Consumptive death in Victorian literature: 1830 - 1880.

PhDVictorian medical men, writers, relatives of the dying and consumptive sufferers themselves seized on the narrative potential of representations of the disease in a variety of ways. I argue that both medical and lay writers subscribed to a common set of beliefs about the disease and that medical knowledge, moreover, shared a common narrative way of knowing and understanding it. I analyse aspects of general clinical expository texts, including accompanying illustrations, showing how a narrative knowledge of death and the tubercular body was elaborated. Furthermore, I show how documents used in the compilation of medical statistics on the cause of death were fundamentally narrative through their reliance on case narratives. It is demonstrated that Dickens uses a seldom noticed consumptive death and decline to offset his heroine's development in Bleak House, in ways similar to those developed in Jane Eyre. Similarly, it is shown that Mrs Gaskell's use of a consumptive alcoholic 'fallen woman' unsettles her account of her heroine in Mary Barton. George Eliot's 'Janet's Repentance' is analysed, showing how the psychological struggle between an orientation towards life or death is played out across both alcoholism and consumption. I also examine how consumption presents a narrative opportunity whereby plots involving setbacks in love are resolved through women's consumptive deaths in popular fiction by Rhoda Broughton,Ladv Georgiana Fullerton and others. Through an examination of the Journal of Emily Shore and accounts of other actual deaths, I illustrate how experiences and accounts of consumptive deaths were structured and rendered intelligible through reliance on beliefs encountered in both fiction and medicine. In conclusion, the thesis alerts readers to the presence of signifiers of consumption in Victorian texts, showing how various narrative strategies are integral to any understanding of representations of its dying victim

The Late Cretaceous dinosaur track record of Bolivia – Review and perspective

Abstract We present an update and a review of the Late Cretaceous dinosaur tracksites of Bolivia. The Puca Group (Coniacian – Late Maastrichtian) records the tracks and trackways of two different titanosaurid sauropods, ankylosaurs, hadrosaurs and different theropod groups from the Central Andean lacustrine back arc basin. We review the sites from the Maragua syncline (Chuquisaca) and present new data on the famous Toro Toro site (Potosi). Furthermore, the first complete map of the world's largest dinosaur tracksite, Cal Orck'o (El Molino Formation, Sucre) gives an insight into behavior and movement patterns. Parallel trackways of subadult ankylosaurs provide the first unequivocal evidence of social behavior amongst these dinosaurs worldwide. The El Molino Formation and the coeval deposits of Southern Peru and Northern Argentina form a megatracksite with a size of around 100,000 km2. The paleogeographic position of the main sites within the basin suggests that they are part of a seasonal migration route along the shoreline and deltas of an ancient lake system

Direct current induced short-term modulation of the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex while learning auditory presented nouns

Background: Little is known about the contribution of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) to the exploration of memory functions. The aim of the present study was to examine the behavioural effects of right or left-hemisphere frontal direct current delivery while committing to memory auditory presented nouns on short-term learning and subsequent long-term retrieval. Methods: Twenty subjects, divided into two groups, performed an episodic verbal memory task during anodal, cathodal and sham current application on the right or left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC). Results: Our results imply that only cathodal tDCS elicits behavioural effects on verbal memory performance. In particular, left-sided application of cathodal tDCS impaired short-term verbal learning when compared to the baseline. We did not observe tDCS effects on long-term retrieval. Conclusion: Our results imply that the left DLPFC is a crucial area involved in short-term verbal learning mechanisms. However, we found further support that direct current delivery with an intensity of 1.5 mA to the DLPFC during short-term learning does not disrupt longer lasting consolidation processes that are mainly known to be related to mesial temporal lobe areas. In the present study, we have shown that the tDCS technique has the potential to modulate short-term verbal learning mechanism

Fine motor deficits and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in primary school children

Background: Many children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) display motor deficiencies during their daily routine, which may have impact on their developmental course. Children with ADHD who experience motor deficiencies often display deficits in tasks requiring movements, such as handwriting. Aim: This study investigated deficiencies in fine motor skills in primary school children with ADHD. The study further sought to establish whether ADHD subtypes differ in deficiencies of fine motor performance, recorded for both the dominant and non-dominant hands. Methods: The Disruptive Behavior Disorders Rating Scale, completed by educators and parents, was used to screen for ADHD symptoms. Researchers confirmed the diagnosis of ADHD. Motor functioning was assessed using the Grooved Pegboard and Maze Coordination. The children diagnosed with ADHD were matched for age and gender with controls without ADHD. The sample consisted of an ADHD group (160) and control group (160) of primary school children from the Moletjie area. Results: Children with ADHD (predominantly inattentive subtype) and ADHD (combined subtype) performed significantly more poorly than the control group on the Grooved Pegboard (p  0.05) between the ADHD subtypes and the controls. Conclusion: Difficulties in fine motor skills are prevalent in children with ADHD, particularly in the ADHD-PI and ADHD-C. Problems are encountered in distal, complex, speeded tasks. The effect may lead to poor handwriting and academic performance

The Wide Integral Field Infrared Spectrograph: Commissioning Results and On-sky Performance

We have recently commissioned a novel infrared ($0.9-1.7$ $\mu$m) integral field spectrograph (IFS) called the Wide Integral Field Infrared Spectrograph (WIFIS). WIFIS is a unique instrument that offers a very large field-of-view (50$^{\prime\prime}$ x 20$^{\prime\prime}$) on the 2.3-meter Bok telescope at Kitt Peak, USA for seeing-limited observations at moderate spectral resolving power. The measured spatial sampling scale is $\sim1\times1^{\prime\prime}$ and its spectral resolving power is $R\sim2,500$ and $3,000$ in the $zJ$ ($0.9-1.35$ $\mu$m) and $H_{short}$ ($1.5-1.7$ $\mu$m) modes, respectively. WIFIS's corresponding etendue is larger than existing near-infrared (NIR) IFSes, which are mostly designed to work with adaptive optics systems and therefore have very narrow fields. For this reason, this instrument is specifically suited for studying very extended objects in the near-infrared such as supernovae remnants, galactic star forming regions, and nearby galaxies, which are not easily accessible by other NIR IFSes. This enables scientific programs that were not originally possible, such as detailed surveys of a large number of nearby galaxies or a full accounting of nucleosynthetic yields of Milky Way supernova remnants. WIFIS is also designed to be easily adaptable to be used with larger telescopes. In this paper, we report on the overall performance characteristics of the instrument, which were measured during our commissioning runs in the second half of 2017. We present measurements of spectral resolving power, image quality, instrumental background, and overall efficiency and sensitivity of WIFIS and compare them with our design expectations. Finally, we present a few example observations that demonstrate WIFIS's full capability to carry out infrared imaging spectroscopy of extended objects, which is enabled by our custom data reduction pipeline.Comment: Published in the Proceedings of SPIE Astronomical Telescopes and Instrumentation 2018. 17 pages, 13 figure

The Dualism of Contemporary Traditional Governance and the State

In many parts of the world, people live in “dual polities”: they are governed by the state and organize collective decision making within their ethnic community according to traditional rules. We examine the substantial body of works on the traditional–state dualism, focusing on the internal organization of traditional polities, their interaction with the state, and the political consequences of the dualism. We find the descriptions of the internal organization of traditional polities scattered and lacking comparative perspective. The literature on the interaction provides a good starting point for theorizing the strategic role of traditional leaders as intermediaries, but large potentials for inference remain underexploited. Studies on the consequences of “dual polities” for democracy, conflict, and development are promising in their explanatory endeavor, but they do not yet allow for robust conclusions. We therefore propose an institutionalist research agenda addressing the need for theory and for systematic data collection and explanatory approaches