Film Cool: Towards a New Film Aesthetic

The influential theorist, David Bordwell, talks about various modes of watching film: the intellectual, the casual, or the obsessive interaction with cinema practiced by the film-buff. This thesis is an attempt to come to terms with film and film culture in a number of ways. It is first an attempt at reinscribing a notion of aesthetics into film studies. This is not an easy task. I argue that film theory is not adequately equipped to discuss film in affective terms, and that instead, it emphasises ways of thinking about film and culture quite removed from the act of film ‘spectating’ – individually, or perhaps even more crucially, collectively. To my mind, film theory increasingly needs to ask: are theorists and the various subjectivities about whom they theorise watching the same films, and in the same way? My experience of film is, as Tara Brabazon writes about her own experience of film, a profoundly emotional one. Film is a stream of quotation in my own life. It is inextricably wrapped up inside memory (and what Hutcheon calls postmodern nostalgia). Film is experience. I would not know how to communicate what Sergio Leone ‘means’ or The Godfather ‘represents’ without engaging what Barbara Kennedy calls the ‘aesthetic impulse.’ In this thesis, I extrapolate from what film means to me to what it might mean to an abstract notion of culture. For this reason, Chapters Three and Four are necessarily abstract and tentatively bring together an analysis of The Matrix franchise and Quentin Tarantino’s brand of metacinema. I focus on an aesthetics of cinema rather than its politics or ideological fabric. This is not to marginalise such studies (which, in any case, this thesis could not do) but to make space for another perspective, another way of considering film, a new way of recuperating affect

Cinema's Autonomous Image in Michelangelo Antonioni and Francis Ford Coppola

Studies of post-classical cinema, whether of the American or European tradition, commonly emphasise the newness of narrative form against an earlier formal classicism. The New Hollywood and the European modernist cinema depict the radical breakdown of continuity, several crises in sensory-motor schema, and the affect of trauma. This article reorients the study of a post-classical narrative to emphasise the relationship between image and narrative, suggesting that such a relationship is fundamentally ambiguous and open to innovative experiments with space, time, image and sound: the foundational elements of cinematic form

The Cinematic Real: Aesthetics and Spectacle

This essay considers the importance of an aesthetic approach to film analysis, focusing on the unique contributions of Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock, and the contemporary 'auteurism' of Steven Spielberg and Wong Kar-wai. It argues that a return to an aesthetic 'film studies' must necessarily offer an alternative to a dominant 'realist' film aesthetics. The essay re-examines the work of Andre Bazin and the myth of a cinematic Real, offering an alternative reading of Welles's use of deep focus in Citizen Kane. The 'reality' beneath deep focus cinematography is revealed to be a cinematographic construct, more 'cinema' than 'real'. This departure from Bazin's realism leads into a discussion of contemporary film aesthetics

Efficacy of methotrexate in ulcerative colitis: Failure or promise

Low-dose methotrexate is a widely used and efficacious therapy in chronic inflammatory disorders such as psoriasis and rheumatoid arthritis. Prospective randomized controlled trials have demonstrated the efficacy of parenteral methotrexate in Crohn’s disease (CD). We performed a systematic review of the efficacy of methotrexate in ulcerative colitis (UC) and discuss the results in the context of the known pharmacokinetics and adverse events of methotrexate therapy in inflammatory bowel diseases and other inflammatory conditions

Characterization of disease course and remission in early seropositive rheumatoid arthritis: results from the TACERA longitudinal cohort study

Background: To characterise disease course and remission in a longitudinal observational study of newly diagnosed, initially treatment-naïve patients with seropositive rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Methods: Patients with early untreated seropositive RA were recruited from 28 UK centres. Multiple clinical and laboratory measures were collected every 3 months for up to 18 months. Disease activity was measured using the 28-joint Disease Activity Score with C-reactive protein (DAS28-CRP) and Simplified Disease Activity Index (SDAI). Logistic regression models examined clinical predictors of 6-month remission and latent class mixed models characterised disease course. Results: We enrolled 275 patients of whom 267 met full eligibility and provided baseline data. According to SDAI definition, 24.3% attained 6-month remission. Lower baseline Health Assessment Questionnaire (HAQ) and SDAI predicted 6-month remission (p = 0.013 and 0.011). Alcohol intake and baseline prescribing of methotrexate with a second disease-modifying antirheumatic drug (DMARD; vs monotherapy without glucocorticoids) were also predictive. Three distinct SDAI trajectory subpopulations emerged; corresponding to an inadequate responder group (6.5%), and higher and lower baseline activity responder groups (22.4% and 71.1%). Baseline HAQ and Short Form-36 Health Survey – Mental Component Score (SF-36 MCS) distinguished these groups. In addition, a number of baseline clinical predictors correlated with disease activity severity within subpopulations. Beneficial effects of alcohol intake were found across subpopulations. Conclusion: Three distinct disease trajectory subpopulations were identified. Differential effects of functional and mental well-being, alcohol consumption, and baseline RA medication prescribing on disease activity severity were found across subpopulations. Heterogeneity across trajectories cannot be fully explained by baseline clinical predictors. We hypothesise that biological markers collected early in disease course (within 6 months) may help patient management and better targeting of existing and novel therapies

C5 Palsy After Cervical Spine Surgery: A Multicenter Retrospective Review of 59 Cases.

STUDY DESIGN: A multicenter, retrospective review of C5 palsy after cervical spine surgery. OBJECTIVE: Postoperative C5 palsy is a known complication of cervical decompressive spinal surgery. The goal of this study was to review the incidence, patient characteristics, and outcome of C5 palsy in patients undergoing cervical spine surgery. METHODS: We conducted a multicenter, retrospective review of 13 946 patients across 21 centers who received cervical spine surgery (levels C2 to C7) between January 1, 2005, and December 31, 2011, inclusive. P values were calculated using 2-sample t test for continuous variables and χ(2) tests or Fisher exact tests for categorical variables. RESULTS: Of the 13 946 cases reviewed, 59 patients experienced a postoperative C5 palsy. The incidence rate across the 21 sites ranged from 0% to 2.5%. At most recent follow-up, 32 patients reported complete resolution of symptoms (54.2%), 15 had symptoms resolve with residual effects (25.4%), 10 patients did not recover (17.0%), and 2 were lost to follow-up (3.4%). CONCLUSION: C5 palsy occurred in all surgical approaches and across a variety of diagnoses. The majority of patients had full recovery or recovery with residual effects. This study represents the largest series of North American patients reviewed to date

Development and Evaluation of Sensor Concepts for Ageless Aerospace Vehicles: Report 5 - Phase 2 Implementation of the Concept Demonstrator

This report describes the second phase of the implementation of the Concept Demonstrator experimental test-bed system containing sensors and processing hardware distributed throughout the structure, which uses multi-agent algorithms to characterize impacts and determine a suitable response to these impacts. This report expands and adds to the report of the first phase implementation. The current status of the system hardware is that all 192 physical cells (32 on each of the 6 hexagonal prism faces) have been constructed, although only four of these presently contain data-acquisition sub-modules to allow them to acquire sensor data. Impact detection.. location and severity have been successfully demonstrated. The software modules for simulating cells and controlling the test-bed are fully operational. although additional functionality will be added over time. The visualization workstation displays additional diagnostic information about the array of cells (both real and simulated) and additional damage information. Local agent algorithms have been developed that demonstrate emergent behavior of the complex multi-agent system, through the formation of impact damage boundaries and impact networks. The system has been shown to operate well for multiple impacts. and to demonstrate robust reconfiguration in the presence of damage to numbers of cells

Perennial grasslands enhance biodiversity and multiple ecosystem services in bioenergy landscapes

Agriculture is being challenged to provide food, and increasingly fuel, for an expanding global population. Producing bioenergy crops on marginal lands—farmland suboptimal for food crops—could help meet energy goals while minimizing competition with food production. However, the ecological costs and benefits of growing bioenergy feedstocks—primarily annual grain crops—on marginal lands have been questioned. Here we show that perennial bioenergy crops provide an alternative to annual grains that increases biodiversity of multiple taxa and sustain a variety of ecosystem functions, promoting the creation of multifunctional agricultural landscapes. We found that switchgrass and prairie plantings harbored significantly greater plant, methanotrophic bacteria, arthropod, and bird diversity than maize. Although biomass production was greater in maize, all other ecosystem services, including methane consumption, pest suppression, pollination, and conservation of grassland birds, were higher in perennial grasslands. Moreover, we found that the linkage between biodiversity and ecosystem services is dependent not only on the choice of bioenergy crop but also on its location relative to other habitats, with local landscape context as important as crop choice in determining provision of some services. Our study suggests that bioenergy policy that supports coordinated land use can diversify agricultural landscapes and sustain multiple critical ecosystem services