Diffractive Poetics: Material and Culture, Composition and Critique in the Late Modernist American Long Poem

Diffractive Poetics: Material and Culture, Composition and Critique in the Late Modernist American Long Poem explores the relationship of late modernist poetry to contemporary theories of materialism. The dissertation argues that Muriel Rukeyser’s “The Book of the Dead” (1938), William Carlos Williams’s Paterson (1946-58), Melvin B. Tolson’s Libretto for the Republic of Liberia (1953), and even a 21st century sequence like Eleni Sikelianos’s The California Poem (2004), engage in revisionary responses to modernist poetics, particularly to the modernist long poem. Like their more canonical antecedents, these long poems also attempt modern reformulations of cultural totality and mythopoetic construction, but they use the bricolage techniques of the modernist long poem to more provisional, localized, and egalitarian purposes. Drawing particularly from the materialist theories of Donna Haraway, Karen Barad, Édouard Glissant, and Sylvia Wynter, the dissertation further argues for the poems’ combined participation in what I term a diffractive materialist poetics, present in each poem’s examination of the imbricated constitution of the cultural and the natural. The poems exhibit moments of inter-field entanglement, mapping patterns of interference between the physical, cultural, and discursive. The dissertation conceives of late modernist poetics as both a theory and practice of materialist thinking. I argue the poems take up and generate working theories of materialism (philosophical, political, cultural, ecological respectively) that both anticipate and help elucidate the current interrogation of the concept and its application to critical methods of reading

Using the stochastic Galerkin method as a predictive tool during an epidemic

The ability to accurately predict the course of an epidemic is extremely important. This article looks at an influenza outbreak that spread through a small boarding school. Predictions are made on multiple days throughout the epidemic using the stochastic Galerkin method to consider a range of plausible values for the parameters. These predictions are then compared to known data points. Predictions made before the peak of the epidemic had much larger variances compared to predictions made after the peak of the epidemic. References B. M. Chen-Charpentier, J. C. Cortes, J. V. Romero, and M. D. Rosello. Some recommendations for applying gPC (generalized polynomial chaos) to modeling: An analysis through the Airy random differential equation. Applied Mathematics and Computation, 219(9):4208 – 4218, 2013. doi:10.1016/j.amc.2012.11.007 B. M. Chen-Charpentier and D. Stanescu. Epidemic models with random coefficients. Mathematical and Computer Modelling, 52:1004 – 1010, 2010. doi:10.1016/j.mcm.2010.01.014 D. B. Harman and P. R. Johnston. Applying the stochastic galerkin method to epidemic models with individualised parameter distributions. In Proceedings of the 12th Biennial Engineering Mathematics and Applications Conference, EMAC-2015, volume 57 of ANZIAM J., pages C160–C176, August 2016. doi:10.21914/anziamj.v57i0.10394 D. B. Harman and P. R. Johnston. Applying the stochastic galerkin method to epidemic models with uncertainty in the parameters. Mathematical Biosciences, 277:25 – 37, 2016. doi:10.1016/j.mbs.2016.03.012 D. B. Harman and P. R. Johnston. Boarding house: find border. 2019. doi:10.6084/m9.figshare.7699844.v1 D. B. Harman and P. R. Johnston. SIR uniform equations. 2 2019. doi:10.6084/m9.figshare.7692392.v1 H. W. Hethcote. The mathematics of infectious diseases. SIAM Review, 42(4):599–653, 2000. doi:10.1137/S0036144500371907 R.I. Hickson and M.G. Roberts. How population heterogeneity in susceptibility and infectivity influences epidemic dynamics. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 350(0):70 – 80, 2014. doi:10.1016/j.jtbi.2014.01.014 W. O. Kermack and A. G. McKendrick. A contribution to the mathematical theory of epidemics. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series A, 115(772):700–721, August 1927. doi:10.1098/rspa.1927.0118 M. G. Roberts. A two-strain epidemic model with uncertainty in the interaction. The ANZIAM Journal, 54:108–115, 10 2012. doi:10.1017/S1446181112000326 M. G. Roberts. Epidemic models with uncertainty in the reproduction number. Journal of Mathematical Biology, 66(7):1463–1474, 2013. doi:10.1007/s00285-012-0540-y F. Santonja and B. Chen-Charpentier. Uncertainty quantification in simulations of epidemics using polynomial chaos. Computational and Mathematical Methods in Medicine, 2012:742086, 2012. doi:10.1155/2012/742086 Communicable Disease Surveillance Centre (Public Health Laboratory Service) and Communicable Diseases (Scotland) Unit. Influenza in a boarding school. BMJ, 1(6112):587, 1978. doi:10.1136/bmj.1.6112.586 G. Strang. Linear Algebra and Its Applications. Thomson, Brooks/Cole, 2006. D. Xiu. Numerical Methods for Stochastic Computations: A Spectral Method Approach. Princeton University Press, 2010

Attitudes towards sub-domains of professionalism in medical education: defining social accountability in the globalizing world

Background: Unmet health needs of populations around the world are a major contributor to lagging health outcomes globally. Medical professionals have a duty to address the health needs of their communities. In a globalizing world, the needs may seem limitless. Yet, most training involves immersion in one health system and its resources. How do practitioners reconcile this potentially limitless demand with their focused training and in understanding their duty to the populations they serve?Methods: A mixed-method design was used. We distributing a pre-validated survey examining all facets of professionalism to the Department of Family Medicine at the University of Ottawa. This was followed by interviewing a purposive sample of residents and faculty with different levels of interest in working with underserved populations, to examine attitudes towards social accountability.Results: Quantitative results did not replicate the factor structure of the pre-validated survey in our cohort. This and other gaps in individual responses were used to construct an interview guide. Interviews revealed differences between residents and faculty. Residents were likely to see social accountability as flowing from personal interest as opposed to a professional duty; and residents’ sense of duty can be met through good care of individual patients under their sphere of care. Faculty were more likely to discuss facets of care that they could influence at the health system level nationally and beyond. Conclusion: More usable and succinct instruments are needed to capture individual attitudes on social accountability. Our results identify how new physicians in family medicine in Ottawa, Canada wish to apply learning in global health to local needs, responding to the call to “think global, act local.

Book Reviews

Book Reviews by Brendan F. Brown, Laurance M. Hyde, Francis W. Johnston, W. T. Lovins, and Robert B. Vining

Sensing the Shape of Canine Responses to Cancer

We conducted a short study investigating the pressure patterns produced by cancer detection dogs via a canine-centered interface while searching samples of amyl acetate. We advance previous work by providing further insights into the potential of the approach for supporting and partly automating the practice of cancer detection with dogs

Vulnerability of coastal and estuarine habitats in the GBR to climate change

Coastal and estuarine habitats occupy a central place in the functioning of tropical marine ecosystems. Their location at the interface between land and sea means they function to modulate the movement of terrestrial materials (eg freshwater, nutrients and pollutants) into the marine environment. Coastal and estuarine habitats also act as a filter, with functional units such as mangrove forests inhibiting trapping and retaining sediments and nutrients. Coastal habitats are also crucial nursery grounds for many species of fish111 and crustaceans, and act as links in the life cycles of species that migrate between marine and freshwater habitats. Beyond this, their close proximity to population and industrial centres makes them the marine habitats most vulnerable to human impacts. The east coast of tropical Queensland comprises a diversity of habitats, ranging from freshwater and littoral marshes, through estuaries, to nearshore open oceans and reefs. These habitats do not function alone but are an interlinked coastal ecosystem mosaic (CEM), connected at a variety of spatial, temporal, functional and conceptual scales. This complex mix of habitats is inhabited by one of the most diverse faunas on earth with organisms covering the full taxonomic spectrum, from viruses and bacteria to cetaceans. Unfortunately, detailed ecological knowledge is limited to a very small subset of the range of these organisms, with many species unknown, unidentified or unquantified. Although it is clear species interact in complex ways, our understanding of this is critically deficient. Moreover, many of the individual components are poorly understood, and details of the links between them largely absent

Health and Housing in an Aging Population: Identifying Risk Factors of Seniors Living Independently

Background: Aging is associated with numerous risk factors for declining physical and mental health. As a result, many elder individuals are forced to relocate to nursing homes, assisted living centers or just closer to adequate medical facilities. Studies have shown: • Relocation of elders is associated with depression, anxiety, memory loss, and decreased social adjustment and life satisfaction • Persistently lonely people exhibit a 2-fold greater risk for developing Alzheimer’s disease (AD) than those who are not chronically lonely • Increased social interaction improves cognitive function in individuals with AD By helping seniors to age in place, many of the deleterious risks of relocation, such as social isolation, depression, and cognitive decline could be avoided. In addition to relocation, other risk factors that affect cognition have been identified: • Physical activity is associated with higher cognitive functioning in elders • Polypharmacy is a risk factor for impaired cognition Thus, simple modifications that allow seniors to age in place may reduce morbidity and enhance quality of life. Cathedral Square Corporation (CSC) is a non-profit organization whose mission is to develop, manage, and own housing that provides community services to promote the health and well-being of elders, low income persons, and persons with disabilities. Students from the University of Vermont College of Medicine (UVM) partnered with CSC in a project to promote aging in place via evaluation of seniors’ current needs and the development of a service model to meet these needs at home.https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/comphp_gallery/1010/thumbnail.jp