The Register, 1980-01-11

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"If only I could get to that place": Tragedy and the American Dream in Cristina Henriquez's "The Book of Unknown Americans"

In Cristina Henriquez's "The Book of Unknown Americans", the theme of the American Dream unfulfilled forms the crux of the characters' tragedies. In this paper, the author examines this theme, and the ambivalent readers response that the narratives cause

“Among Mankind’s Deepest Needs”: Repetitive Grief and Intimate Isolation in Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being and Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude

In this paper, the author considers how two novels, though written by wholly different men from wholly different regions, manage to evoke a similar perspective on the concept of grief–born out of relational instances of shame, sacrifice, and betrayal–as it arises in close relationships. Both authors seek to portray the griefs experienced by their respective characters in an equally realistic and compassionate manner. In exploring the intimacy which exists on multiple levels–both in the isolation of the relationship itself, as well as in the further, personal isolation of individuals recognizing the failures of their relationships–both Kundera and Garcia Marquez have managed to create a vastly complex and full-bodied picture of grief as it exists within the realm of the intimate relationship. Through the use of similar repetitive structures, philosophizing narrators, and excursions into the world of magical realism, both authors create a means of exploring the way in which grief, iterated cyclically and perpetually, shapes a close relationship, and ultimately redefines the very nature of the intimacy itself

Context, Opportunity, and the Potential for Presidential Greatness

The American Presidency is increasingly considered the cornerstone of successful government. The responsibilities and power of the office are intriguing to presidential scholars and the average American alike. The legaciespresident’s leave are valuable because they affect the way we think about our past and the expectations we put on current presidents. Many polls have been administered to historians and other experts to attempt to rank presidentialgreatness. These polls, which have been made readily available in the media, provide us with a list of great presidents and presidents who were failure. But they do not provide an explanation for these rankings. All evaluations of presidential leadership must use value judgments to establish standards of comparison. By examiningtrends within these polls, it becomes possible to gain insight into the particular standards the respondents used in their evaluations. This paper examines reasons for the patterns observed in these polls. Using theories developed bySkowronek, Kernell, and Lowi, it tests a series of hypotheses which explain presidential success using environmental forces independent of personality. The results shed light on the issue of whether political dynamics or individual ability determines presidential success

Hydrography and bottom boundary layer dynamics : influence on inner shelf sediment mobility, Long Bay, NC

Storm-driven processes produced by atmospheric and meteorological forcing dictate sediment transport events in the bottom boundary layer on the inner continental shelf. This study examined the hydrography and bottom boundary layer dynamics of two typical storm events affecting coastal North Carolina, a hurricane and the November event consisting of two small consecutive extratropical storms during the autumn of 2005. Two upward-looking 1200-kHz Acoustic Doppler Current Profilers (ADCP) were deployed at two separate locations on the inner continental shelf of northern Long Bay, North Carolina at water depths of less than 15 m. Both instruments profiled the overlying water column in 0.35 m bins beginning at a height of 1.35 m above the bottom (mab). Simultaneous measurements of wind speed and direction, wave and current parameters, and acoustic backscatter were coupled with output from a bottom boundary layer (bbl) model to describe the hydrography and boundary layer conditions during each event. The bbl model also was used to generate current and suspended sediment concentration profiles and to quantify sediment transport in the boundary layer during each storm. Both study sites exhibited similar temporal trends in response to changing physical forcing mechanisms, but wave heights during the November event were higher than waves associated with the hurricane. Both near-bottom mean and subtidal currents, however, were of greater magnitude during the hurricane. Suspended sediment transport during the November event exceeded transport associated with the hurricane by 25-70%. Substantial spatial variations in sediment transport existed throughout both events. For both storms, along-shelf sediment transport exceeded across-shelf transport and was closely associated with the magnitudes and directions of the subtidal currents. Given the substantial variations in sediment type across the bay, complex shoreline configuration, and local bathymetry, the sediment transport rates reported here are very site specific. However, the general hydrography associated with the two storms is representative of conditions across northern Long Bay

Surface and small-scale processes of biogeochemical cycling of organic matter in tidal sediments

Despite their exceptionally high productivity, freshwater and oligohaline tidal marshes are rarely studied in terms of their biogeochemistry because of their highly variable and diverse conditions. Such environments are particularly interesting because they experience salinity variations that can dramatically alter biogeochemical processes. Sediment cores were collected on a monthly basis over the course of one year from three substations (intertidal mud flat, marsh, and marsh/upland edge) of an oligohaline tidal marsh in the Cape Fear River Estuary, North Carolina. Depth profiles of redox-active remineralization products (O2, Fe2+, Mn2+, and HS-) were generated with microelectrode-based voltammetry, allowing for high-resolution (millimeter scale) assessment of small-scale microbial processes often overlooked in biogeochemical studies. Oxygen (and attendant aerobic respiration), when present, was limited to less than 7 mm below the sediment-water interface at all three substations. Low quantities of labile organic matter limited remineralization processes to Mn reduction in the upper 10 cm of the intertidal mud flat sediments; Fe reduction and sulfate reduction play apparently minor roles. While Mn reduction has previously been shown to dominate organic matter remineralization in some coastal marine sediments, this study demonstrates that this process is also important in intertidal mud flat sediments. Seasonal trends emerged in the biogeochemistry of the marsh substation due to sediment-root interactions, in which sulfate reduction dominated in spring and summer, Mn reduction in fall, and methane production in winter. Marsh/upland edge sediments were highly influenced by subsurface hydrology and plant physiology, resulting in a biogeochemical mosaic of overlapping microenvironments dominated by different remineralization pathways (Mn reduction, Fe reduction, sulfate reduction, methanogenesis). Biogeochemistry at this substation reflects changes in environmental conditions on short time scales due to subsurface hydrology, tidal inundation, plant physiology, rainfall, and labile organic matter content. These sites and their varied biogeochemistry are likely to represent transitional environments expected to result from sea level rise. The great complexity of these environments, as demonstrated in this study, creates challenges for predicting the role that transitional wetlands will play in carbon storage and the release of greenhouse gases

Event driven sediment mobility on the inner continental shelf of Onslow Bay, NC

This study seeks to further constrain near-bottom hydrodynamic current conditions required to mobilize native sediments on a high-energy sediment starved shelf environment and link these data to changes in sidescan sonar imagery of the inner-shelf environment of Onslow Bay, NC. A bottom-mounted upward looking Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler (ADCP) deployed at the OB3M study site on the lower sand flat adjacent to a low-relief marine hardbottom recorded hourly flow velocity profiles from a depth of 17.7 m. The lower sand flat is composed of two dominant surficial lithofacies consisting of patchy, but well-defined areas of well sorted fine sand and poorly sorted coarse grained material. A dual frequency high-resolution sidescan sonar system was utilized to biannually survey a 5.5 by 3.7 km area encompassing the OB3M site between March 2002 and October 2003. Mosaic imagery obtained from these surveys were used to document seasonal changes in bottom characteristics in response to twenty-three identified sediment mobility events. Measurable contributions from semidiurnal tidal flows, mean current flows dominated by subtidal wind-generated currents, as well as wave-generated oscillatory motions in the near-bottom layer during storm and non-storm conditions have been identified for the nineteen-month period bracketing two tropical storm seasons off the North Carolina coast. Calculated critical shear velocity values due to the combined effects of waves and currents indicate that the fine-grained sand fraction was mobile more than 66% of the period, frequently as incipiently suspended load and bedload, and rarely as fully suspended load. Quantitative analysis of sidescan sonar imagery demonstrate that even though hydrodynamic conditions favor mobilization of fine sands, the gross morphology and sediment distribution at this inner-shelf site remained relatively unchanged after the occurrence of several commonplace high-energy events. Seasonal sedimentation patterns, however; were found to be substantially altered after the passage of Hurricane Isabel within 225 km of the study site. Evidence from this study reveals that over the nineteen-month study period at this discrete site, the combined effects of typical high-energy events had little effect on the net distribution of bottom sediments, yet a singular extreme event was found to actively modify seabed sedimentation processes

Phosphorus composition and fatty acid profiles as determinants of egg quality in southern flounder Paralichthys lethostigma

We used in vivo 31P-NMR to examine biochemical events during development in embryos of southern flounder Paralichthys lethostigma. Adult southern flounder broodstock held under an artificial photothermal regime simulating natural seasonal changes spawned volitionally or following hormone induction by LHRH-a. Buoyant eggs were collected and incubated in 34-ppt seawater at 16º C, and their fertilization rate was monitored. Eggs of a prescribed developmental stage were transferred from the incubator to aerated seawater in a 5-mm NMR tube, and spectra were collected immediately. 31P-NMR peaks were observed for inorganic phosphate (Pi), the a, ß, and ?-phosphates of ATP, NAD(P)H, phosphocreatine (PCr), sugar phosphates, and the phospholipids: phosphatidylcholine (PC), phosphatidylinositol (PI), and phosphatidylethanolamine (PE). Levels of PC, PI, and a, ß, and ?-phosphates of ATP, remained at relatively constant levels in unfertilized eggs over time. However, in eggs that were fertilized, there was a significant increase in PE as they developed, which was not observed in unfertilized eggs. Using the chemical shift of the Pi peak, intracellular pH (pHi) was determined. In fertilized floating eggs the pHi decreased from 7.1 (15 h post-spawn) to 6.2 (24 h post-spawn) and then increased to 6.8 (48 h-post-spawn). ATP showed an inverse relationship with pH, starting to decline when pH reached its minimum value. This suggested that ATP was used to stabilize embryonic pH through active transport of nitrogenous waste, such as ammonia, outside of the developing embryo. By the pre-hatching embryo stage, the ATP phosphates, PCr, and NAD(P)H levels declined to undetectable levels, indicating an embryonic requirement for these compounds. Fatty acid profiles during development in embryos were also examined using HPLC. Lipid and fatty acid composition were compared between embryos (blastula stage) of high quality (fertilization rate = 91.5%, survival to first feeding = 39.0%) and low quality (fertilization rate = 39.0%, survival to first feeding = 13.1%). The most abundant fatty acids (proportion of total fatty acids) included, 16:0 (palmitic acid, 21.5%), 18:1 n-9 (oleic acid, 17.5%), and 22:6 n-3 (docosahexanoic acid, DHA, 26.1%). There were no significant differences (P > 0.05) between low and high quality embryos in total lipids (4.4% wet wt), DHA (26.7%), EPA (3.3%) and ARA (1.9%) and DHA/EPA ratio (8.3). There were no significant differences (P > 0.05) in total lipid and fatty acid profiles in high quality eggs at the blastula, gastrula, early embryo, and late embryo stages. In summary, southern flounder eggs that were viable were characterized by an increase in PE during development and decreasing levels of ATP, PCr, and NADP(H). The increase in PE is possibly a way to conserve DHA important to neuro-visual tissue development. Southern flounder eggs contained high levels of polyunsaturated fatty acids, mainly DHA. High levels of the saturate, palmitic acid, as well as the monounsaturate, oleic acid were also present. Fatty acid profiles were not correlated with egg quality. Lack of significant decreases in phospholipids and fatty acids during embryogenesis suggested that other components (e.g. glycogen and free amino acids) accounted for embryonic energy needs. We hypothesize that in southern flounder, lipid is conserved for utilization after hatching, and that catabolic substrate consumption in embryos starts with glycogen, followed by free amino acids, and then lipid after hatching. We further hypothesize that this pattern may be characteristic of subtemperate marine fish eggs with an oil globule

Alice K's adventures interroscribing simulandra: of performance through questions in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and The Trial

This thesis is an exploration of the characters Alice in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Josef K in Franz Kafka’s The Trial and the ways each is an uncertain “self” in an uncertain “family.” The thesis performs according to Carroll’s and Kafka’s considerations that the prose-page is a stage of performance of whatever ideas are appropriate to the context, in this case, analysis of ideas from the two novels. Both writers explored the power of the Law (s) of language but both also suggested that the truth of language will never be known. To use the language of Kafka, the “truth” of language is a door that will never be entered. The result is that uncertainty appears around every corner of the “self” and the families or language of “families” that Alice’s and K’s selves are part of. The conclusion in the thesis is arrived at in the text via explorations of specific word meanings (such as “reeling and writhing” and “family”) and how the meanings of these words are related to the contexts (physical and intellectual positions) from which they are birthed. And the necessity of performance at the core of the thesis reveals itself through performances of “knowledge” that remain uncertain and always hidden inside the door of Kafka’s Law (s) or, in the case of Alice, metaphorically underground

Megagametogenesis and nuclear DNA content estimation in Halophila (Hydrocaritaceae)

Megagametogenesis has been identified in the seagrass Halophila johnsonii, a species with no known seeds, using DAPI staining and manual sectioning methods. Developmental stages were documented and compared with megagametogenesis stages in Halophila decipiens, a related species widely reported to produce viable seeds. Present observations suggest that meiosis occurs in the megasporocyte and, therefore, sexual reproduction should be possible in H. johnsonii. Results of this study, which was part of a multi-level threatened-species recovery plan sponsored by NOAA, are encouraging and suggest that two additional management-related inquiries, 1) the search for male reproductive structures and 2) hybridization with related species are worthwhile. Quantification of the nuclear DNA of nine Halophila taxa was conducted to better understand interspecific genome size variation within the genus. Results suggest that three polyploidy events may have accompanied evolution in this genus. Data for 2C and 4C values are reported with H. engelmanii having the largest content of 2C = 27 pg and H. stipulacea having the lowest, 2C = 7.5 pg