Hero of the inglorious kind: Bukowski and the American Dream

27 p. -- Bibliogr.: p. 26-27Charles Bukowski is, perhaps, one of the most recognizable authors of the second half of the 20th century because of his direct, almost raw form of writing. Nevertheless, one of the major implications of this work has been neglected: his criticism of the philosophical and social construct of the American Dream, one of the first marks of identity of the United States of America, which is still present to this day. In this context, this essay is focused on the analysis of the Bukowskian depiction of the ideal in the novels Post Office (1971), and Factotum (1975) and on the autobiographical magnum opus of the author, Ham on Rye (1981). It is argued that the American Dream is portrayed as a source of alienation, victimization, and dehumanization of the character and the working class as a whole via the character of Henry Chinaski, Bukowski’s alter ego. To this end, the paper firstly includes the historical and literary framework of Bukowski’s works in order to provide the reader a basic understanding of the American Dream, as well as Bukowski’s placement in the American literary canon and his own relationship with the Dream inspiring his writings. The analysis of the characterization of the Dream in Bukowskian literature covers the following aspects: a) the topic of isolation, implying the character’s rebellion, his individual victimization within the family sphere and the social mainstream, and the victimization of the working class; and b) the character’s embracement of the reality of the Dream, which will lead to the auto destructive tendencies of alcoholism and suicide. The major claim of this paper is that through his alter ego, Bukowski exposes the reality of the American Dream as a source of a generalized disillusionment (rather than the prosperity it promises), and in the case of the collective of the working class, a social collapse translated into its dehumanization. Apart from this, this essay also discusses how the character’s resistance against the Dream will only result into an existential crisis, related to the conflict between his desire to break with mainstream American values and the need to accept them in order to survive in 20th century American society

Hero of the inglorious kind: Bukowski and the American Dream

27 p. -- Bibliogr.: p. 26-27Charles Bukowski is, perhaps, one of the most recognizable authors of the second half of the 20th century because of his direct, almost raw form of writing. Nevertheless, one of the major implications of this work has been neglected: his criticism of the philosophical and social construct of the American Dream, one of the first marks of identity of the United States of America, which is still present to this day. In this context, this essay is focused on the analysis of the Bukowskian depiction of the ideal in the novels Post Office (1971), and Factotum (1975) and on the autobiographical magnum opus of the author, Ham on Rye (1981). It is argued that the American Dream is portrayed as a source of alienation, victimization, and dehumanization of the character and the working class as a whole via the character of Henry Chinaski, Bukowski’s alter ego. To this end, the paper firstly includes the historical and literary framework of Bukowski’s works in order to provide the reader a basic understanding of the American Dream, as well as Bukowski’s placement in the American literary canon and his own relationship with the Dream inspiring his writings. The analysis of the characterization of the Dream in Bukowskian literature covers the following aspects: a) the topic of isolation, implying the character’s rebellion, his individual victimization within the family sphere and the social mainstream, and the victimization of the working class; and b) the character’s embracement of the reality of the Dream, which will lead to the auto destructive tendencies of alcoholism and suicide. The major claim of this paper is that through his alter ego, Bukowski exposes the reality of the American Dream as a source of a generalized disillusionment (rather than the prosperity it promises), and in the case of the collective of the working class, a social collapse translated into its dehumanization. Apart from this, this essay also discusses how the character’s resistance against the Dream will only result into an existential crisis, related to the conflict between his desire to break with mainstream American values and the need to accept them in order to survive in 20th century American society

Analytics of type IIB flux vacua and their mass spectra

We analyze the tree-level potential of type IIB flux compactifications in warped Calabi-Yau orientifolds, in regions of weak coupling and moderately large complex structure. In this regime, one may approximate the flux-induced superpotential $W$ by a polynomial on the axio-dilaton and complex structure fields, and a significant fraction of vacua corresponds to a quadratic $W$. In this quadratic case, we argue that vacua fall into three classes, for which one can push the analytic description of their features. In particular, we provide analytic expressions for the vacuum expectation values and flux-induced masses of the axio-dilaton and complex structure fields in a large subclass of vacua, independently of the Calabi-Yau and the number of moduli. We show that supersymmetric vacua always contain flat directions, at least at this level of approximation. Our findings allow to generate vast ensembles of flux vacua in specific Calabi-Yau geometries, as we illustrate in a particular example.Comment: 36 pages + appendices, 5 figure

Symmetric fluxes and small tadpoles

The analysis of type IIB flux vacua on warped Calabi--Yau orientifolds becomes considerably involved for a large number of complex structure fields. We however show that, for a quadratic flux superpotential, one can devise simplifying schemes which effectively reduce the large number of equations down to a few. This can be achieved by imposing the vanishing of certain flux quanta in the large complex structure regime, and then choosing the remaining quanta to respect the symmetries of the underlying prepotential. One can then implement an algorithm to find large families of flux vacua with a fixed flux tadpole, independently of the number of fields. We illustrate this approach in a Calabi--Yau manifold with 51 complex structure moduli, where several reduction schemes can be implemented in order to explicitly solve the vacuum equations for that sector. Our findings display a flux-tadpole-to-stabilized-moduli ratio that is marginally above the bound proposed by the Tadpole Conjecture, and we discuss several effects that would take us below such a bound.Comment: 42 pages + appendices, 3 figure

Surgical treatment for recurrent cholangiocarcinoma: a single-center series

PurposeThe present study aims to assess the results obtained after surgical treatment of cholangiocarcinoma (CC) recurrences.MethodsWe carried out a single-center retrospective study, including all patients with recurrence of CC. The primary outcome was patient survival after surgical treatment compared with chemotherapy or best supportive care. A multivariate analysis of variables affecting mortality after CC recurrence was performed.ResultsEighteen patients were indicated surgery to treat CC recurrence. Severe postoperative complication rate was 27.8% with a 30-day mortality rate of 16.7%. Median survival after surgery was 15 months (range 0-50) with 1- and 3-year patient survival rates of 55.6% and 16.6%, respectively. Patient survival after surgery or CHT alone, was significantly better than receiving supportive care (p< 0.001). We found no significant difference in survival when comparing CHT alone and surgical treatment (p=0.113). Time to recurrence of <1 year, adjuvant CHT after resection of the primary tumor and undergoing surgery or CHT alone versus best supportive care were independent factors affecting mortality after CC recurrence in the multivariate analysis.ConclusionSurgery or CHT alone improved patient survival after CC recurrence compared to best supportive care. Surgical treatment did not improve patient survival compared to CHT alone

Traffic generator using Perlin Noise

Trabajo presentado a IEEE Global Communications Conference, Globecom 2012; Optical Networks and Systems (ONS) Symposium, 3-7 de diciembre de 2012. Anaheim (Estados Unidos)Study of high speed networks such as optical next generation burst or packet switched networks require large amounts of synthetic traffic to feed simulators. Methods to generate self-similar long range dependent traffic already exist but they usually work by generating large blocks of traffic of fixed time duration. This limits simulated time or require very high amount of data to be stored before simulation. On this work it is shown how self-similar traffic can be generated using Perlin Noise, an algorithm commonly used to generate 2D/3D noise for natural looking graphics. 1-dimension Perlin Noise can be interpreted as network traffic and used to generate long range dependent traffic for network simulation. The algorithm is compared to more classical approach Random Midpoint Displacement showing at traffic generated is similar but can be generated continuously with no fixed block size.This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation through the research project INSTINCT (TEC-2010-21178-C02-01). Also, the authors want to thank Spanish thematic network IPoTN (TEC2010-12250-E) and Public University of Navarre for funding through PIF grant

Surgical treatment for recurrent cholangiocarcinoma: a single-center series

Purpose: The present study aims to assess the results obtained after surgical treatment of cholangiocarcinoma (CC) recurrences. Methods: We carried out a single-center retrospective study, including all patients with recurrence of CC. The primary outcome was patient survival after surgical treatment compared with chemotherapy or best supportive care. A multivariate analysis of variables affecting mortality after CC recurrence was performed. Results: Eighteen patients were indicated surgery to treat CC recurrence. Severe postoperative complication rate was 27.8% with a 30-day mortality rate of 16.7%. Median survival after surgery was 15 months (range 0-50) with 1- and 3-year patient survival rates of 55.6% and 16.6%, respectively. Patient survival after surgery or CHT alone, was significantly better than receiving supportive care (p< 0.001). We found no significant difference in survival when comparing CHT alone and surgical treatment (p=0.113). Time to recurrence of <1 year, adjuvant CHT after resection of the primary tumor and undergoing surgery or CHT alone versus best supportive care were independent factors affecting mortality after CC recurrence in the multivariate analysis. Conclusion: Surgery or CHT alone improved patient survival after CC recurrence compared to best supportive care. Surgical treatment did not improve patient survival compared to CHT alone

A case of COVID-19 immediately after liver transplantation: Not only bad news

COVID-19, the illness caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus originated in December 2019 in Wuhan, China and has caused more 3,3 million cases and more than 230,000 deaths throughout the world, with 25,000 of them only in Spain, where the first case was diagnosed on January 31st, 2020. As COVID-19 is a "new" disease, we still do not have data on prognosis or treatment in transplant patients or on how to manage immunosuppression in this complex scenario. We present a case of COVID-19 diagnosed during the early postoperative period in a recipient whose liver transplantation was performed on late March during the lockdown in Spain, with donor and recipient previously negative rRT-PCR to SARS-CoV-2. In the first post-operative week the patient suffered COVID-19 pneumonia that was treated with immunosuppression minimization, oral Hydroxycloroquine and Azithromycin with favorable outcome. The patient was discharged on POD 21 without complications. To date, few early post-liver transplantation SARS-CoV-2 infected recipients have been published, but only one was an early postoperative infection. In our case the outcome was favorable, even though it was an early post -liver transplantation COVID-19 in a frail patient

From target analysis to suspect and non-target screening of endocrine-disrupting compounds in human urine

[EN] In the present work, a target analysis method for simultaneously determining 24 diverse endocrine-disrupting compounds (EDCs) in urine (benzophenones, bisphenols, parabens, phthalates and antibacterials) was developed. The target analysis approach (including enzymatic hydrolysis, clean-up by solid-phase extraction and analysis by liquid chromatography coupled to tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS)) was optimized, validated and applied to volunteers' samples, in which 67% of the target EDCs were quantified. For instance, benzophenone-3 (0.2-13 ng g(-1)), bisphenol A (7.7-13.7 ng g(-1)), methyl 3,5-dihydroxybenzoate (8-254 ng g(-1)), mono butyl phthalate (2-17 ng g(-1)) and triclosan (0.3-9 ng g(-1)) were found at the highest concentrations, but the presence of other analogues was detected as well. The developed target method was further extended to suspect and non-target screening (SNTS) by means of LC coupled to high-resolution MS/MS. First, well-defined workflows for SNTS were validated by applying the previously developed method to an extended list of compounds (83), and then, to the same real urine samples. From a list of approximately 4000 suspects, 33 were annotated at levels from 1 to 3, with food additives/ingredients and personal care products being the most abundant ones. In the non-target approach, the search was limited to molecules containing S, Cl and/or Br atoms, annotating 4 pharmaceuticals. The results from this study showed that the combination of the lower limits of detection of MS/MS and the identification power of high-resolution MS/MS is still compulsory for a more accurate definition of human exposome in urine samples.Open Access funding provided thanks to the CRUE-CSIC agreement with Springer Nature. This work has been financially supported by the Ministry of Science and Innovation of the Spanish Government through project PID2020-117686RB-C31, and by the Education Department of the Basque Government as a consolidated group of the Basque Research System (IT1213-19)