Viewing the Wreckage: Eco-Disaster Tourism in the Wake of Katrina

Before hurricane Katrina, cultural tourism was Louisiana\u27s second largest industry. Tourism agencies are now imploring potential tourists to visit New Orleans for An eyewitness account of the events surrounding the worst natural disaster on American soil! Economic need is driving tour agencies to construct \u27eco-disaster tourism,\u27 and the construction includes explicit causes of blame. Who is defining the new tourism? How is the controversy surrounding causation being negotiated in eco-disaster tour narratives? e main finding is that the big players in the tourism industry, namely Gray Line Tours, have maneuvered into a powerful position to rewrite the tourism narrative by allying with the state. Gray Lines\u27 narrative blames the oil and gas industry for Katrina\u27s severity, while avoiding pointing fingers at government agencies and officials

A preliminary investigation of adult defence style and physiological reactivity to infant distress signals

Species whose offspring require extended care-giving ought to be predisposed to being biologically responsive to their infant\u27s signalling. This paper examined the interplay between biological and psychological aspects of adult response to an infant\u27s distress. HR (heart rate) and GSR (galvanic skin response) were recorded continuously, while 50 adults listened to white noise and an infant cry audio recording. Participants completed the defence style questionnaire and the state trait anxiety inventory. HR acceleration occurred in response to the control sound, while HR decelerated in response to the infant cry. GSR responsiveness was positively correlated with immature and neurotic defence styles. When controlling for other variables, immature defence was a unique and independent predictor of GSR change in response to infant distress. Defence demonstrated a stronger relationship than self-reported anxiety, than that with physiological responsiveness. Employing defence mechanisms appears to reduce an individual\u27s perceived anxiety, though it has little effect on physiological arousal levels

American Passages: A History of the United States

American Passages places a unique emphasis on time as the defining nature of history, how events lead to other events, actions, changes, and often-unexpected outcomes. Rather than grouping facets of historical change into themes or topics, the authors offer students a complete, compelling narrative with balanced coverage of political, economic, social, cultural, military, religious, and intellectual history.https://scholarship.richmond.edu/bookshelf/1276/thumbnail.jp

Limits on the Transverse Velocity of the Lensing Galaxy in Q2237+0305 from the Lack of Strong Microlensing Variability

We present a method for the determination of upper limits on the transverse velocity of the lensing galaxy in the quadruple quasar system Q2237+0305, based on the lack of strong microlensing signatures in the quasar lightcurves. The limits we derive here are based on four months of high quality monitoring data, by comparing the low amplitudes of the lightcurves of the four components with extensive numerical simulations. We make use of the absence of strong variability of the components (especially components B and D) to infer that a "flat" time interval of such a length is only compatible with an effective transverse velocity of the lensing galaxy of v_bulk <=630 km/s for typical microlenses masses of M_microlens=0.1 M_solar (or v_bulk <=2160 km/s for M_microlens=1.0 M_solar) at the 90% confidence level. This method may be applicable in the future to other systems.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figures, accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysic

Death and dying in ‘Third Way’ death manuals: Shaping life and death after neoliberalism

In this chapter, I consider what might be called the “Third Way” death manuals of Philip Gould and Kate Gross, who were both, in different ways, involved with the New Labour Project. Their memoirs describe their experiences of dying and are notable for the conclusions to which they come; conclusions which suggest values at odds with the individualist and progressive narratives that shape neoliberal views of what it means to life well. In considering the tensions and possibilities that shape their respective narratives, new ways of living in the face of death become possible

A life in progress: motion and emotion in the autobiography of Robert M. La Follette

This article is a study of a La Follette’s Autobiography, the autobiography of the leading Wisconsin progressive Robert M. La Follette, which was published serially in 1911 and, in book form, in 1913. Rather than focusing, as have other historians, on which parts of La Follette’s account are accurate and can therefore be trusted, it explains instead why and how this major autobiography was conceived and written. The article shows that the autobiography was the product of a sustained, complex, and often fraught series of collaborations among La Follette’s family, friends, and political allies, and in the process illuminates the importance of affective ties as well as political ambition and commitment in bringing the project to fruition. In the world of progressive reform, it argues, personal and political experiences were inseparable

A Special Interest Group on Designed and Engineered Friction in Interaction

A lot of academic and industrial HCI work has focused on making interactions easier and less effortful. As the potential risks of optimising for effortlessness have crystallised in systems designed to take advantage of the way human attention and cognition works, academic researchers and industrial practitioners have wondered whether increasing the g€friction' in interactions, making them more effortful might make sense in some contexts. The goal of this special interest group is to provide a forum for researchers and practitioners to discuss and advance the theoretical underpinnings of designed friction, the relation of friction to other design paradigms, and to identify the domains and interaction flows that frictions might best suit. During the SIG, attendees will attempt to prioritise a set of research questions about frictions in HCI

Gamma rays and neutrinos from the Crab Nebula produced by pulsar accelerated nuclei

We investigate the consequences of the acceleration of heavy nuclei (e.g. iron nuclei) by the Crab pulsar. Accelerated nuclei can photodisintegrate in collisions with soft photons produced in the pulsar's outer gap, injecting energetic neutrons which decay either inside or outside the Crab Nebula. The protons from neutron decay inside the nebula are trapped by the Crab Nebula magnetic field, and accumulate inside the nebula producing gamma-rays and neutrinos in collisions with the matter in the nebula. Neutrons decaying outside the Crab Nebula contribute to the Galactic cosmic rays. We compute the expected fluxes of gamma-rays and neutrinos, and find that our model could account for the observed emission at high energies and may be tested by searching for high energy neutrinos with future neutrino telescopes currently in the design stage.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures, LaTeX uses revtex.sty, submitted to Phys. Rev. Let

VERITAS: the Very Energetic Radiation Imaging Telescope Array System

The Very Energetic Radiation Imaging Telescope Array System (VERITAS) represents an important step forward in the study of extreme astrophysical processes in the universe. It combines the power of the atmospheric Cherenkov imaging technique using a large optical reflector with the power of stereoscopic observatories using arrays of separated telescopes looking at the same shower. The seven identical telescopes in VERITAS, each of aperture 10 m, will be deployed in a filled hexagonal pattern of side 80 m; each telescope will have a camera consisting of 499 pixels with a field of view of 3.5 deg VERITAS will substantially increase the catalog of very high energy (E > 100GeV) gamma-ray sources and greatly improve measurements of established sources.Comment: 44 pages, 16 figure