“Rhopographic Photography and Atemporal Cinema: The Link Between Ralph Ellison’s Polaroids and Three Days Before the Shooting…”

This essay is drawn from a book manuscript that examines Ralph Ellison’s life-long preoccupation with time and concomitant pursuit of a literature of immanence. In it, I illustrate how Ellison’s engagements with Bergsonian philosophy, Nietzschean cosmology, cybernetic theory, and transhistorical inquiry are inseparable from his ongoing efforts to trouble the Newtonian construct of universal time. Whether it’s in his early short stories, his 1952 masterpiece Invisible Man, his music criticism, or his unfinished tome posthumously published as Three Days Before the Shooting…, Ellison routinely turns to optic and sonic technologies to enact performative critiques of a still-hegemonic view of temporality born of the Enlightenment and maintained by the forces of capitalist acceleration and globalization. As he interrogates the forms of subjectivity that spatialized time reifies, Ellison constructs an alternative durational framework in which individuality and democracy, like emergent temporalities, are always becoming, immanent and inter-implicated. Ellison’s remedies for the order progressive history imposes upon the present, I contend, directly address the time that history adulterates by reclaiming the very technologies through which linear time is formalized. As an integral part of this larger work, “Rhopographic Photography and Atemporal Cinema” specifically addresses Ellison’s Bergsonian ekphrastic references to still photography and motion picture projection in his ultimately unfinished second novel and illustrates how Ellison’s own evolving photographic compositions, represented by the Polaroid photographs he took between 1966 and 1994, inform his temporal theorizing

Immature Spinal Locomotor Output in Children with Cerebral Palsy

Cappellini G, P. Ivanenko Y, Martino G, et al. Immature Spinal Locomotor Output in Children with Cerebral Palsy. Frontiers in Physiology. 2016;7:478

On-road emissions and energy efficiency assessment of a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle

In order to assess potential benefits brought by the electrification of transport it becomes more and more important to evaluate the performance of hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs) in real-driving conditions, measuring on-road air pollutant emissions and energy efficiency. The present report describes a portable system used at JRC for e-measurements in hybrid and electric vehicles, as an upgrade of the classic PEMS (Portable Emission Measurement System). Preliminary results of a test campaign conducted on a Euro-6 Plug-in Hybrid Passenger Car (PHEV) equipped with a Flywheel Alternator Starter (FAS) are reported. The influence of different driving modes as well as of different initial battery state of charge on CO2 and NOx emissions and energy consumption has been evaluated.JRC.C.4-Sustainable Transpor

Assessment of therapeutic responses to gametocytocidal drugs in Plasmodium falciparum malaria.

Indirect clinical measures assessing anti-malarial drug transmission-blocking activity in falciparum malaria include measurement of the duration of gametocytaemia, the rate of gametocyte clearance or the area under the gametocytaemia-time curve (AUC). These may provide useful comparative information, but they underestimate dose-response relationships for transmission-blocking activity. Following 8-aminoquinoline administration P. falciparum gametocytes are sterilized within hours, whereas clearance from blood takes days. Gametocytaemia AUC and clearance times are determined predominantly by the more numerous female gametocytes, which are generally less drug sensitive than the minority male gametocytes, whereas transmission-blocking activity and thus infectivity is determined by the more sensitive male forms. In choosing doses of transmission-blocking drugs there is no substitute yet for mosquito-feeding studies

The Resource Curse and Rentier States in the Caspian Region : A Need for Context Analysis

Although much attention is paid to the Caspian region with regard to energy issues, the domestic consequences of the region’s resource production have so far constituted a neglected field of research. A systematic survey of the latest research trends in the economic and political causalities of the resource curse and of rentier states reveals that there is a need for context analysis. In reference to this, the paper traces any shortcomings and promising approaches in the existent body of literature on the Caspian region. Following on from this, the paper then proposes a new approach; specifically, one in which any differences and similarities in the context conditions are captured. This enables a more precise exploration of the exact ways in which they form contemporary post-Soviet Caspian rentier states.Obwohl der Region am Kaspischen Meer im Zuge von Energiediskursen große Aufmerksamkeit zuteil wird, stellen die innerstaatlichen Folgen der Ressourcenproduktion in der Region ein bislang vernachlässigtes Forschungsfeld dar. Ein systematischer Überblick über die jüngsten Forschungstrends zu wirtschaftlichen und politischen Kausalzusammenhängen des Ressourcenfluchs und zu Rentierstaaten offenbart die Notwendigkeit von Kontextanalysen. Hierauf Bezug nehmend, analysiert der Aufsatz sowohl die Mängel als auch viel versprechende Ansätze in der betreffenden Literatur zur Region am Kaspischen Meer. Der Aufsatz stellt letztendlich einen neuen Ansatz vor, der Unterschiede und Gemeinsamkeiten in den Kontextbedingungen erfasst, um zu erforschen, wie diese die gegenwärtigen post-sowjetischen Rentierstaaten in der Region am Kaspischen Meer tatsächlich prägen

Subsampling effects in neuronal avalanche distributions recorded in vivo

Background Many systems in nature are characterized by complex behaviour where large cascades of events, or avalanches, unpredictably alternate with periods of little activity. Snow avalanches are an example. Often the size distribution f(s) of a system's avalanches follows a power law, and the branching parameter sigma, the average number of events triggered by a single preceding event, is unity. A power law for f(s), and sigma=1, are hallmark features of self-organized critical (SOC) systems, and both have been found for neuronal activity in vitro. Therefore, and since SOC systems and neuronal activity both show large variability, long-term stability and memory capabilities, SOC has been proposed to govern neuronal dynamics in vivo. Testing this hypothesis is difficult because neuronal activity is spatially or temporally subsampled, while theories of SOC systems assume full sampling. To close this gap, we investigated how subsampling affects f(s) and sigma by imposing subsampling on three different SOC models. We then compared f(s) and sigma of the subsampled models with those of multielectrode local field potential (LFP) activity recorded in three macaque monkeys performing a short term memory task. Results Neither the LFP nor the subsampled SOC models showed a power law for f(s). Both, f(s) and sigma, depended sensitively on the subsampling geometry and the dynamics of the model. Only one of the SOC models, the Abelian Sandpile Model, exhibited f(s) and sigma similar to those calculated from LFP activity. Conclusions Since subsampling can prevent the observation of the characteristic power law and sigma in SOC systems, misclassifications of critical systems as sub- or supercritical are possible. Nevertheless, the system specific scaling of f(s) and sigma under subsampling conditions may prove useful to select physiologically motivated models of brain function. Models that better reproduce f(s) and sigma calculated from the physiological recordings may be selected over alternatives

Cross-sectional examination of 24-hour movement behaviours among 3-and 4-year-old children in urban and rural settings in low-income, middle-income and high-income countries : the SUNRISE study protocol

Introduction 24-hour movement behaviours (physical activity, sedentary behaviour and sleep) during the early years are associated with health and developmental outcomes, prompting the WHO to develop Global guidelines for physical activity, sedentary behaviour and sleep for children under 5 years of age. Prevalence data on 24-hour movement behaviours is lacking, particularly in low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs). This paper describes the development of the SUNRISE International Study of Movement Behaviours in the Early Years protocol, designed to address this gap. Methods and analysis SUNRISE is the first international cross-sectional study that aims to determine the proportion of 3- and 4-year-old children who meet the WHO Global guidelines. The study will assess if proportions differ by gender, urban/rural location and/or socioeconomic status. Executive function, motor skills and adiposity will be assessed and potential correlates of 24-hour movement behaviours examined. Pilot research from 24 countries (14 LMICs) informed the study design and protocol. Data are collected locally by research staff from partnering institutions who are trained throughout the research process. Piloting of all measures to determine protocol acceptability and feasibility was interrupted by COVID-19 but is nearing completion. At the time of publication 41 countries are participating in the SUNRISE study. Ethics and dissemination The SUNRISE protocol has received ethics approved from the University of Wollongong, Australia, and in each country by the applicable ethics committees. Approval is also sought from any relevant government departments or organisations. The results will inform global efforts to prevent childhood obesity and ensure young children reach their health and developmental potential. Findings on the correlates of movement behaviours can guide future interventions to improve the movement behaviours in culturally specific ways. Study findings will be disseminated via publications, conference presentations and may contribute to the development of local guidelines and public health interventions.Peer reviewe