Women of the future : gender, technology, and cyborgs in Frank Herbert's dune

Cette thèse défend les mérites d’une lecture cyborgienne de l’oeuvre de science-fiction de Frank Herbert, Dune, où la vision particulière des sciences et technologies nous permet d’interpréter plusieurs personnages en tant que réitération Nouvelle Vague du cyborg. Publié en 1965, Dune introduit des personnages féminins atypiques pour cette époque compte tenu de leurs attributs tels qu’une capacité intellectuelle accrue, une imposante puissance de combat et une immunité manifeste contre la faiblesse émotionnelle. Cependant, le roman reste ambivalent en ce qui concerne ces femmes : en dépit de leurs qualités admirables, elles sont d’autre part caractérisées par des stéréotypes régressifs, exposants une sexualité instinctive, qui les confinent tout au mieux aux rôles de mère, maitresse ou épouse. Finalement, dans le roman, elles finissent par jouer le rôle du méchant. Cette caractérisation se rapproche beaucoup de celle du cyborg femelle qui est d’usage courant dans les productions de science fiction pour le grand public des décennies plus récentes. Par conséquent, cette thèse défend qu’une lecture cyborgienne de Dune complète et accroisse une analyse sexospécifique, car cette approche comporte une théorisation essentielle des réactions à l’égard de la technologie qui, selon Evans, sont entretissées dans la réaction patriarcale de ce roman à l’égard des femmes. Bien que ces créatures fictives ne soient pas encore communes à l’époque de la rédaction de Dune, Jessica et certains autres personnages du roman peuvent néanmoins être considérés comme exemples primitifs des cyborgs, parce qu’ils incarnent la science et la technologie de leur culture et qu’ils possèdent d’autres éléments typiques du cyborg. L’hypothèse propose que la représentation des femmes dans Dune ne découle pas seulement de l’attrait pour le chauvinisme ou la misogynie, mais qu’elle est en fait grandement influencée par la peur de la technologie qui est transposée sur la femme comme c’est couramment le cas dans la littérature cyborg subséquente. Ainsi, ce roman annonce le futur sous-genre cyborg de la science-fiction.Evans argues for the merits of a cyborgian reading of Frank Herbert’s seminal science fiction novel, Dune, on the basis that the novel’s particular conception of science and technology allows many of the characters to be understood as New Wave iterations of the cyborg. First published in 1965, Dune includes female characters uncharacteristic for the genre during this period due to the degree of their intelligence, formidable fighting powers, and seeming freedom from emotional weakness. However, the novel is ambivalent about its super-women: despite their admirable qualities, they are otherwise depicted in retrogressive stereotypes, representing the instinctual sex, naturally best limited to roles of mothers, lovers, and wives; by the novel’s conclusion they are cast as villains. This particular characterization of women shares many qualities with the trope of the female cyborg that becomes common in mass media science fiction of later decades. Therefore, this thesis argues that a cyborgian reading of Dune complements and augments a gender analysis of the novel because this approach incorporates an essential theorization of the reactions to technology that, according to Evans, are interwoven into the novel’s patriarchal response to women. Although these fictional creatures were not yet common at the time of Dune’s writing, Jessica and other characters in the novel can be read nonetheless as early examples of cyborgs because they physically embody their culture’s science and technology, and are consistent with other important hallmarks of the figure. The argument is that Herbert’s depiction of women in Dune does not just arise from an appeal to male chauvinism and misogyny, but is, in fact, strongly influenced by a fear of technology that is projected onto women, as is commonly seen in later cyborg literature. According to such a reading, the novel foreshadows the later cyborg sub-genre of science fiction

Systemic Barriers That Prevent Mental Health Services From Being Accessed by the Deaf Population

Mental health services are essential and need to be equally accessible and non-discriminatory to all individuals within our society. Traditionally, the Deaf community has encountered many hindrances when attempting to access mental health seruices. This study examines the systemic barriers that prevent Deaf individuals from obtaining mental health services in the Twin Cities Metro and regional area. Questionnaires were sent out to 100 individuals that serve Deaf adults with mental illness within the Twin Cities Metro Area. The results from the 48 seruice providers\u27 questionnaires responses show specific qualitative barriers; Community Service Agencies, Cultural Competency, Deaf lndividuals with Additional Needs, Stigma, Discrimination and Stereotypes. The researcher follows with a discussion of the findings\u27 implications on the impact of program development, state legislation, community seruice councils, and policies that would provide viable linkages to the accessibility for Deaf individuals

Effects of Scapular Notching and Bone Remodelling on Long-Term Fixation of the Glenoid Component in Reverse Shoulder Arthroplasty

Reverse shoulder arthroplasty (RSA) has been a proposed surgical treatment for severe rotator cuff deficiency associated with arthritis. Favourable clinical results for this type of prosthesis have been reported from short- and mid-term follow-up studies. However, the high revision rate (5% - 33%) at long-term follow up (i.e. greater than 6 years) is a concern. One of the principal factors leading to RSA failure is glenoid component loosening with an incidence of 5% - 38%. Therefore, one objective of this project is to investigate factors leading to long-term glenoid loosening. As various glenosphere positions have been proposed to minimize scapular notching, the other objective is to predict fixation strengths associated with these new surgical techniques. Scapular notching is one of the most frequently reported complications for Delta RSA, due to the high postoperative incidence of 50% to 96%. In this thesis, the study of scapular notching showed negative effects on the inferior screw safety and safety of the bone close to the screw. The study of initial stability showed that scapular notching may not destroy the good environment for bony ingrowth. Strain-induced bone remodelling has been an important factor for the bone loss after hip and knee joint prosthesis implantations. Effects of this factor on the bone loss after Delta RSA implantations were investigated. The results showed that bone resorption was considerable in the region close to the back of metagelene and the middle stem with a mean reduction of postoperative bone apparent density of approximately 63% at 8-year follow up. Thereby, postoperative bone loss could be caused by three factors: strain-induced bone resorption, scapular notching and osteolysis induced by the polyethylene wear particles. In this study, prosthesis fixations in the case of inferior positioning and downward tilting of the glenosphere were assessed using two parameters: strain-induced bone resorption and initial stability. It was found that inferior positioning may lead to early bone resorption due to the inferior shift of postoperative glenohumeral force. The downward tilting may cause significant increase of bone-prosthesis micromotions and may result in poor initial stabilities of glenoid prosthesis

The Orientalist Semiotics of Dune

Frank Herbert’s »Dune« (1965) is considered to be one of the most successful Science Fiction novels of the 20th century. It introduces its readers to a future universe, in which the production of the most valuable resource of the universe – ›spice‹ – is only possible on one vast desert planet called Arrakis. »Dune« offers many different motifs, including a hero that eventually turns into a superhuman being. However, the novel is also rich of orientalist semiotics and relates to a sign system existent when Herbert wrote his book. Frank Jacob discusses these semiotics in detail and shows how much of »Lawrence of Arabia« is present in the story’s plot

Biological Screening Methods of Ethanol and Aqueous Extracts of Leaves of Albizia Lebbeck (L.) Benth. in Albino Mice

In fact, in humans, it is a common emotion intimately associated with proper fear and probably functions as a mechanism to adapt the environment psychologically. Worldwide, one in five people meet with clinical criteria of anxiety disorder at least once in their lives. The study of anxiety has developed into a key area of psychopharmacological research during this decade. It has been observed that people who suffer from anxiety often accompanied with sleep disorder. The most common sleep disorder is a subjective complaint that it has an inability to initiate or maintain sleep, or the sleep is non-restorative with poor quality and quantity. It is estimated that about 9 to15% of the people in the world suffer from insomnia which causes severe after effects in the day time. Anxiety disorders affect over 18 percent of people in the United States every year. Over the years, treatment options for anxiety disorders have widened to include both prescription medications and natural alternatives. Research trusted source suggests that several herbal supplements may be helpful for conditions such as anxiety, depression, and more. Scientific studies indicate that certain herbs may help to alleviate the symptoms of anxiety. As with the evidence the present study provides valuable information of Phrmacognostical, Pphysicochemical, Phytochemical, Cytotoxic and Pharmacological values of the selected plant extract Albizia lebbeck. The Pharmacognostical studies provide the morphological characters that could be useful to identify and evaluate these plants from adulteration. The Phytochemical studies confirmed the presence of alkaloids, glycosides, phenols, triterphenoids, saponins and flavanoids in the ethanolic extract of AL and the Present flavonoid Quercetin has confirmed from the TLC study. The in vitro studies includes antioxidant, antimicrobial and cytotoxicity was carried out for the EH and aqueous extracts of AL. In vitro antioxidant activity of EH extract of AL was clearly evident from the DPPH and ABTS radical scavenging activity. The antimicrobial studies were carried out against selected bacterial and fungal strains by disc diffusion method. The EH extract posses moderate activity than that of aqueous extract, The EH extract of leaves of AL was non toxic, and it was confirmed by Cytotoxicity study on 3T3 cell lines. Acute toxicity studies for EH extract of AL was carried out upto 2000mg/kg, and they did not cause any mortality in experimental animals. The pharmacological studies confirmed that EH extract leaves of AL possesses significant anti anxiety activity confirmed with the screened parameters. The mechanism of action of anti anxiety activity of these plant extract is yet to be explored in future studies

Distributed computing practice for large-scale science and engineering applications

It is generally accepted that the ability to develop large-scale distributed applications has lagged seriously behind other developments in cyberinfrastructure. In this paper, we provide insight into how such applications have been developed and an understanding of why developing applications for distributed infrastructure is hard. Our approach is unique in the sense that it is centered around half a dozen existing scientific applications; we posit that these scientific applications are representative of the characteristics, requirements, as well as the challenges of the bulk of current distributed applications on production cyberinfrastructure (such as the US TeraGrid). We provide a novel and comprehensive analysis of such distributed scientific applications. Specifically, we survey existing models and methods for large-scale distributed applications and identify commonalities, recurring structures, patterns and abstractions. We find that there are many ad hoc solutions employed to develop and execute distributed applications, which result in a lack of generality and the inability of distributed applications to be extensible and independent of infrastructure details. In our analysis, we introduce the notion of application vectors: a novel way of understanding the structure of distributed applications. Important contributions of this paper include identifying patterns that are derived from a wide range of real distributed applications, as well as an integrated approach to analyzing applications, programming systems and patterns, resulting in the ability to provide a critical assessment of the current practice of developing, deploying and executing distributed applications. Gaps and omissions in the state of the art are identified, and directions for future research are outlined

A study of depressed Jewish patients at Boston Psychopathic Hospital, and cultural factors influencing their illness

Thesis (M.S.)--Boston Universit