Masculine Misuse

A review of:Raymond MalewitzThe Practice of Misuse: Rugged Consumerism in Contemporary American CultureStanford University Press, Stanford, 2014ISBN: 9780804791960 US$55.0

Reg Dodd and Malcolm McKinnon, Talking Sideways: Stories and Conversations from Finniss Springs

Not applicabl

Control of Ship capsize in stern quartering seas.

A non-linear mathematical model for the roll-yaw behaviour of a ship is used to predict capsize of a small tanker which sank in the North Sea some years ago. This capsize problem was initially simulated on an analogue computer by the Danish Maritime Authorities as well as being tank tested. The problem was simulated using the digital package SIMULINK, which produced comparable results indicating instability in waves of just less than 3 m in height. Validation of the results is attempted and a discussion of possible improvements to the model is given. Simulated responses of the tanker with simple hydrodynamic fin stabilisers show that capsize could have been prevented by this means in waves up to 7 m in height. Active PID control using a simple full span elevon is used to show a factor of ten reduction in roll angle to much greater waves. This work is of use to ship designers illustrating that stability can be enhanced for a fraction of the cost of major redesign of the ship hull and can be tailored to load conditions

Country and climate change in Alexis Wright's 'The Swan Book'.

Alexis Wright’s novel, The Swan Book (2013), set one hundred years in the future on a climate-changed Earth, introduces a new note into her fiction: that of doubt about hope. Extending postcolonial discussions of Wright’s fiction, this essay uses ecocriticism to consider Country and climate change in this novel. It argues that the element of doubt about hope, of despair even, evident in The Swan Book derives from the fact that for the first time in Wright’s fiction the essence of the land—Country—has been altered, by anthropogenically-caused climate change. Drawing on the work of ecocritics Timothy Clark and Adam Trexler, the essay argues that to engage with climate change Wright has introduced formal innovations in her novel; and more overtly figured Western culture in terms of its global manifestation, that is, as Christianity conflated with capitalism. I argue that The Swan Book writes a book of Country into the Christian and other stories of the planet, telling a new story of the earth for an age of climate change

Contested Land: Country and terra nullius in Plains of Promise and Benang: From the heart

The Mabo decision of 1992 made questions about the definition of land in Australia and its relation to humans newly significant by overturning the British legal fiction of this continent as ‘terra nullius’ (empty land) and acknowledged for the first time in Anglo-Australian law the validity of Aboriginal land claims. Alexis Wright’s Plains of Promise (1997) and Kim Scott’s Benang (1999) were written in the wake of this landmark decision. Both tell stories of children of the Stolen Generations and their ancient ties to their ancestral land, despite their severance from it. Critical scholarship on these novels has focused primarily on their human stories and been conducted in terms of postcolonial theory and discussions of magic realism. In this article I seek to complicate and expand these predominantly anthropocentric readings by drawing on ecocriticism to explore the central role of the non-human world in these novels. I argue they privilege an Indigenous understanding of two regions of the Australian continent as ‘country’ over their conception as terra nullius, a blank canvass available for colonisation and inscription by British property law and Christianity. The novels contest this concept of terra nullius by manifesting ‘country’: a vibrant, active land inextricably bound to its Indigenous people by ancient, enduring laws. They rewrite the continent as black land and suggest their protagonists’ inextricable, enduring ties to it.

Capitalism versus the agency of place: an ecocritical reading of That Deadman Dance and Carpentaria

I argue in this essay that Australian writer Alexis Wright’s 2006 novel Carpentaria and Kim Scott’s That Deadman Dance (2010) trouble Australia’s national identity, drawing attention to and challenging the economic project – capitalism – upon which the nation is predicated, by positing the particularity and agency of place. Both novels are notable for their generic hybridity, their foregrounding of place and their hopefulness despite their traumatic subject matter, moving beyond the form of western literary realism and postcolonial despair. For these reasons this essay contends that only an ecocritical reading of these novels, with its focus on the literary study of the relationship of human and non-human, can adequately account for the challenges they pose and the vision they offer for reconsidering the nature of and relation between human and non-human in a century facing environmental mayhem

Panel. The Letter and the Image: Print Culture as Medial Interface

Writing Home, Writing Hollywood / Sarah Gleeson-White, University of SydneyFaulkner’s Hollywood letters (1931-1960) reveal his coming into professionalism: they track his exuberance vis-à-vis his earliest motion-picture projects, the sheer desperation of the Warner Brothers years and, finally, the emergence of the canny negotiator, poised to take on the newer medium of television. They also reveal the way in which he came to conceive of his so-called great works – such as Absalom, Absalom! and The Sound and the Fury – as potential cash cows in the motion-pictures marketplace. More broadly, Faulkner’s Hollywood letters enable us to think further about the relation between private and public spheres, and manuscript and print cultures.“Love,” “Manservant,” and the Aviation Background of Faulkner\u27s First Hollywood Screenplay / Michael Zeitlin, University of British ColumbiaFaulkner, arriving at Sam Marx’s office on the MGM lot on May 7, 1932, would not meet Howard Hawks for another two months. In this period, when he was truly on his own, he turned to “Love,” a story he had written in 1921, to abstract the rudiments of what he hoped would be a serviceable screenplay. It’s a bizarre scene, and an occasion to speculate into what I would like to think of as print culture’s unconscious.Comic Strips -- Hybridity -- Pylon / Taylor Hagood, Florida Atlantic UniversityIn Pylon, William Faulkner describes the Feinman Airport in New Valois by referencing the kinds of images found in comic strips. While scholars have noted the impact of film and Faulkner’s Hollywood experiences on Pylon, less discussed are the ways the unique qualities of spatial organization, color, and storytelling featured in comics exert a powerful influence. This paper will examine the novel’s indebtedness to comics from Buck Rogers to The Yellow Kid, paying particular attention to the ways Faulkner works out issues of race within the context of print culture.Between the Literary and the Visual: Print Culture and Adaptation / Peter Lurie, University of Richmon

Fatty acid control of growth of human cervical and endometrial cancer cells.

Stearic acid and iodo-stearic and inhibited cell growth in a cervical cancer cell line (HOG-1) in a dose-related manner, with a half maximal effect at 50 microM stearic acid. Addition of oleic acid abrogated the effect of stearic acid. EGF-stimulated DNA synthesis and growth of HOG-1 cells was inhibited in the presence of stearic acid without any apparent effect on EGF receptor number or affinity

An aerosol challenge model of tuberculosis in Mauritian cynomolgus macaques

Background New interventions for tuberculosis are urgently needed. Non-human primate (NHP) models provide the most relevant pre-clinical models of human disease and play a critical role in vaccine development. Models utilising Asian cynomolgus macaque populations are well established but the restricted genetic diversity of the Mauritian cynomolgus macaques may be of added value. Methods Mauritian cynomolgus macaques were exposed to a range of doses of M. tuberculosis delivered by aerosol, and the outcome was assessed using clinical, imaging and pathology-based measures. Results All macaques developed characteristic clinical signs and disease features of tuberculosis (TB). Disease burden and the ability to control disease were dependent on exposure dose. Mauritian cynomolgus macaques showed less variation in pulmonary disease burden and total gross pathology scores within exposure dose groups than either Indian rhesus macaques or Chinese cynomolgus macaques Conclusions The genetic homogeneity of Mauritian cynomolgus macaques makes them a potentially useful model of human tuberculosis