Romantic Walking and Railway Realism

In Romantic literature, walking is often a way of thinking: in the writings of Rousseau and Wordsworth, it is the solitary philosophical “promenade” through a natural landscape at once far from the distractions of the modern world and of interest in itself. But after Romanticism, the rural walker becomes a passenger, as the path is taken over by the railway. It’s perhaps not a coincidence that railways began at the same moment as realism, in the late 1820s: at the end of Romanticism, we could say. What does the railway do to the walking imagination and the imagination of walking? Far from the indefinite passages of a ramble, the train journey is a direct and regular movement between predetermined points. But hitherto unseen worlds appear via this new mode of travel cutting its straight, level lines. And the older reflective walker now appears, romantically, as an anachronism, a figure in a pre-industrial landscape—as if seen from the train window. With examples from Rousseau’s Confessions, Nerval’s Promenades et souvenirs, and Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbevilles, amongst others, this chapter looks at some possible relations between realism, Romanticism, and the railway: that carrier of new kinds of post-Romantic narrative prospect

The uses of shopping: Richard Hoggart goes to Woolworth’s

In The Uses of Literacy and in the many autobiographical works of his later years, Richard Hoggart wrote about shops and shopping. Taking a distance from the adverse stance of the mid-century literary world to ‘consumer society’ in all its forms, Hoggart consistently represented himself as someone who liked to shop. This essay looks at the changing shopping experiences that Hoggart described, and at the rare distinctiveness of this lifelong interest, for a man of his time and cultural places. It concentrates mainly on the shops he wrote about close to the various homes of his life, but it also briefly considers Hoggart’s accounts of contrasting experiences of touristic consumption: the conviviality of the working-class coach trip, as opposed to the isolations of remote retirement travel

Body Language Without a Body: Nonverbal Communication in Technology Mediated Settings

Humans are wired for face-to-face interaction because this was the only possible and available setting during the long evolutionary process that has led to Homo Sapiens. At the moment an increasingly significant fraction of our interactions take place in technology mediated settings, it is important to investigate how such a wiring - mainly corresponding to neural processes - reacts and adapts to them. This talk focuses in particular on how nonverbal communication - one of the main channels through which people convey socially and psychologically relevant information - plays a role in settings where natural nonverbal cues (facial expressions, vocalizations, gestures, etc.) are no longer available. Such an issue is important not only from a technological point of view (it can help to design interaction and communication technologies that better address human needs), but also from a societal one (it can help to understand major phenomena such as cyberbullyism and virality)

Filling the Void: Bolstering Attachment Security in Committed Relationships

Attachment security has many salutary effects in adulthood, yet little is known about the specific interpersonal processes that increase attachment security over time. Using data from 134 romantically committed couples in a longitudinal study, we examined trust (whether a partner is perceived as available and dependable) and perceived goal validation (whether a partner is perceived as encouraging one’s personal goal pursuits). In concurrent analyses, trust toward a partner was uniquely associated with lower attachment anxiety, whereas perceiving one’s goal pursuits validated by a partner was uniquely associated with lower attachment avoidance. In longitudinal analyses, however, the inverse occurred: Trust toward a partner uniquely predicting reduced attachment avoidance over time and perceived goal validation uniquely predicting reduced attachment anxiety over time. These findings highlight distinct temporal paths for bolstering the security of attachment anxious versus attachment avoidant individuals

Chemical contaminants, pathogen exposure and general health status of live and beach-cast Washington sea otters (Enhydra lutris kenyoni)

Analyses of blood and liver samples from live captured sea otters and liver samples from beachcast sea otter carcasses off the remote Washington coast indicate relatively low exposure to contaminants, but suggest that even at the low levels measured, exposure may be indicated by biomarker response. Evidence of pathogen exposure is noteworthy - infectious disease presents a potential risk to Washington sea otters, particularly due to their small population size and limited distribution. During 2001 and 2002, 32 sea otters were captured, of which 28 were implanted with transmitters to track their movements and liver and blood samples were collected to evaluate contaminant and pathogen exposure. In addition, liver samples from fifteen beachcast animals that washed ashore between 1991 and 2002 were analyzed to provide historical information and a basis of reference for values obtained from live otters. The results indicate low levels of metals, butyltins, and organochlorine compounds in the blood samples, with many of the organochlorines not detected except polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), and a few aromatic hydrocarbons detected in the liver of the live captured animals. Aliphatic hydrocarbons were measurable in the liver from the live captured animals; however, some of these are likely from biogenic sources. A significant reduction of vitamin A storage in the liver was observed in relation to PCB, dibutyltin and octacosane concentration. A significant and strong positive correlation in vitamin A storage in the liver was observed for cadmium and several of the aliphatic hydrocarbons. Peripheral blood mononuclear cell (PBMC) cytochrome P450 induction was elevated in two of 16 animals and may be potentially related to aliphatic and aromatic hydrocarbon exposure. Mean concentration of total butyltin in the liver of the Washington beach-cast otters was more than 15 times lower than the mean concentration reported by Kannan et al. (1998) for Southern sea otters in California. Organochlorine compounds were evident in the liver of beach-cast animals, despite the lack of large human population centers and development along the Washington coast. Concentrations of PCBs and chlordanes (e.g., transchlordane, cis-chlordane, trans-nonachlor, cis-nonachlor and oxychlordane) in liver of Washington beach-cast sea otters were similar to those measured in Aleutian and California sea otters, excluding those from Monterey Bay, which were higher. Mean concentrations of 1,1,1,- trichloro-2,2-bis(p-chlorophyenyl)ethanes (DDTs) were lower, and mean concentrations of cyclohexanes (HCH, e.g., alpha BHC, beta BHC, delta BHC and gamma BHC) were slightly higher in Washington beach-cast otters versus those from California and the Aleutians. Epidemiologically, blood tests revealed that 80 percent of the otters tested positive for morbillivirus and 60 percent for Toxoplasma, the latter of which has been a significant cause of mortality in Southern sea otters in California. This is the first finding of positive morbillivirus titers in sea otters from the Northeast Pacific. Individual deaths may occur from these diseases, perhaps more so when animals are otherwise immuno-compromised or infected with multiple diseases, but a population-threatening die-off from these diseases singly is unlikely while population immunity remains high. The high frequency of detection of morbillivirus and Toxoplasma in the live otters corresponds well with the cause of death of stranded Washington sea otters reported herein, which has generally been attributable to infectious disease. Washington’s sea otter population continues to grow, with over 1100 animals currently inhabiting Washington waters; however, the rate of growth has slowed over recent years. The population has a limited distribution and has not yet reached its carrying capacity and as such, is still considered at high risk to catastrophic events. (PDF contains 189 pages

Negotiating daughterhood and strangerhood: retrospective accounts of serial migration

Most considerations of daughtering and mothering take for granted that the subjectivities of mothers and daughters are negotiated in contexts of physical proximity throughout daughters’ childhoods. Yet many mothers and daughters spend periods separated from each other, sometimes across national borders. Globally, an increasing number of children experience life in transnational families. This paper examines the retrospective narratives of four women who were serial migrants as children (whose parents migrated before they did) . It focuses on their accounts of the reunion with their mothers and how these fit with the ways in which they construct their mother-daughter relationships. We take a psychosocial approach by using a psychoanalytically-informed reading of these narratives to acknowledge the complexities of the attachments produced in the context of migration and to attend to the multi-layered psychodynamics of the resulting relationships. The paper argues that serial migration positioned many of the daughters in a conflictual emotional landscape from which they had to negotiate ‘strangerhood’ in the context of sadness at leaving people to whom they were attached in order to join their mothers (or parents). As a result, many were resistant to being positioned as daughters, doing daughtering and being mothered in their new homes

Recent Deformation in the Bottom Sediments of Western and Southeastern Lake Ontario and its Association with Major Structures and Seismicity

Geophysical surveys, undertaken in the Toronto-Burlington corridor of western Lake Ontario and in the Rochester Basin of southeastern Lake Ontario, revealed the presence of features affecting the young lake-bottom sediments. In the western part of the lake, they include inferred pop-ups in bedrock, and plumose structures, dark linear patterns, and linear belts of circular to elliptical signatures in the modern mud. In southeastern Lake Ontario the glacial and post-glacial sediments display vertical separations of on the order of 10-15 m. Pop-ups are tectonically-induced structures. The features in the modern mud commonly parallel the orientation of P-stresses measured in Paleozoic rocks nearby and, along with the pop-ups, are spatially related to an aeromagnetic lineament. Furthermore, all of these features occur within a seismically active belt. The vertical displacements of the layered glacial and post-glacial sediments, within the Rochester Basin, are located along the southern margin of the postulated WSW extension of the seismically active St. Lawrence rift system and are interpreted to be due to faulting. The geologically young age of the sediments affected by the various deformational features, along with the characteristics of the features themselves, suggest that the lake-bottom sediments surveyed in this study may have recorded the effects of neotectonic processes.Des levés géophysiques effectués dans le corridor Toronto-Burlington, dans l'ouest du lac Ontario, a révélé la présence d'éléments qui altèrent les jeunes sédiments lacustres du fond. Dans la partie ouest du lac, dans la roche en place, il s'agit de structures de soulèvement (pop-ups) et, dans les boues récentes, de structures plumeuses, de réseaux de traits sombres et de zones linéaires de tracés circulaires à elliptiques. Dans la partie sud-est du lac Ontario, il y a dans les sédiments glaciaires et postglaciaires des rejets verticaux de l'ordre de 10 à 15 m. Les structures de soulèvement sont d'origine tectonique. Les formes dans les boues récentes, généralement parallèles à l'orientation des contraintes de compression mesurées dans les roches paléozoïques voisines, sont spatialement reliés, comme les structures de soulèvement, à un linéament aéromagnétique. De plus, toutes ces formes se trouvent dans une zone sismique active. Les rejets verticaux dans les sédiments glaciaires et postglaciaires stratifiés, à l'intérieur du basssin de Rochester, sont localisés le long de la bordure sud du prolongement présumé WSW du système actif du rift du Saint-Laurent et sont probablement attribuables à la formation de failles. La jeunesse des sédiments altérés par les déformations et les caractéristiques des déformations mêmes laissent croire que ces sédiments ont probablement enregistré les effets de processus néotectoniques.Geophysikalische Vermessungen, die im Toronto Burlington-Korridor des westlichen Ontariosees und im Rochester-Becken des sùdôstlichen Ontariosees durchgefùhrt wurden, deckten die Anwesenheit von Elementen auf, welche auf die jungen Seegrundsedimente einwirken. Im westlichen Teil des Sees bestehen sie aus Hebungen im anste-henden Gestein und im modernen Schlamm aus federartigen Strukturen, dunklen linearen Mustern und linearen Gùrteln mit kreisformigen bis ellipsenfôrmigen Umrissen. Im sùdôstlichen Ontariosee gibt es in den glazialen und postglazialen Sedimenten verti-kale Verwùrfe der GrôRenordnung von 10-15 m. Die Hebungen sind tektonischen Ursprungs. Die Formen im modernen Schlamm liegen im allgemeinen paralell zu der Orientierung der in den benachbarten palàozoischen Felsen gemessenen P-Stresse und sind zusammen mit den Hebungen ràumlich mit einem aeromagnetischen Lineament verbunden. AuRerdem treten aile dièse Formen innerhalb eines seismisch aktiven Gùrtels auf. Die vertikalen Verstellungen der geschichteten glazialen und postglazialen Sedimente innerhalb des Rochester-Beckens werden entlang des sùdlichen Rands der angenommenen WSW-Verlàngerung des seismisch aktiven Sankt-Lorenz-Spaltensystems lokalisiert. Das geologisch relativ junge Alter der durch die verschiedenen Verformungen Iàf3t vermu-ten, daB die in dieser Studie gemessenen Seegrundsedimente moglicherweise die Wirkungen neotektonischer Prozesse aufgezeichnet haben