New Waves, New Spaces: Estonian Experimental Cinema of the 1970s

Using the label of “new wave” in the context of Estonian cinema is highly problematic and controversial because, unlike in France or, to take a more similar socio-political framework, in Czechoslovakia, the (Soviet) Estonian filmic arena did not see a creative outburst synchronous with and comparable to, both in scope of innovative production and international acclaim, the cinematic practices adorned with the adjective “new” elsewhere in Europe. While the heyday of various new waves, both in Western Europe and in the Soviet bloc, is normally limited to the period between the mid-1950s and the ruptures of 1968, in Estonia, as the local literary critic Mart Velsker (1999: 1211) has accurately argued, the essence of the innovative 1960s “is manifested in its most vivid form some time between 1968 and 1972, that is, at the end of the decade and partly even beyond it.” Compared to other artistic genres, however, Estonian cinema was severely lagging behind, both in achievement and in reputation. The true “Estonian New Wave” has been defined by local critics as born and burgeoning in the end of the 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s (Orav 2003: 54ff; Kärk 1995: 117; Kirt 1980: 33-4), when a new generation of young filmmakers entered the stagnated cinematic stage with bravado, finally inverting the low ebb that had lasted nearly a decade. Yet, in the midst of the ebbing waters of the early 1970s, a dark horse emerged, whose artistic contribution to Estonian cinematic heritage deserves to be identified as a new wave in miniature, a veritable diamond, albeit perhaps rough-cut. This author was Jaan Tooming, an actor and a theatre director, whose films constitute a fundamentally unprecedented phenomenon in Estonian cinema. His controversial, stylistically and semantically rich output, composed of unceasingly intriguing visual utterances, provides a fascinating order of spatial representations, which reconfigure Estonian cinematic territories in several respects and, at the same time, re-evaluate and criticize quite provocatively the historical and conceptual framework of imagining national, social and personal identities. The following investigation of Tooming’s films will concentrate chiefly on the spatial representations and practices, with digressions into the domain of re/constructing identities, both personal and collective

Complicated Choices: Struggling to Meet NCLB Requirements AND Remain Faithful to a School's Educational Vision and Practice

In an era of high-stakes accountability, school leaders often face contradictory pressures as they strive to improve student performance. They must meet the federal mandate of NCLB for student achievement; at the same time, many believe that NCLB constrains their professional judgment about how to best teach and assess students in the context of their own schools. The case of Baker, a K-8 school in Philadelphia, is illustrative. The case study discusses the complicated choices school leaders made as they attempted to meet the needs of all students. As Baker implemented the school district's highly prescriptive approach to curriculum and instruction, using a Managed Instruction System, it struggled to maintain its progressive educational philosophy and 'best' practices. The school's pedagogical goals included: student-centered and project-based learning, teaching for life-long learning, performance-based assessments, and an emphasis on higher order thinking. Baker was a successful learning community for students and adults, whose significant accomplishments were obscured by the fact that it never had made AYP. If the U.S. Department of Education had permitted the state to use its valued-added growth model, the Pennsylvania Value-Added Assessment, as an alternative to the status achievement metric that focused on the percentage of proficient students, Baker would have made AYP in 2006-07, the last year of this research

Decisions regarding infringements of sponsoring provisions

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The dimension of some affine Deligne-Lusztig varieties

We prove Rapoport's dimension conjecture for affine Deligne-Lusztig varieties for GL_h and superbasic b. From this case the general dimension formula for affine Deligne-Lusztig varieties for special maximal compact subgroups of split groups follows, as was shown in a recent paper by Goertz, Haines, Kottwitz, and Reuman.Comment: 13 pages, some small mistakes corrected, author's last name changed from Mierendorff to Viehman

Stability for the determination of unknown boundary and impedance with a Robin boundary condition

We consider an inverse problem arising in corrosion detection. We prove a stability result of logarithmic type for the determination of the corroded portion of the boundary and impedance by two measurements on the accessible portion of the boundary

Effect of Faecalibacterium prausnitzii on intestinal barrier function and immune homeostasis : a dissertation presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Nutritional Science, Massey University, Manawatū, New Zealand

Various gastrointestinal (GI) diseases, for example inflammatory bowel disease, are linked to impaired barrier function, chronic inflammation and dysbiosis of the resident microbiota. Faecalibacterium prausnitzii, an abundant obligate anaerobe of the healthy human microbiota, has reduced abundance in the GI tract of people with these diseases, and has been suggested to exert beneficial effects. Only a few studies have investigated its mechanisms of action, partly due to the difficulty of co-culturing live obligate anaerobes with oxygen-requiring human cells. The novel apical anaerobic co-culture model used in this study allows this co-culture through the separation of anaerobic and aerobic compartments. This model was used to investigate the effects of live F. prausnitzii (strains A2-165, ATCC 27768 and HTF-F) on intestinal barrier integrity, measured by transepithelial electrical resistance (TEER) of the intestinal epithelial cell line Caco-2, and on immune homeostasis, specifically on Toll-like receptor (TLR) activation. Method development was required to adapt these assays to the novel model and to optimise the growth of F. prausnitzii co-cultured with Caco-2 cells and TLR-expressing cell lines while maintaining their viabilities. Firstly, the optimised co-culture conditions were used to determine the effect of the three F. prausnitzii strains on barrier integrity of healthy and tumour necrosis factor alpha (TNF-α) treated Caco-2 cells. Live and growing F. prausnitzii did not alter the TEER across healthy Caco-2 cells. However, under TNF-α mediated inflammatory conditions, dead F. prausnitzii decreased TEER, whereas live bacteria maintained TEER. Secondly, the TLR activation assay was adapted to be carried out in the novel model. Using the adapted assay conditions it was determined that live F. prausnitzii induced greater TLR2 and TLR2/6 activation than dead F. prausnitzii. Collectively, these results indicate greater immuno-stimulatory effects of live F. prausnitzii, via TLR2 activation, and this effect is potentially linked to its barrier maintaining properties, because previous research showed enhancement of barrier integrity induced by TLR2 signalling. This new knowledge contributes to the understanding of how F. prausnitzii may maintain immune homeostasis in the GI tract. Unravelling the biological mechanisms used by prevalent species of the human microbiota, such as F. prausnitzii, will ultimately allow better comprehension of microbial regulation of GI function