Negative Aesthetics In Art, Environment, And Everyday Life: Arnold Berleant’s Theory And The Novels Of Kirino Natsuo

Arnold Berleant’s valuable analysis of ‘negative aesthetics’ in his 2010 book Sensibility and Sense: The Aesthetic Transformation of the Human World provides an analytic framework not only for general investigation of negative aesthetics but for understanding their extension into daily life and literature. It illuminates the work of Japanese novelist Natsuo Kirino (1951- , 夏生桐野), just as her novels illustrate Berleant’s negative aesthetics. In Kirino’s narratives, negatively aesthetic landscapes determine characters’ mindsets, even as they mirror the moral and aesthetic bleakness of society at large, revealing characters’ internal dynamics and the larger social world with the same destructive efficacy Berleant points out—an efficacy we ignore to our peril

Models of Faith: The Role of Faith-Based Organizations in International Development

Faith-based organizations make up a large percentage of organizations doing development work both domestically and internationally. Faith-based development organizations (FBDOs) can be successful because they have spiritual drive to work for the social good, and large religious organizations to support them. However, not all FBDOs practice good development, and in the past many of them have undertaken development projects that proved to be damaging and detrimental to the host communities. The purpose of this research is to explore how different FBDOs conceptualize and operationalize their faith while doing development work abroad. Through exploring different models of faith-based development and analyzing their practices, this research can ultimately assist FBDOs in structuring their organizations so they can become more effective development actors and ensure that their practices are sustainable and culturally sensitive

What If Society Changed?: A Collection of Dystopian Stories

My senior project will be to write a collection of stories in a variety of creative forms ranging from a single short story to a linked collection to a novella. All of the stories give a glimpse into a futuristic society based off of a contemporary issue. The project itself is two fold. It is an exercise in social criticism through story, as well as an exploration of types of stories

The way of bogs, mires and marshlands: myths, symbols and knowledge

Recent problems in environmentalism, globalization, and global warming reveal the interconnectedness of the various biomes and types of communities within and across them. Difficulties in respecting or understanding even one of these biomes/environments contributes to the perpetuation and exacerbation of problems, at the expense of solutions. Reinterpreting bogs in the light of philosophical approaches that acknowledge their advantages and benefits, such as those of the Japanese, therefore, may be profoundly useful. The social and political difficulties often encountered today in conserving and restoring bogs stem not merely from a lack of scientific knowledge, or the lag in the dissemination of scientific knowledge to the public and decision-makers, but arise primarily from two distinct but related problems arising in relation to bogs understood symbolically and philosophically: first, bogs are a symbol of what we fear and loathe, not merely because of their inherent characteristics and the ways we interact with them, but, more importantly, as a result of the cultural shaping of our understanding; second, bogs do not easily fit into the most prevalent pattern of thinking we have, namely dichotomous or binary thinking. This paper analyzes bogs and swamps, which are disparaged and dismissed in the West, as a culturally constructed symbol in Japan, where positive valuations contrast strongly with the widespread Western aversion. It explores the ways this symbolism, emerging largely from Yin-Yang theory, Daoism, and Buddhism, and reinforced in art and literature, both shapes and is shaped by the intersections of philosophical and customary ways of thinking

Effect of bromoform and linseed oil on greenhouse gas emissions from stored beef manure

Emissions of carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide – potent greenhouse gases - from stored beef feedlot manure are a significant concern relative to climate change. Research on methane reduction strategies for enteric emissions has identified the application of organic additives, such as bromoform and linseed oil, to ruminant diets as potential solutions for reducing enteric emissions and pathogenic bacteria in excreted manure. The objective of this study was to determine the effect of bromoform and linseed oil on greenhouse gas emissions from beef feedlot manure, and on E. coli concentration in beef cattle manure, during a 5-week storage period. The experiment used a completely randomized block design (CRBD) with 4 replications of 5 treatments: 5.5 g/kg and 11 g/kg of linseed oil, 4.3 g/kg, and 8.6 g/kg of bromoform, and a control receiving no additives. Treatments were added to a 3-liter mix of 50% manure, 50% soil, mixed by hand, and stored in airtight columns (10-cm diameter x 40-cm tall) in a greenhouse maintained at 25 C during the storage period. Gas samples were collected 10 times during the 5-week test period using a 15 ml syringe and were analyzed using gas chromatography to determine concentrations of methane, carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide. A 1-cm diameter core of material was removed from the top 20 cm of each column 4 times during the sampling period to conduct bacterial enumerations. Quantification of E.coli in samples was determined by incubating serial dilutions for 24 hours at 36 C and manually counting colonies. Preliminary results of the study showed that through 5 weeks of observation, 11g/kg linseed oil reduced the average concentration of E. coli (p \u3c0.05) compared to all other treatments. Preliminary results also indicate that bromoform at 8.6g/kg decreased carbon dioxide emissions but neither bromoform concentration had any significant effect on methane or nitrous oxide emissions compared to control. Linseed oil at 11g/kg increased methane emissions compared to control but neither linseed oil concentrations significantly impacted the average flux of carbon dioxide, or nitrous oxide from manure storages when compared to control

A micro-geoarchaeological view on stratigraphy and site formation processes in the Middle, Upper and Epi-Paleolithic layers of Sefunim Cave, Mt. Carmel, Israel

This paper presents a micro-geoarchaeological study carried out on the sedimentary sequence exposed at the entrance of Sefunim Cave, Israel, a sequence that spans from the Middle Paleolithic to the early Epipaleolithic periods. Using FTIR and micromorphological techniques, we investigated the stratigraphic sequence to reconstruct patterns of site use and archaeological formation processes. We identified formation processes that are common among Paleolithic caves sites in the Southern Levant, mainly the deposition of local terra rossa through colluvial sedimentation. Taphonomic disturbances of the deposits range from minimal to moderate, exhibited mainly by root and burrowing activity, but with no evidence for significant transport of archaeological materials. While the upper layers (II–III) are decalcified, the precipitation of secondary calcite results in increasing cementation of the sediments with depth in the lower layers (V–VII). We observed variation at the microscopic scale and identified an inverse correlation between human and carnivore activity throughout the layers. We observed human activity by the presence of micro-archaeological materials such as chert, bone, charcoal, rubified clay, burnt bone and shell, and wood ash. We observed carnivore activity by the presence of phosphatic grains and coprolite fragments as well as chewed and digested bones. We conclude that human activity at the site was characterized by episodes of varying intensity, based on the frequency of archaeological finds within the different layers. The alternating episodes of human and carnivore activity at Sefunim Cave may demonstrate the close-knit interactions and reciprocal relations that humans and carnivore shared at Paleolithic caves.publishedVersio

Firearm access and adolescent suicide risk: Toward a clearer understanding of effect size

Background: Strong and consistent associations between access to firearms and suicide have been found in ecologic and individual-level observational studies. For adolescents, a seminal case-control study estimated that living in a home with (vs without) a firearm was associated with a fourfold increase in the risk of death by suicide. Methods: We use data from a nationally representative study of 10 123 US adolescents aged 13-18 years to (1) measure how much adolescents who live in a home with a firearm differ from those who do not in ways related to their risk of suicide, and (2) incorporate these differences into an updated effect estimate of the risk of adolescent suicide attributable to living in a home with firearms. Results: Almost one-third (30.7%) of adolescents reported living in a home with firearms. Relative to those who did not, adolescents reporting living in a home with a firearm were slightly more likely to be male, older and reside in the South and rural areas, but few differences were identified for mental health characteristics. The effect size found by Brent and colleagues appeared robust to sources of possible residual confounding: updated relative risks remained above 4.0 across most sensitivity analyses and at least 3.1 in even the most conservative estimates. Conclusions: Although unmeasured confounding and other biases may nonetheless remain, our updated estimates reinforce the suggestion that adolescents' risk of suicide was increased threefold to fourfold if they had lived in homes with a firearm compared with if they had not