The Victorian Governess as Spectacle of Pain: A Cultural History of the British Governess as Withered Invalid, Bloody Victim and Sadistic Birching Madam, From 1840 to 1920

This thesis examines the celebrity of governesses in British culture during the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Victorian governess-mania was as pervasive as it was inexplicable, governesses comprising only a tiny fraction of the population and having little or no ostensible effect on the social, political, or economic landscape. Nevertheless, governesses were omnipresent in Victorian media, from novels and etiquette manuals to paintings, cartoons and pornography. Historians and literary critics have long conjectured about the root cause of popular fixation on the governess, and many have theorized that their cultural resonance owed to the host of contradictions and social conundrums they embodied, from being a `lady\u27 who worked, to being comparable to that bugbear of Victorian society, the prostitute. However, while previous scholarship has maintained that governess-mania was produced by their peculiarity as social or economic actors, I intend to demonstrate that this nonconformity was extrapolated in visual and literary depictions to signify a more prurient deviance, specifically a fixation on human suffering. This analysis reveals that whether depicted in mainstream press or in nefarious erotica, popular interest in governesses was contoured by a fixation on their perceived relationship to corporal violence. Over the course of the nineteenth century governesses were increasingly portrayed as the victims of a huge range of internal and external threats, such as disease, sterility, assault, murder, rape, and even urban accidents like train crashes or gas leaks. Cast as flagellant birching madams in pornographic fantasy, governesses were also construed as deriving erotic authority through the infliction of pain on others. From imagining the governess as a pitiful victim of brutality or conversely eroticizing her as the stewardess of sadomasochism, all of these constructs rely on the dynamics of violation, on bodies that experience misfortune and bodies that mete that it out. Utilizing a wide array of sources and methodological approaches, I will demonstrate that the Victorian governess was not only popularly correlated with social or sexual irregularity, but that these themes were ultimately circumscribed by a larger preoccupation with the governess as an icon of violence and pain

Heat Melt Compaction as an Effective Treatment for Eliminating Microorganisms from Solid Waste

One of the technologies being tested at Ames Research Center as part of the logistics and repurposing project is heat melt compaction (HMC) of solid waste to reduce volume, remove water and render a biologically stable and safe product. Studies at Kennedy Space Center have focused on the efficacy of the heat melt compaction process for killing microorganisms in waste and specific compacter operation protocols, i.e., time and temperature required to achieve a sterile, stable product. The work. reported here includes a controlled study to examine the survival and potential re-growth of specific microorganisms over a 6-month period of storage after heating and compaction. Before heating and compaction, ersatz solid wastes were inoculated with Bacillus amyloliquefaciens and Rhodotorula mucilaginosa, previously isolated from recovered space shuttle mission food and packaging waste. Compacted HMC tiles were sampled for microbiological analysis at time points between 0 and 180 days of storage in a controlled environment chamber. In addition, biological indicator strips containing spores of Bacillus atrophaeus and Geobacillus stearothermophilus were imbedded in trash to assess the efficacy of the HMC process to achieve sterilization. Analysis of several tiles compacted at 180deg C for times of 40 minutes to over 2 hours detected organisms in all tile samples with the exception of one exposed to 180deg C for approximately 2 hours. Neither of the inoculated organisms was recovered, and the biological indicator strips were negative for growth in all tiles indicating at least local sterilization of tile areas. The findings suggest that minimum time/temperature combination is required for complete sterilization. Microbial analysis of tiles processed at lower temperatures from 130deg C-150deg C at varying times will be discussed, as well as analysis of the bacteria and fungi present on the compactor hardware as a result of exposure to the waste and the surrounding environment. The two organisms inoculated into the waste were among those isolated and identified from the HMC surfaces indicating the possibility of cross contamination

Prospective review of radiotherapy trials through implementation of standardised multi-centre workflow and IT infrastructure

Objective: We sought to develop a process that would allow us to perform a prospective review of outlining in trials using expert reviewers based in multiple centres. Methods: We implemented a specific information technology infrastructure and workflow that could serve all organizations involved in the radiotherapy quality assurance (RTQA) process. Results: Data were processed and packaged in the computational environment for radiotherapy research (CERR) binary format and securely transmitted to the expert reviewer at the designated remote organization. It was opened and reviewed using the distributed CERR-compiled application, and a standardized report was sent to the respective centre. Centres were expected to correct any unacceptable deviations and resubmit outlining for approval prior to commencing treatment. 75% of reviews were completed and fed back to centres within 3 working days. There were no delays in treatment start date. Conclusion: Our distributed RTQA review approach provides a method of prospective outlining review at multiple centres, without compromising the quality, delaying the start of treatment or the need for significant additional infrastructure resources. Future progress in the area of prospective individual case review will need to be supported by additional resources for clinician time to undertake the reviews. Advances in knowledge: Trial groups around the world have formulated different approaches to address the need for the prospective review of radiotherapy (RT) data with clinical trials, in line with available resources. We report a UK solution that has allowed the workload for outlining review to be distributed across a wider group of volunteer reviewers without the need for any additional infrastructure costs and has already been adopted within the UK RT trials community

Scenario of Accelerating Universe from the Phenomenological \Lambda- Models

Dark matter, the major component of the matter content of the Universe, played a significant role at early stages during structure formation. But at present the Universe is dark energy dominated as well as accelerating. Here, the presence of dark energy has been established by including a time-dependent $\Lambda$ term in the Einstein's field equations. This model is compatible with the idea of an accelerating Universe so far as the value of the deceleration parameter is concerned. Possibility of a change in sign of the deceleration parameter is also discussed. The impact of considering the speed of light as variable in the field equations has also been investigated by using a well known time-dependent $\Lambda$ model.Comment: Latex, 9 pages, Major change

Reply to “Comments on ‘The North American Regional Climate Change Assessment Program: Overview of Phase I Results\u27”

The authors of Mearns et al. (2012) are aware of the role of driving RCMs with reanalyses and have written extensively on the roles of different types of regional climate models (RCMs) simulations (e.g., Giorgi and Mearns 1999; Leung et al. 2003). Thus, we agree that the skill of dynamical downscaling in which global reanalysis is used to provide boundary conditions in general indicates an upper bound of skill compared to dynamical downscaling in which the boundary conditions come from global climate model simulations. This finding has long been established, as global climate model simulations cannot outperform global reanalysis in providing boundary conditions since the latter is constrained by observations through data assimilation (that is, unless the reanalyses themselves have been shown to have serious deficiences; e.g., Cerezo-Mota et al 2011). The classification of different types of dynamical downscaling introduced by Castro et al. (2005) further adds clarity to this point

Heat Melt Compaction as an Effective Treatment for Eliminating Microorganisms from Solid Waste

One of the technologies being tested at NASA Ames Research Center (ARC) for the Advance Exploration Systems program and as part of the logistics and repurposing project is heat melt compaction (HMC) of solid waste. Reduces volume, removes water and renders a biologically stable and safe product. The HMC compacts and reduces the trash volume as much as 90o/o greater than the current manual compaction used by the crew.The project has three primary goals or tasks. 1. Microbiological analysis of HMC hardware surfaces before and after operation. 2. Microbiological and physical characterizations of heat melt tiles made from trash at different processing times and temperatures. 3. Long term storage and stability of HMC trash tiles or "Do the bugs grow back?

Effect of exercise therapy on lipid profile and oxidative stress indicators in patients with type 2 diabetes

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Yoga has been shown to be a simple and economical therapeutic modality that may be considered as a beneficial adjuvant for type 2 diabetes mellitus. This study investigated the impact of Hatha yoga and conventional physical training (PT) exercise regimens on biochemical, oxidative stress indicators and oxidant status in patients with type 2 diabetes.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>This prospective randomized study consisted of 77 type 2 diabetic patients in the Hatha yoga exercise group that were matched with a similar number of type 2 diabetic patients in the conventional PT exercise and control groups. Biochemical parameters such as fasting blood glucose (FBG), serum total cholesterol (TC), triglycerides, low-density lipoprotein (LDL), very low-density lipoproteins (VLDL) and high-density lipoprotein (HDL) were determined at baseline and at two consecutive three monthly intervals. The oxidative stress indicators (malondialdehyde – MDA, protein oxidation – POX, phospholipase A2 – PLA2 activity) and oxidative status [superoxide dismutase (SOD) and catalase activities] were measured.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The concentrations of FBG in the Hatha yoga and conventional PT exercise groups after six months decreased by 29.48% and 27.43% respectively (P < 0.0001) and there was a significant reduction in serum TC in both groups (P < 0.0001). The concentrations of VLDL in the managed groups after six months differed significantly from baseline values (P = 0.036). Lipid peroxidation as indicated by MDA significantly decreased by 19.9% and 18.1% in the Hatha yoga and conventional PT exercise groups respectively (P < 0.0001); whilst the activity of SOD significantly increased by 24.08% and 20.18% respectively (P = 0.031). There was no significant difference in the baseline and 6 months activities of PLA2 and catalase after six months although the latter increased by 13.68% and 13.19% in the Hatha yoga and conventional PT exercise groups respectively (P = 0.144).</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The study demonstrate the efficacy of Hatha yoga exercise on fasting blood glucose, lipid profile, oxidative stress markers and antioxidant status in patients with type 2 diabetes and suggest that Hatha yoga exercise and conventional PT exercise may have therapeutic preventative and protective effects on diabetes mellitus by decreasing oxidative stress and improving antioxidant status.</p> <p>Trial Registration</p> <p>Australian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry (ANZCTR): ACTRN12608000217303</p