The art of getting lost: reeling through Benjamin

This project asks why Walter Benjamin regarded film as a revolutionary technology. Through Picture House and Hansel & Gretel, two `digital objects' I have composed, and my text, the art of getting lost, I trace the obscure connections among memory, mimesis, embodied experience, communication, translation, forgotten futures, allegory, and the (neo)baroque, which Benjamin weaves together in his theory of film. In film's mimetic nature Benjamin saw a means to (re)educate our abilities to make connections, to stray from our usual ways of perceiving and to enter into an astonishment that can lead to new awareness. I argue that in his concept of innervation -an exchange between screen and skin- Benjamin sees film as producing a semblance of an oral society, one which privileges memory and embodied communication. Film, I posit, is a site which Benjamin understood as permitting a recuperation of the sensual; for him it is a time and place which sutured experience and representation, body and memory. Further, I argue that the aura Benjamin claimed was stripped away in technological reproduction is in film actually reproduced as an `afterlife' which is able to touch us in ways that are more than metaphorical. My own practice picks up on Benjamin's notion that within film there lies buried what paradoxically he called forgotten futures. My pieces play along one of these possible tangents, engaging in a baroque cinema of attractions which celebrates artifice and openendedness. Benjamin, I am arguing, saw the technology of film as performing a remembrance service, reminding us of the cost of uncritically accepting representations and misusing technologies. His theories prove as relevant to today, if not more so, as to the time he wrote them

Super-heavy fermion material as metallic refrigerant for adiabatic demagnetization cooling

Low-temperature refrigeration is of crucial importance in fundamental research of condensed matter physics, as the investigations of fascinating quantum phenomena, such as superconductivity, superfluidity and quantum criticality, often require refrigeration down to very low temperatures. Currently, cryogenic refrigerators with $^3$He gas are widely used for cooling below 1 Kelvin. However, usage of the gas is being increasingly difficult due to the current world-wide shortage. Therefore, it is important to consider alternative methods of refrigeration. Here, we show that a new type of refrigerant, super-heavy electron metal, YbCo$_2$Zn$_{20}$, can be used for adiabatic demagnetization refrigeration, which does not require 3He gas. A number of advantages includes much better metallic thermal conductivity compared to the conventional insulating refrigerants. We also demonstrate that the cooling performance is optimized in Yb$_{1-x}$Sc$_x$Co$_2$Zn$_{20}$ by partial Sc substitution with $x\sim$0.19. The substitution induces chemical pressure which drives the materials close to a zero-field quantum critical point. This leads to an additional enhancement of the magnetocaloric effect in low fields and low temperatures enabling final temperatures well below 100 mK. Such performance has up to now been restricted to insulators. Since nearly a century the same principle of using local magnetic moments has been applied for adiabatic demagnetization cooling. This study opens new possibilities of using itinerant magnetic moments for the cryogen-free refrigeration

Ecological level analysis of primary lung tumors in dogs and cats and environmental radon activity

Background: Epidemiologic studies suggest residential radon exposure might increase the risk of primary lung cancer in people, but these studies are limited by subject mobility. This limitation might be overcome by evaluating the association in pets. Hypothesis: Primary pulmonary neoplasia (PPN) rate is higher in dogs and cats residing in counties with a high radon exposure risk (Environmental Protection Agency [EPA] zone 1) compared to zones 2 (moderate radon exposure risk) and 3 (low radon exposure risk). Animals: Six hundred ninety client-owned dogs and 205 client-owned cats with PPN. Methods: Retrospective review of medical records at 10 veterinary colleges identified dogs and cats diagnosed with PPN between 2010 and 2015. Each patient's radon exposure was determined by matching the patient's zip code with published county radon exposure risk. County level PPN rates were calculated using the average annual county cat and dog populations. The PPN counts per 100 000 dog/cat years at risk (PPN rates) were compared across radon zones for each species. Results: The PPN rate ratio in counties in high radon zone (1) was approximately 2-fold higher than in counties in lower radon zones for dogs (rate ratio zone 1 to 2, 2.49; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.56-4.00; rate ratio zone 1 to 3, 2.29; 95% CI, 1.46-3.59) and cats (rate ratio zone 1 to 2, 2.13; 95% CI, 0.95-4.79; zone 1 to 3, 1.81; 95% CI, 0.9-3.61). Conclusions and Clinical Importance Exposure to household radon might play a role in development of PPN in dogs and cats.This is the published version of the following article: Fowler, Brittany L., Chad M. Johannes, Annette O'Connor, Deanna Collins, Jonathan Lustgarten, Chaohui Yuan, Kristen Weishaar et al. "Ecological level analysis of primary lung tumors in dogs and cats and environmental radon activity." Journal of Veterinary Internal Medicine 34, no. 6 (2020): 2660-2670. DOI: 10.1111/jvim.15936. Copyright 2020 The Authors. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). Posted with permission