Thoughts on Friendship in the Letters of Peter the Venerable

This is a preprint draft of the article that appears in the Revue Bénedictine

TRACING THE TWELFTH-CENTURY CHRONICA OF RICHARD OF POITIERS, MONK OF CLUNY.

A preprint draft of the article appearing in Memini. This article investigates the Chronicle of Richard of Poitiers (aka of Cluny), surveying its contents, its publication history, and its manuscript history

Charisma and power in the literary correspondence of Peter the Venerable and Peter of Poitiers

This paper discusses the literary, emotional and monastic relationship of Peter of Poitiers and Abbot Peter the Venerable, in particular looking at Peter of Poitier's verse Panegyric in praise of his abbot, and Peter the Venerable's subsequent verse Defence of his monk's writings. The paper concludes that the Panegyric and its defence were part of a political struggle at the Abbey of Cluny among different factions who resisted and supported Peter's abbatial power. This remains a preliminary statement of my analysis of these works that I am in the process of translating into English

‘Take Two and See me in the Morning’: Reflections on the Political Placebo Effect

The use of medical metaphors in politics is a well-honed rhetorical strategy. We talk of ‘diagnosing’ political and social ills; of governments having to ‘prescribe tough medicine’; and of politicians ‘sugar coating’ policies the public doesn’t want to swallow. Sometimes these metaphors help clarify the political world. Other times the rhetorical comparison hides more truth than it reveals. We ask whether the idea of a ‘political placebo’ — or more precisely, a political placebo effect — can be usefully applied to the social sciences. Up to this point, the idea of a ‘political placebo’ has been used only haphazardly (and with little conceptual clarity) to describe cynical political efforts to sell snake oil to the masses. In contrast, we argue that a more refined conceptualization of a political placebo effect — one which understands the placebo effect as a phenomenon in which certain actions and words by medical or scientific authorities lead to an observable effect other than those that would have been predicted on the basis of the dominant predictive scientific and medical models — would be a useful tool for social scientific reflection. When applied to the political realm, such a concept (with its attentiveness to the multi-faceted effects of structures of meaning, emotions and the complex interaction between mind and body) helps us understand a wide variety of situations in which primarily mental stimuli — e.g. language, concepts, policy ideas — have important and observable effects other than those that would be predicted by the dominant predictive rational-actor theories. This article develops this conceptualization of the political placebo effect by (a) synthesizing three of the main findings of contemporary scientific explanations of medical placebos; (b) identifying how these characteristics should also define the concept of a political placebo effect; and (c) demonstrating with reference to two examples how such a concept can help us understand specific political events and situations more convincingly than would otherwise be the case

Monitoring Bus Passenger Zonal Origin-Destination Matrices: Development, Validation, and Application Using Data from The Ohio State University Campus Area Bus System

Origin-destination (OD) flows indicate where people come from and move to within a transportation system. For bus transit, stop-to-stop OD matrices represent the number of passengers traveling from one bus stop to another for every feasible stop pair on a bus route. Stop-to-stop OD matrices can be large and are route-specific. Their large size can present a challenge in interpreting the matrices. The route-specific nature of the matrices can limit their usefulness in planning for future route changes or interpreting changes over time that result when routes are modified. As opposed to stop-to-stop OD matrices, zonal OD matrices aggregate passenger flows across bus routes by mapping bus stops into zones. While stop-to-stop matrices are useful in monitoring passenger flows along routes, zonal OD matrices are more fundamental in representing the geography of passenger flows because they do not rely on a specific route and instead focus on movements between geographic areas. Because there are fewer zones than stops, the zonal matrices have smaller dimensions. For these reasons, zonal OD matrices can be easier to use than stop-to-stop OD matrices in representing general demand of transit passengers and in observing patterns and spatial changes over time. The Ohio State University's (OSU's) Campus Transit Laboratory (CTL) has been estimating stop-to-stop OD matrices from automatic passenger counter (APC) data from Campus Area Bus System (CABS) buses for many years. They deliver these estimated matrices to OSU's Transportation and Traffic Management office (TTM) on a monthly basis for TTM's general monitoring and ongoing planning. Recently, CTL has also begun estimating and delivering monthly zonal OD matrices along with the stop-to-stop matrices. When considering estimated matrices, there will be differences from one month to another. Such differences can be slight, resulting from real but uninteresting variability in passenger flows or from imprecision in the estimates. However, differences can also be large and indicative of important changes in the spatial patterns of passenger flows. Therefore, it would be useful to have an automatic way to indicate when noteworthy changes occur in the matrices. Being able to automatically monitor changes in estimated zonal OD matrices would be of interest to TTM and to any transit agency that receives OD estimates on a regular basis. In this thesis, a scalar metric was developed to allow comparisons between pairs of OD matrices in order to identify matrices that are similar over time, recurring differences in the matrices, and singular changes in the matrices. The metric was applied to pairs of 240 empirically estimated zonal OD matrices or aggregations of these matrices. The 240 matrices represent flows of passengers using CABS buses during four time-of-day (TOD) periods for each month between 01/2018 and 12/2022. This empirical application allowed an assessment of the metric's ability to detect noteworthy changes among spatial patterns in different zonal OD matrices. The application of the metric to the historical matrices also allowed for investigation and interpretation of similarities and changes in bus passenger flow patterns on OSU's campus over time. The empirical results indicate that the metric is able to detect important changes in spatial flow patterns as well as periods of similarities in the patterns. Changes were indicated between matrices representing flow patterns in academic year months and matrices representing flow patterns in summer months. The metric was then used to identify groups of months in one year with similar flow patterns. Analysis of these monthly groups over the years showed that some stability in spatial patterns was maintained through time. However, there were large differences between matrices obtained before the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the OSU campus ("pre-lockdown" matrices) and matrices obtained during the period when OSU implemented important policy changes in response to the pandemic ("during-lockdown" matrices). Differences between the during-lockdown matrices and "post-lockdown" matrices were also large, while differences among pre-lockdown matrices were generally small. Differences between pre-lockdown and post-lockdown matrices indicated that post-lockdown spatial patterns are closer to pre-lockdown patterns than to during-lockdown patterns. This could reflect that conditions are gradually returning to pre-lockdown conditions. Alternatively, it could indicate a lasting structural change from both pre-lockdown and post-lockdown spatial flow patterns on the OSU campus. The ability of the metric to represent changes in spatial flow patterns motivates its use for investigating the effects of specific changes in bus service on zonal passenger bus demand. The empirical results also motivate developing an additional measure to automatically identify noteworthy changes in zone pairs when large differences in the overall matrices are determined.Campus Transit LaboratoryCollege of EngineeringDepartment of Transportation and Traffic ManagementNo embargoAcademic Major: Civil Engineerin

The Good Enough Space in Art Therapy

This paper provides context for the zine, “The Good Enough Space”, printed in March 2015, distributed to students at Creative Arts Therapies Programs at Concordia University, and available online. The zine illustrates the fictionalized account of two art therapy interns in their second year practicum and presents some of the challenges they face creating consistency for their clients and conducting art therapy in the spaces provided at their practicum sites. Motivated by my experience of having to shift my expectations of the art therapy room and to learn to adapt to what was available to me, I was interested in finding out what was necessary to creating consistency for our clients in changing circumstances. This research explores the ideal art therapy space, art therapy in hospital settings, art therapy in school settings, positive therapist qualities, and affect regulation modeled in the client therapist relationship

First Record of Greenland Halibut (Reinhardtius Hippoglossoides) in the Beaufort Sea (Arctic Ocean)

Eleven Greenland halibut (Reinhardtius hippoglossoides) were captured in two longline sets in the offshore waters (71 45 N, 127 08 W) of Sachs Harbour, Banks Island, Northwest Territories. This is the first record of Greenland halibut in the Beaufort Sea and Arctic Ocean. The Greenland halibut were captured in the Atlantic water layer of the Beaufort Sea at a depth of approximately 430 m, with a temperature of 0.3 C and salinity of 34.8 parts per million.Key words: first record, Greenland halibut, Reinhardtius hippoglossoides, Atlantic water mass, Beaufort Sea, Arctic OceanOn a capturé onze flétans du Groenland (Reinhardtius hippoglossoides) dans deux jeux de palangres placés dans les eaux au large (par 71°45' de latit. N. et 127°08' de longit. O.) de Sachs Harbour, dans l'île Banks située dans les Territoires du Nord-Ouest. C'est la première fois que l'on enregistre la présence du flétan du Groenland dans la mer de Beaufort et l'océan Arctique. Les flétans du Groenland ont été pris dans la couche d'eau de l'Atlantique de la mer de Beaufort à une profondeur d'environ 430 m, avec une température de 0,3°C et une salinité de 34,8 p. mille.Mots clés: premier relevé, flétan du Groenland, Reinhardtius hippoglossoides, masse d’eau de l’Atlantique, mer de Beaufort, océan Atlantique&nbsp

The Good Enough Space in Art Therapy

This paper provides context for the zine, “The Good Enough Space”, printed in March 2015, distributed to students at Creative Arts Therapies Programs at Concordia University, and available online. The zine illustrates the fictionalized account of two art therapy interns in their second year practicum and presents some of the challenges they face creating consistency for their clients and conducting art therapy in the spaces provided at their practicum sites. Motivated by my experience of having to shift my expectations of the art therapy room and to learn to adapt to what was available to me, I was interested in finding out what was necessary to creating consistency for our clients in changing circumstances. This research explores the ideal art therapy space, art therapy in hospital settings, art therapy in school settings, positive therapist qualities, and affect regulation modeled in the client therapist relationship

Emerging Contaminants: Artificial Sweetener Sample Preservation and Palladium Nanoparticle Transport in Porous Media

Emerging contaminants are an increasing concern for regulatory bodies: artificial sweeteners and nanoparticles (NPs) included. Artificial sweeteners are found in domestic waste waters and can be used as tracers of anthropogenic impacts in groundwater and surface water. Collection procedures for aqueous samples for the analysis of artificial sweetener compounds are not delineated in standard published methods. Identifying the acceptable limits for sample collection and storage is important to provide guidelines for studies which will provide cost and time savings for industry and government agencies. Nanoparticles are used in consumer products at an increasing rate. These particles are introduced into the environment through the breakdown of these products or from accidental spills or release during manufacturing or shipping. The effects that NPs have on the environment are unknown both in terms of human and ecological health and their ultimate fate. This thesis describes two experiments on the shared topic of emerging contaminants, (1) a set of batch experiments to determine the effects of sample collection materials and storage conditions on groundwater samples for artificial sweetener analysis and, (2) column experiments to understand the transport of NPs through different porous media using a non-destructive imaging technique. Laboratory batch experiments were conducted to determine appropriate storage methods and sampling materials to be used for groundwater samples for the analysis of artificial sweeteners. The storage methods investigated included: acidification, isolation from light, reduction of temperature, and elimination of headspace. Data were combined to evaluate the frequency distributions of concentrations at each sampling time to delineate the number of samples with analyses that fell outside of the range of 60 – 120 % of the input concentration, a range recommended to be acceptable for interpretation of data in many environmental fate studies. Over the course of the experiment, the measured concentrations for the majority of samples fell within the acceptable range for sample preservation. The only samples with concentrations that fell outside of this range were those that were both acidified and stored at room temperature, irrespective of headspace or exposure to light. The sampling materials investigated included: three types of plastic tubing; polytetrafluoroethylene (Teflon™), styrene-ethylene-butylene co-polymer (MasterFlex™) and polypropylene (PharMed BPT™) tubing, three types of metals; aluminum, steel and stainless steel, and two types of solid plastics; polyamide (Nylon) and polyvinyl chloride. Sampling materials were submerged in simulated groundwater (SGW) to maximize contact of the sampling materials with the water samples. Artificial sweetener concentrations in aqueous samples remained constant over time in all sampling material trials, except with steel, when compared to a control test. The artificial sweetener concentration in groundwater samples in contact with steel decreased by more than 70% for each compound after 289 days (9.5 months). SEM images of the steel surfaces after 90 days (3 months) showed the presence of substantial quantities of iron oxyhydroxide precipitates and TEM images of the solution showed the presence of iron oxyhydroxide particles in suspension. These results suggest that aqueous samples for artificial sweetener analysis can be stored for up to 241 days (8 months), unless they are both acidified and stored at 25 oC, and that artificial sweeteners are stable in the presence of all of the sampling materials tested with the exception of steel. Laboratory column experiments were conducted and the transport of palladium (Pd) NPs was investigated with traditional effluent analysis and novel synchrotron x-ray computerized micro tomography (SXCMT), a non-destructive imaging technique. Five columns were packed with standard Ottawa sand, 98% Ottawa sand with 2% attapulgite clay, and, Borden sand to understand the effect of different porous media on NP transport. The column experiments were conducted with SGW or ultrapure water (UPW). Breakthrough-curve and mass-balance data from direct analysis of Pd in effluent samples suggest that NPs are more retarded in Borden sand than in Ottawa sand. The SXCMT data used to calculate the Pd concentration in individual pores, derived from three-dimensional images of the column suggest that the Pd NP can be transported in porous media and can be quantified by the SXCMT technique