Remembering Hamlet : Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead and the tragic value of Hamlet

The canonical importance of Hamlet is indisputable, but the nature of its cultural value needs to be reconsidered in relation to our contemporary understanding of tragedy and death. Though the play has clearly stood the test of time, the shadow that Hamlet casts over literature and beyond has led to many reinterpretations, keeping the play’s cultural meaning in constant flux. Consequently, I would suggest that Hamlet’s original tragic value has in fact diminished and cannot be quite fully restored. I will argue that Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead holds a significant position in this history of Hamlet reworkings precisely because it captures the discontent and disillusionment that a contemporary audience might have with regards to the grandeur of Hamlet as a tragedy and its questionable treatment of death. Stoppard’s displacement of the iconic Hamlet gives us access to the play’s underbelly, which Stoppard attacks by questioning the credibility and relevance of the concept of agency in post-Beckettian theatre. As Hamlet, agency, and heroism are decentred, the tragedy of the unheroic non agent becomes all the more palpable, thereby resuscitating the poignancy of Hamlet without evoking its now inapt grandeur.peer-reviewe

Dementia and Primary-Care Health Measures:Hearing, Gait, and Markers of Inflammation

Dementia is a syndrome associated with declining cognitive function that has a variety of types and causes, and is encountered frequently in general medical practice. Researchers are actively exploring possible risk factors for dementia. The St. Louis University Mental Status (SLUMS) exam is a dementia-screening exam used in primary care visits to detect cognitive impairment that may be a sign of dementia. This study compared scores on the SLUMS exam to other measures recorded in a typical primary care visit in 86 patients of age 65 and older to look for correlations between indicators of health, such as physical examination measures and complete blood count panels, and cognitive impairment, as measured by score on the SLUMS exam. Abnormal gait was associated with a lower score on the SLUMS exam compared to normal (p=.006), failure of the hearing test in both ears was associated with a lower score on the SLUMS exam compared to patients passing the hearing test in one or both ears (p=.046), red blood cell count was positively correlated with SLUMS exam score (p=.020), white blood cell count was negatively correlated with SLUMS exam score (p=.003), and serum albumin levels were negatively correlated with SLUMS exam score (p=.002). These data support the view that both physical impairments and markers of an inflammatory response are related to dementia

[Review of] Susan Lobo and Steve Talbot, eds. Native American Voices: A Reader

This valuable collection of readings edited by leading scholars in the field enriches the social science and educational literature for several reasons. First, the book provides a wealth of information for both undergraduate and graduate students. The readings are multidisciplinary, and contain scholarly articles, journalistic selections, documents, oral history and testimony, songs and poetry, maps and charts. The readings encompass a global approach with their foci on Indian peoples of the United States, as well as a few selections of indigenous groups in Canada and Latin America. The book is arranged into nine interrelated parts with discussion questions, key terms, and suggested readings at the end of each part. In short, the articles succeed in bringing to students important materials representing the rich diversity of Native Peoples

Sectoral Leadership in International Competitiveness

The purpose of this paper is to identify the type of labour and the sectors where labour productivity should be improved to raise the international competitiveness of Portugal. A static multi-sectoral general equilibrium model, with multi-national and single-country versions is used. The model allows the identification of the sectors that are leaders in competitiveness improvement. It is expectable that for some countries this role should be played by the traditional exporting-sectors, while for other countries the effort should be concentrated on the suppliers of intermediate goods. The results show that the choice of sector, and type of labour are crucial for the improvement of the international competitiveness of the Portuguese economy. In addition, the criterion used to measure competitiveness also has an important role. While the multifactor productivity is especially increased when the promotion of labour competencies occurs in exporting-sectors and importing-sectors, the population welfare have a greater impact with the generalised improvement of unskilled labour competencies.General equilibrium models, competitiveness, productivity.

A geologic atlas of TIMS data

In the three years since the first data were taken, it was well demonstrated that the Thermal Infrared Multispectral Scanner (TIMS), properly used, can be a most valuable tool for the geologist. Compilation of the TIMS data into a geological atlas was felt to be useful. Several data sets were extensively studied to establish TIMS as a geologic tool and to explore the optimum enhancement techniques. It was found that a decorrelation stretch of bands 1, 3, and 5 enhance the data to a form that is very useful and this enhancement will be used in the geologic atlas along with an accompanying geologic map and description. Many data sets are well published and familiar to TIMS users, but there are some sets that, for lack of time and funds, were not thoroughly studied or published. A short description of these least studied sets of data is presented. The images presented along with the many previously studied and published TIMS images constitute an enormously useful set of information for the geologist in the 8 to 10 micron range

A generic tool to generate a lexicon for NLP from Lexicon-Grammar tables

Lexicon-Grammar tables constitute a large-coverage syntactic lexicon but they cannot be directly used in Natural Language Processing (NLP) applications because they sometimes rely on implicit information. In this paper, we introduce LGExtract, a generic tool for generating a syntactic lexicon for NLP from the Lexicon-Grammar tables. It is based on a global table that contains undefined information and on a unique extraction script including all operations to be performed for all tables. We also present an experiment that has been conducted to generate a new lexicon of French verbs and predicative nouns

FINANCIAL DEVELOPMENT AND INSTABILITY:THE ROLE OF THE LABOUR SHARE

This paper examines the role of the labour share in creating instability in a small open economy. We assume that financial markets are imperfect so that entrepreneurs are credit constrained, and that this constraint is tighter for low levels of financial development. Aghion, Bacchetta and Banerjee (2004) have shown that as the degree of financial development increases, output rises but instability appears for intermediate levels of financial development. Crucially, they assume that labour is paid before production takes place, and hence crises are solely due to the increased cost of debt repayment as firms accumulate capital. We show that under the more reasonable assumption that wages are paid at the end of the period, changes in the labour share also play a role in eroding profitability. Our analysis also predicts that financial crises are associated with substantial movements in the sharing of value added between capital and labour.Financial liberalization, Volatility, Labour share, Credit constraint