Because to have them do
anything would help keep those damn prospectors and miners from tearing
the country to pieces. This was a big step ahead. Then Fish and Wildlife
did establish the area on the American side. That was pretty well taken
care of in principal and policy. So that you could, in those main
6
concepts of government, principal and policy, you could go forward and do
more and more with it in terms of protecting and saving it.
MR: KAYE: Let me go back a little ways. You and Clarence Rhode discussed
whether the area should be a park, or a wildlife area, who else was
involved in those discussions back in the 1950s, and tell me how they
went? What things were considered? Who was on what side?
MR. COLLINS: Well, there was a man from Stanford University whose name
escapes me for the moment. I’ve got it somewhere. And he ran the Arctic
Research Laboratory for a couple of years up at Barrow. We would go over
to Barrow and write up reports. Write up what we thought we had learned.
We’d go over there once in a while. And he came over to northeast Alaska
and he went down in the Sheenjek too with us. He was a fine professor of
geology, I think, at Stanford. He was great guy. He understood exactly
what we were doing. And he made available to us stenographic help and
things like that over at Barrow when we’d go over there. We were able to
keep up our reports pretty well. And they looked pretty good when we sent
them outside to San Francisco, and Washington. Of course, that’s all gone
now. No laboratory up there anymore. I think it’s been closed out, which
I think is wrong, absolutely wrong! They never should have discontinued
that effort. They need something, even though our part of the Arctic is
small compared to Canada.
[tape stops and restarts]
The Assistant Director of the National Park Service in Washington, a man
I’d known many, many years and most of my adult life, and of course
Clarence Rhode. Although Clarence was head of Fish and Wildlife in
Alaska, he thought first of the land, and the wildlife. [tape stops] He
was a great man, I think. There was this little fellow from Stanford who
was ahead of any of us. He could see your point of view, just like that.
And I can’t think of his name. But I don’t think, well, Ben Thompson, . .
.
The Superintendent of McKinley was “Mush” Pearson. He was a dog Musher.
He could have been up there for 100 years, and wouldn’t have known anymore
about Alaska than the Alaska Railroad and how to get from Fairbanks to
Anchorage. He was a hunter, and just wasn’t a conservation minded guy.
Those were the only people who had ever been there, who knew anything.
You couldn’t discuss this stuff with anyone. There were more people on
the Canadian side, by far, than there were on the Alaskan side who could
have discussed our views on the Artic with far reaching views.
MR. KAYE: Let’s go back to Clarence Rhode. Did he fly you around? Was
he involved in your survey?
MR. COLLINS: He flew me whenever he was up there in that region on his
own business for Fish and Wildlife. He’d take the time, I flew a lot with
Clarence. He was a good pilot, an excellent pilot. Highly trained, and
skilled. Not a man of great formal training or education, but he had
enough. Clarence had a tremendous business head, when it came to running
his outfit there. He and I talked about it all the time. You might say
7
that he and John Reed were my strongest confederates in discussions and
analysis of what the Arctic was, and why it should be left alone, and
things like that. I don’t remember other people. You had to have been
there and learned a little about it in order to have anything to say about
it. I know I couldn’t talk intelligently about it until after I had been
there for awhile, and I went there for that purpose.
MR. KAYE: Your second trip, was that to the Firth River, Joel Creek area?
MR. COLLINS: No, I don’t remember for sure. I made a couple of trips up
there to the Artic area before I got a consciousness of the vastness of
it. I could see, as anybody would, from a map that it was a big thing,
but the personality of the land, and when my concept came to the point of
thinking in terms of everything north of the Yukon River being another
world. I included the Brooks Range. But now, as I look back, that my
mind gradually took the crest of the Brooks Range on up to the Artic as
that world in itself. And south of there, I thought, was the Yukon, and
more Alaska. It was a normal way of dividing up the land, to even think
about it.
MR. KAYE: What was the best area, the area that you most enjoyed in Artic
Refuge? You camped all over, Joel Creek, Schrader Lake, and Sheenjek,
what did you like best?
MR. COLLINS: Well, it’s hard to answer that. I never spent a lifetime
there. I never spent enough time to be greatly impressed by, as I know I
would have been, by many other places besides Joel Creek. But in the
experience that I did have, I felt that Joel Creek was one of the most
representative and distinguished parts of the Artic region that I knew
anything about. And even now, in my mind’s eye when I think about the
Artic, I think first about Joel Creek. Where it started over there, up
Joel Creek and through the hills a little ways. And then, the next river
south, Manchu Creek, which runs into the Firth River. It seemed to me
that the difference between those two places, Manchu Creek in it’s own
way, and the Firth in the way that appealed to me so much. Then the whole
setting, going back to Peter’s Lake and Schrader Lake and the big mountain
that sticks up there. I include all that when I talk about the area where
“Doc” and I camped and worked so much. You can land a plane in there
pretty safely and comfortably.
MR. KAYE: With a float- plane? At Peter’s Lake you mean?
MR. COLLINS: No, I meant over at Joel Creek. Yeah, we had that big
willow patch. And there was a family of moose that lived in there. And
we lived on one end of it. But we went out and dug around a little bit,
and made a good enough strip so you could get in and out.
MR. KAYE: Who flew you in there?
MR. COLLINS: For heavens sake, (thinking) it was an Alaskan Airlines guy
who lived up on the coast there. Do you remember him?
8
MR. KAYE: No
MR. COLLINS: He had a place down Fairbanks.
MR. KAYE: Did he live at Barter Island?
MR. COLLINS: No, Barter Island is over on the Canadian side. He lived
about half way between Barter Island and Barrow. His
The Ursinus Weekly, May 11, 1953
No full textEd Abramson elected prexy by thespians • Spirit Committee to hold election • Ursinus debaters triumph over LaSalle team, on FEPC • J. Alfred Kaye to speak at commencement, June 1 • Clubs elect 1953-54 heads • Cast receives high praise for Two blind mice production • New Y cabinet installed Sunday; Dance planned • Day Study elections decide new officers • Ruth Reed is May queen; Crowned under sunny sky • Seniors win study awards • Quartets present program, Tuesday • MSGA elections to be held Tuesday • Career offer for grads • Freshmen women elect soph rulers; Nesta Lewis to head committee • Editorials: But who shall decide? • Letters to the editor • Time machine • Mr. all-college visits U.C. and finds a way of life • To all happy drivers: We struggle for survival • Rittenhouse places in intercollegiates • Taylor hurls one-hitter; Belles defeat Beaver, 3-2 • PMC tops tracksters; Bears win 880, discus • Tennis team wins; Tops Albright, 5-4 • Baseball team wins, 5-4; Burger, Anderson star • Swarthmore wins meet 76-50; Swett, Eshbach win again • Sororities close year with dinner dances, shore tripshttps://digitalcommons.ursinus.edu/weekly/1520/thumbnail.jp
Decompacting a Late Holocene sea-level record from Loch Laxford, northwest Scotland.
No full textThis thesis assesses the degree to which sediment compression affects a Late Holocene sea-level reconstruction from Loch Laxford, northwest Scotland. The reconstruction is based on analysis of a short sediment core (~0.7 m) that records a progressive increase in organic content up-core with loss on ignition rising from 5% at the base to ~60% at the surface. The core is decompacted using site-specific geotechnical data and a modified version of a previously published compaction model. Compression properties at the site, measured using geotechnical laboratory tests upon contemporary surface samples have significant correlations with key physical properties and environmental parameters. These data are combined to reconstruct compression properties downcore. Model predictions of bulk density, void ratio and effective stress downcore closely match those observed in situ (r2 = 0.80, r2 = 0.78 and r2 = 0.98 respectively), providing confidence in model accuracy. Modelled decompaction of the core produces estimates of post-depositional lowering (PDL, m), providing quantification of the degree to which sea level index points developed from the sample core have been lowered since their formation. A maximum PDL value of 0.013±0.005 m (2σ error) is identified between 0.35 and 0.45 m below ground level. Compaction therefore has minimal effect on reconstructed sea level at Loch Laxford and can be ruled out as a key control on the relative sea-level history at Loch Laxford.
The research also assesses the potential for geotechnical methods, particularly downcore void ratio, to identify erosive breaks in sediment successions that are not evident in routine litho- or bio-stratigraphic analysis. This allows a first-order assessment of the suitability of cores for high resolution sea-level studies without the need for the development of expensive age-depth models and time-consuming laboratory analyses
The changing face of the Constantia Valley a temporal study of land use change in a heritage landscape
No full textIncludes bibliographical references.The study of land use change and urban morphology requires a multi-layered approach. Case studies are needed to gain an understanding of the local factors that are driving land use change and forming urban landscapes. This study will provide a temporal perspective on land use change in the Constantia Valley, a high income suburb on the outskirts of Cape Town. It will contextualise the efforts to conserve its heritage and, furthermore, attempt to explain the factors underlying the observed changes in the urban form. This study, through the use of Geographic Information System (GIS) mapping and a series of interviews, examines how and why the urban form of the Constantia Valley has changed. Finally, based on the findings the possible future urban form of Constantia will be considered
Magnetic investigation of igneous intrusions in Teesdale, Northern England
No full textA total field magnetic survey was conducted in Harwood valley in Northern Teesdale, and the neighbouring area, to investigate the igneous intrusions which could be the cause of a magnetic anomaly and metasomatism in the mineralization of the area. Niccolite and other nickel-bearing minerals had been found in magnetite-rich ore at three localities in Harwood valley by a team of the British Geological Survey. This mineral assemblage has only been sighted in a few other zones and the cause of mineralization was assumed to be metamorphism due to the emplacement of the Whin Sill and associated dykes during the late Carboniferous-early Permian age. Magnetic profiles recently acquired in the area confirm the existence of a dyke intruding the Teesdale fault along the Harwood valley. The average amplitude of the anomaly is 350nT, reversed with respect to the present field. Further investigations to the south-east and north-west of the valley relate the intrusion with the known outcrops of the Cleveland dyke (Tertiary). An outcrop of an igneous intrusion that bears similar properties with samples of the Cleveland dyke rock was recently sighted by the author at lower Langdon Beck near the confluence of the Tees and Harwood rivers. Thin sections of this rock displayed an identical match in grain size and pigment composition with the Cleveland dyke samples from other known outcrops, confirming the dyke's presence along the Teesdale Fault.2.5D modelling of the magnetic profiles was carried out and the results reflect the depth to the top of the dyke at Harwood to be about 30m. Thickness of the body varies from 5 to 25m but is 12m at Harwood and about 14m in Etters Gill. Further south of the valley at Langdon Beck is another geological formation; the Burtreeford Disturbance. This is a series of faulting and folding that was a result of compressional stress (Permian age) from a WSW direction. It also produced the E- facing monoclinal folds of the Dent Fault zone and the easterly directed Pennine thrusts of the Cross Fell Inlier before, during and after the emplacement of the Whin. The study here reflects the Disturbance as a magnetic high and its confluence with the Teesdale fault, the inferred Cleveland dyke and the Whin Sill offers a complex interpretation challenge. A GIS data base for the project area was created using Arc-GIS, GRAVMAG, SURFER,DIDGER and other Microsoft Office applications. General interpretation of the anomalies is conducted but conclusions raise several questions. The cause of the mineralization in Harwood Valley is still uncertain, though it could be due to the cooling Cleveland dyke (58Ma) or the dyke could be forming a passage for the fluids of unknown age from the lower crust or mantle that cool and crystallize at shallower depths
Sarah Fielding: Satire and Subversion in the Eighteenth-Century Novel
No full textThis study of Sarah Fielding (1710―68) is an original contribution to Fielding scholarship that has a dual purpose: to support those who are striving to re-introduce her to the modern literary landscape in an effort to restore her eighteenth-century literary standing, and to firmly establish Fielding as an early feminist writer. It is argued here that throughout her oeuvre Fielding challenged prevailing traditions that denied women a choice, particularly in education, employment and marriage. These themes are also considered in the political treatises of Mary Astell (1666―1731) and Mary Wollstonecraft (1759―97), who are now widely recognised as feminist writers.
It is further argued that Fielding’s subversion in fiction of the English patriarchal system is underscored by her unorthodox performance in the literary arena. This is fully explored alongside her use of sentimentalism as a literary tool with which she challenges her seemingly inhumane society. Fielding’s interest in ‘the Labyrinths of the Mind’ (in modern terms, human psychology) will also be addressed as will her placement in the history of feminism and her placement in the sentimental novel tradition. Fielding’s performance as a literary critic will be compared with the few female authors who, like her, dared to publish literary criticism during her writing career. Accordingly, extracts from Fielding’s novels and her two critical pamphlets will be thoroughly examined.
An updated biography of Fielding that is also included here will provide evidence for a further claim, that her fiction is autobiographical in part. A comprehensive account of Fielding’s performance as a literary critic forms the final chapter of this work. It is the first full-length examination of her contribution to the genre and includes an appraisal of her recently unearthed critical pamphlet entitled A Comparison Between the Horace of Corneille and The Roman Father of Mr. Whitehead (1750) that is yet to be formerly attributed to her. Ultimately this study of Fielding will go far beyond what has previously been written about this remarkable eighteenth-century author, particularly regarding her feminist activity
Assisting reading and analysis of text documents by visualization
No full textThe research reported here examined the use of computer generated graphics as a means to assist humans to analyse text documents which have not been subject to markup. The approach taken was to survey available visualization techniques in a broad selection of disciplines including applications to text documents, group those techniques using a taxonomy proposed in this research, then develop a selection of techniques that assist the text analysis objective. Development of the selected techniques from their fundamental basis, through their visualization, to their demonstration in application, comprises most of the body of this research. A scientific orientation employing measurements, combined with visual depiction and explanation of the technique with limited mathematics, is used as opposed to fully utilising any one of those resulting techniques for performing complete text document analysis.
Visualization techniques which apply directly to the text and those which exploit measurements produced by associated techniques are considered. Both approaches employ visualization to assist the human viewer to discover patterns which are then used in the analysis of the document. In the measurement case, this requires consideration of data with dimensions greater than three, which imposes a visualization difficulty. Several techniques for overcoming this problem are proposed. Word frequencies, Zipf considerations, parallel coordinates, colour maps, Cusum plots, and fractal dimensions are some of the techniques considered.
One direct application of visualization to text documents is to assist reading of that document by de-emphasising selected words by fading them on the display from which they are read. Three word selection techniques are proposed for the automatic selection of which words to use.
An experiment is reported which used such word fading techniques. It indicated that some readers do have improved reading speed under such conditions, but others do not. The experimental design enabled the separation of that group which did decrease reading times from the remaining readers who did not. Measurement of comprehension errors made under different types of word fading were shown not to increase beyond that obtained under normal reading conditions.
A visualization based on categorising the words in a text document is proposed which contrasts to visualization of measurements based on counts. The result is a visual impression of the word composition, and the evolution of that composition within that document.
The text documents used to demonstrates these techniques include English novels and short stories, emails, and a series of eighteenth century newspaper articles known as the Federalist Papers. This range of documents was needed because all analysis techniques are not applicable to all types of documents. This research proposes that an interactive use of the techniques on hand in a non-prescribed order can yield useful results in a document analysis. An example of this is in author attribution, i.e. assigning authorship of documents via patterns characteristic of an individual's writing style. Different visual techniques can be used to explore the patterns of writing in given text documents.
A software toolkit as a platform for implementing the proposed interactive analysis of text documents is described. How the techniques could be integrated into such a toolkit is outlined. A prototype of software to implement such a toolkit is included in this research. Issues relating to implementation of each technique used are also outlined
Facts, Legends and Myths on the Evolution of Resuscitation
No full textThis study aimed to overview in chronological order a number of "facts" and "myths" that have been reported in the literature on the history of resuscitation. In particular, this review presents remarkable resuscitation attempts, innovative techniques and landmarked events that enhanced resuscitation in terms of science, history and intervention from ancient times until today. The resuscitation methods were designed for victims needing help in various locations of three-dimensional space, with emphasis on those occurring on, or brought to, land. These methods required single or double rescues to be carried out. Some of them were either empirically or scientifically designed. In some techniques, the stimuli used to revive the victim were rather painful and dangerous or at least disturbing. In some techniques, respiration was attempted with various more or less sophisticated devices. Finally, a small number of cases have been mistakenly reported by previous scholars as resuscitation attempts
Discussion forums in a blended learning approach for social studies: the influence of cognitive learning styles on attitudes towards asynchronous collaboration in a South East Asian university
No full textTo keep pace with ubiquitous computing in all aspects of society, universities have invested heavily in off-the-shelf or in-house learning management systems, and teachers are being encouraged to seek ways in which to optimize the role of information and communication technology to support their teaching and learning activities; both on the campus and beyond campus borders. However, many students in residential universities are resistant to embracing CMC-mediated activities as an integral part of their coursework, and this attitude underscores the importance of understanding how these students are affected by the implementation of the new teaching and learning strategies associated with a 'blended learning' approach. This study explores a particular context in which discussion forums were deployed as a replacement to traditional face-to-face tutorial discussions. Research subjects (n=147), health psychology students at a South East Asian university, completed a Felder Soloman Index of Learning Styles (ILS) questionnaire before being assigned to online discussion forum groups of 8 or 9 students per group. During the 9 weeks of the tutorial assignment activity, student interactions in the discussion forums were monitored and transcripts of their postings and replies were analysed and coded. Quantitative data from attitude survey MCQs, grades, peer ratings and usage statistics, as well as qualitative data from attitude survey open-answer questions and one-to-one interviews, were also gathered and analysed. The findings identified a number of weaknesses and drawbacks of using discussion forums: notably that students who felt uncomfortable about expressing their opinions in discussion forums also had difficulty understanding what was being communicated in the postings and didn't trust their group members; students who were identified as having a moderate to strong 'Sequential' cognitive learning style preference were more likely to indicate that they had a difficult time working in the discussion forums; and students who were identified as having a moderate to strong 'Active' cognitive learning style preference tended to make fewer forum postings. Nevertheless, since the scope of the information quoted, and opinions generated, in the discussion forum postings was noticeably greater than what was generally brought up in face-to-face discussions, and because the majority of students worked independently and responsibly, this particular blended learning approach was deemed a success by the course instructor. However, the author puts forward a number of recommendations to instructional designers, practitioners and students for designing, setting up and running a similar but more flexible approach as an alternative to traditional large-class face-to-face tutorial discussions
