Cultivating the Taste of the Nation: The National Council of Women of Canada and the Campaign against “Pernicious” Literature at the Turn of the Twentieth Century

This article analyzes the campaign against “pernicious” literature undertaken by the National Council of Women of Canada at the turn of the twentieth century. Concerned with the growing availability of dime novels, penny dreadfuls, and romances and their perceived influences on young readers, Council members sought to educate the Canadian public about the circulation of so-called “pernicious” literature. But they also sought to eradicate the popularity of “pernicious” literature by encouraging children, youth, and adults to read a “better class” of books, through the creation of the National Home Reading Union in 1895. This article argues that through these strategies, the Council’s campaign re-asserted the primacy of the family, with the mother as its moral guide, in providing the ultimate defence against the dangers of “pernicious” literature

Azerbaijan: Religious Freedom Survey, 2018

Azerbaijan restricts freedom of religion and belief with interlinked freedoms of expression, association, and assembly. Forum 18’s survey analyzes violations including prisoners of conscience who were jailed and tortured for exercising freedom of religion and belief, strict state literature censorship, and regime claims of its “tolerance.” Forum 18\u27s survey analysis documents Azerbaijan\u27s violations of freedom of religion and belief, with interlinked freedoms of expression, association, and assembly. Serious violations include but are not limited to: - a complex labyrinth of “legal” restrictions to prevent the exercise of freedom of religion, belief, and other fundamental freedoms; -total state control of the Islamic community; - a ban on all exercise of freedom of religion and belief by groups of people without state permission; - raids on people exercising freedom of religion and belief without state permission; - forcible closure of places of worship, especially Sunni mosques; - a ban on praying outside mosques; - jailing prisoners of conscience for exercising human rights, including freedom of religion and belief; - torture of people who exercise freedom of religion and belief; - prosecutions and punishments of conscientious objectors to the compulsory military service; - a highly restrictive censorship regime, including pre-publication, bookshop, photocopy shop and postal censorship; - and severe denials of human rights in the Nakhichevan exclave

Measurement of substrate thermal resistance using DNA denaturation temperature

Heat Transfer and Thermal Management have become important aspects of the developing field of uTAS systems particularly in the application of the the uTAS philosophy to thermally driven analysis techniques such as PCR. Due to the development of flowing PCR thermocyclers in the field of uTAS, the authors have previously developed a melting curve analysis technique that is compatible with these flowing PCR thermocyclers. In this approach a linear temperature gradient is induced along a sample carrying microchannel. Any flow passing through the microchannel is subject to linear heating. Fluorescent monitoring of DNA in the flow results in the generation of DNA melting curve plots. This works presents an experimental technique where DNA melting curve analysis is used to measure the thermal resistance of microchannel substrates. DNA in solution is tested at a number of different ramp rates and the di®erent apparent denaturation temperatures measured are used to infer the thermal resistance of the microchannel substrates. The apparent variation in denaturation temperature is found to be linearly proportional to flow ramp rate. Providing knowledge of the microchannel diameter and a non-varying cross-section in the direction of heat flux the thermal resistance measurement technique is independent of knowledge of substrate dimensions, contact surface quality and substrate composition/material properties. In this approach to microchannel DNA melting curve analysis the difference between the measured and actual denaturation temperatures is proportional to the substrate thermal resistance and the ramp-rate seen by the sample. Therefore quantitative knowledge of the substrate thermal resistance is required when using this technique to measure accurately DNA denaturation temperatur

Understanding and Quantifying Bioaerosol Fate Within the Aerobiological Pathway: Physical Transport, Environmental Decay, and Mitigation

The recent COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the need for better tools to understand and characterize phases of the aerobiological pathway, a model for understanding how infectious bioaerosols are sourced, generated, transported, deposit, and affect human health. This dissertation presents validation of methodologies for studying transport of airborne biological agents and variations on their consequences, especially focusing on their physical and chemical fate. Chapter 1 focuses on a parallel comparison of two methods of aging bioaerosols in real-world outdoor environments with complex sunlight, atmospheric chemistry, and pollutants. Both capture on microfibers and the use of Goldberg rotating drums to keep a test population of particles aloft performed nearly identically for the aging of Bacillus thuringiensis spores, suggesting that both techniques are valid for understanding how biological agents interact with and deactivate in their unique environment. Chapter 2 establishes a real-time fluorescent particle tracer technique, historically used in biodefense, to characterize physical fate of bioaerosols in complex environments, focusing on exposure risk upon Boeing 767 and 777 aircraft. Both aircraft had high air-change rates, and limited forward to aft air movement, such that overall risk of superspreader events is likely low, but contaminants do remain within the immediate space of a release, especially the same row. Coupling physical and chemical fate allows better capture of the overall risk of infection to susceptible persons, and Chapter 3 applies the Chapter 2 methodology to quantify and optimize the placement of portable HEPA filters as a mitigation for infectious airborne disease within a hospital ship environment. Testing real-time differences in aerosol clearance, allows for comparison of possible outcomes to uninfected patients and staff. Combining physical removal and biological decay (as in Chapter 1) comes in a Wells-Riley probability of infection model, utilized across a wide range of possible number of patients or severity of cases. Ultimately, portable HEPA filters can both bring function of an older clinical space to more modern ventilation standards and reduce the probability of infection in statistically significant ways, with a 2.8x increase in time to achieve a similar probability of infection in this study

Concentration of white blood cells from whole blood by dual centrifugo-pneumatic siphoning with density gradient medium

Due to the pervasiveness of HIV infections in developing countries there exists a need for a low-cost, user-friendly point-of-care device which can be used to monitor the concentration of T-lymphocytes in the patient’s blood expressing the CD4+ epitope. As a first step towards developing a microfluidic “lab-on-a-disc” platform with this aim we present the concentration of white blood cells from whole blood using a density medium in conjunction with centrifugo-pneumatic siphon valves [1]. Two such valves are actuated simultaneously, removing the bulk of plasma through the upper valve and the bulk of WBCs through the lower valve while leaving the vast majority of red blood cells in the centrifugal chamber

Tunable silk: using microfluidics to investigate sequence-structure-property relationships

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Boston UniversitySilk is an ancient material that is produced in nature by both silkworms and spiders and has been used in textiles for thousands o·f years. Stronger than steel and tougher than Kevlar, silk fibers possess a unique combination of strength and elasticity. Silk is also biodegradable and biocompatible, and has been the focus of research areas ranging from fiber optics to tissue regeneration. While textile applications utilize raw silkworm silk, biomedical applications rely primarily on regenerated silk, which is derived from silkworm cocoons and reprocessed into the desired material. Additionally, there has been much progress in the area of recombinant silk technology, where genetically engineered proteins are inspired by or mimic: native silk sequences. However, despite major advancements in silk engineering, native silk spinning - a remarkable process that takes place at ambient temperature and pressure- is still not completely understood. Given these gaps in knowledge, it remains a challenge in the field to fabricate a regenerated or recombinant material that can mimic the outstanding properties of native silks. We have developed a novel microfluidic silk processing technique that mimics aspects of silkworm spinning to transform aqueous silk solution into fibers in a highly controlled manner. By altering flow parameters within the device and utilizing post-spin processing, we can tune properties such as fiber diameter and Young's modulus across a broad range for tailored applications. Unlike alternative processing methods, we can fabricate a fiber from as little as 50 micro-liters of silk solution or spin continuously for up to two hours to produce a non-woven mesh from a single fiber approximately 6.5 meters long. Using this device we have fabricated regenerated silk fibers to investigate cell behavior, incorporated silk fibers into cell sheets to provide structural support, and fabricated non-woven silk meshes for use as structural support layers for multi-layer tissue constructs. We have also spun multiple variants of recombinant silk-like sequences. We have optimized this device for use as a low-volume sequence screening tool as part of a combined computational and experimental approach to further the understanding of both native and recombinant silk protein folding and hierarchical assembly

his Body Well Be Red : The Politics Of Representing The Body In the Faerie Queene

This study explores the representations of the body in Edmund Spenser\u27s The Faerie Queene and several other early modern texts. It takes as its premise the Foucauldian notion that the body, born into culture, is never entirely present in itself, but that it is actively produced in discourse; the body is not simply the object on which power operates but the result of a negotiation of its fashionings. The apparent naturalness of bodily presence is used in discursive practice for its authority, and constructions of the body lend formative force to ideological and political ideas and organizations. The regulation of the body that is culture can be perpetuated, resisted, and/or negotiated through the representation of the body. These dimensions and potentialities form the focus of this study.;In an attempt to suggest the cultural embeddedness of Spenser\u27s representations of the body, I employ some of the practices of the new historicisms and cultural materialisms; I have incorporated a variety of other early modern discursive material and have read this material against The Faerie Queene. This study contains four chapters, each of which examines a different kind of bodying forth. The first chapter explores, through the cave of Mammon episode, the sometimes conflictual meeting of the discourse of mining with the discourse of anatomy, and probes the debate between Mammonic mercantilism and pastoral nostalgia that takes place over the body of the earth. My second chapter, a reading of the lower region of the house of Alma, is concerned with the constitutive linkage between the excremental production of the lower bodily stratum and those bodies constructed as \u27low\u27 in the social order. The penultimate chapter concerns the discursive production of subjectivity, and explores class and gender absolutes as they are produced on and about three Spenserian bodies: Braggadocchio, Mirabella, and Duessa. The final chapter considers bodies designated as monstrous, particularly the giant Argante, and examines the deployment of narratives of sibling incest as they contribute to this designation. The representations of the body in The Faerie Queene and other early modern texts perform political and ideological work