Haunting emotions: Visualizing Hamlet's melancholy for students in two recent graphic novel adaptations

The study of emotion and Shakespeare and, in particular, emotion and Hamlet, is well established. Shakespeare's work enables us to experience emotions and their transformations as we try to understand them. From the opening of the play, Hamlet's emotions are all too clearly present; Shakespeare defines him as a passionate and emotional man plagued by melancholy. How is this human emotion interpreted and visualized by authors attempting to adapt Hamlet in the twenty-first century? In recent years, visual literacy has become a prominent aspect of classroom learning. In a changing, more visually dependent world, students need to learn how to read the visual as well as the textual. The medium of graphic storytelling can help students learn how to do this. This paper will examine two recent graphic novel versions of Shakespeare: Kill Shakespeare (2010-current), by Canadian writers Anthony Del Col and Conor McCreery (alongside Andy Belanger as head-artist), and Australian author Nicki Greenberg's Hamlet (2010). Each of these graphic novels includes the character Hamlet as the protagonist, and each of these texts approaches adapting the melancholy Dane (and Shakespeare's "text") in very different ways. Through comparisons with Shakespeare's canonical play-text, including Shakespeare's incorporation of humoural ideas of melancholy, we will analyze how this aspect of Hamlet's emotions are visually interpreted and developed in these two new media adaptations. The essay concludes that these adaptations of Hamlet work well as a text for K-12 students because the emotions Hamlet experiences are presented in a relatable way. The texts help these students to understand the emotions, and so relate to a character whose complex personality may otherwise be lost in the difficulty of the original text

The Molecular Line Opacity of MgH in Cool Stellar Atmospheres

A new, complete, theoretical rotational and vibrational line list for the A-X electronic transition in MgH is presented. The list includes transition energies and oscillator strengths for all possible allowed transitions and was computed using the best available theoretical potential energies and dipole transition moment function with the former adjusted to account for experimental data. The A-X line list, as well as new line lists for the B'-X and the X-X (pure rovibrational) transitions, were included in comprehensive stellar atmosphere models for M, L, and T dwarfs and solar-type stars. The resulting spectra, when compared to models lacking MgH, show that MgH provides significant opacity in the visible between 4400 and 5600 Angstrom. Further, comparison of the spectra obtained with the current line list to spectra obtained using the line list constructed by Kurucz (1993) show that the Kurucz list significantly overestimates the opacity due to MgH particularly for the bands near 5150 and 4800 Angstrom with the discrepancy increasing with decreasing effective temperature.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures, 3 table

The Molecular Continuum Opacity of MgH in Cool Stellar Atmospheres

The opacity due to photodissociation of 24MgH is investigated in the atmospheres of cool stars. The lowest two electronic transitions A 2Pi -- X 2Sigma+ and B' 2Sigma+ -- X 2 Sigma+ are considered where the cross sections for the latter were published previously (Weck, Stancil, & Kirby 2002) while the former are presented in this work. Model atmospheres calculated with the PHOENIX code are used to investigate the effect of the photodissociation opacity on spectra of cool stars. The A -- X photodissociation cross sections are obtained using a combination of ab initio and experimentally derived potential curves and dipole transition moments. Partial cross sections have been evaluated over the accessible wavelength range 1770-4560 Angstrom for all rotational transitions from the vibrational levels v''=0-11. Assuming a Boltzmann distribution of the rovibrational levels of the X 2Sigma+ state, LTE photodissociation cross sections are presented for temperatures between 1000 and 5000 K. Shape resonances, arising from rotational predissociation of quasi-bound levels of the A 2Pi state near threshold, characterize the LTE photodissociation cross sections. A sum rule is proposed as a check on the accuracy of the photodissociation calculations.Comment: 9 pages, 8 figure

The Cape Triage Score - a triage system for South Africa

The Cape Triage Score (CTS) has been derived by the Cape Triage Group (CTG) for use in emergency units throughout South Africa. It can also be used in the pre-hospital setting, although it is not designed for mass casualty situations. The CTS comprises a physiologically based scoring system and a list of discriminators, designed to triage patients into one of five priority groups for medical attention. Three versions have been developed, for adults, children and infants. As part of the ongoing assessment process the CTG would value feedback from the readers of this Journal

Enhancement of magnetocaloric effect in the Gd2Al phase by Co alloying

To understand the effect of Co doping on the magnetic entropy changes in Gd2 Al phase, a series of Gd2AlCox alloys with 0 ≤ x ≤ 0.6 were synthesized by arc-melting and the crystal structure was analyzed by XRD. The magnetic properties were investigated, and the entropychanges were calculated for a magnetic field change of 50 kOe. All the as-cast alloys dopedwith Co exhibited greater magnetic entropy changes than the original binary Gd2 Al phase. The main reasons attributed to this are the increase of ferromagnetic interaction indicated by the disappearance of cusp and sharp drop in magnetization and the reduction of the critical field required to trigger the field-induced transition below 50 K in Gd2 Al phase after Co alloying

Gut microbiota composition is associated with environmental landscape in honey bees.

There is growing recognition that the gut microbial community regulates a wide variety of important functions in its animal hosts, including host health. However, the complex interactions between gut microbes and environment are still unclear. Honey bees are ecologically and economically important pollinators that host a core gut microbial community that is thought to be constant across populations. Here, we examined whether the composition of the gut microbial community of honey bees is affected by the environmental landscape the bees are exposed to. We placed honey bee colonies reared under identical conditions in two main landscape types for 6 weeks: either oilseed rape farmland or agricultural farmland distant to fields of flowering oilseed rape. The gut bacterial communities of adult bees from the colonies were then characterized and compared based on amplicon sequencing of the 16S rRNA gene. While previous studies have delineated a characteristic core set of bacteria inhabiting the honey bee gut, our results suggest that the broad environment that bees are exposed to has some influence on the relative abundance of some members of that microbial community. This includes known dominant taxa thought to have functions in nutrition and health. Our results provide evidence for an influence of landscape exposure on honey bee microbial community and highlight the potential effect of exposure to different environmental parameters, such as forage type and neonicotinoid pesticides, on key honey bee gut bacteria. This work emphasizes the complexity of the relationship between the host, its gut bacteria, and the environment and identifies target microbial taxa for functional analyses