Dance as Sport: Living Art and Commentary on the Lives of Dancers in French Literature

In defining what qualifies a sport, dance historically seems to lie closer to the description of art instead of sport. However, dance is better defined as a living and athletic art—combining art and sport in an unmatchable hybrid of the two. In French youth literature, Catherine Certitude (written by Patrick Modiano, published in 1988) recalls a childhood flashback of the protagonist, Catherine, and her life in Paris with her father, Georges. This paper argues that family dynamics and gender roles, a battle between two cities for the story’s location, and a clear presence of mystery throughout the story show distinct characteristics in the lives of dancers. To illustrate more clearly these three topics in this paper, I look further at the relationship Catherine has with her father and her unnamed mother, the differences between action in New York City and Paris, and the role of Catherine’s eyeglasses in the mysteriousness of her life as a dancer

SEX WORK AND INGESTION IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FRANCE

This thesis explores the significance of eating and drinking to sex work in mid- to late-eighteenth-century French literature and culture. It combines close reading of alimentary details with historicised and more recent theoretical approaches to food studies, establishing how ingestion was used, understood, and depicted in fictional, polemical, and documentary material relating to sex work. This thesis reveals that ingestion was no mere detail or incitement to pleasure in sex workers’ lives. It was instead a fundamental part of sexual practice, a source of danger, and a literary symbol with which male writers could work through widespread concerns about female sexuality and the dangers of ingestion. Chapter One provides an overview of ingestion’s role in the eighteenth-century sex trade. Chapter Two explores mid-century police records on brothels and kept women to demonstrate how ingestion was not simply a matter of pleasure but was intimately linked to risk and vulnerability for clients, madams, and sex workers alike. Chapter Three considers ingestion’s symbolic significance in four texts discussing sex work reform, beginning with the genre’s English Urtext, Bernard Mandeville’s A Modest Defence of Publick Stews, and ending with Rétif de la Bretonne’s Le Pornographe. Chapter Four establishes how images of ingestion can reveal differences between apparently similar sex worker heroines, focusing on Margot la ravaudeuse and Vénus en rut. Chapter Five considers the role of ingestion in fostering sociability or division in two fictional collections of sex workers’ letters: Correspondance de Madame Gourdan and Correspondance d’Eulalie. Chapter Six explores the gendered differences between the male and female consuming bodies, examining ingestion as pleasure in texts with gigolo heroes: Ma Conversion, Le Petit-fils d’Hercule and L’Année galante. Chapter Seven concludes the thesis by considering the sex worker as a victim of cannibalism in Rétif de la Bretonne’s L’Anti-Justine

Safely sleeping? An exploration of mothers’ understanding of safe sleep practices and factors that influence reducing risks in their infant’s sleep environment.

In spite of widespread awareness of the risk factors for sudden unexpected death in infancy (SUDI), many infants continue to be exposed to a range of risks, and most deaths now occur in situations where risk reduction measures have not been followed. SUDI is also more likely to occur in families with identified vulnerabilities such as young maternal age, low educational achievement, smoking, alcohol and substance use. Families with these characteristics can be described as having a higher risk for SUDI and sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). This study adopts a qualitative approach using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA), to gain an understanding about the lived experience of young first-time mothers identified as being at increased risk for experiencing SUDI, their understanding of safe sleep practices, what factors influence their decision-making and behaviour in relation to their infant's sleep environment, and whether infant-care practices change over time. A homogeneous sample of five first-time mothers, with identified characteristics known to increase the risk of experiencing SUDI, were recruited antenatally. Serial in-depth interviews were conducted during the antenatal and postnatal period. The interviews were transcribed, and data analysed to identify emergent, subordinate and superordinate themes. Superordinate themes of transition, the construction of knowledge, and fractured application, revealed that adolescence was the context for understanding how information shared with them was received and processed, and ultimately how that knowledge was translated and applied. Filiano and Kinney’s (1994) triple-risk hypothesis has been enhanced to explain the emergent theories generated from this inductive research, adding a new domain of ‘social vulnerability’. This new domain recognises the unique contribution that this exploratory research makes in providing a deeper understanding of the lived experience of vulnerable young mothers; and how this context impacts on their decision-making with regard to infant-care practices, and how this may increase the risk of SIDS to their infant in the sleep environment

An evidence-based guide to the investigation of sudden unexpected death in infancy

Purpose: Many countries now have detailed investigations following sudden unexpected death in infancy (SUDI) but there is no clear evidence as to the most effective way to investigate SUDI. This systematic literature review addresses the following questions: What are the current models of practice for investigating SUDI? What is the evidence to support these investigative models? What are the key factors for effective SUDI investigation? Methods: This was a systematic review of papers from Europe, North America, and Australasia, detailing models of SUDI investigation or the outcomes of SUDI investigations. Results: The review includes data detailing four different models of investigation: police-led, coroner or medical examiner-led, healthcare-led or joint agency approach models. There were 18 different publications providing evidence of effectiveness of these models. All models, with the exception of police-led models, have the potential to reach best practice standards for SUDI investigation. Key factors identified for effective SUDI investigation include the need for mandatory investigation, strong leadership, integration with coronial services, and for investigations to be provided by specialist professionals. Conclusion: Detailed SUDI investigation should lead to greater understanding of why infants die and should help prevent future deaths. The challenge is now to ensure that local SUDI investigative practices are as effective as possible

Random geometric graph diameter in the unit ball

This is the author's accepted manuscript

Leveraging Language to Learn Program Abstractions and Search Heuristics

Inductive program synthesis, or inferring programs from examples of desired behavior, offers a general paradigm for building interpretable, robust, and generalizable machine learning systems. Effective program synthesis depends on two key ingredients: a strong library of functions from which to build programs, and an efficient search strategy for finding programs that solve a given task. We introduce LAPS (Language for Abstraction and Program Search), a technique for using natural language annotations to guide joint learning of libraries and neurally-guided search models for synthesis. When integrated into a state-of-the-art library learning system (DreamCoder), LAPS produces higher-quality libraries and improves search efficiency and generalization on three domains -- string editing, image composition, and abstract reasoning about scenes -- even when no natural language hints are available at test time.Comment: appeared in Thirty-eighth International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML 2021

RESULTS OF AN EXPERIMENT TO LEAD CRANES ON MIGRATION BEHIND MOTORIZED GROUND VEHICLES

Ten greater sandhill cranes (Grus canadensis tabida) , trained to enter and ride in a specially-equipped truck, were transported at ca 80 days of age from their rearing site at Patuxent Wildlife Research Center (patuxent), Maryland, to a reintroduction site located within the species\u27 former breeding range in northern Arizona. After 5 additional weeks of training, these juvenile cranes were led south ca 600 km to a wintering area on the Arizona/Mexico border. Nine of the 10 survived the trek, 495 km of which were flown, although only a few cranes flew every stage of the route. Their longest flight was 77 lan. Major problems during the migration were powerline collisions (3, 1 fatal), eagle attacks (none fatal), and overheating (when air temperatures exceeded ca 25 C). All cranes that entered training quickly learned to follow the truck, and their tenacity when following under unfavorable conditions (e.g., poor light, extreme dust, or heat) showed that cranes could consistently be led over long distances. We cannot predict if the cranes will retrace their route unassisted when adults, but 2 cranes returned 130 km to the starting point of the migration after the flock was scattered by an eagle during our migration south. Three other cranes were recovered 55 km from the attack site and on course toward the starting point