Bow Ties Research Articles

Lightning Flowers

Lightning Flowers Sarah K. Lenz (bio) Atrio of open caskets propped on wooden-straight back chairs. The open lids of each white coffin reveal a square peephole framing the face and torso of three dead bodies. On top of the caskets, shiny placards read in ornate scroll: At Rest. Like all corpses laid out for funeral rites, the three boys exude a certain peacefulness due to the careful closing of their eyes and mouth, what morticians call “setting the features.” The dead brothers wear matching dark suits and black bow ties. Their dark hair is slicked back from their foreheads. Carnations rest on their chests, near clasped hands. Edgar Allan Poe in triplicate, I think, but I can’t tell if it’s the hair, the dark suits, or the morbid situation that brings this to mind. In the background, a ladder-shaped shadow that the wooden chairs make and the white curtains of the parlor take on the blur of an apparition. In the foreground of the photo, the bottoms of the caskets are cropped out. The coffins slant toward the viewer at a precarious angle, as if at the slightest stirring each casket could slip, topple to the ground, and spill its contents. My father gave me the photograph. I was in from Ohio, visiting him in central Nebraska. I hadn’t seen him in over a year. He looked older than I remembered, the sagging skin around his eyes more pronounced, the hair around his temples whiter. Almost a decade after his divorce from my mother, he had started to rid his house of clutter and memorabilia—things he thinks he won’t need for the rest of his life—as he plans on moving to a retirement community. “I’ve got something for you,” he said. He took me to the back bedroom and dug through the closet. “Here, you’re the family historian. You should have this.” He handed me the framed photograph, lacquered with dust. Flecks of molded plaster decorating the frame crumbled when I touched it. I’d seen this photo before, heard the story: they were struck by lightning. But looking at it is still chilling. [End Page 92] Click for larger view View full resolution I’m not sure why this photograph haunts me. Though they are my great-great-uncles, I can’t call them my “dearly departed.” They died nearly a hundred years ago, and anyone who would have known them is dead now too. I am certain this is the only extant photograph of these relatives. They have ceased to live on in any memory. What remains is a ten-by-twelve silver gelatin print. After my dad gave me the picture, I put it facedown on the backseat of my car. The next day, I drove to Lincoln to visit my cousin, Erin. From there I would drive home to Ohio. When I arrived at Erin’s ranch-style suburban house, she was just as I remembered: petite, blonde, and wearing too much blue eye shadow. I hadn’t seen her in two years, not since my sister’s wedding, but growing up we had been as close as sisters. Erin’s mom, my aunt Dixie, died of breast cancer when Erin was six and I was seven. Our aunts made sure Dixie’s legacy lived on by mothering Erin as their own and telling her as many stories about Dixie as they could remember. Five years ago, Erin gave birth to a premature baby who died. Though she is only nine months younger than me, Erin’s life has [End Page 93] been transformed by these tragic deaths in ways I cannot imagine. Members of Generation X who get married in their twenties will probably not experience the death of a close loved one for a period of at least twenty-five years, and even then, it will most likely be death in older age, notes Dr. Stanley B. Burns, a famous curator of postmortem photographs. I have gotten this far without a death in the immediate family. But it’s only a matter of time. I brought Erin a bottle of Patrón. We sat...

Aqueous Self-Assembly of an Electroluminescent Double-Helical Metallopolymer

A new type of water-soluble copper-containing polymer has been synthesized using the technique of subcomponent self-assembly. Copper(I)-directed imine bond formation between triethylene glycol functionalized 1,2-phenylenediamine and 2,9-diformylphenanthroline subcomponents resulted in the formation of a chain in which two conjugated helical ligand strands wrap around a linear array of metal ions. Characterization data from a variety of analytical methods are consistent with our formulation of this material. After purification by dialysis, the polymer was shown to possess several properties of conceptual and practical interest. (1) Individual double-helical strands appear to further aggregate through entanglement of their side chains to form well-defined superstructures such as nanoscale bow ties and macrocycles, which can be imaged on a surface. (2) The material's copper(I) ions underwent reversible electrochemical oxidation in solution, whereas analogous model compounds were observed to decompose upon oxidation: the polymer's greater length appeared to stabilize oxidized states through delocalization or entrapment. (3) Photophysical measurements reveal this material to be photo- and electroluminescent. It has been successfully used for the fabrication of electroluminescent devices and shows a weak emission of white-blue light with CIE coordinates of (0.337, 0.359). This study further demonstrates the utility of the technique of subcomponent self-assembly for the straightforward generation of materials with useful properties.

Real-World Application of the Bow-Tie Method

This article, written by Senior Technology Editor Dennis Denney, contains highlights of paper SPE 154549, ’Lessons Learned From Real-World Application of the Bow-Tie Method,’ by Gareth Book, Risktec Solutions, prepared for the 2012 SPE Middle East Health, Safety, Security, and Environment Conference and Exhibition, Abu Dhabi, 2-4 April. The paper has not been peer reviewed. Also known as barrier diagrams, bow-tie diagrams provide an understandable visualization of relationships between the causes of business upsets, the escalation of such events to a range of possible outcomes, the controls preventing the event from occurring, and the preparedness measures in place to limit consequences. Preventive and mitigating measures are linked to tasks, procedures, responsible individuals, and competencies. This crucial connection between risk controls (whether hardware or human intervention) and the management system ensures ongoing effectiveness. Introduction The primary motivation for the use of bow-tie diagrams was to seek assurance that fit-for-purpose risk controls were consistently in place throughout all operations worldwide. Their use has spread between companies, industries, and countries and from industry to regulators. This paper aims to demonstrate the practical uses and benefits of this versatile tool, which can be used to qualitatively assess and to demonstrate control of all types of risk in many industries and business sectors. The complete paper details an example case. Bow-Tie Method The bow-tie method shown in Fig. 1 provides a readily understood visualization of the relationships between the causes of business upsets, the escalation of such events, the controls preventing the event from occurring, and preparedness measures to limit the business effects. In its most common use, the ultimate aim is to demonstrate control of health, safety, and environmental (HSE) hazards; therefore, it is first necessary to identify those hazards requiring bow-tie analysis. Once hazards have been identified, the bow-tie method can be applied to assess risks further and provide a framework for demonstrating effective control. Typically, bow ties are developed by asking a structured set of questions that build the diagram in a step-by-step fashion, detailed in Figs. 2 through 4 in the complete paper. Applying the Technique. Development of the bow-tie diagrams and critical tasks should be carried out in a structured manner to obtain quality information and best represent the actual risk-control arrangements. Fig. 2 summarizes an effective building process, which has been developed and refined through experience with a variety of companies, industries, and work groups.

The struggle over dimensionality: A note on theory and empirics

On Friday, 13 December 1963, the National Emergency Civil Liberties Committee (NECLC) organized their annual Bill of Rights dinner in order to present a distinguished individual with its Tom Paine Award. That night, the award was given to a young singer-songwriter dressed in a suede jacket and a pair of blue jeans, attire that starkly contrasted with the furs, pearls, and bow ties worn by the mostly wealthy and elderly liberal NECLC ranks. In his controversial acceptance speech Bob Dylan declared his political independence by stating: ‘There’s no black and white, left and right to me anymore; there’s only up and down and down is very close to the ground. And I’m trying to go up without thinking about anything trivial such as politics.’ By 1963, Dylan had become a symbol of the New Left and the Civil Rights Movement, a role that made him uncomfortable. Interestingly, Dylan used two distinct terms to demonstrate his political autonomy; he no longer wanted to be associated with the ‘left’ or the ‘right’. These labels are clearly not Dylan’s inventions nor are they merely a vestigial homage to the seating arrangement in the French Estates General of 1789 where supporters of the Ancien Regime sat to the right of the Assembly president and supporters of the revolution to his left. The terms ‘left’ and ‘right’ have come to identify distinct historical traditions, different conceptions of the good society, and alternative lifestyles. In the contemporary world, political scientists, politicians, journalists, and voters have come to associate broad streams of ideas with the terms ‘left’ and ‘right’. Although the left–right dimension is

Characterizing and Extracting Multiplex Patterns in Complex Networks

Complex network theory provides a means for modeling and analyzing complex systems that consist of multiple and interdependent components. Among the studies on complex networks, structural analysis is of fundamental importance as it presents a natural route to understanding the dynamics, as well as to synthesizing or optimizing the functions, of networks. A wide spectrum of structural patterns of networks has been reported in the past decade, such as communities, multipartites, bipartite, hubs, authorities, outliers, and bow ties, among others. In this paper, we are interested in tackling the challenging task of characterizing and extracting multiplex patterns (multiple patterns as mentioned previously coexisting in the same networks in a complicated manner), which so far has not been explicitly and adequately addressed in the literature. Our work shows that such multiplex patterns can be well characterized as well as effectively extracted by means of a granular stochastic blockmodel, together with a set of related algorithms proposed here based on some machine learning and statistical inference ideas. These models and algorithms enable us to further explore complex networks from a novel perspective.

Race, Gender, and Research

When students enter college classrooms for the first time they inevitably have preconceived images of professors. According to research on student evaluations of teaching, these preconceptions have important implications in college classrooms. This study explores one avenue through which these preconceptions are perpetuated—popular film. Using content analysis, the authors examine popular films released between 1985 and 2005 that contain professors in either primary or secondary roles. The findings show stereotypical depictions beyond glasses, bow ties, and tweed jackets. Specifically, the authors find stereotypical images of race and gender as well as an emphasis on the importance of research, sometimes at the expense of teaching or ethical behavior. This research provides instructors with knowledge of the stereotypes that students may have upon entering the college classroom, which may impact classroom interactions, and provides insight into how race and gender affect student evaluations of professors.

Life etc.

Life etc. Mairi MacInnes (bio) After Her Funeral After the funeral my father looked backOver some fifty yearsIn search of a reason for remorse.Humming and whistling, at last he hitOn when they toured the Highlands together,With Billy Miles, in their first car,A two-seater Swift with dickey in the rearThat opened like a lid. My father was driving, her turn in the dickey,Billy inside, snug, smug, and chatty,When a storm broke over Glencoe.She was drenched forthwith,While Billy chatted under cover, dryAnd warm and quite oblivious."How could I do that to her?"My father asked me: "Why let that BillyBlab on and stay dry, dry and under cover,While she was soaked to the skin?" I'd never heard that story before, I lied.There was nothing to forgive.She'd always said he was lovable,Beloved, an excellent man.And I shivered, feeling the desolationForming around me, the chill, the wet, And thought of their flaming rows,Hurled glasses and jugs, shouts in the night,Grapes chucked on the fire like money,Even departures—happenings that now meant nothing. [End Page 220] Bread You take yourself for granted, but if you askwhat I miss most, I'll have to say your bread:how every loaf roof falls to the knife, its oatnuggets loading the cut rift; how crustand rough crumb answer to butter at breakfastwith coffee; how teeth crunch on it as I'm fed,how tongue savors and spit spurts. Your breadputs me in touch with every common lust.For trees up here lean blazing on the field,mountains rise naked from a colored furof leaves like hard embarrassed men, the fallbursts overhead like rockets. Despite allI'm dull with hunger, every sense is sealed,wanting your bread, the body's integer. The Pet I say, "Go away!" to the dog when she pesters meand brings the ball to me once too oftenwhen I want to read, and she leaves obediently but is back in two minuteshaving thought of another of our games.I must have some value, then,though I can't say what that is,stranded as I am at the end of lifelike a castaway watching ships far out at sea. Suddenly though she becomes irresistible,her brilliant black eyes in her brindled peltregistering a ridiculous amount of regard,and now it's as though I'm sailing a small boatamong liners and ferries and container ships,a proper blip upon the radar screen,and I throw the ball for her one more time. [End Page 221] Dancing at Home in the Thirties They rolled back the rugs to reveal the plain boardswhich they sprinkled with crystals to make a smooth floor, trod them in and then seized each other and swooped,glided, out of character, the pair of them sharing a mood, breathily humming or murmuring the words of a song,dancing by themselves without music, so I had to make fun of them both to myself and ran off embarrassed and hid.I don't know what else happened or what they did, excepting the rugs were replaced when I came in again,and they were laughing and humming right up to the evening. So later that night, after the guests came and they'd dined,rugs were rolled back again, and music unwound from seventy-eights on our box of a gramophone,and all danced, transformed, the women in their slinky long dresses, the men in their black tailored suits,white shirts, bow ties, rosetted shoes, elastic-sided boots just visible from the top of the stair as they whirled:portly Bill Brown and Nell, slim Alan, Rita, Dan, Andrea. In the morning—Sunday, of course—my parents slept late.The smell of cigars downstairs, ash in the grate, the furniture still pushed against the walls,the maids bustling. I started to dance by myself till Betty whirled me about. No, let me alone,I protested. I wanted to dance by myself, quite alone. [End Page 222] Mairi MacInnes Mairi Macinnes, a woman...

Retro Fashion in Surgery: the White Coat

The debate on current doctors' attire is topical and international, from Glasgow (Association of Surgeons of Great Britain and Ireland annual conference 2009) to Adelaide (international Surgical Week 2009). Our attire has a great influence on the public's perception of our competence. Recently white coats and bow ties have gone out of vogue, yet they were the doctors' traditional uniform. To investigate the public response to the wearing of white coats and bow ties (and coincidentally to honour the impending retirement of an eminent consultant surgeon who is a great advocate of such attire) we carried out a non-randomised clinical trial by exposing our patients to a ward round with fashion from a bygone era.

POLARIZATION PATTERNS IN PULSAR RADIO EMISSION

A variety of intriguing polarization patterns are created when polarization observations of the single pulses from radio pulsars are displayed in a two-dimensional projection of the Poincare sphere. In many pulsars, the projections produce two clusters of data points that reside at antipodal points on the sphere. The clusters are formed by fluctuations in polarization amplitude that are parallel to the unit vectors representing the polarization states of the wave propagation modes in the pulsar magnetosphere. In other pulsars, however, the patterns are more complex, resembling annuli and bow ties or bars. The formation of these complex patterns is not understood and largely unexplored. An empirical model of pulsar polarization is used to show that these patterns arise from polarization fluctuations that are perpendicular to the mode vectors. The model also shows that the modulation index of the polarization amplitude is an indicator of polarization pattern complexity. A stochastic version of generalized Faraday rotation can cause the orientation of the polarization vectors to fluctuate and is a possible candidate for the perpendicular fluctuations incorporated in the model. Alternative models indicate that one mode experiences perpendicular fluctuations and the other does not, suggesting that the fluctuations could also be due to a mode-selective random process, such as scattering in the magnetosphere. A polarization stability analysis of the patterns implies that processes intrinsic to the emission are more effective in depolarizing the emission than fluctuations in the orientation of its polarization vector.

500 Clown Macbeth (review)

Reviewed by: 500 Clown Macbeth Regina Buccola 500 Clown Macbeth Presented by 500 Clown at The Steppenwolf Theater, Chicago, Illinois. June 14-July 29, 2007. Directed by Leslie Buxbaum Danzig. Set by Dan Reilly. With Adrian Danzig (Bruce), Paul Kalina (Shank), and Molly Brennan (Kevin). Things that you need to know about 500 Clown Macbeth: first, there are no clowns. At least, not in the sense of full-facial greasepaint, oversized red shoes, and twirling bow ties. Second, the cast consists of three people-Molly Brennan, Adrian Danzig, and Paul Kalina-not 500. Third, the savvy theatregoer will recognize very little of Shakespeare's language from the Scottish play, though the casts' kilts pay homage to its original setting. The threesome is also significant, since the piece opens with the trio sharing among them, one word at a time, the dozen lines of the play's opening scene, beginning: "When shall we three meet again?"(1.1.1), concluding with a gleeful marching cadence as they repeat over and over again in unison, "Fair is foul and foul is fair" (1.1.10). Theatrical convention-Shakespearean or otherwise-goes out the window from the opening moments of the performance. As electronica by The Propellerheads plays, the audience assembles in front of a stage set only with a three-tiered scaffolding of metal and plywood. Brennan, Danzig, and Kalina enter from the rear of the performance space. At the Steppenwolf in summer 2007, they emerged from the light and sound booth to climb in, like rambunctious monkeys, over the audience, through the light rigging, eventually hopping down from the catwalks into the aisles. As they made their way to the stage, they clambered [End Page 182] Click for larger view View full resolution Adrian Danzig as Bruce, Paul Kalina as Shank, and Molly Brennan as Kevin in 500 Clown's production of Macbeth. Photo by Michael Brosilow. [End Page 183] over the seated audience members, Kalina at one point straddling a befuddled theatregoer with a foot on each of her armrests as he adjusted his disheveled kilt. Though they may not look like circus clowns, Brennan, Danzig, and Kalina are highly trained in clown, circus arts, and physical theatre, and display these skills with panache over the course of the performance. The two nods to conventional clown aesthetics in the show are the punked-out hairstyles and hair-colors of the cast, and their ears, which are painted solid red. In a post-show discussion after a performance at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center of the University of Maryland in College Park in December 2006, Danzig explained that the red ears "emphasize that the troupe is ever alert, listening for cues from the audience." Their names are apparently unrelated to 500 Clown Macbeth itself, but to the process of developing their performance personas, since the character-names have proven portable into their other ventures, 500 Clown Frankenstein and 500 Clown A Christmas Carol. The actors both are and are not portraying the central characters from these familiar narratives, and their clown names seem to allow them to detach the roles they play from themselves, and to avoid identifying with any specific character in the original piece of literature. 500 Clown Macbeth has been staged repeatedly since it premiered at Charybdis Multi-Arts Complex in Chicago in 2000. The now defunct Charybdis, which billed itself as an "artists' playground," was the perfect place to debut the cursed Scottish play with three clowns taking all of the major roles, performing on a rickety tri-tiered scaffolding-a playing space masterminded to fall apart by designer Dan Reilly. According to its Mission Statement, 500 Clown aims to deploy "circus arts, improvisation, and action-based performance to produce theatre that catapults the performers into extreme physical and emotional risk. The work shifts the audience from passive to active observers and creates a charged environment that celebrates the unpredictable power of the moment." The physical risks to the performers are clear; during one early performance, the scaffolding completely collapsed mere minutes into the show. It took several moments for the technicians running the lights and sound to realize that this particular accident had happened accidentally...

Much Ado About Nothing (review)

Reviewed by: Much Ado About Nothing Justin Shaltz Much Ado About Nothing Presented by The Stratford Festival of Canada at The Festival Theatre, Stratford, Ontario. May 13–October 22, 2006. Directed by Stephen Ouimette. Designed by Michael Gianfresco. Lighting by John Munro. Sound by Todd Charlton. With Lucy Peacock (Beatrice), Adrienne Gould (Hero), Gary Reineke (Leonato), Peter Donaldson (Benedick), Shane Carty (Don Pedro), Wayne Best (Don John), Jeffrey Wetsch (Claudio), Thom Marriott (Borachio), Robert Perischini (Dogberry), Bernard Hopkins (Vargas), and others. Stephen Ouimette left the Stratford Festival production of Much Ado About Nothing after its first dress rehearsal, leaving "midwife" directorial control to Marti Maraden. This directorial discontinuity seemed to have had little effect on the production, which played with an easy smoothness—perhaps too much so. Rather than a "merry war" with dynamic [End Page 106] tension between two mature and sharp-witted intellectuals, the end result was a casual, almost bland romantic situation comedy. The production was set in Sicily at the turn of the twentieth century, conflating the end of a war, the end of a century, and the end of two longtime opponents of romance. The color palette of the costume and set design was muted to near drabness, with much beige, white, and cream lit in an almost unchanging mid-day brightness. A guitar player and violinist in the balcony lent occasional musical accompaniment, especially during set changes. Lucy Peacock's matronly Beatrice began the play at an easel with a paint brush, shrill and mean-spirited in contrast to the younger women, especially Hero, although she softened over the course of the play—and seemed to even sadden a little—as she discovered her feelings for Benedick. Peacock's subtle change from strident vitriol to demure tenderness was effected with a measure of wide-eyed disbelief as well as relief and gratitude. Similarly, Peter Donaldson as the rough-hewn Benedick, battle-weary and wizened, became clean-shaven and boyish as his love for Beatrice came alive. The initial scene between Benedick and Beatrice was something of a cage match, as they squared off at center stage, the rest of the cast stepping aside in bemusement. Afterward, Benedick tried his hand at painting and inadvertently ruined Beatrice's canvas; in subsequent scenes Donaldson's crusty Benedick devolved into a schoolboy in the throes of his first crush. The celebration in 2.1 was so stiff and stately as to seem a requiem for the passing era, the men in tuxedoes, tails, and bow ties, and the women in lightly shaded gowns. Brilliant stars shone above, balloon lights were strung at the sides of the stage, and an accordion player and horn player joined the musicians in the balcony for some solemn musical accompaniment. The masquerade turned the celebration trivial, not a joyous romp into romance but a callow vanity trip, adults behaving like teenagers. The exchanges were played with too much juvenile posturing for an apparently mature group of men and women experiencing the end of a war as well as a century, and not profound enough to befit the birth of romantic feeling within Beatrice and Benedick. The players donned wonderfully detailed and lifelike animal masks—lamb, rabbit, cat, raccoon, Benedick as a monkey—for the flirting-in-disguise scenes, but the sequences, although well-costumed and handsomely choreographed, were languidly paced, elegant to observe but characterized by a by-the-numbers lack of passion. The usually broadly comic eavesdropping scenes in 2.3 were underplayed and unremarkable, save for some likeable, subtle acting. Benedick [End Page 107] lounged at a bistro table with his feet up on a chair and spoke in relaxed confidence to the audience, then comically scrambled up to the balcony to peek out among citrus trees and spy on his friends. Beatrice also hid among the lemon trees, but revealed a flash of her old temper, hurling a lemon at the catty Hero and Ursula. Don John, wielding a walking stick with a concealed blade, accompanied by his towering henchman Borachio who swigged from a flask, only incidentally supplied any complications or villainy to the trancelike movement of the play. Dogberry and the watch, however, delivered a welcome but...

The Edinburgh human metabolic network reconstruction and its functional analysis

A better understanding of human metabolism and its relationship with diseases is an important task in human systems biology studies. In this paper, we present a high-quality human metabolic network manually reconstructed by integrating genome annotation information from different databases and metabolic reaction information from literature. The network contains nearly 3000 metabolic reactions, which were reorganized into about 70 human-specific metabolic pathways according to their functional relationships. By analysis of the functional connectivity of the metabolites in the network, the bow-tie structure, which was found previously by structure analysis, is reconfirmed. Furthermore, the distribution of the disease related genes in the network suggests that the IN (substrates) subset of the bow-tie structure has more flexibility than other parts.

David Allan Bromley

David Allan Bromley

ARAMIS project: A more explicit demonstration of risk control through the use of bow–tie diagrams and the evaluation of safety barrier performance

Over the last two decades a growing interest for risk analysis has been noted in the industries. The ARAMIS project has defined a methodology for risk assessment. This methodology has been built to help the industrialist to demonstrate that they have a sufficient risk control on their site. Risk analysis consists first in the identification of all the major accidents, assuming that safety functions in place are inefficient. This step of identification of the major accidents uses bow–tie diagrams. Secondly, the safety barriers really implemented on the site are taken into account. The barriers are identified on the bow–ties. An evaluation of their performance (response time, efficiency, and level of confidence) is performed to validate that they are relevant for the expected safety function. At last, the evaluation of their probability of failure enables to assess the frequency of occurrence of the accident. The demonstration of the risk control based on a couple gravity/frequency of occurrence is also possible for all the accident scenarios. During the risk analysis, a practical tool called risk graph is used to assess if the number and the reliability of the safety functions for a given cause are sufficient to reach a good risk control.

Bow ties, metabolism and disease

Highly organized, universal structures underlying biological and technological networks mediate effective trade-offs among efficiency, robustness and evolvability, with predictable fragilities that can be used to understand disease pathogenesis. The aims of this article are to describe the features of one common organizational architecture in biology, the bow tie. Large-scale organizational frameworks such as the bow tie are necessary starting points for higher-resolution modeling of complex biologic processes

Tying it together.

Rudi Westendorp, a Dutch physician-scientist known for his love of bow ties, seeks elegant solutions in his work as a clinical epidemiologist, geriatrician, and gerontologist at Leiden University Medical Center in the Netherlands. After completing his residency training and earning a Ph.D., in 1993 he made a detour into clinical epidemiology, studying patient populations to identify underlying risk factors for disease. He now supervises the long-running Leiden 85-plus study, which tracks cognitive decline, heart disease, and other illnesses in very old people. To round out his knowledge, Westendorp spent 1998 studying the biology of aging at the University of Manchester, U.K. His quest to test the evolutionary theory of the tradeoff between fertility and longevity has led him into the genealogical archives of British aristocrats and, more recently, to Ghana.

A Prospectus for a “New” Constitutional History of Early Modern England

The study of English constitutional history has fallen on hard times. Once an intellectually thriving field, constitutional history now conjures up visions of bad tweed and bow ties coupled with dryly-legalistic discussions of statutes, charters, parliamentary debates, Year Books, and legal reports. Indeed, whether Whig, Neo-Whig, Revisionist, or Post-Revisionist in orientation, constitutional history has traditionally concerned itself with the “activity of government”; it has emphasized the formal structures of government, their historical origins, their changing composition, their evolving roles, and functions. These formal structures, the Crown, Parliament, the Council, the established church, and the law courts, together constituted the sinews of government. Constitutional controversy arose when the respective roles and functions of these formal structures came into conflict. Accordingly, constitutional historians became experts on the anatomy and development of the particular organs of government and their changing roles yet they were often unable to see the broader conceptual forest in which they were standing. As a result, some critics have lampooned constitutional history and its leading proponents as lacking theoretical engagement and being overly preoccupied with the minutiae of government at the expense of conceptual sophistication and breadth of vision.

The partial thromboplastin time: defining an era in coagulation

The partial thromboplastin time: defining an era in coagulation

Scanning laser polarimetry with variable corneal compensation: identification and correction for corneal birefringence in eyes with macular disease.

In scanning laser polarimetry with variable corneal compensation (SLP-VCC), the macula is used as an intraocular polarimeter to calculate and neutralize corneal birefringence based on an intact Henle's layer. The purpose of this investigation was to validate this strategy in eyes with macular structural disease. A nerve fiber analyzer was modified to enable the measurement of corneal polarization axis and magnitude so that compensation for corneal birefringence was eye specific. Normal subjects and patients with a variety of pathologic macular conditions underwent complete ocular examination, SLP-VCC, and direct measurement of the corneal polarization axis (CPA), with a slit-lamp-mounted corneal polarimeter. Macular birefringence patterns were classified as well defined, weak, or indeterminate bow ties. A new "screen" method is described that determines the anterior segment birefringence without relying on the presence of macular bow-tie patterns. Forty-seven eyes (20 normal, 27 with maculopathy) of 47 patients (mean age, 59.0 +/- 19.0 years; range, 24-88) were enrolled. The correlation between CPA measured with corneal polarimetry (CPA by P(IV) [fourth Purkinje image]) and SLP-VCC was less in eyes with macular disease (R(2) = 0.22, P = 0.024) compared with normal eyes (R(2) = 0.72, P < 0.0001). Eyes with macular disease had significantly (P = 0.007) more indeterminate macular bow ties (8/27; 29%) than did normal eyes (0/20). The magnitude of difference between CPA by P(IV) and CPA by SLP-VCC was significantly (P = 0.0007) greater in eyes with indeterminate bow-tie patterns than in weak and well-defined patterns. Although no relationship was observed between CPA and 12 retardation parameters obtained with SLP-VCC in normal eyes (P > 0.05), eyes with macular disease showed a significant association between CPA and average thickness (R(2) = 0.27, P = 0.005), ellipse average (R(2) = 0.24, P = 0.0085), superior average (R(2) = 0.24, P = 0.009), inferior average (R(2) = 0.28, P = 0.004), and superior integral (R(2) = 0.37, P = 0.0008), suggesting incomplete corneal compensation. Greater correlation between CPA by P(IV) and CPA derived by SLP-VCC was found by using the screen method (R(2) = 0.83, P < 0.0001) compared with the bow-tie method (R(2) = 0.22, P = 0.024) in eyes with maculopathy. Macular strategies for neutralization of corneal birefringence using SLP-VCC can fail if Henle's layer is disrupted by macular disease. The screen method provides a more robust measure of the anterior segment birefringence in some eyes with macular disease.

A View from the Outside

I remember sitting in a classroom in West Texas several years ago, listening to my English professor lecture on some British author. Actually, he was staring out the window and telling us about the remarkable attributes of mesquite trees — there was some connection between Lord Byron and southwestern vegetation. At that moment, like the heavenly light dazzling Saul on the road to Damascus, a voice inside me said, “That’s what I want to be, an English professor!” What a great job! You have nice colleagues, wear tweed sport coats with bow ties, give lectures on Byron and mesquite trees, and get paid for it! I could do this, I told myself (with only the vaguest sense of what “graduate school” was going to be like). Had the Fates been kind, they would have given me a copy of a book like Mentor in a Manual to read before mailing out those graduate school applications. Mentor in a Manual is something like a U.S. Army training manual as compared to the travel agency brochures one might find at a recruiting office (“See Hawaii!— Join the Marines!”). It is encyclopedic, loaded with useful hints and suggestions for survival, and it will disabuse anyone of romantic ideas about academe, just as reading about bayonets puts Hawaii in a different light. Not that I regret choosing a career in academe. The professorial calling does have its unique pleasures, but I might have considered my career alternatives as a librarian or navy midshipman more seriously had I known that being good is not always good enough in academe. As Schoenfeld and Magnan put it in their preface, “There is no entitlement to tenure based upon a record that is merely competent and satisfactory for a prescribed period of time” (xiii).