Tourism and the formation of the writer: three case studies

In the nineteenth century a vogue for travel writing emerged as writers began to describe experiences of foreign travel in a style quite different from realistic Grand Tour narratives. In their travel writing, Byron, Shelley and Dickens display an impression of the complexities of modernity rather than present a mimetic and conformist view of the world. The study shows how travel writers represent the manifold nature of tourist experience through a composite presentation of subject which despite its heterogeneity lays claim to a unity of knowledge. This thesis discusses the impact of tourism on the beliefs, identities and style of writers. The chapter on Byron shows how he evolved a new poetic voice using a verse travelogue which evaluates the injustices of war and empire. The chapter on Shelley examines his tour of Switzerland and shows how the influence of Rousseau's imagination inspired Shelley in his vision to improve English society. The chapter on Dickens considers how the economic development of America informed his views on the state of American society and urged him to conceive in his later works a world in which the privacy of the domestic hearth is sanctified. The thesis investigates the extent to which ideals of political and social reform govern the nature of travel writing in Europe and America in the late Romantic and early Victorian periods. Tourist narratives of the period use contemporary and historical evidence to assess the advantages and disadvantages of the political and social systems of abroad, thereby indicating a path to enlightened social harmony

Rapid modulation of sensory processing induced by stimulus conflict

Humans are constantly confronted with environmental stimuli that conflict with task goals and can interfere with successful behavior. Prevailing theories propose the existence of cognitive control mechanisms that can suppress the processing of conflicting input and enhance that of the relevant input. However, the temporal cascade of brain processes invoked in response to conflicting stimuli remains poorly understood. By examining evoked electrical brain responses in a novel, hemifield-specific, visual-flanker task, we demonstrate that task-irrelevant conflicting stimulus input is quickly detected in higher level executive regions while simultaneously inducing rapid, recurrent modulation of sensory processing in the visual cortex. Importantly, however, both of these effects are larger for individuals with greater incongruency-related RT slowing. The combination of neural activation patterns and behavioral interference effects suggest that this initial sensory modulation induced by conflicting stimulus inputs reflects performance-degrading attentional distraction because of their incompatibility rather than any rapid task-enhancing cognitive control mechanisms. The present findings thus provide neural evidence for a model in which attentional distraction is the key initial trigger for the temporal cascade of processes by which the human brain responds to conflicting stimulus input in the environment

Texas Forestry Paper No. 26

Aerial photograph use in industrial forest management in the south, 1970 and 1974https://scholarworks.sfasu.edu/texas_forestry_papers/1014/thumbnail.jp

FUSE Measurements of Interstellar Fluorine

The source of fluorine is not well understood, although core-collapse supernovae, Wolf-Rayet stars, and asymptotic giant branch stars have been suggested. A search for evidence of the nu process during Type II supernovae is presented. Absorption from interstellar F I is seen in spectra of HD 208440 and HD 209339A acquired with the Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer. In order to extract the column density for F I from the line at 954 A, absorption from H2 has to be modeled and then removed. Our analysis indicates that for H2 column densities less than about 3 x 10^20 cm^-2, the amount of F I can be determined from lambda 954. For these two sight lines, there is no clear indication for enhanced F abundances resulting from the nu process in a region shaped by past supernovae.Comment: 17 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in Ap

Taste Processing: Whetting our appetites

AbstractTwo G-protein-coupled receptors have been identified that are present in the apical membranes of rat and mouse taste cells and differentially distributed across the tongue and palate. They are strong candidates for being taste receptors and their discovery has provided new tools for research into gustatory processing

Confronting the Material Convoy in Later Life

This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Smith, G. V. and Ekerdt, D. J. (2011), Confronting the Material Convoy in Later Life*. Sociological Inquiry, 81: 377–391. doi:10.1111/j.1475-682X.2011.00378.x, which has been published in final form at http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-682X.2011.00378.x. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Self-Archiving.We adapt a metaphor from life course studies to designate the whole of one’s possessions, across time, as a convoy of material support. This dynamic collection of things supports daily life and the self, but it can also present difficulty in later life. To alleviate the purported burdens of the material convoy, a discourse has arisen that urges elders and their family members to reduce the volume of possessions. An analysis of 11 such possession management texts shows authors addressing two distinct audiences about elders’ need to downsize: family members and elders themselves. Authors who speak to family members do so with an urgent, unsentimental tone that echoes mainstream clutter-control advice about disorderly, overfull households. In texts for elders, the standard critique about consumption and unruly lives is gentler, more sensitive to the meaning of things, and underplays the emotions of divestment. There is stress on the responsibility to spare the next generation and control one’s legacy. These latter texts seem to respect that downsizing in later life symbolizes a narrowing of the life world

Revisiting the Expanded Use of Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy for Treatment of Resistant Migraines

There are currently 13 indications approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for use of hyperbaric oxygen therapy. The European Consensus Conference on Hyperbaric Medicine has 28 indications approved for its use. However, neither includes the use of hyperbaric oxygen therapy for neurological conditions such as migraines with aura. Recent research has made the attempt to fully understand the use of hyperbaric therapy in treatment of neurological conditions, but results have so far been inconclusive. We report a 23-year-old female with an 11-year history of migraines with aura who has received inadequate pharmacological treatment for her migraines since she began having them. Migraines have led her to significant loss of function. The patient underwent treatment at 1.5 absolute atmospheres in a hyperbaric chamber Monday through Friday for 1 hour each day for a total of 40 sessions but reported missing a few sessions over the 8-week period. No more than 1 session during a given week was missed and the patient received no other treatments for her migraines throughout this time period. By her 2

Woe from stones: commemoration, identity politics and Estonia's 'War of Monuments'

No abstract available