The Icy Bride and the Invisible Husband: Shivering Solitary Pleasure in Horacio Quiroga’s “El almohadón de plumas” (1917)

Despite the extensive scholarship on Horacio Quiroga’s “El almohadón de plumas,” no study has established a direct correlation between the enigmatic illness of the sexually frustrated bride and prevalent nineteenth-century medical discourses on female frigidity and masturbation. When taking into account these treatises, the infamous deathly “parasite” found lurking inside of Alicia’s feather pillow can be reinterpreted as a metaphor for her wasteful onanistic indulgences caused by sensual dissatisfaction.1 Given the warnings in masturbation treatises surrounding the parasitical nature of feather bedding, Alicia’s vampiric pillow not only points to her solitary pleasures, but she also displays several other characteristics that paralleled the causes, symptoms and consequences of masturbation in medical treatises of the time.2 Alicia is described as a wealthy woman who spends each day in boredom and solitude in a desolate palace, highlighting the medical idea that idleness would lead one to indulge in solitary pleasures, which I will explain later in the article. The character is also a shivering blonde who feels coldness towards her husband on their honeymoon, hinting that she is suffering from the nineteenth-century pathology of frigidity which, according to physicians, would lead wives to masturbate for their inability to achieve arousal in coitus, a tenet present in medical discourses that I will broach in my analysis of the text. Alicia’s frigidity and propensity towards self-pleasure is foreshadowed by the excess of white marble that adorns her chilly autumn-like home, hinting that she is plagued with fluor albus, a female disorder that physicians linked to masturbation. Spending her days alone in the wintery, palace-like abode, causes Alicia to suffer from inexplicable melancholy and fits of crying, behaviors that medical treatises also attributed to the guilty indulgences of masturbation. When Alicia’s emotional and physical discontent with her husband intensifies, she permanently retreats to her bed to fulfill her neglected needs through what can be interpreted as autoerotic reveries. In addition to the idea that excessive sleeping was linked to onanism, there was also the belief that masturbation triggered anemia, emaciation, cerebral apoplexy, debilitation, pallor, delirium and nightmares, all of which are ailments that plague Alicia throughout her solitary time in bed.3 Through what can be understood as Alicia’s onanistic excesses and rejection of her sexually inept husband, Quiroga exposes a crisis of masculinity in fin-de-siècle society provoked by medical theories that stressed a woman’s natural need for sensual gratification. Due to the wintery imagery connected with Alicia’s corporeality, her marital erotic disappointment and subsequent masturbatory practices, I claim that Quiroga molds her character as an incarnation of the frigid hysterical bride discussed in nineteenth-century medical treatises, a sexually insatiable woman who was often said to indulge in autoerotic pleasure to satisfy her desires left unfulfilled by marital coitus.

The Hysterical Mirror: Staged Masturbatory Fantasy and Gender Transgression in Late Nineteenth Century Male Authored Literature of the Hispanic World

This dissertation analyzes how male authors of late nineteenth to early twentieth century Spain and Latin America used the themes of masturbatory fantasy, mirror gazing, and illness to display struggles of living up to unattainable gender norms. These works include Francisco de Sales Mayo’s La condesita (1869), Eduardo Zamacois’s La enferma (1896), and Alberto Insúa’s Las neuróticas (1910) in Spain. For the Latin American perspective, I analyze “Los perseguidos” (1908), “Los guantes de goma” (1909), and “La meningitis y su sombra” (1917) by Uruguayan writer Horacio Quiroga. These texts expose a shared crisis of masculinity provoked by arguments for female equality, women’s desires to remain independent, and the pressure for men to fulfill women’s wants. This male predicament was also aroused by oppressive hegemonic standards of masculinity and medical discourses that compelled men to display virile prowess, self-control, and dominance over the public sphere. I also show how individuals who deviated from gender ideals in fin-de-siècle society would risk being labeled as sick, hysterical social outcasts, leading them to hide their true selves behind a façade of conformity. Because of these tensions between private wants and social expectations, individuals turned to the mirror, real or figurative, to enter a fantasy realm where they could explore their forbidden wants. Solitary mirror encounters are masturbatory reveries in which characters undergo a pleasurable retreat into the self, becoming the subject and object of their desires. In this introspective autoerotic journey, characters experiment with identities that rebel against gender ideals in a fearful, yet enticing process of self-spectatorship. Through masturbatory fantasy the characters “go on stage” to participate in a performance of the self where they negotiate their identities, judging themselves from an external perspective. This auto-scrutiny involves seeing oneself through the gaze of a desiring, liberated other who disregards social constraints to pursue his or her own wants. However, the pleasures involved in this trial of the self are interrupted by the condemning gazes of society and physicians, who remind them of the supposed immorality of their transgressions.Doctor of Philosoph

The biology, behaviour and survival of pupating false codling moth, Thaumatotibia leucotreta (Meyrick) (Lepidoptera: Tortricidae), a citrus pest in South Africa

Control of the citrus pest, false codling moth (FCM), Thaumatotibia leucotreta Meyrick (Lepidoptera: Tortricidae) is crucial for the South African citrus industry. The economic losses and phytosanitary status of this pest, coupled with increased consumer awareness and demands, has created a need for effective, IPM-compatible control measures for use against the soil-dwelling life stages of FCM. Promising developments in the field of microbial control through the use of entomopathogenic fungi (EPF) and entomopathogenic nematodes (EPNs) have highlighted the need for research regarding pupation biology, behaviour and survival of FCM, as a good understanding of biology of the target organism is an important component of any biological control programme. The aim of this study was to improve the current understanding of FCM pupation habits through the manipulation of soil texture class, ground cover, shading, soil compaction, air temperature, and soil moisture in the laboratory. These findings would then be used to aid the biological control programmes using EPF and EPNs against FCM in the soil. Three soil texture classes (sandy loam, silt loam and silty clay loam) were obtained from orchards for use in the study. FCM larvae were allowed to drop into the soil of their own accord and the pupation behaviour that followed was then captured on film with pupae formed in the soil being kept in order to measure adult eclosion. In general, very few abiotic factors had a clear influence on FCM pupation. Larval wandering time and distance was short, but also variable between individuals. Distance did increase when soils were moist. Pupation depth was shallow, with pupal cocoons generally being formed on the soil surface. Depth of pupation was less than one centimetre for all abiotic conditions, with little burrowing into soil. Eclosion success was higher for sandier soils when these were dry and uncompacted, but the addition of both moisture and soil compaction increased FCM eclosion success. FCM was sensitive to desiccation when the soils were dry and temperature limits of 15 °C and 32 °C had a strongly negative impact on eclosion success. Preferences for particular abiotic conditions were limited to only certain moisture conditions when interacting with soil texture class and a preference for pupating in soil when it is available. Limited preference was found for particular soil textures despite this having a strong influence on eclosion success, but individuals did appear to pupate in close proximity to one another. Viable direct habitat manipulation for FCM control could not be identified. These results and all of the abiotic variables measured have important implications for EPF and EPN application, survival and persistence in the soil in order to improve the ability of these biological control agents to control FCM. These are discussed in each chapter

Streptolysin O and NAD-Glycohydrolase Prevent Phagolysosome Acidification and Promote Group A Streptococcus Survival in Macrophages

ABSTRACT Group A Streptococcus (GAS, Streptococcus pyogenes) is an ongoing threat to human health as the agent of streptococcal pharyngitis, skin and soft tissue infections, and life-threatening conditions such as necrotizing fasciitis and streptococcal toxic shock syndrome. In animal models of infection, macrophages have been shown to contribute to host defense against GAS infection. However, as GAS can resist killing by macrophages in vitro and induce macrophage cell death, it has been suggested that GAS intracellular survival in macrophages may enable persistent infection. Using isogenic mutants, we now show that the GAS pore-forming toxin streptolysin O (SLO) and its cotoxin NAD-glycohydrolase (NADase) mediate GAS intracellular survival and cytotoxicity for macrophages. Unexpectedly, the two toxins did not inhibit fusion of GAS-containing phagosomes with lysosomes but rather prevented phagolysosome acidification. SLO served two essential functions, poration of the phagolysosomal membrane and translocation of NADase into the macrophage cytosol, both of which were necessary for maximal GAS intracellular survival. Whereas NADase delivery to epithelial cells is mediated by SLO secreted from GAS bound to the cell surface, in macrophages, the source of SLO and NADase is GAS contained within phagolysosomes. We found that transfer of NADase from the phagolysosome to the macrophage cytosol occurs not by simple diffusion through SLO pores but rather by a specific translocation mechanism that requires the N-terminal translocation domain of NADase. These results illuminate the mechanisms through which SLO and NADase enable GAS to defeat macrophage-mediated killing and provide new insight into the virulence of a major human pathogen

The Auditory Comprehension of Unaccusative Verbs in Aphasia

Some persons with aphasia, particularly those diagnosed with a Broca’s aphasia, exhibit a delayed time course of lexical activation in canonically ordered S-V-O sentences (Ferrill et al., 2012) and delayed re-activation of displaced arguments in sentences that contain syntactic dependencies (Love et al., 2008). These patterns support the Delayed Lexical Activation (DLA) hypothesis: Lexical activation is delayed relative to the normal case, and thus lexical activation and syntactic operations are de-synchronized; that is, lexical access is too slow for normally fast-acting syntactic operations. This delay in lexical access leads to what appear to be syntactic comprehension deficits in aphasia. In the current study we further examined lexical activation during sentence comprehension in persons with aphasia by using unaccusative verbs. Unaccusative verbs are a type of intransitive verb with a single argument that is base generated in object position and displaced to the surface subject position, leaving behind a copy or trace (‘gap’) of the movement (see, for example, Burzio, 1986), as in: 1. The girl vanished Thus there is a syntactic dependency between the two positions. When encountering sentences that contain syntactic dependencies (e.g., object relatives, Wh-questions) neurologically unimpaired individuals immediately reactivate the displaced argument at the gap (Shapiro et al., 1999; Love et al., 2008). In contrast to this immediate reactivation, prior findings indicate that neurologically unimpaired individuals do not reactivate the displaced argument in similar sentences with unaccusative verbs until 750ms downstream from the gap (Friedmann et al., 2008). This built-in delay observed with unaccusative verbs in neurologically healthy participants provides a unique opportunity to further examine lexical delays in individuals with Broca’s aphasia. Importantly, individuals with Broca’s aphasia may have unaccusative verb deficits. Previous research has found that persons with aphasia have difficulty producing unaccusative verbs. Offline truth-value judgment tasks with intransitive sentences containing unaccusative verbs do not reveal comprehension deficits (Lee & Thompson, 2004). However, in a sentence-picture matching task, McAllister et al. (2009) found lower accuracy for intransitive sentences that contained unaccusative verbs than transitive sentences. We entertain the following hypothesis: The delayed lexical access routines better synchronize with the delay of reactivating the argument of unaccusatives, suggesting that individuals with Broca’s aphasia should evince a pattern like that of unimpaired individuals. Alternatively, participants with Broca’s aphasia might show activation even further downstream from the gap, given that in other sentence constructions containing syntactic dependencies they exhibit a delayed pattern of reactivation compared to neurologically unimpaired individuals

Haven or hell? : A perspective on the ecology of offshore oil and gas platforms

We acknowledge in-kind support from Net Zero Technology Centre and the University of Aberdeen through their partnership in the UK National Decommissioning Centre. Also E. Carr for graphical assistance.Peer reviewe

Aminopyralid + Metsulfuron-Methyl for Cost-Effective Control of Hard to Kill Pasture Weeds

This paper summarises research trials conducted from 2010 to 2013 to determine speed of brownout and efficacy of an aminopyralid + metsulfuron-methyl herbicide product in pastures compared to metsulfuron alone and current commercial standards

Individual Tree Detection in Large-Scale Urban Environments using High-Resolution Multispectral Imagery

We introduce a novel deep learning method for detection of individual trees in urban environments using high-resolution multispectral aerial imagery. We use a convolutional neural network to regress a confidence map indicating the locations of individual trees, which are localized using a peak finding algorithm. Our method provides complete spatial coverage by detecting trees in both public and private spaces, and can scale to very large areas. We performed a thorough evaluation of our method, supported by a new dataset of over 1,500 images and almost 100,000 tree annotations, covering eight cities, six climate zones, and three image capture years. We trained our model on data from Southern California, and achieved a precision of 73.6% and recall of 73.3% using test data from this region. We generally observed similar precision and slightly lower recall when extrapolating to other California climate zones and image capture dates. We used our method to produce a map of trees in the entire urban forest of California, and estimated the total number of urban trees in California to be about 43.5 million. Our study indicates the potential for deep learning methods to support future urban forestry studies at unprecedented scales