Creativity with Purest Energy: How Sir Thomas Wyatt Introduced Modern English Poetics

The court poetry of Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-42) asserts a special confidence and boldness of the individual and his poetics that stand at the forefront of an ambitious, sure and powerful England which eventually came into place during his life and afterwards. Wyatt marks the start of a new literary period when humanity and art gradually diverged from religious rites and instruction, dramatic impulses for romantic love and mere desires for adventure, allegory and narrative to favor instead modern demands and conscious intellectualism. Wyatt\u27s poetry best represents this distinct literary break from his native medieval predecessors and from writers who had already been challenged on the European Continent by the renaissance which began there about a century ahead of England\u27s. Transmitting and revising poetry from Italy, France and elsewhere, Wyatt introduced numerous poetic forms to England. Then, by experimenting with these new metrical forms and using native vernacular, he originated his own poetry. Wyatt\u27s poetry also began to reflect a new attitude about human life, an attitude reflecting the flourishing of classical authorities somewhat at odds with old ideas. His early modern poetics would exceed beyond medieval literature\u27s propensity for rhyme and the harsh depiction of nature\u27s realities. Instead, he would offer an alternative to philosophic depth and poetic virtuosity that was mastered by Chaucer and imitated by others in England and on the European Continent. His would be a transformative kind of poetry, more direct and less narrative, in new and irregular prosody. And Wyatt\u27s new poetry uniquely combined native traditions and classical influences in radically different tones and from ordered meters that did not restrict--actually, which served as a catalyst for--lyrical variations, prosodic innovations, and quite different and highly aesthetic expressions about universal truths and humanity\u27s new-found boldness and intellect that was taking hold in Tudor England. Wyatt\u27s court-poet contemporaries and then successive poets like Spenser, Sidney, Shakespeare, and Donne to name only a few, would acknowledge the poetics that Wyatt first introduced and that they then improved upon in their own poetry to establish what is well-known as the Early Modern eras\u27 best lyrics. However, without the clear voice and innovations by Wyatt, that new path in British life and literature undoubtedly would not have been advanced, at least not in the first half of the sixteenth century

Distance models as a tool for modelling detection probability and density of native bumblebees

Effective monitoring of native bee populations requires accurate estimates of population size and relative abundance among habitats. Current bee survey methods, such as netting or pan trapping, may be adequate for a variety of study objectives but are limited by a failure to account for imperfect detection. Biases due to imperfect detection could result in inaccurate abundance estimates or erroneous insights about the response of bees to different environments. To gauge the potential biases of currently employed survey methods, we compared abundance estimates of bumblebees (Bombus spp.) derived from hierarchical distance sampling models (HDS) to bumblebee counts collected from fixed‐area net surveys (“net counts”) and fixed‐width transect counts (“transect counts”) at 47 early‐successional forest patches in Pennsylvania. Our HDS models indicated that detection probabilities of Bombus spp. were imperfect and varied with survey‐ and site‐covariates. Despite being conspicuous, Bombus spp. were not reliably detected beyond 5 m. Habitat associations of Bombus spp. density were similar across methods, but the strength of association with shrub cover differed between HDS and net counts. Additionally, net counts suggested sites with more grass hosted higher Bombus spp. densities whereas HDS suggested that grass cover was associated with higher detection probability but not Bombus spp. density. Density estimates generated from net counts and transect counts were 80%–89% lower than estimates generated from distance sampling. Our findings suggest that distance modelling provides a reliable method to assess Bombus spp. density and habitat associations, while accounting for imperfect detection caused by distance from observer, vegetation structure, and survey covariates. However, detection/ non‐detection data collected via point‐counts, line‐transects and distance sampling for Bombus spp. are unlikely to yield species‐specific density estimates unless individuals can be identified by sight, without capture. Our results will be useful for informing the design of monitoring programs for Bombus spp. and other pollinators

Manual / Issue 9 / Out of Line

Manual, a journal about art and its making. Out of Line. The nineth issue. This issue of *Manual*—themed Out of Line—is a collection about the way that lines disrupt, point outward. In poetry, the attention to detail one takes in crafting a line is all about making the line disappear, making something it holds to take front stage. . . . The space between the lines creating the image . . . the space around that argues for the importance of all that the lines hold. Manual 9 (Out of Line) complemented Lines of Thought: Drawing from Michelangelo to Now, presented in collaboration with the British Museum, on view at the RISD Museum October 6, 2017 to January 7, 2018. Softcover, 76 pages. Published 2017 by the RISD Museum. Manual 9 (Out of Line) contributors include Fida Adely, Reginald Dwayne Betts, Stefano Bloch, Mimi Cabell, Namita Vijay Dharia, Douglas W. Doe, Jared A. Goldstein, Lucinda Hitchcock, Jan Howard, Kate Irvin, Douglas Kearney, Amber Lopez, Jeffrey Moser, Sheida Soleimani, and Craig Taylor.https://digitalcommons.risd.edu/risdmuseum_journals/1035/thumbnail.jp

A comparison of two methods for estimating odds ratios: Results from the National Health Survey

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licens

Aberrant epithelial GREM1 expression initiates colonic tumorigenesis from cells outside the stem cell niche

Hereditary mixed polyposis syndrome (HMPS) is characterized by the development of mixed-morphology colorectal tumors and is caused by a 40-kb genetic duplication that results in aberrant epithelial expression of the gene encoding mesenchymal bone morphogenetic protein antagonist, GREM1. Here we use HMPS tissue and a mouse model of the disease to show that epithelial GREM1 disrupts homeostatic intestinal morphogen gradients, altering cell fate that is normally determined by position along the vertical epithelial axis. This promotes the persistence and/or reacquisition of stem cell properties in Lgr5-negative progenitor cells that have exited the stem cell niche. These cells form ectopic crypts, proliferate, accumulate somatic mutations and can initiate intestinal neoplasia, indicating that the crypt base stem cell is not the sole cell of origin of colorectal cancer. Furthermore, we show that epithelial expression of GREM1 also occurs in traditional serrated adenomas, sporadic premalignant lesions with a hitherto unknown pathogenesis, and these lesions can be considered the sporadic equivalents of HMPS polyps

Afterword : materialities, care, 'ordinary affects', power and politics

In this paper I explore ways of thinking about material practices in terms of hierarchies of value as well as assemblages, in which strategic agendas are made present in everyday practices, with profound affects as well as effects. For example, I suggest how power can work through the association of multiple and heterogeneous materials and social processes to create ‘thresholds’, as spaces through which people must pass in order to be included as patients, and which circulate specific imaginaries over what counts as an appropriate need. I go on to suggest how some material practices are made mundane and immaterial, that is inconsequential, so that drawing attention to their importance in how care is done (or not done) helps disrupt the commonplace production and reproduction of the ‘neglected things’ (Puig de la Bellacasa 2012) of healthcare environments, and by so doing help reimagine what is important for occasions to actually be caring. Specifically, I shift to thinking about a sensibility, one that is highly valued in this collection of articles, that helps illuminate different imaginaries of care to those that dominate heathcare environments, an approach that I have called elsewhere ‘relational extension’. Relational extension is the attachment to and detachment from materials through which specific kinds of relations are done and through which world-making is accomplished, and especially how switches between extensions, or motility, re-accomplishes stabilities. While I have shown in my work on medicine and healthcare how this sensibility includes focussing on how entanglement in assemblages and ‘motility’ helps reproduce stabilities (e.g. Latimer 2004, 2013 a,b), in the example I offer here I show how shifts in extension and motility disrupts stabilities and their reproduction

Grid Cells, Place Cells, and Geodesic Generalization for Spatial Reinforcement Learning

Reinforcement learning (RL) provides an influential characterization of the brain's mechanisms for learning to make advantageous choices. An important problem, though, is how complex tasks can be represented in a way that enables efficient learning. We consider this problem through the lens of spatial navigation, examining how two of the brain's location representations—hippocampal place cells and entorhinal grid cells—are adapted to serve as basis functions for approximating value over space for RL. Although much previous work has focused on these systems' roles in combining upstream sensory cues to track location, revisiting these representations with a focus on how they support this downstream decision function offers complementary insights into their characteristics. Rather than localization, the key problem in learning is generalization between past and present situations, which may not match perfectly. Accordingly, although neural populations collectively offer a precise representation of position, our simulations of navigational tasks verify the suggestion that RL gains efficiency from the more diffuse tuning of individual neurons, which allows learning about rewards to generalize over longer distances given fewer training experiences. However, work on generalization in RL suggests the underlying representation should respect the environment's layout. In particular, although it is often assumed that neurons track location in Euclidean coordinates (that a place cell's activity declines “as the crow flies” away from its peak), the relevant metric for value is geodesic: the distance along a path, around any obstacles. We formalize this intuition and present simulations showing how Euclidean, but not geodesic, representations can interfere with RL by generalizing inappropriately across barriers. Our proposal that place and grid responses should be modulated by geodesic distances suggests novel predictions about how obstacles should affect spatial firing fields, which provides a new viewpoint on data concerning both spatial codes

Genetic effects on gene expression across human tissues

Characterization of the molecular function of the human genome and its variation across individuals is essential for identifying the cellular mechanisms that underlie human genetic traits and diseases. The Genotype-Tissue Expression (GTEx) project aims to characterize variation in gene expression levels across individuals and diverse tissues of the human body, many of which are not easily accessible. Here we describe genetic effects on gene expression levels across 44 human tissues. We find that local genetic variation affects gene expression levels for the majority of genes, and we further identify inter-chromosomal genetic effects for 93 genes and 112 loci. On the basis of the identified genetic effects, we characterize patterns of tissue specificity, compare local and distal effects, and evaluate the functional properties of the genetic effects. We also demonstrate that multi-tissue, multi-individual data can be used to identify genes and pathways affected by human disease-associated variation, enabling a mechanistic interpretation of gene regulation and the genetic basis of diseas