Picturing voices, writing thickness: a multimodal approach to translating the Afro-Cuban tales of Lydia Cabrera

Lydia Cabrera's career spans much of the twentieth century and her many books provide a unique insight into Afro-Cuban religions, customs, and folktales. Her work crosses the boundaries between ethnography, linguistics and fiction and her texts are inscribed with the dual strands of the African and Iberian cultures that fuse together to form the Cuban. Nonetheless, Cabrera's oeuvre remains relatively unknown outside Spanish-speaking academic circles and to date very little of it has been translated. This research project aims to address Cabrera's unwarranted obscurity by presenting English translations of twelve of her Afro-Cuban tales alongside hitherto unpublished archival material. Polyvocality is identified as a key feature of her work and ways in which 'voice' operates in her four collections of short stories are analysed. It is considered important that all the participants in the story-telling chain be 'heard' in any new presentation of Cabrera's work. This means paying attention to Cabrera as author of the published texts, but also to the informants who were her oral sources, to the translator, and to the reader of the new English versions. The fact that Cabrera's tales often encompass both the scientific (ethnographic) and the artistic (literary), makes the process of translating them a rich and complex endeavour. In formulating a creative response to this complexity, insights are drawn from visual art, concrete poetry, and ethnography. The notion of 'thick translation' (Appiah 1993/2000) provides the theoretical underpinning for the multimodal artefact which is developed. This PhD therefore also crosses disciplines - translation studies and interactive media - and comprises two parts; a written thesis and a DVD-Rom. Ultimately, it is suggested that one future direction for translation is to take a 'visual turn' towards a practice which does more than offer one written text in the place of another

Perceptions Among Senior Consumers Regarding Stereotyping in Magazine Advertisements

Marketing decision makers often employ stereotypes in their advertising messages, but constant exposure to negative messages is offensive to older consumers and contributes toward ageism. The general problem is that many senior adults feel dissatisfied with advertising directed toward them and may not purchase products that they could otherwise enjoy. Based on the tenets of social identity theory, the purpose of this study was to explore the perceptions of a group of senior consumers toward the stereotypes used to portray older adult models featured in magazine advertisements by uncovering the factors that influence purchasing decisions and the stereotypes that are most offensive and least offensive. Study participants included 30 self-selected volunteers living in Maryland and ranging in age from 70 to 85 years. Each participant ranked 40 magazine advertisements that featured a variety of potentially offensive age-related stereotypes. Analysis of the data included correlation, factor analysis, and factor scores. Three unique factors emerged from the data, which were termed Pioneers, Unpredictables, and Cupids. Pioneers, Unpredictables, and Cupids had 17, 18, and 15 distinguishing advertisements, respectively, each at a 95% confidence level. Participants found stereotypes portraying older adults as sickly or weak to be the most offensive. Stereotypes highlighting active lifestyles and loving relationships were least offensive. This study has implications for social change by increasing awareness of the negative effects of ageism in magazine advertisements. Understanding how senior adults perceive stereotypes presented in advertisements may challenge generalizations and facilitate their happiness, health, and positive identity formation

Psychological Distress and Access to Services Among a Community Sample of the South Asian Population in South East England

South Asian people are less likely to have their mental health needs recognised and experience inequality in access to services, compared to the White British population in the UK. Attempts through government policy to improve equality in mental health care and outcomes have had limited success. The aim of this study was to explore access to and experiences of services among people of South Asian origin living in the UK who were experiencing distress. An anonymous survey was distributed in GP surgeries and online, collecting a community sample of 103 adults who self-identified as South Asian. The survey contained questionnaires measuring distress, quality of life, acculturation and access to and experience of services for mental health. Between 33% and 50% of the sample was above the threshold for distress, depending on the measure used, while 40% reported a low quality of life. Those who were unemployed had greater levels of distress. Half of the sample had sought help for emotional problems in the past, with the majority seeking help in the NHS. Greater acculturation was associated with reduced distress and a higher quality of life. Seeking help from services was predicted by experiencing distress, being female and having a physical health problem. Clinical implications for mental health service delivery as well as the need for further research relating to the recognition of mental health problems in primary care are discussed

SPH simulations of Shakura-Sunyaev instability at intermediate accretion rates

We show that a standard Shakura-Sunyaev accretion disc around a black hole with an accretion rate lower than the critical Eddington limit does show the instability in the radiation pressure dominated zone. We obtain this result performing time-dependent simulations of accretion disks for a set of values of the viscosity parameter and accretion rate. In particular we always find the occurrence of the collapse of the disc: the instability develops always towards a collapsed gas pressure dominated disc and not towards the expansion. This result is valid for all initial configurations we tested. We find significant convective heat flux that increases the instability development time, but is not strong enough to inhibit the disc collapse. A physical explanation of the lack of the expansion phase is proposed considering the role of the radial heat advection. Our finding is relevant since it excludes the formation of the hot comptonizing corona -often suggested to be present- around the central object by the mechanism of the Shakura-Sunyaev instability. We also show that, in the parameters range we simulated, accretion disks are crossed by significant amplitude acoustic waves.Comment: 8 pages, 12 Postscript figures, uses natbib.sty, accepted for publication in MNRA

Super-Keplerian Frequencies in Accretion Disks. Implications for Mass and Spin Measurements of Compact Objects from X-ray Variability Studies

The detection of fast quasi-periodic variability from accreting black holes and neutron stars has been used to constrain their masses, radii, and spins. If the observed oscillations are linear modes in the accretion disks, then bounds can be placed on the properties of the central objects by assuming that these modes are locally sub-Keplerian. If, on the other hand, the observed oscillations correspond to non-linear resonances between disk modes, then the properties of the central objects can be measured by assuming that the resonant modes are excited at the same radial annulus in the disk. In this paper, we use numerical simulations of vertically integrated, axisymmetric hydrodynamic accretion disks to provide examples of situations in which the assumptions implicit in both methods are not satisfied. We then discuss our results for the robustness of the mass and spin measurements of compact objects from variability studies.Comment: 12 pages, 4 figures, submitted to Ap

A paleopathological and mortuary analysis of three Precontact burials from southern Saskatchewan

There is relatively little interment information available for the Middle and Late Middle Precontact Periods and even less for the Early Precontact and Early Middle Precontact Periods in Southern Saskatchewan. The Stoney Beach, Fox Valley and Adamiak sites provide some data on paleopathology and mortuary practices and contribute to this data set in order to try to create a more complete picture of health and mortuary practices during Precontact times in southern Saskatchewan. The Stoney Beach site appears to be the oldest interment found in Saskatchewan and one of the oldest on the Northern Plains. Stoney Beach is classified as an Early Middle Precontact Period inhumation due to a radiocarbon date of 6050±40 B.P. and represents a primary burial orientated southeast-northwest with an adult female between the ages of thirty and thirty five found in a flexed position and an infant between 9.2 and 10.2 lunar months found near the knees. Associated cultural material included bison and canid remains, a shell pendant, and red ochre. The adult female had calculus deposition, attrition/abrasion, and slight periodontal disease. As well, there was minor osteophyte formation on the fourth lumbar vertebra and an abnormal peroneal process of the left calcaneus possibly related to an ankle injury such as a strain, and a possibly transacted fifth metacarpal. The association of the female and infant and the young age of the child may indicate that they both died due to obstetric problems, possible representing a coffin birth. The Fox Valley interment is a shallow, secondary bundle burial containing at least four individuals beneath a rock cairn. A radiocarbon date of 2410±40 B.P. is congruent with a Late Middle Precontact burial and the mortuary practices and associated grave goods (a tubular pipe, a flake, red ochre, and whooping crane remains) indicate the Fox Valley burial to be a probable Pelican Lake site. This thesis identifies the past existence and rare inclusion of whooping cranes in archaeological sites and contributes to knowledge of whooping crane use in Precontact cultures. Out of the minimum of four individuals only one could be analyzed in detail and was determined to be an adult male between the ages of thirty and forty. Dental conditions present included dental attrition, slight periodontal disease, tooth crowding, and an abscess. The other pathological condition present was osteomyelitis of the distal left femur and humerus. The Adamiak cranium cannot be placed culturally as it had no associated material or a known provenience. However, it is Native American in origin, of antiquity, and displays a unique pathology and therefore is important to this thesis. The Adamiak cranium belongs to a 35 to 45 year old female with poor dentition (enamel hypoplasia, calculus deposition, attrition, and alveolar resorption subsequent to antemortem tooth loss) and displays biparietal thinning which has been observed in many parts of the world but rarely on the Plains. This condition has an unknown etiology but may be related to osteoporosis, vascular constriction, or normal variation. In the future when causation is determined, the information gathered in this thesis may be used to better understand this pathology. These three sites help to expand and contribute to the data for health and mortuary practices from the Middle Precontact Period in Saskatchewan. With the use of comparative sites trends in mortuary practices can be suggested

Modeling the Formation of Clouds in Brown Dwarf Atmospheres

Because the opacity of clouds in substellar mass object (SMO) atmospheres depends on the composition and distribution of particle sizes within the cloud, a credible cloud model is essential for accurately modeling SMO spectra and colors. We present a one--dimensional model of cloud particle formation and subsequent growth based on a consideration of basic cloud microphysics. We apply this microphysical cloud model to a set of synthetic brown dwarf atmospheres spanning a broad range of surface gravities and effective temperatures (g_surf = 1.78 * 10^3 -- 3 * 10^5 cm/s^2 and T_eff = 600 -- 1600 K) to obtain plausible particle sizes for several abundant species (Fe, Mg2SiO4, and Ca2Al2SiO7). At the base of the clouds, where the particles are largest, the particle sizes thus computed range from ~5 microns to over 300 microns in radius over the full range of atmospheric conditions considered. We show that average particle sizes decrease significantly with increasing brown dwarf surface gravity. We also find that brown dwarfs with higher effective temperatures have characteristically larger cloud particles than those with lower effective temperatures. We therefore conclude that it is unrealistic when modeling SMO spectra to apply a single particle size distribution to the entire class of objects.Comment: 25 pages; 8 figures. We have added considerable detail describing the physics of the cloud model. We have also added discussions of the issues of rainout and the self-consistent coupling of clouds with brown dwarf atmospheric models. We have updated figures 1, 3, and 4 with new vertical axis labels and new particle sizes for forsterite and gehlenite. Accepted to the Astrophysical Journal, Dec. 2, 200

Patient perceptions regarding benefits of single visit scale and polish : a randomised controlled trial

Peer reviewedPublisher PD