“Araby” in Ireland: An Imperial Wolf in Sheik’s Clothing

While many believe that “Araby” is a story of a young boy’s early realization of the futility of turn-of-the-century Dublin life, I propose that its detached narrator tells the story in such a way that he acknowledges that he understands of how Ireland is being manipulated by the British government and that such a realization is the basis for change. If like the boy, the Irish fall into the not always negative stereotype that they are romantic (that is, “original”) by nature, they run the risk of falling prey to those who would try to capitalize on this tendency. Instead of, as they boy did, trying to fill the national type of the romantic wanderer, the religious crusader, he who blindly loves that which symbolizes his nation, the Irishman should strive to be an individual so as not to fall into the trap of the English colonizer. It is possible that it is not the creating of the “Orient” that is hazardous, but that the Orient created by the wrong people is hazardous. Perhaps in his manipulation of the factual occurrence of the bazaar, Joyce was actually showing that despite the glamour that the English sponsors of the bazaar wanted the Irish patrons to see, so that they would spend money and have a greater reverence for the magnanimity of the Empire, the promise of opulence for the Irish through the Empire is empty, andis self-serving, benefiting only the Empire itself

L\u27evolution Du Sentiment Religieux Dans Les Contes De Charles Nodier: A La Recherche De La Reconciliation Interieure (french Text)

En partant des recits de jeunesse dans Les Tristes (1806) et en allant jusqu\u27au dernier conte Franciscus Columna (1843), cette dissertation trace l\u27evolution du sentiment religieux dans trente-huit contes de Charles Nodier. Profondement romantique, le sentiment religieux chez Nodier est intimement lie au besoin de reconcilier le monde materiel et l\u27aspiration au paradis perdu. L\u27oeuvre de la jeunesse, comme aussi celle de la maturite et de la vieillesse, se definit en effet par une tentative de retour aux origines caracteristique de l\u27homo religiosus d\u27apres Mircea Eliade.;Il est donc possible de reperer certaines constantes dans les contes de Nodier. Par exemple, l\u27on y decele l\u27existence d\u27une thematique reliee aux etapes du cheminement initiatique, c\u27est-a-dire le schema separation-isolement-epreuves-mort-renaissance. Il est egalement possible d\u27affirmer que la certitude d\u27un monde depassant les limites de l\u27entendement humain se degage tant des contes que des ecrits theoriques. L\u27entendement humain est considere par l\u27auteur comme une aberration nuisible au salut spirituel. Le surnaturel d\u27un cote, et le non-rationnel, tel qu\u27incarne par le reve et la folie, s\u27installent donc comme contre-parties du positif pour faciliter cette distanciation vis-a-vis du terrestre necessaire a une reconciliation interieure .;Dans les contes de la maturite, la condamnation du progres commence a se moduler, tandis qu\u27un modele de vie fonde sur le principe de la charitee chretienne constituera le theme central dans les contes de la vieillesse. C\u27est l\u27attente, l\u27acceptation de la souffrance, et l\u27amour d\u27autrui qui y deviendront les mots d\u27ordre.;Nodier semble ainsi en etre arrive a la conclusion que si, d\u27une part, il faut renoncer au bonheur terrestre, d\u27autre part la certitude de la vie eternelle fournit un appui certain permettant d\u27assumer sa condition humaine et de voir dans son voisin une ame soeur, emprisonnee elle aussi dans son enveloppe materielle

The unexplained nature of reading.

The effects of properties of words on their reading aloud response times (RTs) are 1 major source of evidence about the reading process. The precision with which such RTs could potentially be predicted by word properties is critical to evaluate our understanding of reading but is often underestimated due to contamination from individual differences. We estimated this precision without such contamination individually for 4 people who each read 2,820 words 50 times each. These estimates were compared to the precision achieved by a 31-variable regression model that outperforms current cognitive models on variance-explained criteria. Most (around 2/3) of the meaningful (non-first-phoneme, non-noise) word-level variance remained unexplained by this model. Considerable empirical and theoretical-computational effort has been expended on this area of psychology, but the high level of systematic variance remaining unexplained suggests doubts regarding contemporary accounts of the details of the mechanisms of reading at the level of the word. Future assessment of models can take advantage of the availability of our precise participant-level database

Hospital clinicians information behaviour and attitudes towards the 'Clinical Informationist': an Irish survey

Background: Hospital clinicians are increasingly expected to practice evidence-based medicine (EBM) in order to minimize medical errors and ensure quality patient care, but experience obstacles to information-seeking. The introduction of a Clinical Informationist (CI) is explored as a possible solution. Aims:  This paper investigates the self-perceived information needs, behaviour and skill levels of clinicians in two Irish public hospitals. It also explores clinicians perceptions and attitudes to the introduction of a CI into their clinical teams. Methods: A questionnaire survey approach was utilised for this study, with 22 clinicians in two hospitals. Data analysis was conducted using descriptive statistics. Results: Analysis showed that clinicians experience diverse information needs for patient care, and that barriers such as time constraints and insufficient access to resources hinder their information-seeking. Findings also showed that clinicians struggle to fit information-seeking into their working day, regularly seeking to answer patient-related queries outside of working hours. Attitudes towards the concept of a CI were predominantly positive. Conclusion: This paper highlights the factors that characterise and limit hospital clinicians information-seeking, and suggests the CI as a potentially useful addition to the clinical team, to help them to resolve their information needs for patient care

Clinical Librarianship in the Republic of Ireland: current trends and future opportunities

This paper will provide an overview of the current status of Clinical Librarianship in the Republic of Ireland. TwoClinical Librarians roles and a Clinical Informationist pilot project are described. Despite some evidencesuggesting largely positive attitudes held by both librarians and clinicians towards the concept, ClinicalLibrarianship has not flourished in Ireland, as it has in the United Kingdom and elsewhere. This paper willexplore the likely causal factors for this underdevelopment and look towards future opportunities for ClinicalLibrarianship in Ireland

Damage-Free Peripheral Nerve Stimulation by 12-ns Pulsed Electric Field

Modern technologies enable deep tissue focusing of nanosecond pulsed electric field (nsPEF) for non-invasive nerve and muscle stimulation. However, it is not known if PEF orders of magnitude shorter than the activation time of voltage-gated sodium channels (VGSC) would evoke action potentials (APs). One plausible scenario requires the loss of membrane integrity (electroporation) and resulting depolarization as an intermediate step. We report, for the first time, that the excitation of a peripheral nerve can be accomplished by 12-ns PEF without electroporation. 12-ns stimuli at 4.1-11 kV (3.3-8.8 kV/cm) evoked APs similarly to conventional stimuli (100-250 mus, 1-5 V, 103-515 V/m), except for having higher selectivity for the faster nerve fibers. Nerves sustained repeated tetanic stimulations (50 Hz or 100 Hz for 1 min) alternately by 12-ns PEF and by conventional pulses. Such tetani caused a modest AP decrease, to a similar extent for both types of stimuli. Nerve refractory properties were not affected. The lack of cumulative damages even from tens of thousands of 12-ns stimuli and the similarities with the conventional stimulation prove VGSC activation by nsPEF without nerve membrane damage

Horses with equine recurrent uveitis have an activated CD4+ T-cell phenotype that can be modulated by mesenchymal stem cells in vitro.

Equine recurrent uveitis (ERU) is an immune-mediated disease causing repeated or persistent inflammatory episodes which can lead to blindness. Currently, there is no cure for horses with this disease. Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) are effective at reducing immune cell activation in vitro in many species, making them a potential therapeutic option for ERU. The objectives of this study were to define the lymphocyte phenotype of horses with ERU and to determine how MSCs alter T-cell phenotype in vitro. Whole blood was taken from 7 horses with ERU and 10 healthy horses and peripheral blood mononuclear cells were isolated. The markers CD21, CD3, CD4, and CD8 were used to identify lymphocyte subsets while CD25, CD62L, Foxp3, IFNγ, and IL10 were used to identify T-cell phenotype. Adipose-derived MSCs were expanded, irradiated (to control proliferation), and incubated with CD4+ T-cells from healthy horses, after which lymphocytes were collected and analyzed via flow cytometry. The percentages of T-cells and B-cells in horses with ERU were similar to normal horses. However, CD4+ T-cells from horses with ERU expressed higher amounts of IFNγ indicating a pro-inflammatory Th1 phenotype. When co-incubated with MSCs, activated CD4+ T-cells reduced expression of CD25, CD62L, Foxp3, and IFNγ. MSCs had a lesser ability to decrease activation when cell-cell contact or prostaglandin signaling was blocked. MSCs continue to show promise as a treatment for ERU as they decreased the CD4+ T-cell activation phenotype through a combination of cell-cell contact and prostaglandin signaling

Interactive Search and Exploration in Online Discussion Forums Using Multimodal Embeddings

In this paper we present a novel interactive multimodal learning system, which facilitates search and exploration in large networks of social multimedia users. It allows the analyst to identify and select users of interest, and to find similar users in an interactive learning setting. Our approach is based on novel multimodal representations of users, words and concepts, which we simultaneously learn by deploying a general-purpose neural embedding model. We show these representations to be useful not only for categorizing users, but also for automatically generating user and community profiles. Inspired by traditional summarization approaches, we create the profiles by selecting diverse and representative content from all available modalities, i.e. the text, image and user modality. The usefulness of the approach is evaluated using artificial actors, which simulate user behavior in a relevance feedback scenario. Multiple experiments were conducted in order to evaluate the quality of our multimodal representations, to compare different embedding strategies, and to determine the importance of different modalities. We demonstrate the capabilities of the proposed approach on two different multimedia collections originating from the violent online extremism forum Stormfront and the microblogging platform Twitter, which are particularly interesting due to the high semantic level of the discussions they feature

Anomalous suppression of the shot noise in a nanoelectromechanical system

In this paper we report a relaxation-induced suppression of the noise for a single level quantum dot coupled to an oscillator with incoherent dynamics in the sequential tunneling regime. It is shown that relaxation induces qualitative changes in the transport properties of the dot, depending on the strength of the electron-phonon coupling and on the applied voltage. In particular, critical thresholds in voltage and relaxation are found such that a suppression below 1/2 of the Fano factor is possible. Additionally, the current is either enhanced or suppressed by increasing relaxation, depending on bias being greater or smaller than the above threshold. These results exist for any strength of the electron-phonon coupling and are confirmed by a four states toy model.Comment: 7 pages, 7 eps figures, submitted to PRB; minor changes in the introductio

Evaluating a Model of Team Collaboration via Analysis of Team Communications

Human Factors and Ergonomics Society 51st Annual Meeting—2007The article of record may be found at https://doi.org/10.1177/154193120705100456A model of team collaboration was developed that emphasizes the macro-cognitive processes entailed in collaboration and includes major processes that underlie this type of communication: (1) individual knowledge building, (2) developing knowledge inter-operability, (3) team shared understanding, and (4) developing team consensus. This paper describes research conducted to empirically validate this model. Team communications that transpired during two complex problem solving situations were coded using cognitive process definitions included in the model. Data was analyzed for three teams that conducted a Maritime Interdiction Operation (MIO) and four teams that engaged in air-warfare scenarios. MIO scenarios involve a boarding team that boards a suspect ship to search for contraband cargo (e.g. explosives, machinery) and possible terrorist suspects. Air-warfare scenarios involve identifying air contacts in the combat information center of an Aegis ship. The way the teamsí behavior on the two scenarios maps to the model of team collaboration is discussed.Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited