2014 VanArsdel prize essay: W. T. Stead and participatory reader networks

W. T. Stead’s contribution to the development of reader engagement in the New Journalism was extensive and innovative. In this essay, I argue that Stead’s participatory reader networks in the Link and the Review of Reviews were the culmination of Stead’s career-long interest in media-based community engagement projects. Rather than viewing Stead’s journalism through the narrow lens of a single publication or journalistic campaign, I consider how his participatory reader networks were refined and shaped over the course of many years and within the pages of multiple periodicals

The Evolution of Frank Norris in the American Medievalist Tradition: Norris\u27s Progression From Gothic Juvenilia to Modern Courtly Love in The Pit .

Though most Frank Norris scholars dismiss the author\u27s early gothic works as insignificant elements of the Norris canon, I argue that this frequently ignored juvenilia is essential to understanding Norris\u27s unique development as an American Naturalist. Norris, like other authors of his generation, was caught up in a boyhood enthusiasm for the Middle Ages which was initiated and nurtured by a similar nostalgia for the period among the American elite in the late nineteenth-century. This post-medieval nostalgia for medieval convention came to be known as medievalism and its enthusiasts were called medievalists. Norris\u27s early naturalistic writings, including a number of poems and the short stories Le Jongleur de Taillebois and Lauth, are rooted in his interest in medieval culture and custom and are combined with his enthusiasm for popular Darwinism that was fashionable in late nineteenth-century America. This unlikely combination of interests formed an odd hybrid genre of medievally-inspired naturalism that was especially dark and brutal, and foreshadowed the bleak naturalism in his early novels Vandover and the Brute and McTeague. This medievalist/naturalist motif is uniquely Norrisian and I show, through a collection of Norris\u27s essays, the direct relationship in Norris\u27s mind between the medieval and natural worlds as he understood them. Norris\u27s mature application of medievalism is most obvious in his last two novels, The Octopus and The Pit. I example medievalism in The Pit extensively, citing the courtly love structure of the Jadwin/Laura/Corthell triangle, with a special focus on Jadwin, who Norris characterizes throughout the novel as a warring feudal lord whose modern battleground is the Chicago Trading Pit for Future Exchanges. I dissert that Frank Norris never abandoned his enthusiasm for the culture and custom of the Middle Ages, as is often suggested by Norris critics. I show that as his writing matured, his boyhood interest in the medieval period was ameliorated into a sophisticated application of contemporary medievalism through which he could voice social commentary that condemned existing Old World traditions, such as courtly love conventions and feudal power structures, as impediments to the modernization of the New World

The development of semantic memory : a spatial model of animal concepts in schoolchildren, novices and experts

Children’s and adults judgements of semantic relatedness amongst a set of animal terms were compared in order to examine the validity of a spatial model of conceptual development in schoolchildren

A Comparison of Neuromuscular Electrical Stimulation and Acupuncture to Traditional Dysphagia Therapy In Stroke Patients

A comparison of neuromuscular electrical stimulation and acupuncture to traditional dysphagia therapy in reducing dysphagia in individuals who suffered a stroke

Absorption and biotransformation of polybrominated diphenyl ethers DE-71 and DE-79 in chicken (\u3ci\u3eGallus gallus\u3c/i\u3e), mallard (\u3ci\u3eAnas platyrhynchos\u3c/i\u3e), American kestrel (\u3ci\u3eFalco sparverius\u3c/i\u3e) and black-crowned night-heron (\u3ci\u3eNycticorax nycticorax\u3c/i\u3e) eggs

We recently reported that air cell administration of penta-brominated diphenyl ether (penta-BDE; DE-71) evokes biochemical and immunologic effects in chicken (Gallus gallus) embryos at very low doses, and impairs pipping (i.e., stage immediately prior to hatching) and hatching success at 1.8 µg g-1 egg (actual dose absorbed) in American kestrels (Falco sparverius). In the present study, absorption of polybrominated diphenyl ether (PBDE) congeners was measured following air cell administration of a penta-BDE mixture (11.1 lg DE-71 g-1 egg) or an octa-brominated diphenyl ether mixture (octa BDE; DE-79; 15.4 lg DE-79 g-1 egg). Uptake of PBDE congeners was measured at 24 h post-injection, midway through incubation, and at pipping in chicken, mallard (Anas platyrhynchos), and American kestrel egg contents, and at the end of incubation in black-crowned night-heron (Nycticorax nycticorax) egg contents. Absorption of penta-BDE and octa-BDE from the air cell into egg contents occurred throughout incubation; at pipping, up to 29.6% of penta-BDE was absorbed, but only 1.40–6.48% of octa-BDE was absorbed. Higher brominated congeners appeared to be absorbed more slowly than lower brominated congeners, and uptake rate was inversely proportional to the log Kow of predominant BDE congeners. Six congeners or co-eluting pairs of congeners were detected in penta-BDE-treated eggs that were not found in the dosing solution suggesting debromination in the developing embryo, extraembryonic membranes, and possibly even in the air cell membrane. This study demonstrates the importance of determining the fraction of xenobiotic absorbed into the egg following air cell administration for estimation of the lowest-observed-effect level

Committed Partners and Inheritance: An Empirical Study

There is widespread recognition that U.S. households have changed dramatically in the latter half of the twentieth century. 1 The changes include an increased number of blended families, 2 single-parent households, 3 and unmarried same-sex and opposite-sex committed couples, including some with children. 4 The transformation taking place in U.S. households implicates property law and vice versa. In recognition of the changing U.S. household and the symbiotic relationship between wealth transmission and family, we undertook an empirical study designed to assess public attitudes about the inclusion of surviving committed partners as heirs. This Article reports our findings