A Personal Relationship with the Mysteries:(Re)discovering the Enchanted Garden Through Movement and the Body

This article investigates the possible role of improvised, conscious dance movement in nature as a way of reclaiming our direct experience of the metaphysical. I first discuss some aspects of the body and embodiment, not as contradictory with but absolutely essential to spirituality. I briefly touch on the possibility of embodied ecstasy, as well as various elements of embodiment such as awareness, alignment, presence, and connection. Then, after introducing some notions of dance and spirituality in various contexts, I zoom in on the ingredients of improvised movement as a way of negotiating the unknown, unpacking the possibilities of movement improvisation as a spiritual practice. Thirdly, I consider the potential for waking up to the sacred all around us, when movement practice is brought out into nature. Finally, I weave these threads together in some concluding thoughts on the role that dance can play in enhancing mystical participation in an enchanted world.Cet article explore le rôle possible du mouvement dansé, conscient et improvisé, dans la nature, en tant que moyen de nous réapproprier une expérience directe du métaphysique. Je discute d’abord certains aspects du corps et de l’incarnation qui ne sont pas contradictoires, mais plutôt essentiels à la spiritualité. J’aborde brièvement la possibilité de l’extase incarnée, ainsi que les divers éléments de l’incarnation, tels que la conscience, l’alignement, la présence et la connexion. Puis, après avoir présenté certaines conceptions de la danse et de la spiritualité dans divers contextes, je me focalise sur les ingrédients d’un mouvement improvisé en tant que moyen d’aborder l’inconnu, en dévoilant les possibilités de l’improvisation en tant que pratique spirituelle. Ensuite, je considère les possibilités de réveiller le sacré autour de nous, lorsque la pratique du mouvement est portée dans la nature. Enfin, je rassemble ces éléments en concluant sur le rôle que la danse peut jouer pour stimuler une participation mystique dans un monde enchanté

Education for Sustainable Development: Research overview

This discussion paper outlines some of the main characteristics of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), particularly in the context of ‘development’ and ‘globalization’. It addresses the various interpretations and meanings of ESD, shows how these relate to environmental education and emerging educations that overlap with SD-issues and introduces sustainability competence as a key outcome of ESD. The paper also outlines some regional trends that affect the way ESD manifests itself in the various countries and regions around the world. Some key developments affecting ESD are introduced, including globalization, the rise of the information and knowledge society, the utilization of diversity and the need for the inclusion of marginalized groups and perspectives

Plasma needle : exploring biomedical applications of non-thermal plasmas

The plasma needle is a novel design of a radio-frequency discharge in helium/air mixtures at atmospheric pressure. The discharge contains neutral, excited and ionized particles, and emits ultraviolet (UV) light. It operates at low electric power and close to ambient temperature; it combines chemical activity with non-destructive character. Therefore it is expected that the plasma needle will be used in future in (micro) surgery, e.g. in wound healing and in controlled tissue removal through cell detachment or apoptosis, avoiding necrosis and in°ammation reactions. Focus of this study is both on optimization of needle design and on assessment of effects of plasma activity on living cells. This work is a pio- neering study of the effects of non-thermal plasma on biological samples. The design of the plasma needle was adjusted in such a way that instead of operating in a closed reactor, now the treatments could be performed in open air. Thus, larger samples could be treated and handling times were reduced. Then, a characterization of the needle was performed using electrical as well as optical diagnostics (Chapter 3). It was found that the needle operated at voltages of 140 Vrms and higher. A model was made to determine the resistance of the plasma and from this an estimation of the electron density could be made. The latter can be regarded as an indirect measure for plasma reactivity. Results from optical emission spectroscopy showed that reactive oxygen species, such as O¢ and OH¢, were produced in the plasma. Furthermore, UV emission was detected. Both the radicals and the UV are known to interact with cells and tissues. For applications, the amount of radicals that reach the sample or that are generated in the sample is important. For this reason, radicals were detected in liquid that was treated with plasma using a chemical technique (Chapter 4). It involved a fluorescent probe: the probe was dissolved in liquid and after reaction with specific radicals it became fluorescent. Radical density in the liquid depended on plasma conditions, treatment time, and amount of liquid used, but it was always in the micromolar range. These concentrations were found to be comparable with physiological concentrations that were stated in literature. Basic cell reactions after plasma treatment were determined by experiments on cultured Chinese hamster ovarian (CHO K1) cells (Chapter 5). One of these reactions was cell detachment: cells detached from their environment but remained alive after treatment. Other reactions included a small percentage of apoptosis and, when high plasma powers were used, necrosis. A comparison with the effect of UV light from UV lamps was made (Chapter 7). The main effect of UV treatment was necrosis, but only above a certain threshold value. For mammalian cells, this threshold was reasonably high. Thus, the ef- fects of plasma treatment could not be explained by the action of the UV light from the plasma. Quantitative experiments were performed on cultured bovine aortic endothelial cells (BAEC) and rat smooth muscle cells (A7r5) (Chapter 6). These two cell types constitute walls of blood vessels. It was shown that treatment times of less than one minute cause detachment of the cells if the layer thickness of the liquid that covered the cells was low (around 0.1 mm). This suggests that at short treatment times, the penetration depth of the plasma into the sample is limited. The percentage of necrotic cells was low after treatment. No difference was found in the detachment behavior of both cell types. Finally, pilot experiments were performed on carotid arteries of C57BL/6 and Swiss mice ex vivo (Chapter 8). They were studied using a two-photon laser scanning microscope (TPLSM). Cell nuclei, elastin bands, and collagen could be visualized. Preliminary results indicate that induced changes are not strongly dependent on applied energy if no heating e®ects are induced. Apparent effects were limited to the adventitia, probably due to a low penetration depth of active plasma species. In conclusion, we can state that the plasma needle is a non-destructive tool that can be ap- plied with precision. It has a superficial action and causes little damage to the tissue. The level of damage can be controlled to achieve a desired therapeutic effect. Both on cultured cells and on ex vivo arteries interesting effects were found that confirm the hypothesis that the plasma needle will have a future in surgery

Transient behavior of EUV emitting discharge plasmas : a study by optical methods

Pulsed discharge plasmas are considered to be important candidate sources of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) radiation for application in future lithography tools for the high-volume manufacturing of computer chips. Two specific types of such plasmas have been the subject of research in this work: (1) a hollow-cathode triggered source, developed by Philips EUV in Aachen, Germany; and (2) a laser-ignited discharge in tin vapor, from the Institute of Spectroscopy (ISAN) in Troitsk, Russia. In the evolution of the discharge pulses of these and similar types of EUV sources, generally four different phases can be distinguished. After a device-dependent ignition phase, a strong current starts to flow ("prepinch phase"). A Lorentz force, associated with the electric current, causes a strong radial compression of the plasma ("pinch phase"). After this, in the decay phase, the plasma cools down, expands, and finally dies out. For the further development and optimization of discharge plasma EUV sources, a better understanding of the plasma properties and dynamics is needed; to obtain such understanding, time-resolved measurements of the plasma properties are indispensable. Optical diagnostics are strongly preferred because they provide a lot of information about the plasma while in general they cause little or no disturbance of the plasma itself. In this work, a number of different optical diagnostic techniques have been applied to both types of discharges; their results are summarized below. First of all, time-resolved imaging of the plasma, both in the EUV and in the visible light ranges of the spectrum, serves mainly to obtain basic, qualitative understanding of the evolution of the discharge pulse. The visible light images help to visualize the parts of the plasma that are not hot enough to emit EUV radiation. Plasma imaging has, for instance, helped to identify a preferential direction of expansion of the plasma along the axis of symmetry in both types of discharges, with supersonic velocities of roughly 4×104 m s-1. Also, time and space resolved spectra have been recorded for the EUV wavelength range. These have shown, together with EUV plasma imaging, that high ionization stages already exist in a ring-shaped plasma in the prepinch phase, before the onset of compression. The recorded spectra have further been compared to EUV spectra produced by a computer model. This comparison gives information about which plasma processes play a prominent role in the studied part of the discharge; detailed consideration of, among others, radiative deexcitation and the influence of both Doppler and Stark broadening on the opacity of the radiation, proved to be important to produce good reproductions of the experimentally obtained spectra. Furthermore, the "lagging" of the ionization stage populations compared to the instantaneous electron temperature, had to be taken into account in the form of an effective net ionization rate—hence, the ionization stage population was shown to be essentially non-stationary. Finally, doubly excited states were shown to play a role in determining the shapes of the EUV spectra of both discharges. Best matches between simulated and experimental spectra were obtained with electron temperatures near 25 eV and pinch electron densities of about 1×1025 m-3 and 3×1025 m-3 for the xenon and tin plasmas, respectively. These and other plasma parameters agree fairly well with the results of other diagnostic techniques. The Stark broadening of specific spectral lines of tin ions in the visible wavelength range has been measured as a function of time during the evolution of the tin vapor discharge. A cross-calibration has led to the determination of four new Stark broadening parameters for lines of doubly ionized tin. From the spectral line widths, information about electron densities for various parts of the plasma evolution have been derived. Finally, the Thomson scattering (TS) technique has been applied to the tin vapor discharge to determine space and time resolved electron temperatures and densities simultaneously. First experiments were performed with an existing TS setup. However, to obtain a better ratio between the TS signal and the background radiation, generated by the plasma itself, a new setup for sub-ns Thomson scattering has been designed and built. A laser with a shorter pulse duration, a camera with a shorter gate time, and improved synchronization between the two, together have enabled this signal-to-background ratio to be improved by more than an order of magnitude. This has greatly expanded the applicability of the TS technique to EUV generating discharge plasmas. In application to the tin vapor discharge, electron temperatures and densities of up to about 10 eV and 2×1023 m-3, respectively, have been found for the laser-induced ignition plasma. Once the electron density near the anode reaches a value of around 2×1022 m-3, an electric current can start to flow. In the subsequent high-current phase, both densities and temperatures increase fast, with temperatures reaching to about 30 eV after 100 ns. Especially in the beginning of this phase, the plasma exhibits a hollow radial temperature profile. Compression leads to the pinch phase, in which electron densities on the order of 3×1025 m-3 are achieved. After the end of the pinch phase, additional evaporation of tin from the cathode results in a cooler plasma with relatively slowly decreasing electron densities, from initially above 1024 m-3 to around 1021 m-3 after 4 µs. Nearly all densities, except for those in the pinch phase, have been confirmed independently by the Stark broadening results. The experiments described above have led, first of all, to a more complete understanding of the plasma evolution. Certain phenomena have been confirmed, others have been newly discovered—such as the aforementioned EUV emission from a ring-shaped plasma. Furthermore, extensive information, both temporally and spatially resolved, has been gathered on the electron temperatures and densities in the tin vapor discharge. Such data could serve as a benchmark for future computer simulations of the evolution of discharge plasmas