Interviews with the Swamp Thing, the Poacher and the Healer

Interactions with and within institutions have characteristic qualities, styles, personalities, and tone. These aspects of institutional life are difficult to capture through formal description or professional obligation. Institutions comprise performed characters, each activating infrastructural scenography in their way, infusing physical, procedural architectures with particular tonalities. How might we trace these performers? What are these performances, and for whom are they enacted? Transcribed here are conversations with essential practitioners. These are the characters of art institutions, tracing outlines of who they are and what they do, and how they perform it. Necessarily veiled and anonymized, these personnel profiles have monikers following their ways of life within the institution: Swamp Thing, Poacher, and Healer. They recount and refract dimensions of the critically indivisible person-professional-practitioner entities that people in arts and cultural institutions find themselves impelled or compelled to become. Such exchanges about practices in institutions reveal how these contexts demand that we enact reactionary and curative roles, composed within the constraints and affordances of the scenographic infrastructure of buildings and publications, policies and procedures, presumption, and tradition

Reconsidering experiential knowledge in the relation of art and science practices.

As practice-theory orientations the arts and sciences have often seemed juxtaposed. We are interested in how a new generation of artist-scientists think, operate and communicate. We argue that it is crucial to find new forms and formats for engagement and communication in communities of inter-disciplinary research and practice. In this paper, we investigate the discursive and communicative relation between different disciplines, in social and experiential events (conferences, festivals, and the like). For this purpose, we will build upon the experiences and observations from various "Re-mix" situations in which art-scientists meet in conference and festival settings

Traveling at the Speed of Paik: An artist-researcher visits the Nam June Paik Art Center

Nam June Paik visited Japan in 1985, in preparation for Bye Bye Kipling, his second work for satellite, fusing live broadcasts from Seoul, Tokyo and New York. In this same year, German film director Wim Wenders went to Tokyo. Wenders’s trip resulted in his nebulous homage to 1950s film director Yasujiro Ozu, Tokyo-Ga

Behavioral confirmation of loneliness in dyadic conversations

This study was designed to examine the self-fulfilling nature of the social stigma of loneliness. It was hypothesized that individuals (perceivers) would be less warm and friendly in dyadic conversations with persons believed to be lonely (lonely target) than not-lonely (not-lonely target), and that partners would reciprocate this behavior. These patterns were expected to be stronger in female perceiver/male target than male perceiver/female target dyads. In this study, university students engaged in cross-sex dyadic conversations prior to which they were provided with items from the revised UCLA loneliness scale indicating that their partner (target) was lonely or not-lonely. The analyses revealed that, consistent with the hypotheses, in female perceiver/male target dyads, the perceiver was observed to be less warm during later stages of the conversations when the male target was lonely compared to when not-lonely. It was found that about the same point in the conversations male targets were observed to be less proud when lonely than not-lonely. Additionally, subsequent to the conversations

Extending Postpartum Medicaid: State and Federal Policy Options During and After COVID-19

The United States is facing a maternal health crisis with rising rates of maternal mortality and morbidity and stark disparities in maternal outcomes by race and socioeconomic status. Among the efforts to address this issue, one policy proposal is gaining particular traction: extending the period of Medicaid eligibility for pregnant women beyond 60 days after childbirth. The authors examine the legislative and regulatory pathways most readily available for extending postpartum Medicaid, including their relative political, economic, and public health trade-offs. They also review the state and federal policy activity to date and discuss the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the prospects for policy change

Incidence of Secondary Hemophagocytic Lymphohistiocytosis in Critically-Ill COVID-19 Patients.

Objective Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is associated with diffuse lung injury that can progress to acute respiratory distress syndrome, multisystem-organ failure, and death. The inflammatory storm seen in many COVID-19 patients closely resembles secondary hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis (sHLH) which has been described in other virus-associated severe sepsis. We sought to describe the incidence of sHLH in COVID-19 infected patients. Design In this retrospective study, we reviewed the records of critically ill COVID-19 positive patients to determine the incidence of sHLH. An H-score for sHLH diagnosis was determined for each study participant, with a score greater than 169 points needed for diagnosis. Setting A quaternary referral center in suburban Pennsylvania, USA. Patients All study participants had a positive COVID-19 test, and were deemed critically ill defined as receiving invasive mechanical ventilation and/or who expired. Measurements and Main Results Of the 246 records identified, 242 records met inclusion criteria and were reviewed. Eighty five patients were excluded from analysis due to missing H-score data parameters. Overall, 32 of 157 (20.38%, 95% CI:14.38-27.54%) patients met diagnostic criteria for sHLH. The average age was 69.42 years (standard deviation (SD) 14.81). Patients diagnosed with sHLH were more likely to be younger (61.09 years vs 69.38 years

Science vs Nature: Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

The way science overpowers nature is especially relevant to the prioritization and advancement of science and technology in the Silicon Valley.https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/frankenstein200_posters/1000/thumbnail.jp

Dilute proparacaine for the management of acute corneal injuries in the emergency department

Objective: Dogma discourages the provision of topical anesthetics to patients with corneal injuries discharged from the emergency department because of the toxicity of concentrated solutions. We compared the analgesic efficacy of dilute topical proparacaine with placebo in emergency department patients with acute corneal injuries. Methods: We conducted a prospective randomized controlled trial of adults with corneal injuries presenting to one of 2 tertiary care emergency departments in London, Ont. Patients were randomly assigned to groups receiving either 0.05% proparacaine or placebo drops as outpatients and were followed up to healing by a single ophthalmologist. Our primary outcome was pain reduction as measured on a 10-cm visual analog scale. Results: Fifteen participants from the proparacaine group and 18 participants from the placebo group completed the study. The mean age of the patients was 38.7 (standard deviation 12.3) years and the majority were male (85%). Pain reduction was significantly better in the proparacaine group than in the placebo group, with a median improvement of 3.9 (interquartile range [IQR] 1.5-5.1) cm on the visual analog scale versus a median improvement of 0.6 (IQR 0.2-2.0) cm (p = 0.007). The proparacaine group was more satisfied (median level of satisfaction 8.0 [IQR 6.0-9.0] cm on a 10-cm visual analog scale v. 2.6 [IQR 1.0-8.0] cm, p = 0.027). There were no ocular complications or signs of delayed wound healing in either group. Conclusion: Dilute topical proparacaine is an efficacious analgesic for acute corneal injuries. Although no adverse events were observed in our study population, larger studies are required to evaluate safety. © 2010 Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians