Serratia marcescens: The Miracle Bacillus

The objectives of this article are to explain the mysterious appearance of crimson-colored bacteria on food and communion bread/wafers, over the centuries, as well as to describe the biological basi

"The problem is, I'm not sure I believe in the thunderclap of trauma": Aesthetics of trauma in contemporary American literature

Jonathan Safran Foer’s 2005 novel, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005), focusing on a nine-year-old boy’s traumatised response to losing his father in the attacks of 11 September 2001, polarised responses from reviewers and critics. The general hostility of newspaper reviewers is epitomised by Harry Siegel, writing in the New York Press, who accused Foer of arch opportunism, arguing that in choosing the novel’s key subject, ‘he snatches 9/11 to invest his conceit with gravitas, thus crossing the line that separates the risible from the villainous’.1 Several literary critics, by contrast, approved of Foer’s formally experimental novel. Philippe Codde, for example, argues that it is precisely the failure of written language and narrative in the face of unrepresentable trauma that ‘has prompted the controversial form of Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close,’ and that this is also ‘why both of Foer’s novels are such interesting and convincing representations of trauma’.2 Vociferous debates regarding the literary representation of trauma are illustrated by strikingly divergent assessments of novels such as Foer’s. This essay considers those debates, focusing especially on how the discussion of trauma in America, where the phenomenon has so fully entered public discourse, has begun to influence both writers and, interdependently, critics and theorists. In the following I contend that a significant proportion of contemporary literature has reified elements of dominant trauma theory into an often prescriptive aesthetic. Elements of representation that were once highly experimental have become instead aesthetic tropes of the ‘trauma genre’. This essay also discusses a number of writers and texts which resist this trauma aesthetic, either through a rigorously deployed realism or through the employment of more disruptive effects and subjects which have not, at least yet, become ossified into genre clichés

"Maybe that's what happens if you touch the Doctor, even for a second": Trauma in Doctor Who

When the BBC television series Doctor Who returned in 2005, this followed an absence of 16 years (barring the 1996 TV movie starring Paul McGann). During this hiatus theories associated with trauma were widely disseminated in the West. Although post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) was first defined in 1980 by the American Psychiatric Association (APA), the term’s preeminence was in its infancy at the time of the cancellation of the original run of Doctor Who in 1989. In the 1963-1989 series direct treatment of trauma was thus sparse and unsystematic, whereas in the more theoretically-aware period of 2005 to the present day, the new series has engaged extensively and self-consciously with theories of trauma. The following essay analyses both series’ approach to issues of trauma with a two-fold intention. Firstly, to highlight the different approaches taken to trauma in the series’ two runs: the more metaphorical and piecemeal approach in the original, compared to the way in which the current series has drawn more directly and systematically on existing theory, to the extent that trauma has become a crucial concept underpinning its popular success. Secondly, the essay analyses ways in which an academic discourse such as trauma studies is articulated in and disseminated through the realm of popular culture

Naturalism and Steinbeck's "curious compromise" in The Grapes of Wrath

In the seventy years since the publication of The Grapes of Wrath, the extent of the influence of naturalism upon the work and the quality of Steinbeck’s naturalistic discourse has been frequently debated. Only ten years after its publication, Woodburn O. Ross noted Steinbeck’s “partial affiliation” with naturalism, concluding that he is, “up to a certain point, the complete naturalist” (433). Prior to this, as David Wyatt observes in the introduction to his collection on the novel, Edmund Wilson “set the terms of the initial critical debate…by casting Steinbeck as the crudest sort of naturalist” (5). More recently, critics have noted a considerable sophistication in Steinbeck’s naturalistic-biological themes, in particular with regard to the ways in which naturalism is synthesized with numerous other discourses. Given that this issue has been rehearsed at length throughout the novel’s existence, the starting point for this essay is to assume that there are a number of naturalistic attributes detectable in The Grapes of Wrath. In what follows, naturalism is treated as just one of this novel’s discursive formulations amongst many other literary, philosophical and sociological theoretical bases. This complex blending and clashing of discourses—to paraphrase Barthes’ oft-quoted axiom—has previously been noted by a number of critics. Donald Pizer, for example, identifies “primitivist, Marxist, Christian, and scientific discourses in The Grapes of Wrath” (Bloom 86), while Ralph Willett and John White suggest that the novel embraces “nostalgia for the agrarian past, a documentary desire to record contemporary fact (soil erosion, foreclosures, industrialized farming, Hoovervilles), a populist faith in ‘the people’, and an indignation against man-made suffering” (229)

Parent materials of Yellow-brown loams in the Waikato-Coromandel district.

The yellow-brown loams of the Waikato-Coromandel region are derived from weathered airfall volcanic materials. These materials may be either direct airfall deposits, or erosion products of these deposits, described as reworked ash in some publications. In the erosion products small amounts of other rocks may be included in the parent materials, and these additions may modify to a slight degree the chemical and physical properties of the soil as a yellow-brown loam. In larger amounts these additions result in the formation of intergrades to yellow-brown earths or gley soils

"Things happen to you they happen": Cormac McCarthy, morality, and neo-naturalism

This article examines elements of determinism and naturalism in Cormac McCarthy's twenty-first-century novels, No Country for Old Men and The Road. While naturalism has been noted in McCarthy's work prior to these novels, this article contends that the character and strength of naturalism has changed in the most recent works. This change is placed in the general context of naturalist theory, as well as what the article argues is a more general resurgence of naturalism in American culture post-9/11. In particular, this article examines the implications in McCarthy's work for the extent to which the deterministic dimension of naturalism prevents us from judging characters morally, since they exercise at best highly limited free will. The article provides a detailed analysis of this phenomenon in the two novels, and also uses this to place them in the wider American and global twenty-first-century context

A Means to an End: Henry Roth's Self-Consuming Short Fiction

Entre Call It Sleep et le premier volume de Mercy of a Rude Stream, Henry Roth a publié nombre de pièces de fiction brève, dont des nouvelles, des articles et des ébauches autobiographiques. Même si ces récits ont leur intérêt propre, Roth les considère comme mineurs. Aussi s’en sert-il souvent pour tenter des expérimentations qu’il exploitera plus tard dans son œuvre ou bien comme extraits qu’il enserre tels quels dans ses longs récits. Les récits brefs de Henry Roth sont ainsi davantage des outils au service d’une stratégie plus large. Le présent article étudie l’insertion de la nouvelle « Somebody Always Grabs the Purple » (1940) dans le premier volume de Mercy of a Rude Stream ainsi que les liens entre le récit bref intitulé « Itinerant Ithacan » (1977) et les quatre volumes de Mercy. Cette étude se propose d’illustrer la façon dont Roth retravaille les matériaux thématiques de récits courts, les développe et se les approprie pleinement dans son œuvre romanesque

“You make yourself into a monster so you no longer bear responsibility for what you do”: Dexter, Naturalism, and Neoliberal Crime Discourse

Showtime’s popular crime series Dexter (2006–13) draws on a range of themes, aesthetics, and ideas typically associated with naturalism, and the relationship between the program’s naturalist attributes, gender-based violence, and neoliberal crime discourse is particularly striking. Reflecting a broader twenty-first-century resurgence in contemporary American culture, naturalism is clearly a key component of Dexter, which is based on a series of novels by Jeff Lindsay. This is the case even as central components of naturalism— notably determinism— are inconsistently integrated into the program’s narrative structure and thematic concerns. The show’s protagonist, Dexter Morgan (Michael C. Hall), works by day as a forensic scientist for Miami Metro PD but is in his spare time a serial killer. If this marks a sensationalist scenario consistent with a tradition of naturalism, then it is even more significant that, at least initially, Dexter is depicted as being compelled to kill by biological and environmental forces beyond his control. That Dexter drifts, especially during its latter seasons, from this commitment to determinism is understood in the following as an indication that the program-makers appropriate naturalistic components rather than demonstrate any firm commitment to naturalism. Dexter is only compelled to kill by determining forces, that is, when it suits the show’s political ideology. After briefly assessing how naturalism manifests in the show, this article examines the extent to which the program-makers represent Dexter’s actions as involuntarily determined as a means to absolve him from moral responsibility. This depiction has the combined effect of maintaining audience sympathy for the serial-murdering protagonist and reinforcing the show’s neoliberal political stance. Finally, the essay examines in more detail how Dexter links naturalism to a model of masculinity within the context of its neoliberal discourse on crime and the American justice system

Translesion synthesis in mammalian cells

DNA damage blocks the progression of the replication fork. In order to circumvent the damaged bases, cells employ specialized low stringency DNA polymerases, which are able to carry out translesion synthesis (TLS) past different types of damage. The five polymerases used in TLS in human cells have different substrate specificities, enabling them to deal with many different types of damaged bases. PCNA plays a central role in recruiting the TLS polymerases and effecting the polymerase switch from replicative to TLS polymerase. When the fork is blocked PCNA gets ubiquitinated. This increases its affinity for the TLS polymerases, which all have novel ubiquitin-binding motifs, thereby facilitating their engagement at the stalled fork to effect TLS