Naming Melancholy : le monde nocturne des Notebooks de S.T. Coleridge

International audienceL’écriture mosaïque des Notebooks du poète anglais Coleridge, écriture faite de bribes poétiques et métaphysiques, de citations, de descriptions de lieux, d’esquisses, de projets d’œuvres, porte en elle l’extrême diversité, richesse et complexité de la pensée du poète. Ces petites carnets avaient pour le poète une visée exploratoire : ils devaient rendre visible la naissance, l’évolution de ses pensées et leur cheminement vers la Vérité ultime du poète. Recherche tant sur la forme que sur l’in-forme, la matière textuelle et graphique des carnets témoigne en effet d’une volonté de percer le tangible pour explorer « l’envers du visible » et accéder à cette étincelle de divinité qui fonde toute âme. La complexité de l’acte de perception dans les Notebooks interroge néanmoins la notion d’être dans un lieu. Comment le voir affecte l’inscription du sujet dans l’espace ? Cette question trouve une résonance dans l’acte de nommer les lieux : le « naming places » des romantiques anglais. La disparition progressive des noms de lieux dans les Notebooks ne se ferait-elle pas le reflet d’une difficulté à ancrer le corps dans le monde naturel et à habiter poétiquement l’espace ? Peu à peu, le nocturne devient à la fois le lieu et l’écriture privilégiés des Notebooks, une tentative vaine de conférer une substance à ce point insaisissable qui est au cœur de la quête mélancolique.The mosaic-writing of Coleridge’s Notebooks, made of poetic fragments, metaphysical thoughts, quotes, descriptions of places, sketches, literary projects, reflects the extreme diversity, richness and complexity of Coleridge’s thought. The process of private writing was for Coleridge as much an exploration of the formed matter as of the unformed. The graphic and textual material of the Notebooks reveals his desire of piercing into the depths of the natural world, of going beyond the visible to have a glimpse at this spark of divinity present in every man’s soul. The complexity of the act of seeing in the Notebooks raises questions though about the act of being in the world. How does the gaze affect the way the subject finds a habitation in the world? This question finds a semantic echo in the romantic act of “naming places”. The gradual disappearance of the names of places in the Notebooks may be related to an impossible rooting of the body in the natural world and thus an impossible poetic relation to the world and to the other. The Nocturnal then gradually becomes the privileged moment and writing in the Notebooks, a hopeless attempt to give substance to this vanishing point which is at the heart of melancholia

Investigating the Role of ADP-forming Acetyl-CoA Synthetase from the Protozoan Parasite Entamoeba histolytica

ADP-forming acetyl-CoA synthetase (ACD; EC 6.2.1.13) catalyzes the reversible conversion of acetyl-CoA to acetate coupled to the production of ATP. This enzyme is present only in certain acetate-producing archaea and a limited number of bacteria and eukaryotes. ACD belongs to the same NDP-forming acyl-CoA synthetase enzyme superfamily as succinyl-CoA synthetase (SCS; EC 6.2.1.4) from the citric acid cycle, and a similar three-step mechanism involving a phosphoenzyme intermediate was originally proposed for this enzyme. ACD has been postulated to be a major acetate-producing enzyme in the protozoan parasite Entamoeba histolytica and may contribute to ATP production. Biochemical and kinetic characterization of recombinant E. histolytica ACD (EhACD) revealed that this enzyme may function in the direction of acetate production for generation of ATP and CoA during growth in the high glucose environment of the small intestine, and in acetate assimilation to acetyl-CoA in the high acetate environment of the lower intestine during colonization. EhACD utilizes multiple substrates including propionate and propionyl-CoA supporting an additional proposed role in amino acid degradation. EhACD activity is regulated by both ATP and PPi, important energy molecules in E. histolytica. The ACD mechanism has been controversial, as a required second phosphorylation step was proposed for the Pyrococcus furiosus enzyme. Investigation of the catalytic role of the two proposed phosphorylation sites in EhACD revealed that His252, the site of phosphorylation in the original three-step mechanism, is essential for activity and His533, the proposed second phosphorylation site, is important but not essential. Likewise, Glu213, proposed to play a role in phosphorylation/ dephosphorylation of His252, is also required but Asp674 thought to stabilize the phosphohistidine is not. These results suggest that EhACD follows a three-step mechanism with a single phosphoenzyme intermediate. Additional conserved active site residues were examined for their role in catalysis. Asp314 was shown to be essential for activity, possibly in both a catalytic role and a structural role. Alteration at this position resulted in complete loss of activity, and computational modeling based on the Candidatus Korarchaeum cryptofilum ACD-I structure suggests that this residue may be critical for dimerization. Future directions for understanding the complex mechanism of ACD and its physiological role are presented

A Case Study: the Role of Women in Creating Community on the Dakota Frontier, 1880 to 1920

ABSTRACT A CASE STUDY: THE ROLE OF WOMEN IN CREATING COMMUNITY ON THE DAKOTA FRONTIER, 1880 TO 1920 by Ruth Page Jones The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 2015 Under the Supervision of Professor Genevieve G. McBride During the Dakota Boom years of 1878 to 1887, Dakota Territory welcomed droves of new families, adding close to 400,000 people in the 1880s. Creating new homes on the treeless prairie, many people faced the challenge of sustaining life without the benefit of an established community. The conditions were too harsh, the weather too unpredictable, and the economy too fragile for anyone to live in isolation. By researching the history of one rural county, Aurora County, from 1880 to 1920, this study examines how women experienced new lives in that area, and how they participated in shaping their societies and developing community. Aurora County was typical of many South Dakota counties east of the Missouri River that were settled during the “boom” era. The rural character of those counties greatly influenced the experiences of the women and the ways in which they shaped their societies. While documenting a new local history, this study also broadens our understanding of women’s lives and their role in building community as they moved onto the South Dakota frontier in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries

HIV and young people: perceptions of risk, resilience and dignity in an urban slum

Young people are at the centre of the HIV pandemic. Although global incidence of HIV is diminishing, for many cohorts below the age of 24, such as slum-dwelling youth, prevalence has, overall, plateaued or increased. HIV in eastern and southern Africa, the region hit hardest by the disease, is becoming an urban phenomenon and aggregating in informal slum settings. A new genre of research is called for that provides insight into the urban evolution of HIV and identifies entry points for tackling root causes of risk and vulnerability. This is a novel piece of research carried out in two urban slums in Nairobi, Kenya: Korogocho and Majengo. Each site was politically marginalised and inhabited mostly by young people facing a generalised HIV epidemic. In contrast to the predominant quantitative research tradition in Kenya, this is a qualitative study that seeks to understand perceptions of HIV and the processes involved in managing risk from the point of view of young people. A constructivist grounded theory methodology was adopted given its fit with the study’s theoretical conception and topic of inquiry. Two methods were used to generate primary data: first, 25 semi-structured interviews with men and women aged 18–24 years; and second, a photovoice exercise involving nine participants. During interviewing and photovoice, rich data emerged that were sorted into a progression of open, focussed and theoretical codes. The simultaneous process of data generation and analysis pointed to where the research needed to go next and formed an integral part of constructing social theory. An inductive coding approach gradually created a higher conceptual order moving from descriptive to explanatory in which core properties, dimensions and relationships pertaining to the slum universe were captured and synthesised. Through creating a storyline, participants' experiential approach to life was brought into sharp focus as was the role of individual agency and purpose. Research conclusions were interrogated within the domains of individual, environmental and structural determinants and checked against the literature to establish the principle of knowledge generation and translation. The study constructs a theoretical model, 'HIV and the Integrity of Risk —Dignifying Resilience in Disadvantage,' which accounts for young people’s action driven by the exigencies of survival and in which HIV forms part of the compendium of a life lived on the edge. Risk, as this study finds, is about the integrity to perceive advantage in the daily struggle to find sustenance, to take life on with all its pitfalls and gain resilience within the social realm capable of managing processes at the heart of HIV. This research calls for further inquiry that explores measures taken by young slum dwellers to dignify their lives and avoid episodes of humiliation and the impact these have on the social epidemiology of HIV. As a means of helping to control the epidemic, HIV research must continue to prioritise innovative people-centred slum-based social inquiry that highlights what matters most to the people most at risk and the people holding the key to ending AIDS

Temperature distribution in magnetized neutron star crusts

We investigate the influence of different magnetic field configurations on the temperature distribution in neutron star crusts. We consider axisymmetric dipolar fields which are either restricted to the stellar crust, ``crustal fields'', or allowed to penetrate the core, ``core fields''. By integrating the two-dimensional heat transport equation in the crust, taking into account the classical (Larmor) anisotropy of the heat conductivity, we obtain the crustal temperature distribution, assuming an isothermal core. Including quantum magnetic field effects in the envelope as a boundary condition, we deduce the corresponding surface temperature distributions. We find that core fields result in practically isothermal crusts unless the surface field strength is well above $10^{15}$ G while for crustal fields with surface strength above a few times $10^{12}$ G significant deviations from isothermality occur at core temperatures inferior or equal to $10^8$ K. At the stellar surface, the cold equatorial region produced by the quantum suppression of heat transport perpendicular to the field in the envelope, present for both core and crustal fields, is significantly extended by the classical suppression at higher densities in the case of crustal fields. This can result, for crustal fields, in two small warm polar regions which will have observational consequences: the neutron star has a small effective thermally emitting area and the X-ray pulse profiles are expected to have a distinctively different shape compared to the case of a neutron star with a core field. These features, when compared with X-ray data on thermal emission of young cooling neutron stars, will open a way to provide observational evidence in favor, or against, the two radically different configurations of crustal or core magnetic fields.Comment: 10 pages, 10 figures, submitted to A&

Rethinking Teacher Education for Classroom Behaviour Management: Investigation of an Alternative Model using an Online Professional Experience in an Australian University.

This paper responds to the theory-practice divide regarding classroom behaviour management in teacher education. Qualitative interviews and surveys were used to investigate whether an alternative model using an online professional experience could improve perceptions of teacher education students’ beliefs, knowledge, perceived skills and confidence in classroom management. Teacher education students participated in an innovative Master of Teaching course designed to integrate ecological classroom management theory, video observation, and critical reflection in an online professional experience (practicum). Results indicated that participants, upon completion of the course, reported improvements in their beliefs, knowledge, perceived skills and confidence in classroom management. Additionally, in a subsequent in-school professional experience, a preference for initial correction and prevention strategies to manage the learning environment was highlighted. The implications for future teacher education programmes are presented

Taxonomy of the spring dwelling amphipod Synurella ambulans (Crustacea: Crangonyctidae) in West Russia: with notes on its distribution and ecology

This study deals with taxonomic problems of the semi-subterranean crangonyctid amphipod Synurella ambulans (F. Müller, 1846), well-known from various freshwater habitats in Europe. The taxonomy of the species S. ambulans and the generic diagnosis for the genus Synurella are revised. A new synonymy is proposed: Synurella ambulans (F. Müller, 1846) = Synurella ambulans meschtscherica Borutzky, 1929, syn. nov. The affinity with the related groups, distribution and ecology of the species are examined

The Complexities of Global Systems History*

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/79129/1/j.1540-5923.2010.00307.x.pd

Multi-Scale Entropy Analysis as a Method for Time-Series Analysis of Climate Data

Evidence is mounting that the temporal dynamics of the climate system are changing at the same time as the average global temperature is increasing due to multiple climate forcings. A large number of extreme weather events such as prolonged cold spells, heatwaves, droughts and floods have been recorded around the world in the past 10 years. Such changes in the temporal scaling behaviour of climate time-series data can be difficult to detect. While there are easy and direct ways of analysing climate data by calculating the means and variances for different levels of temporal aggregation, these methods can miss more subtle changes in their dynamics. This paper describes multi-scale entropy (MSE) analysis as a tool to study climate time-series data and to identify temporal scales of variability and their change over time in climate time-series. MSE estimates the sample entropy of the time-series after coarse-graining at different temporal scales. An application of MSE to Central European, variance-adjusted, mean monthly air temperature anomalies (CRUTEM4v) is provided. The results show that the temporal scales of the current climate (1960–2014) are different from the long-term average (1850–1960). For temporal scale factors longer than 12 months, the sample entropy increased markedly compared to the long-term record. Such an increase can be explained by systems theory with greater complexity in the regional temperature data. From 1961 the patterns of monthly air temperatures are less regular at time-scales greater than 12 months than in the earlier time period. This finding suggests that, at these inter-annual time scales, the temperature variability has become less predictable than in the past. It is possible that climate system feedbacks are expressed in altered temporal scales of the European temperature time-series data. A comparison with the variance and Shannon entropy shows that MSE analysis can provide additional information on the statistical properties of climate time-series data that can go undetected using traditional method