Embodied consciousness in non-fiction illness narratives : a phenomenological-sociological approach.

This dissertation uses a phenomenological and sociological lens to explore how non-fiction illness narratives help us understand how perception of the self is disrupted because of serious illness or injury. Specifically, I use the French philosopher, M. Merleau-Ponty\u27s phenomenological thought concerning the body and the sociological perspective of medical sociologist, Arthur Frank and his types of narratives and how culture helps construct illness. I analyze the works of four different writers: Sarah Manguso, Oliver Sacks, Jean Dominique-Bauby, and Anatole Broyard. Chapter one serves as an introduction to the subject of illness writing and an overview of some of the material published during the past several decades. I discuss some of the functions of illness writing and summarize Frank\u27s narrative types as well as explain some of the theories of Merleau-Ponty which are relevant to this study. In chapter two I analyze Sarah Manguso\u27s The Two Kinds of Decay approaching her narrative as a poetic type of prose in which she addresses her illness from the perspective of someone who came through a particularly harrowing illness experience and emerged to cautiously recount the experience several years later. The third chapter\u27s focus is Jean Dominique-Bauby\u27s The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. I discuss Bauby\u27s sense of disassociation caused by locked-in syndrome as a result of his need to escape what he metaphorically names the diving bell. Bauby, like Anatole Broyard who is discussed in the last chapter, does not survive the illness. Chapter four\u27s focus is Oliver Sacks and his book, A Leg To Stand On. Like Manguso, Sacks tells the story looking back from the present into the past. He moves beyond his injury, but the self-objectification that occurs in his narrative is a testament to the nature of disembodiment as an almost necessary phenomenon for living through severe physical trauma. Chapter five is a discussion of Anatole Broyard and his book, Intoxicated By My Illness. Broyard\u27s book is a compilation of his writings - mainly journals created during the time from his diagnosis and his subsequent journey through prostate cancer, which eventually took his life. In the conclusion I speculate about the effect of these narratives on the reader and briefly explore several other texts written by professional writers who were ill

Repertoire of virus-derived small RNAs produced by mosquito and mammalian cells in response to dengue virus infection

AbstractRNA interference (RNAi) is the major defense of many arthropods against arthropod-borne RNA viruses (arboviruses), but the role of RNAi in vertebrate immunity to arboviruses is not clear. RNA viruses can trigger RNAi in vertebrate cells, but the vertebrate interferon response may obscure this interaction. We quantified virus-derived small RNAs (vRNAs) generated by mosquito (U4.4) cells and interferon-deficient (Vero) and interferon-competent (HuH-7) mammalian cells infected with a single isolate of mosquito-borne dengue virus. Mosquito cells produced significantly more vRNAs than mammalian cells, and mosquito cell vRNAs were derived from both the positive- and negative-sense dengue genomes whereas mammalian cell vRNAs were derived primarily from positive-sense genome. Mosquito cell vRNAs were predominantly 21 nucleotides in length whereas mammalian cell vRNAs were between 12 and 36 nucleotides with a modest peak at 24 nucleotides. Hot-spots, regions of the virus genome that generated a disproportionate number of vRNAs, overlapped among the cell lines

2019 Scholars at Work Conference Program

Program for the 2019 Scholars at Work Conference at Minnesota State University, Mankato on March 29, 2019

The Marine Microbial Eukaryote Transcriptome Sequencing Project (MMETSP): illuminating the functional diversity of eukaryotic life in the oceans through transcriptome sequencing

International audienceCurrent sampling of genomic sequence data from eukaryotes is relatively poor, biased, and inadequate to address important questions about their biology, evolution, and ecology; this Community Page describes a resource of 700 transcriptomes from marine microbial eukaryotes to help understand their role in the world's oceans

Identification of dispersal barriers for a colonising seagrass using seascape genetic analysis

© 2020 Seagrasses are important habitats providing many ecological services. Most species have broad distributions with maximum dispersal distances of 100\u27s of kms, however there is limited understanding of dispersal distances of colonising species like Halodule uninervis. It commonly grows in disturbed environments and could disperse to other meadows via clonal fragments. Effective conservation management requires greater understanding of genetic structure, dispersal barriers, and connectivity timescales to predict recovery following disturbance. Despite fragment viability of up to 28 days in a congenera, this theory remains untested in situ. Using 80 neutral single nucleotide polymorphisms, we investigated genetic diversity, gene flow patterns and structure among 15 populations of H. uninervis along 2000 km of Western Australian coastline. These data were combined with a multi-generational oceanographic dispersal model and a barrier dispersal analysis to identify dispersal barriers and determine which fragment dispersal duration (FDD) and timescale over which stepping-stone connectivity occurred, best matched the observed genetic structure. The 2-7 day FDD best matched the genetic structure with 4–12 clusters, with barriers to dispersal that persisted for up to 100 years. Modelling suggested greater fragmentation of metapopulations towards the southern edge of the species distribution, but genetic diversity did not decline. Several long-term boundaries were identified even with fragment viability of up to 28 days. This suggests H. uninervis dispersal is spatially limited by factors like oceanographic features and habitat continuity which may limit dispersal of this species. This study reiterates that potential dispersal does not equal realised dispersal, and management scales of 10\u27s of kilometers are required to maintain existing meadows. Recruitment from distances further than this scale are unlikely to aid recovery after extreme disturbance events, particularly towards the range edge of H. uninervis distribution