This body of art: The singular plural of the feminine

I explore the possibility that the feminine, like art, can be thought in terms of Jean-Luc Nancy’s concept of the singular plural. In Les Muses, Nancy claims that art provides for the rethinking of a technë not ruled by instrumentality. Specifically, in rethinking aesthetics in terms of the debates laid out by Kant, Hegel and Heidegger, he resituates the ontological in terms of the specificity of the techniques of each particular artwork; each artwork establishes relations particular to its world or worlds. What is at stake in the singular plural is the multiplicity of relations that are lost in the unifying gestures that arise out of radical oppositions. I rethink the singular plural through a phenomenological encounter with Barb Hunt’s artwork, Antipersonnel, a collection of hand-knitted replicas of antipersonnel landmines

Does Television Terrify Tourists? Effects of US Television News on Demand for Tourism in Israel

In this paper we analyze a time series measuring the monthly flow of US tourists to Israel over the period 1997-2006. We pay particular attention to the response of tourists to variations in the intensity the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, drawing a distinction between actual conflict intensity and the intensity with which the conflict is reported in the US television media. We find that different dimensions of the conflict affect tourists in different ways. For some (but not all) dimensions of the conflict, reported intensity matters more than actual intensity

Medium-term prognosis of an incident cohort of parkinsonian patients compared to controls

Funding This work was supported by Parkinson's UK (grant numbers G0502, G0914), BMA Doris Hillier Award, the BUPA Foundation, NHS Grampian Endowments, RS MacDonald Trust.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Reporting and dealing with missing quality of life data in RCTs : has the picture changed in the last decade?

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Second-line antiretroviral therapy in a workplace and community-based treatment programme in South Africa: determinants of virological outcome.

: Background: As antiretroviral treatment (ART) programmes in resource-limited settings mature, more patients are experiencing virological failure. Without resistance testing, deciding who should switch to second-line ART can be difficult. The consequences for second-line outcomes are unclear. In a workplace- and community-based multi-site programme, with 6-monthly virological monitoring, we describe outcomes and predictors of viral suppression on second-line, protease inhibitor-based ART.Methods: We used prospectively collected clinic data from patients commencing first-line ART between 1/1/03 and 31/12/08 to construct a study cohort of patients switched to second-line ART in the presence of a viral load (VL) ?400 copies/ml. Predictors of VL<400 copies/ml within 15 months of switch were assessed using modified Poisson regression to estimate risk ratios.Results: 205 workplace patients (91.7% male; median age 43 yrs) and 212 community patients (38.7% male; median age 36 yrs) switched regimens. At switch compared to community patients, workplace patients had a longer duration of viraemia, higher VL, lower CD4 count, and higher reported non-adherence on first-line ART. Non-adherence was the reported reason for switching in a higher proportion of workplace patients. Following switch, 48.3% (workplace) and 72.0% (community) achieved VL<400, with non-adherence (17.9% vs. 1.4%) and virological rebound (35.6% vs. 13.2% with available measures) reported more commonly in the workplace programme. In adjusted analysis of the workplace programme, lower switch VL and younger age were associated with VL<400. In the community programme, shorter duration of viraemia, higher CD4 count and transfers into programme on ART were associated with VL<400.Conclusion: High levels of viral suppression on second-line ART can be, but are not always, achieved in multi-site treatment programmes with both individual- and programme-level factors influencing outcomes. Strategies to support both healthcare workers and patients during this switch period need to be evaluated; sub-optimal adherence, particularly in the workplace programme must be addressed

Entrapment: an important mechanism to explain the shortwave 3D radiative effect of clouds

Several mechanisms have previously been proposed to explain differences between the shortwave reflectance of realistic cloud scenes computed using the 1D independent column approximation (ICA) and 3D solutions of the radiative transfer equation. When the sun is low in the sky, interception of sunlight by cloud sides tends to increase reflectance relative to ICA estimates that neglect this effect. When the sun is high, 3D radiative transfer tends to make clouds less reflective, which we argue is explained by the mechanism of “entrapment” whereby horizontal transport of radiation beneath a cloud layer increases the chances, relative to the ICA, of light being absorbed by cloud or the surface. It is especially important for multilayered cloud scenes. We describe modifications to the previously described Speedy Algorithm for Radiative Transfer through Cloud Sides (SPARTACUS) to represent different entrapment assumptions, and test their impact on 65 contrasting scenes from a cloud-resolving model. When entrapment is represented explicitly via a calculation of the mean horizontal distance traveled by reflected light, SPARTACUS predicts a mean “3D radiative effect” (the difference in top-of-atmosphere irradiances between 3D and ICA calculations) of 8.1 W m−2 for overhead sun. This is within 2% of broadband Monte Carlo calculations on the same scenes. The importance of entrapment is highlighted by the finding that the extreme assumptions in SPARTACUS of “zero entrapment” and “maximum entrapment” lead to corresponding mean 3D radiative effects of 1.7 and 19.6 W m−2, respectively

Agricultural Change and Farmland Rental in an Urbanising Environment : Waterloo Region, Southern Ontario

Dans l'analyse des rapports entre l'urbanisation et l'agriculture, la recherche géographique s'est surtout intéressée, jusqu'à maintenant, aux effets néfastes de la croissance urbaine sur l'agriculture. Nous émettons l'idée que cette interaction, lorsque prévalent des conditions régionales bien précises, peut jouer un rôle positif dans le progrès agricole. C'est à titre d'exemple d'effets potentiellement bénéfiques que nous étudions ici le phénomène de la location des terres agricoles appartenant à des propriétaires non-exploitants. Pour une région donnée du sud de l'Ontario, des corrélations statistiques entre certaines variables agricoles et démographiques justifient une enquête approfondie auprès des agriculteurs. Les résultats de cette enquête montrent, qu'autour des villes de taille moyenne à haut niveau de croissance de cette région, la location des terres appartenant à des non-exploitants joue un rôle important dans le développement agricole. Cette recherche contribue donc à alimenter une littérature récente qui tend à démontrer la complexité de l'agriculture en milieu péri-urbain.In geographic research into urbanisation-agriculture interactions, a strong emphasis has been given to the negative effects of urbanisation on agriculture. Here, it is argued that the urbanisation-agriculture interaction process may provide certain opportunities for agricultural progress and development, depending upon the specific regional circumstances; the phenomenon of farmland renting from nonfarm landowners is thus studied as an example of such a potentially beneficial interaction. Statistical associations between agricultural and population variables for an area in southern Ontario provide the context for a detailed farmer survey. The results show farmland rental from nonfarm owners to be a significant factor in agricultural development in the urban fringe environment of the medium-sized, yet fast-growing cities in the study area, and add to recent literature which has stressed the complexities of urban fringe agriculture