The self-overcoming heterodoxy of the political novel: A comparative study of the work of Graham Greene, Thomas Pynchon and William S. Burroughs

This thesis attempts to link the fictional approaches of three very distinctive political novelists: Graham Greene, Thomas Pynchon, and William Burroughs. In so doing, it attempts to surmount what is commonly perceived as an impasse in political thinking, as it applies to the political novel of the modern and post-modern periods. The subject matter of politics within the novels becomes more precisely that of sociology, in that there is an emphasis upon how both politics and society are shaped by self-contradictory ideals and cultural eclecticism. Each novelist under discussion adheres to a twentieth-century restatement of the political in personal, often existential terms, such as alienation or a desire for self-determination. In particular, an individual character's point of view tends to work against the logic of cause and effect, such as that necessary to historical representation or the sense of destiny which drives political ideologies. At the literary level, this fundamental aspect of the personalisation of politics contributes to a disruption of generic expectations regarding the political novel. Certain perceived ideals which contribute to historical expositions or political idealism are avoided or parodied in the works of Greene, Pynchon and Burroughs. These include individual heroism, unequivocal patriotism, an unambiguous moral framework, political idealism, and the importance of revolution. At the level of theme, all three writers avoid focusing in detail upon historical presentation of actual events, or identifying with any received political ideologies. Instead, certain ideas emerge in the fiction under discussion, in light of which the political process is itself problematic and which illustrate the schism between theoretical hypothesis and practical necessity. 1. Regarding a broad questioning of the meaning of "liberty", primarily in terms of an individual's rationalisation by his social role and status and by bureaucratic or political forces. 2. Regarding the meaning of "democracy" in practical terms. More specifically, how an unrepresentative freedom from accountability for technocrats and multinational organisations is used to portray the pluralistic nature of democracy, as is the proliferation of bureaucracies whose functions are impractical, repressive and socially divisive. Also Greene, Pynchon and Burroughs criticise microcultural or micropolitical groups, that seek to define political representation merely in terms of cultural identity. 3. In relation to the above, bureaucracy and microcultures are shown to be insular to the degree that they are unable to incorporate their activity constructively into a broader socio-political context. More generally, there is a converse failure primarily within a capitalist system of liberal democracy, which results from an attempt to incorporate ideals sometimes opposed to its very being, in turn reducing political protest and revolt to parodies of their initial purpose. 4. With regard to Pynchon and Burroughs, an emphasis upon technology and leisure in advanced capitalism is portrayed as creating a radical confusion of society's needs and our desires which both destroys the ethical component of capitalism and our ethical behaviour. The novels of Greene, Pynchon and Burroughs studied herein, between them evaluate the above ideas in a manner demonstrative of the failure of liberal democracy in general to co-ordinate its two key operative principles; individual freedom of self-determination, and bureaucratic rationalisation of man as social functionary. Their criticisms of this practical contradiction can be illuminated by a broader context of modern sceptical thought. A relevant example from the discipline of philosophy is the "hermeneutic phenomenology" of Martin Heidegger, while sociological ideas with their origin in the nineteen - sixties, such as "future shock", and the complex relationship of power to knowledge examined by Michel Foucault are also helpful. Finally, the credibility of any received ideology to answer the questions raised and problems identified in the fiction herein, may be tested by comparison to existing political ideals which seem to befit the writers' arguments best. Conversely, it is possible that each of these writers forms a secondary allegiance to extreme political views which aid the construction of their socio - political contexts

Money and its substitutes : commerce and its instruments of adjustment / by Henry Carey Baird Philadelphia : H. C. Baird & co., 1876

Money and its substitutes : commerce and its instruments of adjustment / by Henry Carey Baird Philadelphia : H. C. Baird & co., 1876 16 p. ; 24 cm Sul front.: Reprinted, by permission, from the Atlantic monthly for March, 1876

The silver dollar, the original standard of payment of the United states of America, and its enemies / by Henry Carey Baird Philadelphia : Henry Carey Baird, 1883

The silver dollar, the original standard of payment of the United states of America, and its enemies / by Henry Carey Baird Philadelphia : Henry Carey Baird, 1883 27 p. ; 24 cm Estr. da: Philadelphia Inquirer, settembre 1883

DIAL 2004 Working Group Report on Acquisition Quality Control

This report summarizes the discussions of the Working Group on Acquisition Quality at the International Workshop on Document Image Analysis for Libraries, Palo Alto, CA, 23-24 January 2004. Acquisition of the image is one of the most time intensive components of forming a digital library, and the quality of the acquisition will affect all later stages of the digital library project. The current state of the art in acquisition is analyzed. Problems and suggested improvements for image acquisition and storage formats and the special problems associated with acquisition from microfilm follows. A list of general suggestions was developed which was complemented by a wish list of things the Working Group would like to see followed in acquisition discussions in the future

Defining the geographical range of the plasmodium knowlesi reservoir

Background: The simian malaria parasite, Plasmodium knowlesi, can cause severe and fatal disease in humans yet it is rarely included in routine public health reporting systems for malaria and its geographical range is largely unknown. Because malaria caused by P. knowlesi is a truly neglected tropical disease, there are substantial obstacles to defining the geographical extent and risk of this disease. Information is required on the occurrence of human cases in different locations, on which non-human primates host this parasite and on which vectors are able to transmit it to humans. We undertook a systematic review and ranked the existing evidence, at a subnational spatial scale, to investigate the potential geographical range of the parasite reservoir capable of infecting humans.Methodology/Principal Findings: After reviewing the published literature we identified potential host and vector species and ranked these based on how informative they are for the presence of an infectious parasite reservoir, based on current evidence. We collated spatial data on parasite occurrence and the ranges of the identified host and vector species. The ranked spatial data allowed us to assign an evidence score to 475 subnational areas in 19 countries and we present the results on a map of the Southeast and South Asia region.Conclusions/Significance: We have ranked subnational areas within the potential disease range according to evidence for presence of a disease risk to humans, providing geographical evidence to support decisions on prevention, management and prophylaxis. This work also highlights the unknown risk status of large parts of the region. Within this unknown category, our map identifies which areas have most evidence for the potential to support an infectious reservoir and are therefore a priority for further investigation. Furthermore we identify geographical areas where further investigation of putative host and vector species would be highly informative for the region-wide assessment

Reading handwritten digits: a ZIP code recognition system

A neural network algorithm-based system that reads handwritten ZIP codes appearing on real US mail is described. The system uses a recognition-based segmenter, that is a hybrid of connected-components analysis (CCA), vertical cuts, and a neural network recognizer. Connected components that are single digits are handled by CCA. CCs that are combined or dissected digits are handled by the vertical-cut segmenter. The four main stages of processing are preprocessing, in which noise is removed and the digits are deslanted, CCA segmentation and recognition, vertical-cut-point estimation and segmentation, and directly lookup. The system was trained and tested on approximately 10000 images, five- and nine-digit ZIP code fields taken from real mail

Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on tuberculosis control in Indonesia:a nationwide longitudinal analysis of programme data

BACKGROUND: The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on tuberculosis control in high-burden countries has not been adequately assessed. We aimed to estimate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the national tuberculosis programme in Indonesia, in association with indicators of human development and health-system capacity across all 514 districts in 34 provinces. METHODS: We did a nationwide longitudinal analysis to compare tuberculosis case notification, treatment coverage, and mortality rates in Indonesia before (2016-19) and during (2020-21) the COVID-19 pandemic. The following outcomes were assessed: the district-level quarterly reported tuberculosis case notification rate (number of all reported tuberculosis cases per 100 000 population), treatment coverage (proportion of tuberculosis patients who started treatment), and all-cause mortality rate in patients with tuberculosis (number of reported deaths per 100 000 population). District-level data on COVID-19 incidence and deaths, health-system capacity, and human development and sociodemographics were also analysed. Multilevel linear spline regression was done to assess quarterly time trends for the three outcomes. FINDINGS: During the COVID-19 pandemic, the tuberculosis case notification rate declined by 26% (case notification rate ratio 0·74, 95% CI 0·72-0·77) and treatment coverage declined by 11% (treatment coverage ratio 0·89, 95% CI 0·88-0·90), but there was no significant increase in all-cause mortality (all-cause mortality rate ratio 0·97, 95% CI 0·91-1·04) compared with the pre-pandemic period. In the second year of the pandemic, we observed a partial recovery of the case notification rate from Q1 to Q4 of 2021, a persistent decrease in treatment coverage, and a decrease in the all-cause mortality rate from Q2 of 2020 to Q4 of 2021. The multivariable analysis showed that the reduction in the tuberculosis case notification rate was associated with a higher COVID-19 incidence rate (adjusted odds ratio 3·1, 95% CI 1·1-8·6, for the highest compared with the lowest group) and fewer GeneXpert machines for tuberculosis diagnosis (3·1, 1·0-9·4, for the lowest compared with the highest group) per 100 000 population. The reduction in tuberculosis treatment coverage was associated with higher COVID-19 incidence (adjusted odds ratio 11·7, 95% CI 1·5-93·4, for the highest compared with the lowest group), fewer primary health centres (10·6, 4·1-28·0, for the lowest compared with the middle-high group), and a very low number of doctors (0·3, 0·1-0·9, for the low-middle compared with the lowest group) per 100 000 population. No factors were shown to be significantly associated with all-cause mortality. INTERPRETATION: The COVID-19 pandemic adversely and unevenly affected the national tuberculosis programme across Indonesia, with the greatest impacts observed in districts with the lowest health-system capacity. These disruptions could lead to an escalation in tuberculosis transmission in the coming years, warranting the need for intensified efforts to control tuberculosis and strengthen local health systems. FUNDING: Wellcome Africa Asia Programme Vietnam. TRANSLATION: For the Bahasa translation of the abstract see Supplementary Materials section.</p

Towards controlling the crystallisation behaviour of fenofibrate melt: triggers of crystallisation and polymorphic transformation

Fenofibrate (FEN) is a dyslipidemia treatment agent which is poorly soluble in water. FEN has tendency to form polymorphs and its crystallisation behaviour is difficult to predict. The nucleation process can be initiated by mechanical disruption such as ball milling or surface scratching which may result in different crystallisation behaviour to that observed in the unperturbed system. This study has obtained insights into the controllability of FEN crystallisation by means of regulating the exposed surface and growth temperatures during its crystallisation. The availability of an open top surface (OTS) during the crystallisation of the FEN melt resulted in a mixture containing FEN form I and IIa (I ≫ IIa) at room temperature, and in the range 40 to 70 °C. Covering the surface led to significant increases in the yield of form IIa at room temperature and at 40 and 50 °C. These temperatures also yielded the highest amount of form IIa in the OTS samples whilst crystallisation at 70 °C led to only FEN form I crystals regardless of the availability of the free surface. The metastable FEN form IIa transforms to the stable form I under the influence of a mechanical stress. Additionally, the introduction of OTS before the completion of crystallisation of form IIa led to a ‘switch’ of from IIa growth to form I. This study demonstrates that the polymorph selection of FEN can be obtained by the manipulation of the crystallisation conditions

Festchrift: A Collection of Essays on Architectural History

A collection of essays on architectural history prepared by the Northern Pacific Coast Chapter Society of Architectural Historians dedicated to Professor Marion Dean Ross, chapter founder, on the occasion of his 65th birthday

No Exit? Withdrawal Rights and the Law of Corporate Reorganizations

Bankruptcy scholarship is largely a debate about the comparative merits of a mandatory regime on one hand and bankruptcy by free design on the other. By the standard account, the current law of corporate reorganization is mandatory. Various rules that cannot be avoided ensure that investors’ actions are limited and they do not exercise their rights against specialized assets in a way that destroys the value of a business as a whole. These rules solve collective action problems and reduce the risk of bargaining failure. But there are costs to a mandatory regime. In particular, investors cannot design their rights to achieve optimal monitoring as they could in a system of bankruptcy by free design. This Article suggests that the academic debate has missed a fundamental feature of the law. Bankruptcy operates on legal entities, not on firms in the economic sense. For this reason, sophisticated investors do not face a mandatory regime at all. The ability of investors to place assets in separate entities gives them the ability to create specific withdrawal rights in the event the firm encounters financial distress. There is nothing mandatory about rules like the automatic stay when assets can be partitioned off into legal entities that are beyond the reach of the bankruptcy judge. Thus, by partitioning assets of one economic enterprise into different legal entities, investors can create a tailored bankruptcy regime. In this way, legal entities serve as building blocks that can be combined to create specific and varied but transparent investor withdrawal rights. This regime of tailored bankruptcy has been unrecognized and underappreciated and may be preferable to both mandatory and free design regimes. By allowing a limited number of investors to opt out of bankruptcy in a particular, discrete, and visible way, investors as a group may be able to both limit the risk of bargaining failure and at the same time enjoy the disciplining effect that a withdrawal right brings with it