Tabloid brand medicine chests: selling health and hygiene for the British tropical colonies

During the late Victorian and early Edwardian period a surge of commodities went on display and were advertised throughout the empire. One such commodity was the Burroughs Wellcome & Co. (BWC) Tabloid brand medicine chest. The marketing of the chest was intimately related to BWC's economic and political interests in empire, contributing to a discourse of tropicality and belief in western progress and white European superiority in Britain's tropical colonies. BWC used their scientific and medical authority to further differentiate and fix western culture and the identity of white Europeans, in opposition to the tropics and their inhabitants. Despite BWC's claims to the medical and scientific superiority of these chests, the majority of their contents were in use for hundreds, if not thousands of years, often deriving from the very contexts white Europeans were supposedly civilising with their aid. BWC's advertisement and promotion of their chests, in this case, reveals processes of hybridisation between supposedly distinct cultures. The selling of Tabloid brand medicine chests contributed to a belief in western and white European superiority, but closer investigation of their contents demonstrates how such claims were, in the end, inherently problematic and unstable. Such an analysis shows that the ultimate medical value of the chests did not derive from unbiased and empirical processes, but from academic, state and industrial authority in relation to Britain's imperial ambitions

Art Education and the Social Use of Metaphor

Human beings are greatly dependent upon social knowledge as a basis for directing their actions in the world and interpreting the actions of others. The dominant quality of social knowledge, or culture, is that it is symbolic. Consider the concept of culture offered by anthropologist Clifford Geertz: (Cultura) denotes a historically transmitted pattern of meanings embodied in symbols, a system of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic forms by means of which men communicate, perpetuate, and develop their knowledge about and attitudes toward life

Some contributions to the theory of edge waves

A new theory of edge waves over a slowly varying depth

Elimination of rocket engine asymmetric loads during tests at sea level

Secondary injection concept eliminates asymmetric loads and may increase thrust rocket engine loads during sea level tests. The concept uses either a tubular manifold with evenly spaced injection ports or secondary fluid injected at the turbine exhaust inlet to the thrust chamber

Modified faceplate assembly for stud-welding gun

Ventilated barrel assembly aids installation of studs on narrow uneven weld lands. The modified faceplate permits proper aligning of the percussion stud-welding gun in any position and on a smaller surface, and it maintains gap setting without any other adjustment

Subatmospheric Brayton-cycle Engine Program Review

A solar energy powered electrical generator utilizing a Subatmospheric Brayton cycle engine is examined. The generator consists of a subatmospheric, Brayton-cycle engine and a permanent magnet (PM) alternator. The electrical power is generated by an alternator driven directly by the Brayton-cycle engine rotating group. Features that enhance reliability and performance include air foil bearings on both the Brayton-cycle engine rotating group and the PM alternator, an atmospheric-pressure solar receiver and gas-fired trim heater, and a high temperature recuperator. The subatmospheric Brayton-cycle engine design is based on that of the gas fired heat pump engine

Microwave switching power divider

A pair of parallel, spaced-apart circular ground planes define a microwave cavity with multi-port microwave power distributing switching circuitry formed on opposite sides of a thin circular dielectric substrate disposed between the ground planes. The power distributing circuitry includes a conductive disk located at the center of the substrate and connected to a source of microwave energy. A high speed, low insertion loss switching diode and a dc blocking capacitor are connected in series between the outer end of a transmission line and an output port. A high impedance, microwave blocking dc bias choke is connected between each switching diode and a source of switching current. The switching source forward biases the diodes to couple microwave energy from the conductive disk to selected output ports and, to associated antenna elements connected to the output ports to form a synthesized antenna pattern

A Blend of Absurdism and Humanism: Defending Kurt Vonnegut’s Place in the Secondary Setting

This essay argues that Kurt Vonnegut blends a unique humanist stance into his absurdist plots and characters, ultimately urging readers to confront the absurd with a kindness and human decency his protagonists often find rare. As a result of this absurd and humanist synthesis, I defend and promote Vonnegut’s place in the secondary English curriculum, despite his rank on many banned books lists, since his characters’ journeys correlate thematically with the growth and process of postmodern adolescents and encourage moral responsibility without sentimental manipulation. Focusing on Cat’s Cradle, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, and Slaughterhouse-Five as primary sources, specifically for Vonnegut’s view of their success and their more frequent use in the secondary setting, I explore Vonnegut’s unique postmodern style. Using personal and recorded interviews as well as literary scholarship, I attempt to forge a new outlook on the connection between Vonnegut and adolescent learners. His protagonists struggle with the same philosophical questions that adolescents are beginning to ponder as they develop their ability to think abstractly. I argue that Vonnegut’s moral response to these questions will provide students with a framework from which they may begin to formulate their own answers in a universe they cannot control. Vonnegut’s novels strive to better humanity, and in teaching our youngest generations how he sought to do so may better the society in which we exist together