Food and eating in fiction since 1950 with particular reference to the writing of Angela Carter, Doris Lessing, Michele Roberts and Alice Thomas Ellis.

PhDEating is a fundamental activity. What people eat, how and with whom, what they feel about food, what they do or do not want to eat and why - even who they eat - are of crucial significance in any reading of human behaviour. In this thesis, I consider the diverse and complex uses of food and eating in fiction since 1950, especially that written by women. I argue both that food and eating carry much of the meaning of a novel or story and that the acts of cooking, feeding and eating depicted are inseparable from issues of power and control: individually, interpersonally, culturally, politically. My discussion centres on the writing of Angela Carter, Doris Lessing, Michele Roberts and Alice Thomas Ellis. Drawing on psychoanalytic theory, sociology, anthropology, Foucault, Bakhtin and others, the thesis aims to construct an interdisciplinary perspective which both resists reductive interpretations and emphasises the centrality, complexity and diversity of food and eating in literature in our culture. I begin with an examination of the ambiguities of maternal feeding and nurturing, moving on to explore the links between appetite, eating and sexuality. I explore cannibalism and vampirism as manifestations of oppression, but also as indicating insatiable emptiness and transgressive appetite. The body itself is crucial, and my argument considers the paradox of not eating as control/enslavement, also tracing self-starvation as a positive route towards wholeness and connection. The last part of my argument focuses on social eating, examining conventions, rituals and food itself in connection with power relations, and finally considers how we might truly speak of food and eating in the context of society as a whole

Separation of carbon dioxide from flue emissions using Endex principles

In an Endex reactor endothermic and exothermic reactions are directly thermally coupled and kinetically matched to achieve intrinsic thermal stability, efficient conversion, autothermal operation, and minimal heat losses. Applied to the problem of in-line carbon dioxide separation from flue gas, Endex principles hold out the promise of effecting a CO2-capture technology of unprecedented economic viability. In this work we describe an Endex Calcium Looping reactor, in which heat released by chemisorption of carbon dioxide onto calcium oxide is used directly to drive the reverse reaction, yielding a pure stream of CO2 for compression and geosequestration. In this initial study we model the proposed reactor as a continuous-flow dynamical system in the well-stirred limit, compute the steady states and analyse their stability properties over the operating parameter space, flag potential design and operational challenges, and suggest an optimum regime for effective operation.Australian Research Counci

Social change, migration and pregnancy intervals

Maternity histories from residents of a Pacific Island society, Tokelau, and migrants to New Zealand, are analysed using life table techniques. Inter-cohort differentials in patterns of family formation were found in the total Tokelau-origin population. The process of accelerated timing and spacing of pregnancies was more pronounced among migrants who tended to marry later, be pregnant at marriage, have shorter inter-pregnancy intervals at lower parities and to show evidence of family limitation occurring at higher parities. These results point to the significance of changing patterns of social control on strategies of family building

Exciton dynamics in molecular solids from line shape analysis: an assessment of the extent of line shape distortion resulting from use of real crystals

For crystal absorption systems, the line profile of the frequency dependence of the dielectric permittivity ε(ω) contains information about the exciton dynamics that may be studied by the autocorrelation function generated by the Fourier transformation of ε(ω) into the time domain. However, ε(ω) obtained through transforming normal incidence reflectance data R (ω) of a real crystal when the photon-crystal eigenmodes are strongly coupled may be considerably distorted from ε(ω) of a perfect infinite crystal. In this paper, we consider the ways by which such distortions may arise and, by using a model for ε(ω) that might reasonably correspond to the 4000 Å b -polarized 0-0 absorption system at low temperatures of crystalline anthracene probed on the (001) face, we illustrate the dependence of the extent of distortions on the line profile of ε(ω) upon the following number of factors, viz., (i) spatial dispersion of the exciton bands; (ii) use of an oblique angle of incidence as an approximation to normal incidence in determining R (ω); (iii) thickness of the crystal slab used to determine R (ω); (iv) extent of roughness on the crystal surface; (v) mole fraction of defects in the crystal; and (vi) mole fraction of impurities in the crystal. The treatment allows definition of the condition [real ε(ω) < 0] under which various quasiparticles (longitudinal excitons, surface excitons, excitons bound to impurities) may be excited in a particular crystal system. The methods employed in this paper are of general applicability to strongly absorbing crystal systems and will be of use in understanding exciton dynamics in such systems. The data provide a firm foundation for interpreting reflectance data of a strongly absorbing crystal system, and thus we are able to discuss existing spectral data for anthracene crystals, especially narrow structure observed in low temperature reflection spectra, as well as suggest areas for both theoretical and experimental work

A Legacy of Lies: Examining Donald Trump’s Record-Breaking Dishonesty

Donald Trump told a record number of lies while in office, and ended his term with an unprecedent attack on democracy carried out by his supporters. Presidential lying has a long history in the United States, and significant research has been done on intention, lie typology, and outcomes. Trump’s lies go beyond the existing literature, threatening norms of democracy and bordering on authoritarian behavior. My research examines the power of presidential rhetoric by analyzing a dataset of fact-checked tweets, with the intention of better understanding if and how Trump’s dishonesty violates democratic norms and its potential implications for political violence. I find that this presidential lying falls outside of known typologies, with the unprecedented effect of undermining core democratic institutions and threatening the legitimacy of the American government. Trump uses anti-democratic call-to-action rhetoric that challenges the widely accepted norms of democracy, widening the scope of acceptable presidential behavior and eroding public trust in government

Restructuring and hospital care: Sub-national trends, differentials, and their impacts; New Zealand from 1981

An analysis of the "nation's health" is the central concern of this study. Its genesis was a detailed, technical, time-series research on regional and ethnic differentials in health in New Zealand. But as this work progressed it became increasingly evident that the results of this more narrow analysis could make a wider contribution to the development of a knowledge-base on health trends and on the impacts of policy on these. In a sense, the analysis provides a demographic audit of health trends over the last two decades. The focus here is different from that in most other studies on restructuring of the New Zealand health system as their concern was either to review in detail the rewriting of policy per se, and attendant structural and institutional changes (Fougere 2001), or to identify how these changes relate to changes in mortality (Blakely et al. 2008). The research question reported here was, instead, to analyse the most crucial of health outcomes, „how long we live and how often we end up in hospital‟, identified in the earlier quotation, to report patterns and trends in hospital use nationally and sub-nationally over the period under review, and to determine the degrees to which various sub-populations benefited, or did not benefit, from these changes. The analysis focuses on the hospital sector in the system, but it will also show relations between this and other sectors, formal (e.g. primary health) and less formal (notably the healthcare afforded sickness and invalid beneficiaries). Thus two questions are addressed: 1. whether or not the nation‟s population health improved over the period and; 2. whether or not there was a convergence in patterns of health gain across its constituent sub-populations defined geographically and ethnically. This monograph deals with sub-national differences in health in New Zealand over a period of substantial socio-economic restructuring and associated radical changes in health policy, health systems and their related information systems (see also, Text Appendix A). It complements the recently published analysis of national ethnic trends in mortality (Blakely et al. 2004), but differs in several critical respects. That study reviewed health status by emphasising aetiologies and causes of death. In contrast, the present analysis focuses on actuarial dimensions of both mortality and morbidity and on health as measured by functional capacity rather than the disease orientated „burden of disease‟. It goes beyond health status issues to look at the system itself, to assess whether health policy outcomes were generated more through efficiency-gain (economic or service delivery, such as those resulting in a convergence sub-nationally of supply and demand effects), or through health gains, or ideally, by both. To do this, and as a by-product to analyse changes in health status and the system in an era of restructuring, innovative methodologies and composite time-series indices combining the two dimensions of a „nation‟s health‟, needing hospital care and longevity, have had to be custom-designed. To achieve this objective, the ensuing analysis is often technical, and may introduce concepts that are unfamiliar to some readers. In order to look at possible inequalities of outcome, comparisons were made between regions and ethnic groups, as well as age-groups and genders, and as a result, in places the analysis becomes rather complex

Electronic structure analyses and activation studies of a dinitrogen-derived terminal nitride of molybdenum

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Chemistry, 2004.Vita.Includes bibliographical references.This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections.Chapter 1: Complexes obtained by electrophilic attack on a dinitrogen-derived terminal molybdenum nitride: Electronic structure analysis by solid state CP/MAS ¹⁵N NMR in combination ... Chapter 2. Carbene chemistry in the activation of a dinitrogen-derived terminal nitride of molybdenum ... Chapter 3. Nitrogen atom transfer from dinitrogen into an organic nitrile via the anionic ketimide complex (THF)²Mg[O(Ph)C¹⁵NMo(N[tBu]Ar)₃]₂ ...by Emma Louise Sceats.S.M

Rationality and reality: perspectives of mental illness in Tudor England, 1485- 1603

This thesis addresses a leading question that has been significantly overlooked in current early modern historiography: what were Tudor perspectives of mental illness? In order to answer this query it explores three sub-questions. First, what were Tudor theories with regards to psychological disorders? This incorporates religion, the rise and popularity of scientific medicine, attitudes towards gender differences, as well as Tudor thought on the vulnerabilities of old age. Second, what treatments and care were available for the mentally ill? This explores the variety of remedies delivered to patients and who was perceived as being responsible for their care. And finally, how did the Tudor populous react towards those with psychological difficulties? This addresses the collective mindset of ordinary Tudor citizens by looking at charitable giving, the poor law and intervention from local authorities, as well as psychological illness within popular entertainment. The notion of Tudor views of the physical and spiritual world has been emphasised throughout the course of the study. For instance, it was perfectly rational to believe in spirits, therefore explanations for mental illness which incorporated spirits were part of the Tudor reality. This project has found that the sixteenth century populous largely accepted those who suffered from mental ailments, as well as their burden of care. Similarly, it is clear that there was an awareness of many different forms of mental illness at the time, rather than solely melancholy; which current historiographical study has greatly focused upon. One of the study’s leading conclusions is how explanations of mental illness depended on social status, age, gender and the type of illness. Whereas treatments revolved largely around the social status of the individual and what they could afford; patient gender mattered very little in practice. Thus, the thesis emphasises that theory did not always reflect reality, which was also reflected in popular entertainment. On stage, madness was often exaggerated, yet it represented the true concerns of the audience and many of mental ailments with which they were familiar. These conclusions highlight how the subject of Tudor madness is deserving of further attention, and illustrate that the topic is yet to be thoroughly explored