When Daughters Leave:Essay Writing and The Fugitive Subject

Following Paul Heilker’s suggestion in his book, The Essay: Theory and Pedagogy for an Active Form (1996), that we should think of the essay as ‘less than a thing than it is an action, less an artifact than an activity, less a noun than a verb’, this paper eschews conventional academic forms of critiques and imagines a more open form that makes room for the personal, the subjective, the conceptual and the creative, thus writing critique as a rhetorical, textual and creative performance. Reading and writing about two poems that draw on the myth of Demeter and Persephone, and threaded through by other writers and theorists, and experiences, ‘When Daughters Leave’ performs a ‛tableau vivant’ of subjectivity on the page by employing two individual ‘I’ voices who function both separately, neither a ‘we’ nor an ‘I’, to highlight the porous quality of that first person pronoun. The essay also explores the textual and affective terrain of mothers and daughters as subjects and objects of writing, and as metaphors for thinking about subjectivity in an essay about essay writing

Dust in Brown Dwarfs IV. Dust formation and driven turbulence on mesoscopic scales

Dust formation in brown dwarf atmospheres is studied by utilising a model for driven turbulence in the mesoscopic scale regime. We apply a pseudo-spectral method where waves are created and superimposed within a limited wavenumber interval. The turbulent kinetic energy distribution follows the Kolmogoroff spectrum which is assumed to be the most likely value. Such superimposed, stochastic waves may occur in a convectively active environment. They cause nucleation fronts and nucleation events and thereby initiate the dust formation process which continues until all condensible material is consumed. Small disturbances are found to have a large impact on the dust forming system. An initially dust-hostile region, which may originally be optically thin, becomes optically thick in a patchy way showing considerable variations in the dust properties during the formation process. The dust appears in lanes and curls as a result of the interaction with waves, i.e. turbulence, which form larger and larger structures with time. Aiming on a physical understanding of the variability of brown dwarfs, related to structure formation in substellar atmospheres, we work out first necessary criteria for small-scale closure models to be applied in macroscopic simulations of dust forming astrophysical systems.Comment: A&A accepted, 20 page

Educational Gerontology

The aging population in the developed world has implied increasing age diversity in the workforce of organizations. Consequently, mutual perceptions about one’s coworkers and age discrimination are becoming increasingly important. This study aims to explore how perceptions about older workers’ work (un)adaptability, work effectiveness, and workplace age discrimination vary according to participants’ psychosocial factors, such as age group, gender, education level, and work sector. This study included a sample of 453 workers in Portugal, diverse in terms of age, gender, education level, and work sector. Four different instruments were used: (a) a sociodemographic questionnaire; (b) an older workers’ Work Adaptability scale; (c) an older workers’ Work Effectiveness Scale and; (d) the Workplace Age Discrimination Scale (WADS). Results: Middle-aged and older participants perceive older workers as more adaptable than younger participants. The oldest group of participants perceives older workers to be more workeffective and experience the highest levels of age discrimination in the workplace, when compared to the other age groups. Also, participants with lower levels of education tend to perceive higher levels of workplace age discrimination, when compared to participants with high school and higher education. Conclusions: Generational perceptions in the workplace are perceived by workers differently, hence organizations should implement age management strategies to address age discrimination, particularly due to the increasing proportion of older workers.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Sexual well-being in older adults: A qualitative study with older adults from Portugal and Slovenia

Introduction Beyond living longer, it is increasingly important to live with more and better health during aging; sexual well-being was found to contribute to health and well-being in old age and is highly under-researched in the older population. This study aims to analyze sexual well-being in a cross-cultural way through older Portuguese and Slovenian older samples. Methods We interviewed 136 older participants with an average age of 71.6 years old. Participants were Portuguese and Slovenian and lived in the community. Participants were subjected to semi-structured interviews and these were subjected to a content analysis process. Results The content analysis indicated nine themes related to sexual well-being: self-reported good health; demonstrations of love; non-sexual joint activities; overall well-being and quality of life; partner support; positive self-image; being independent and active; sexual compatibility; and masturbation. Conclusions Portuguese older adults experience their sexual well-being associated mainly with self-reported good health and demonstrations of love, while Slovenians older adults associate their sexual well-being mainly with non-sexual joint activities and overall well-being and quality of life. Policy Implications The themes found in this study are fundamental evidence for cultural interventions and guidelines outlining in the context of sexual health in aging, mainly due to the scarcity of knowledge of sexual well-being among older adults.Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia - FCTinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

What distresses sexual well-being among older adults in different cultures? A qualitative study with Slovenian and Portuguese older adults

Objective To analyze the perspectives of sexual unwellness (SU) of Portuguese and Slovenian older adults was the objective of this study. A qualitative research was carried out, in which these perceptions were analyzed at a cultural level. Methods The sample of this study consisted of 136 older participants, between 65 and 96 years of age. Participants were of two different nationalities and lived in the community. Participants were interviewed, and all interviews were carried out through the process of literal transcription and subsequent content analysis. Results Eight key mutually exclusive themes emerged from the interviews: unavailability of partner; traditional values; body restrictions; low self-esteem and well-being; poor social support; dissatisfaction with physical appearance; pain during sex; and difficulties meeting new people. Unavailability of partner was the most important theme (17.9%) for the studied sample and specifically among Portuguese participants. Conversely, difficulties meeting new people were the least reported theme (6.8%) for the entire sample. For Slovenians traditional values were most relevant with respect to feeling sexually unwell. Conclusions Older adults from two different countries reported diverse sexual experiences. Eight mutual-exclusive themes were extensively illustrated. Policy Implications These findings are evidence for cultural-adapted interventions and policy making in the context of older adults’ sexual well-being, particularly in terms of its relation with aging well.Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia - FCTinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio