Worthy of faith?: Authors and readers in early modernity

This chapter will consider how the traditional (classical Roman and Europeanmedieval) definition of the “author” as “one worthy of faith” (the faith of thereader, obviously) is put increasingly to the test during the early modern period, as the notion of literary writing gradually moves from epistemological (vatic) and/or ethical-rhetorical models toward what Terry Eagleton has called “the ideology of the aesthetic” – that is, toward suspension of readerly belief in the moral fidelity and intellectual credibility of the literary writer. In a classic formulation, the literary author as a distinctive “personal” and individual presence, indeed as willful demideity “making worlds,” first emerges in what we sometimes still call the Renaissance: first in the Italy of Dante and Petrarch, and then, gradually, spreads throughout the nascent vernacular traditions of western Europe. What follows will rehearse some clichés of the topic, one hopes in an appealing way, and lay out to shift the terms of the discussion in others. In particular, I will focus on the intuitively obvious, yet not always thoroughly explored, point that any notion of authorship is intricately tied to ideas, and realities, of readership. More especially, I will explore, on the one hand, the question of authorial control over the meaning of a text as this takes shape in the experience of its readers and, on the other, how such readers may either trustingly embrace the offered sense of the text or willfully recast it

A game demonstrating aspects of bumblebee natural history

The Bumblebee Game is an exciting outdoor game, which demonstrates aspects of bumblebee natural history including food chains, food webs and competition for food, predation by crab spiders, parasitism by Conopidae (Diptera) and brood parasitism by cuckoo bees. It has been played successfully with groups of 10-25 people. Although most suitable for 6-14 year olds, adults have had a lot of fun playing this game

Modal couping effects in the free vibration of elastically interconnected beams

The problem of free vibration of a uniform beam elastically interconnected to a cantilevered beam, representing an idealized launch vehicle aeroelastic model in a wind tunnel, is studied. With elementary beam theory modelling, numerical results are obtained for the frequencies, mode shapes and the generalized modal mass of this elastically cou pled13; system, for a range of values of the spring constants and cantilevered beam stiffness and inertia values. The study shows that when the linear springs are supported at the nodal points corresponding to the first free-free beam mode, the modal interaction comes primarily from the rotational spring stiffness. The effect of the linear spring stiffness on the higher model modes is also found to be marginal. However, the rotational stiffness has a significant effect on all the predominantly model modes as it couples the model13; deformations and the support rod deformations. The study also shows that though the variations in the stiffness or the inertia values of the cantilever beam affect only the13; predominantly cantilever modes, these variations become important because of the fact that the cantilevered support rod frequencies may come close to, or even cross over, the13; predominantly model mode frequencies. The results also bring out the fact that shifting of the support points away from the first mode nodal points has a maximum effect only on the first model mode

Granulocytic Sarcoma as the First Sign of Acute Leukemia in Childhood

Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) may rarely involve the orbit as a solid tumor termed granulocytic sarcoma. This report describes the case of a child who presented with rapidly progressive unilateral proptosis and was diagnosed as rhabdomyosarcoma. However subsequent examination of the peripheral blood film revealed AML. Thus proptosis may present as the initial manifestation of AML