The development of stage machinery in the nineteenth century British theatre : a study of physical and documentary evidence

Thc devolopment of scene changing machinery in Great Britain is perhaps one of the few disciplines in the field of mechanical engineering which have virtually never relied upon new discoveries in technology for their advancement. Instead it has always lagged behind, perhaps modifying, certainly adapting, existing techniques. This study aims to examine the evolution of stage machinery during the nineteenth century, when many techniques had already been in existence and traditions firmly established since the previous century. The degree of development in the course of the nineteenth century was in many ways a reflection of the type of drama presented. As time went by, the public's taste for spectacle and visual presentation intensified and fostered an increase in the complexity of scene changing equipment. This in turn meant that many of the theatres built in the eighteenth century, especially in the provinces, were sadly inadequate for housing the vast quantities of equipment which machinists needed to install above and below the stage. As a result architects, began improving and enlarging existing theatres as well as building new ones, with increased stage width and depth, increased flying space above and increased depth below the stage.There was indeed an enormous rise in demand for scenic effects shortly after the beginning of the nineteenth century. This rapid growth caused the smaller existing Georgian playhouses, like the Theatre Royal, Ipswich, either to be modified in an attempt to cater for new trends, or to close. This dilemma alone must be acknowledged as a significant contributory factor in the decline of the Georgian playhouse and helps to explain the comparatively small number of such theatres surviving to the present day.The techniques of the stage machinist in the first half of the nineteenth century relied almost totally on  technology and basic engineering principles which had existed for many years. Certainly the comparison often made between the backstage of a theatre of this period and a sailing ship is a very apt one, since both relied on manually hauled ropes, sheaves and the principles of mechanical advantage. However, these techniques had also been utilised for other, non-theatrical purposes. For instance, housed in the central tower of Beverley Minster is a large treadwheel, which was, and is still, used to raise equipment from ground level into the roof space [sec photo.1]. This is based upon the principles of mechanical advantage, in much the same way as many pieces of scene-changing equipment.Thus, because the theatrical profession was slow to adopt now apparatus and constantly replacing old machinery with brand new near-replicas, its evolution was comparatively slow. The job of a stage machinist was quite often a family concern, as the techniques, traditions, secrets and tricks of the trade were passed from father to son. The Sloman family and the Grieve family were particularly well known in London for their knowledge and expertise in this hold. Change was to a greater or lessor extent resisted and in any case many saw little need for change, especially those who were steeped in the traditions of the machinist and his machinery. It was, in fact, this basic resistance which caused a disruption in the evolutionary development of stage machinery. Many theatre architects were happy to furnish a traditional stage machinist with a blank drawing denoting "The Stage", requiring him to fill in the details as he saw fit, whilst the innovators devised all manner of new equipment, that which worked and sometimes that which emphatically did not. There was therefore a bifurcation, with the 'traditional school' refining the 'English wood stage' to a higher degree of sophistication, whilst the 'modern school' developed and attempted to apply the engineering technology associated with other disciplines. In essence, the latter attempted to replace muscle power with hydraulic or electrical power.This thesis documents the development of stage machinery from its comparatively primitive state at the beginning of the nineteenth century, through years of growth and expansion, and finally into the last decade of the century, when theatrical productions were in truth exercises in spectacle

The Effects of a 20-Week Exercise Training Program on Resting Metabolic Rate in Previously Sedentary, Moderately Obese Women

The present study was designed to investigate the effects of exercise training on resting metabolic rate (RMR) in moderately obese women. It was hypothesized that exercise training would increase resting metabolic rate. Nineteen previously sedentary, moderately obese women (age= 38.0±0.9 years, percent body fat= 37.5 ± 0.8) trained for 20 weeks using either resistance training (RT) or a combination of resistance training arid walking (RT/W). The high intensity resistance training program was designed to increase strength and fat-free mass and the walking program to increase aerobic capacity. There was also a non-exercising control group (C) of 9 subjects in this study. Fat-free mass was significantly increased in both the RT (+ 1.90 kg) and RT/W (+ 1.90 kg) groups as a result of the training program. No group showed significant changes in fat mass or relative body fat from pre- to post-training. Aerobic capacity was slightly, though significantly, increased in the RT/W group only. The RT group showed a significant increase (+44 kcal· day-1), while the RT/W group showed a significant decrease (-53 kcal·day-1) in resting metabolic rate post-training. RT can potentiate an increase in RMR through an increase in fat-free mass, and the decrease in RMR in the RT IW group may have been a result of heat acclimation from the walk training

Meta-Evaluation to improve learning, evaluation capacity development and sustainability: findings from a participatory evaluation project in Nepal

Recent studies suggest that meta-evaluation can be valuable in developing new approaches to evaluation, building evaluation capacities, and enhancing organizational learning. These new extensions of the concept of meta-evaluation are significant, given the growing emphasis on improving the quality and effectiveness of evaluation practices in the South Asian region. Following a review of the literature, this paper presents a case study of the use of concurrent meta-evaluation in the four-year project Assessing Communication for Social Change which developed and trialled a participatory impact assessment methodology in collaboration with a development communication Non-government organization (NGO) in Nepal. Key objectives of the meta-evaluation included to: continuously develop, adapt and improve the impact assessment methodology, Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) systems and process and other project activities; identify impacts of the project; and build capacities in critical reflection and review. Our analysis indicates that this meta-evaluation was essential to understanding various constraints related to the organizational context that affected the success of the project and the development of improved M&E systems and capacities within the NG

Gonococcal peritonitis diagnosed post laparotomy in a 38-year-old woman: a case report

A 38-year-old South African lady with a background history of cervical intra-epithelial neoplasia and recent colposcopy presented to the emergency department with severe abdominal pain. Initial investigations were non-diagnostic and despite empirical antibiotic therapy the patient developed peritonism. Post-laprotomy the diagnosis of severe pelvic inflammatory disease and peritonitis secondary to infection with Neisseria Gonorrhoea was made

The Double Flip: Applying a Flipped Learning Approach to Teach the Teacher and Improve Student Satisfaction

This paper describes a professional development (PD) program for academics at an Australian university designed to model good blended curriculum design and effective use of contemporary learning technologies. It evaluates a case study from the pilot of this program involving a postgraduate psychology course to illustrate one of the most challenging examples and in turn the potential impact of the approach developed. Academic developers face known barriers, including time constraints, interdisciplinary miscommunication, and change resistance, when introducing academics to new approaches to learning and teaching. This PD sought to promote change by modelling a shift from “sage on the stage” to “guide on the side,” through use of flipped and blended learning approaches by the academic developer. The case study found the teacher gained confidence in these methods and student satisfaction ratings increased

How to get a job: deception in the applicant advice industry

The performance of applicants in a job interview is a well-studied topic within I-O psychology, yet less attention has been given to applicant preparation throughout the hiring process. While professional interview coaching has been rigorously tested, the surfeit of freely-available information circulating the internet has yet to be examined for content accuracy and integrity. In an attempt to highlight this industry under-examined by researchers, the current study proposes an investigation of online materials aimed at job applicants. Particularly, the proposed study aims to determine the sources of advice materials and whether they promote applicant deception during the job interview. Using a team of trained undergraduate coders, the proposed study will systematically categorize and analyze all articles available through Google from March 2017 to March 2019. Articles will be coded according to their primary topic of advice (i.e., ideal attire, charismatic nonverbal behavior, or commonly-asked interview questions), the source of the information (i.e., professional publication, mainstream news outlet, non-professional publication), and the overall goal of the article. As the proposed study aims to determine whether the online advice industry attempts to enable applicants to promote themselves beyond their abilities—potentially compromising the integrity of the job interview—each article is labeled along a continuum of deception, from purely-descriptive Informational materials to more prescriptive Image Maintenance and Image Creation materials. Classification in this manner will provide a systematic overview of the content and motive of recent advice materials, informing I-O researchers and practitioners of the potential influence of this industry. Preliminary results from April 2017 point to a prevalence of descriptive Informational materials and somewhat-prescriptive Image Maintenance materials, with deception-tolerant Image Creation appearing less frequently. Materials focused on appropriate answers for popular interview questions (50% of articles), do’s and don’ts for leveraging social media in the hiring process (12% of articles), and the Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities contributing to successful job interviews (11% of articles). Mainstream news outlets emerged as the second-largest source of advice materials, publishing one-third of coded articles. Initial results suggest the promotion of mild impression management by the advice industry through self-enhancing techniques provided in Image Maintenance materials. Fully categorizing recent advice materials will enable more thorough examination and comparison of online advice materials to research-supported interview techniques. In the absence of other research on this industry, completion of the proposed study will enhance I-O understanding of the magnitude and nature of these materials’ impact

Survival of the safest: examining organization risk factors for cybersecurity incidents

[Invited adaptation from presentation proposal, A Matter of Time: Exploring Survival Analysis Through Cybersecurity] Given that employees pose a large threat to organizational cybersecurity, much research attention has been directed to identifying individual risk factors for cybersecurity noncompliance and misbehavior at the cost of examining broad organizational risk factors. However, no study to date has formally examined how the risk of organizational cybersecurity incident changes over time, or how organizational characteristics affect this risk. The proposed study aims to conduct a survival analysis (SA) of cybersecurity events across the past decade, examining broad factors that impact the changing probability of cyberincidents. In particular, the proposed study will examine associations between cyberbreaches and industry type, annual revenue, and the sensitivity of information handled in the organization. While other studies have examined organization-wide risk factors, none have done so in a longitudinal analysis such as SA. The proposed study emphasizes the necessity of examining changes in risk across time due to the abundant evidence that cybersecurity incidents are increasing in both frequency and severity. Previously-employed methods such as odds ratios fail to account for the time-based component needed for properly analyzing the continuously-changing threat of cyberattacks. To analyze the impact of organizational factors on the risk of cyberincident, the proposed study will record security breaches (or lack thereof) for organizations listed in the top Fortune 1000 from 2005 to 2019, using publically-available data on over 9,000 cyberincidents recorded by Privacy Rights Clearinghouse. Event data will be examined in R, and organizational factors will be examined for covariance with the risk of cyberincident. Preliminary results from 2004 Fortune 500 companies indicate significant associations between cyberincident risk and both industry type and annual revenue. By utilizing Survival Analysis, the proposed study will provide an enhanced, time-based view on the past prevalence of cybersecurity incidents and the organizational factors associated with increased risk. Emphasis of these factors serves to alert organizations of their unique vulnerabilities, inspiring increased attention to the subject of security