LIBERATING THE ZEITGEIST: Using Metaphor & Emotion To Unlock the Transcendency of The Short Story

Barometers have often been likened to short stories—measuring momentary shifts in atmospheric pressure. Short Stories, like barometers are sensitive instruments, recording impressions about the stresses our world is under. What separates Short Stories though from their meteorological counterparts is that, what they measure is infinitely more elusive than the pressure air places on the Earth. What they measure are the prevailing spirits of a times—the Zeitgeist. These four authors, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Joyce, and Crane, have, in their respective texts, created stories that not only measure this spirit but capture it. From a writer’s perspective, these authors imbedded the zeitgeist of their eras into the very alloy of their stories like coppersmiths—pounding every character, every description and mundane object into a vessel of meaning. However dissimilar in subject matter, “Babylon Revisited” , “A Clean Well-Lighted Place”, “Araby”, and “The Open Boat” are similarity in that they have been fashion to speak to more than their immediate subject matter. It is because of this intentioned placement of meaning, symbolism and allegory that these stories are able to transcend their subject matter—because each functioning part of the story has been strategically tied to something greater than itself. Whether it be the object imbedded with pathos as in Crane’s “The Open Boat” or the character of “Babylon Revisited” made in to proxies for real life people in Fitzgerald’s work, or it be the use of patriotic tropes of Irish Womanhood in Joyce’s “Araby”—everything in these stories call on the very spirits that drive us as human beings. These spirits and the unlocking of them are what makes these stories resonate, not only within the times they were written, but in the rich fabric of literary history of which they are a part. These short stories find their roots in either a societal truth, a personal truth, or a metaphor and this case study seeks to explore how author’s employ the spirit of the time—the zeitgeist—as well as their own histories to give their stories greater import. More simply put, these writers have honed their ability to use what the know we already have lingering around in our head to what we all ready have in our heads to break their dependance on being culturally situated to speak the millions unborn who have yet to read their pages. -Vincent Hugh Bish, Jr

Does undertaking rural placements add to place of origin as a predictor of where health graduates work?

Objective: To determine the work location (metropolitan, regional, rural and remote) of graduates in nursing, allied health and oral health disciplines who complete their professional training, end-to-end training, in a regional or rural area noting the potential inclusion of a metropolitan-based placement for speciality practice not available in rural or regional Victoria. Methods: We tracked the place of employment from the Australian Health Practitioners Regulation Agency (AHPRA) of all graduates from a regional/rural tertiary education provider. The student home address at enrolment, locations where they undertook all placements and their current place of work were described using an objective geographical model of access, the Modified Monash Model. Results: Seventy-five per cent of 5506 graduates were located in the AHPRA database. About one third of graduates were working in metropolitan areas, 1/3 in regional cities and 1/3 in rural areas. Students' origin accounted for 1/3 of variance in current workplace location. The more placement days students completed in regional/ rural areas was also a significant predictor of working in a regional or rural area. Conclusion: End-to-end training in regional/rural areas is an effective approach to retaining a regional/rural workforce. Student origin is a strong predictor of working rural or regionally, as is undertaking placements in rural areas. This suggests that priority for rural/ regional student placements should be given to students in end-to-end regional/ rural programs and students from a regional/ rural background

The Cellular Processing Capacity Limits the Amounts of Chimeric U7 snRNA Available for Antisense Delivery

Many genetic diseases are induced by mutations disturbing the maturation of pre-mRNAs, often affecting splicing. Antisense oligoribonucleotides (AONs) have been used to modulate splicing thereby circumventing the deleterious effects of mutations. Stable delivery of antisense sequences is achieved by linking them to small nuclear RNA (snRNAs) delivered by viral vectors, as illustrated by studies where therapeutic exon skipping was obtained in animal models of Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD). Yet, clinical translation of these approaches is limited by the amounts of vector to be administered. In this respect, maximizing the amount of snRNA antisense shuttle delivered by the vector is essential. Here, we have used a muscle- and heart-specific enhancer (MHCK) to drive the expression of U7 snRNA shuttles carrying antisense sequences against the human or murine DMD pre-mRNAs. Although antisense delivery and subsequent exon skipping were improved both in tissue culture and in vivo, we observed the formation of additional U7 snRNA by-products following gene transfer. These included aberrantly 3′ processed as well as unprocessed species that may arise because of the saturation of the cellular processing capacity. Future efforts to increase the amounts of functional U7 shuttles delivered into a cell will have to take this limitation into account