Cul De Sacs Research Articles

COVID‐19's impact on the mental health of older adults: Increase in isolation, depression, and suicide risk. An urgent call for action

COVID‐19's impact on the mental health of older adults: Increase in isolation, depression, and suicide risk. An urgent call for action

Higher education student pathways to ebook usage and engagement, and understanding: Highways and cul de sacs

Ebooks have enthusiastically been adopted by academic libraries, viewed as a golden bullet by library professionals, resulting in efficient resource use, space saving, student satisfaction and accommodating millennial generation study habits. A small-scale online survey undertaken at Northumbria and Durham Universities investigated students’ ebook use, examining aspects of learning ebooks support, searching strategies, devices used for ebook access, and reading and use strategies. Ninety-two responses were analysed using a mixed methods approach. Despite many advantages of ebooks including portability, availability, functionality and searching, results, demonstrated sentiment regarding ebooks was not wholly positive. There were frustrations regarding the complexity of ebook provision, publisher’s restrictions and the lack of compatibility with reading devices. A key finding related to ebook interrogation which involved greater targeted searching of content and a ‘bite-size’ approach to reading. Caution must be observed to ensure that library collections facilitate a complexity of learning styles, and provide opportunities for students to better digest content.

Nurturing Children’s Health Through Neighbourhood Morphology

Among the key factors required for the adequate development and growth of children’s physical and mental health is the child’s outdoor activities. Master plans are inclusive and provide sustainable settlements when they accommodate and respond to children. An understanding of the child’s need for outdoor spaces will help build better public spaces thereby providing opportunities for better physical, mental and emotional health of children. This paper is an effort to explore those environmental settings which are conducive for their physical activities. It tries to uncover the spatial planning approach which can contribute to child friendly spaces. The study is an investigation and a comparative analysis of a planned and an organic settlement in an urban fabric; HSR layout and Mangammanapalya in Bangalore, India. A qualitative analysis of the various layers of the physical settings has been done. The investigations reveal how each settlement caters to and supports the physical needs of children. The goal is to make use of these findings in the future planning and design intervention of neighbourhoods. The findings for the planned settlement, HSR revealed the presence of amenities like parks, playgrounds and sports facilities which the children frequented. The organic settlement lacked the presence of parks but the street network pattern revealed a majority of dead ends which are used as play spaces by children. Increase in commercial use in the settlement of HSR brought about the threat of traffic and stranger danger which act as deterrents to the independent mobility of the child while Mangammanapalya because of its cul de sacs which discourage through traffic offered a relatively safe and sustainable environment for play and mobility on its streets. A child friendly route could act as a safe and interesting path for children to explore the neighbourhood.

The Retopian Approach to Art

In contemporary art there has been a resurgent interest in returning to the idea of Utopia. However 500 years after Thomas More the meaning of the word utopia has become more complex than in the 16th century: is utopia a outopia or a eutopia? This paper argues the need for a classification of the use of the term of utopia in the context of contemporary art. Is Utopia a contemporary outopia (as shown by artists like Thomas Hirschhorn) that reflects a critical use of the term but excludes any possibility of social change and is pessimistic about artistic agency. Is utopia a contemplative utopia (as artists like Liam Gillick propose) that acknowledges transformative potential of a reality transcending concept but does not articulate any agency? Can the social and political change be achieved through activism without a mental utopian picture (as aimed for in the projects of WochenKlausur)? Or are all three basic attitudes toward utopia in contemporary art a reduction of the transformative potential of utopia because none of them connects a utopian mental picture with the concept of political agency? Based on a critical reevaluation of Lewis Mumford’s idea of “reconstructive utopia” the concept of retopia is an attempt to revive utopia as a suggestive device that links a utopian mental picture with political agency. The retopia is a reconstructive eutopia that does not make any claim on human nature and avoids abstract universals by explicitly grounding the utopian project in the local environment. Retopia has the claim to be put into practice through social experimentation. A retopian approach to contemporary art (and politics) has the potential to reintroduce reality transcending political concepts that do not replicate the authoritarian cul de sacs of past utopias while at the same time reaffirm the catalyst function of utopian thinking.

Road Maps in Resolving African Conflicts: Pathways to Peace or Cul de Sacs?

ABSTRACTRoad maps have become popular in recent African efforts to mediate and resolve conflicts. The African Union singly, or in concert with Regional Economic Communities and international actors, has invoked road maps as mediation and conflict resolution templates in Darfur, Libya, Côte d’Ivoire, Madagascar, and North-South Sudan. Although they are growing in significance, there is very little understanding of their usefulness and efficacy in peacemaking. It is important to understand whether road maps are pathways to peace or simply rhetorical tools that conceal the difficulties of negotiating protracted conflicts. More critical, therefore, is determining whether road maps facilitate or foreclose conflict resolution. This article probes these questions by examining some of the road maps in recent African conflicts with a view to shedding light on their conceptions, deployment, and impact on resolving conflicts. Both as process and content tools, road maps exemplify new collective African approaches to conflict resolution, but they also face severe constraints in managing conflicts that are characterized by deep divisions.

Fellowship, Forbearance, and Flats (perish high heels) in the Megaplex

Fellowship, Forbearance, and Flats (perish high heels) in the Megaplex

Comparative monitoring study of reverse osmosis vs lime softening for THM levels in water distribution systems and cul de sacs

Abstract The City of Miramar, located in South Florida, has two water treatment plants which utilize two different water treatment processes. The East Water Treatment Plant (EWTP) uses lime softening, while the West Water Treatment Plant (WWTP) uses reverse osmosis treatment. Biscayne aquifer is used as the source water for both plants. Effectiveness of lime softening and reverse osmosis processes were evaluated in terms of trihalomethane (THM) levels in the distribution system with distance and at cul de sacs (dead end streets). The water treated by lime softening had significantly higher levels of THMs in comparison to the water treated by reverse osmosis. With the aging of reverse osmosis membranes (after 5 years), the THM levels exhibited similar levels in both distribution systems. The THM concentrations at the cul de sacs receiving water treated by lime softening were significantly higher in comparison to the system wide water quality. At the cul de sacs receiving water treated by reverse osmosis, T...

Carving Fresh Initials on the World Tree

Carving Fresh Initials on the World Tree

Asymptomatic oculocardiac reflex during phacoemulsification

Editor, The oculocardiac reflex (OCR) is defined by the appearance of bradycardic arrhythmia and reduced arterial pressure and may be associated with a symptomatic vagal response consisting of nausea and vomiting. The OCR may be elicited by pressure on the globe – as occurs in acute glaucoma (Faupel & Niedermeier 1970) and extracapsular cataract surgery (Gao et al. 1997) – among other causes. The purpose of this study is to assess the appearance of OCR during phacoemulsification. A prospective, interventional study was performed on 122 consecutive patients who were operated on by uneventful phacoemulsification. Written informed consent was obtained from the patients prior to the procedure and data gathering. The procedures were performed in accordance with the ethical standards of the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki. Three different modalities of anaesthesia [peribulbar blockade (PB), topical anaesthesia (TA) and topical + anterior chamber anaesthesia (TACA)] were used depending on the preferred clinical practice of each of the surgeons. PB was performed by injection of 3 ml 2% lidocaine and 3 ml 0.5% bupivacaine; TA was performed by the instillation of tetracaine 0.5% in the conjunctival cul de sacs. TACA was performed as TA plus 0.1 ml 2% lidocaine in the anterior chamber. The patients were operated on by ‘divide and conquer’ phacoemulsification and were monitored during surgery by chest electrodes. The heart rate (HR) was determined immediately before surgery (basal) and 10 seconds after starting continuous anterior chamber infusion at 95 cm H2O (≈ 70 mmHg). OCR was defined by a decrease in HR greater than 15% from baseline (Karanovic et al. 2006). The concomitant medical treatment given prior to surgery and during surgery was registered. Sixteen patients were operated on under PBA, 39 patients under TACA and 67 patients under TA. The results are shown in Table 1. The HR in the whole group decreased from an average 71.3 ± 11.3 beats per minute (bpm) to 68.9 ± 12.3 bpm (p= 0.0006); a reduction ≥ 15% was observed in 19 patients from an average 71.4 ± 9.4 to 58.4 ± 7.5 bpm (p< 0.001; Student’s t-test for paired data). Considering the different modalities of anaesthesia, OCR appeared in 1/15 patients under PB and in 3/40 patients under TACA, compared with 15/67 patients under TA (t = 2.26, p= 0.03, simple linear regression). OCR appeared more frequently among patients older than 75 years (t = 2.65, p= 0.01, simple linear regression). A symptomatic vagal response in the form of nausea and vomiting did not appear in any case. None of the patients required pharmacological treatment or change in the surgical schedule. Since the first reports on the use of topical anaesthesia for cataract surgery were published (Kershner 1993), a trend towards a widespread indication of topical anaesthesia exists. However, we should be aware that phacoemulsification with TA is more painful than with PBA and that the effect of pain may induce changes in systemic objective parameters such as white blood cell count, cortisol levels and systemic arterial pressure (Gombos et al. 2007). Different combinations of anaesthetic drugs have reported either for PB blockade (Borazan et al. 2008) or as a combination of topical plus peribulbar anaesthesia (Monteiro et al. 2007). Modern cataract surgery involves sudden rises and drops in intraocular pressure (IOP) (95 cm H2O ≈ 70 mmHg), which might be associated with a decreased HR or other vagal signs. Pain may also play a role in the appearance of OCR, and increased analgesia may reduce the frequency of OCR in patients undergoing retinal surgery (Vlajkovic et al. 2007) – although opioids may induce OCR (Snellen et al. 1993). In our study, fentanyl did not seem to influence the changes in HR. Symptomatic OCR was not detected in any patient in our series, which may explain why the appearance of OCR has not been reported during phacoemulsification previously. We would like to alert cataract surgeons of a potential risk of bradycardia in older patients (especially when performing topical anaesthesia in outpatient non-hospital settings). Further studies assessing changes in HR are required in order to determine the effect of IOP rises during phacoemulsification.

“We Never Locked Our Doors at Night”: Newark on the 'Net, Minus the Mob

In an episode of recently concluded HBO series, Sopranos, New Jersey mob boss decides to show his teenage son Newark neighborhood. We're talking history A.J. Your family's Newark's history. His son, though, remains unimpressed. Well who gives a shit about Newark? I'm making a point, Tony counters. This used to be beautiful. A hundred percent Italian. He then laments state of disrepair along Garside Street, commenting on filthiness and crime he sees all around him. I mean, look at, look at all these buildings here. Most of them are falling down to ground. He then points to his family's parish church, a symbol for him of vanished Little Italy that has been replaced by boarded-up crack dens. But that church is still standing. You know why? Tony asks his son. The bricks? A. J. guesses. Because our people give a shit, that's why. Every Sunday, Italians from they drive miles to come here to pray. To keep this place alive. To which A. J. asks, Yeah, so how come we never do? (The Sopranos). irony of this violent mob boss lamenting intrusion of crime and danger into his formerly safe which all Italian here, need hardly be remarked. Periodically throughout series, flashbacks show us that in 1950s, when streets were clean and safe, Tony's father and Uncle Junior were not above using baseball bats and meat cleavers to convince shopkeepers delinquent with loan payments of errors of their ways. And some of what was built by Italians (and, as we shall see, Jews) in working-class Newark was not exactly sanctioned by Chamber of Commerce. Clearly, Tony is building for himself a selective and usable past out of memories that like bricks lie all around him on Garside Street. Yet there is another irony to Tony's trek. Why don't we come here? A. J. asks, and it is evident that for all of Tony's loving evocations of old neighborhood, where his people built something, Garside Street and poverty of life in its coldwater flats are things he and his people did everything they could to flee as soon as they could. Yet even if, like Tony, most white ex-Newarkers avoid city in favor of leafy green suburbs of McMansions to which many of them have escaped, thousands of former city residents do return to city of their youth- virtually. New technologies, particularly Internet, have enabled exiles from urban America to creatively recoup the neighborhood from comfort of their cul de sacs, without having to traverse city streetscapes they imagine as demonstrably more dangerous and lethal than they were in their youth. One such imaginative recreation is http://www.oldnewark.com, a cornucopia of oral histories, photos, and historical vignettes of Newark's theaters, ethnic shops and neighborhoods, fire companies, restaurants, parks and much else that gave texture to New Jersey's largest city from roughly 1910-67. Newark is not alone as phenomenon of virtual city has become a common one. In Europe especially, virtual cities have arisen as new combination virtual city hall and chamber of commerce, where one can an array of shopping, entertainment and city services, all without ever having to step over a homeless person or negotiate gridlocked streets. point of such virtual cities, Aurigi and Graham argue, is to present urbanism's thrills and cultural amenities without poverty and contestation that may disconcert or threaten upscale computer users in time. Of course, they note problems of poverty and unequal access to resources or political influence persist offscreen (Aurigi and Graham).1 Other cities' Web sites offer a mix of historical vignettes and information on current amenities in real cities they virtually replicate. In virtual analog of Jersey City, information on current offerings at Liberty State Park coexists with Frank I am Law Hague, who has not held sway at City Hall since 1947 (Olszewski). …

Development of a maze test and its application to assess spatial learning and memory in Merino sheep

A maze test was developed to assess spatial memory and learning in Merino sheep. Total time to traverse the maze and times spent in cul de sacs (errors) were used to assess performance. Both total time and errors decreased when the performance of sheep was assessed on three consecutive days, indicating that sheep learnt to traverse the maze. Scopolamine hydrobromide, a drug known to impair memory, was administered to sheep to validate whether the maze could be used to assess deficits in learning and spatial memory. Sheep receiving scopolamine hydrobromide 30 min before maze testing on each of three successive days were significantly slower to complete the maze on day 3 compared to control sheep receiving saline. The results suggested that the maze was measuring spatial memory and therefore might be useful to assess neurological deficits related to spatial memory and learning in sheep in neurological conditions such as Annual Ryegrass Toxicity. Tunicamycins are chemically and toxicologically analogous to the corynetoxins that cause the often fatal neurological disease Annual Ryegrass Toxicity. Exposure to tunicamycins did not affect total time to complete the maze, the number of errors committed or the ability to retain the memory of the maze configuration when tested 6 weeks later. These results, in addition to showing no adverse effect of the tunicamycins, also indicate that sheep have the ability to learn and retain the spatial memory of a relatively complex maze.

Gender and "Origins of the New South"

WE MIGHT FORGIVE OUR GRADUATE STUDENTS IF THEY REDUCE THE FACT-filled paragraphs and biting arguments in C. Vann Woodward's 542-page masterpiece, Origins of the New South, to three words: change versus continuity. Even though we understand that all history is about change, especially the degree of and reasons for change, countless professors have urged countless graduate students to take their stands in this dichotomous debate. I remember the day I received this assignment and, ultimately, found myself standing behind Vann Woodward. (1) George Brown Tindall had paired Origins with Carl N. Degler's Place Over Time for my southern history class. (2) We met in Tindall's office, a space filled with moon pies, RCs, baseball caps, and photos of Elvis. There, amid these cultural artifacts, it didn't feel that all that much had changed lately. But Tindall made us choose sides: Would it be Woodward or Degler? As I often did when I was confused in graduate school, I turned to the primary source in my head--my grandmother, Candy Lovin, born in 1887, who brought me up. Which would it be, Candy? Change or continuity? Candy Lovin was herself reared outside of Hanging Dog, North Carolina, in a family that earned its living by raising fighting cocks. In the 1950s we found ourselves in suburban Greensboro, North Carolina, living in a house-on-a-slab with a great room and patio. Out back, where my mother had graded the yard for a tennis court, Candy had insisted on planting rows of corn, those Kentucky runners, and summer squash. Twice a day, in the dew of the morning and in the cool of the evening, Candy would put on a dress, roll down her thick stockings, pull on her men's work boots, don her sunbonnet to keep the Cherokee in her from popping out, hoist her hoe to her shoulder, and go out to tend to the garden. Once she set to hoeing, she would sing at the top of her lungs, off-key, in her mountain twang. Her repertoire ranged from dozens of verses of Barb'ry Allen, to plaintive Hank Williams songs, to a particularly nasal rendition of Amazing Grace. Sometimes, if in a mellow mood, she would croon that smash hit of the 1890s, After the Ball. I could scarcely ask for a more convincing demonstration of continuity. (3) Next door, though, our neighbors seethed. They had bought a double lot, erected a huge house with sixteen sliding glass doors, and settled in to entertain clients by their pool. He was the regional sales manager for the Dale Carnegie seminars How to Win Friends and Influence People. They might have a lot of money, my mother sniffed, but they aren't from here. As they and their business victims sipped Bloody Marys poolside, Candy would treat the group to her spirited renditions and pre-World War I attire. Finally, the Newer South neighbors built a high fence to screen her out. Even then, they couldn't shut her up. She simply sang louder and switched to medleys of slightly off-color songs from the 1920s. (You take the legs off some ol' table, you take the arms off some ol' chair, you take a neck off some ol' bottle, and from a horse you take some hair.... you take some hair.) (4) As historians, how we determine the extent and nature of change depends on the analytical tools we use to measure it. In my own Newer South, folk culture survived: an anthropologist would have had a field day with Candy. Nevertheless, the politics of World War II, the social transformations that made divorce more common in the 1950s, and the market economy had combined to set us adrift, ultimately, to wash up in our suburb. There, blotting out the farms where Albion W. Tourgee had set A Fool's Errand, Newer South developers had imposed two cul de sacs in the largest sense of the term. (5) A national franchise market had landed Dale Carnegie's Newer Man of the Newer South next door, even as regional isolation bound my mother to toil all her life as a secretary at a down-at-the-heels cotton brokerage, while dreaming of tennis, which she did not know how to play. …

Market Niches, ‘Cul de Sacs’, and Social Context: Alternative Systems of Food Production

Market Niches, ‘Cul de Sacs’, and Social Context: Alternative Systems of Food Production

Burglar alarms and the choice behavior of burglars: A suburban phenomenon

Employing observation and deduction, the present study addressed the question of why some homes in a community are more likely targets for burglary. The period of observation spanned two-and-a-half years, in three Philadelphia suburbs. The townships differ in population density, distance from the city, and affluence. The deduced burglary model entails four decision points for the burglar: choice of neighborhood, choice of street, choice of property, and choice of point of entry. The neighborhood is chosen for its proximity to thoroughfares that are familiar to the burglar. Cul de sacs abutted by a wooded area or an abandoned railroad right-of-way, which offer opportunities for concealment, were targeted more frequently than other streets by burglars. Homes with high value and few target hardening attributes were more likely targets than other homes. Most burglars entered the targeted home through a first floor doorway. All other things equal, the presence of an alarm reduces the victimization rate. The alarm reduces the victimization rate to a greater degree as home value increases.

THE CRISIS OF THE MOVEMENTS: THE ENABLING STATE AS QUISLING

The basic argument of this paper is that the anti‐systemic movements political successes over the last century have turned out to be medium‐term cul de sacs at the expense of the real longue duree purposes of the movements. The discovery of the enabling state by radicals towards the end of the nineteenth century has resulted in a Quisling in the anti‐systemic ranks. This argument brings to the fore the anarchist critique which never accepted the enabling state as a legitimate part of the radical political repertoire. Nevertheless this essay is not a plea for a return to anarchist roots but rather attempts to reinsert anarchism, and feminism, into a single framework of anti‐systemic movements alongside socialism and nationalism. As the state is being shown to be disenabling rather than enabling across the various zones of the world‐economy it is argued that anarchist ideas deserve some priority as we revise radical political strategies.

Percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty and subsequent restenosis: Quantitative and qualitative methodology for their assessment

Coronary apteriography is the most commonly used technique for documenting the immediate percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty result and for follow-up of the dilated arterial segment for restenosis within 6 months (which occurs in about 25% to 35% of cases). Acute success in dilation of the coronary lesion is likely if there is at least a resultant 1.3 mm 2 minimum lumen area, equivalent to a 1.3 mm mean minimum lumen diameter, or about a 50% diameter stenosis of a typical proximal vessel. The measurement methods applied to this problem include a digital caliper, computer-assisted border recognition techniques and a video-densitometric approach to estimation of lumen area. Calipers are recommended because of their simplicity, precision and accuracy for the routine assessment of angioplasty result. Border-recognition techniques require considerable operator input to distinguish true flow channels from cul de sacs in the dissected segment. The automated scanning videodensitometry approach has theoretical appeal and has shown promise in preliminary reports; however, there is the potential for large measurement errors in the setting of dissection. Further, certain qualitative morphologic features of the dilated segment, such as longitudinal or transverse dissection or intraluminal thrombus, may effectively contribute to the prediction of acute complications and may be useful predictors of late restenosis. Because these features are best appreciated at increased arterio-graphic magnification, further high resolution studies will be necessary to better understand their importance.

Water supply and drainage in semi‐arid countries

Drainage cannot be separated from water supply for land development in hill‐plain border regions of semi‐arid countries. I n order to avoid economic and technical cul de sacs, resulting from the usual procedures of amelioration, drainage should be considered a residual engineering task, incidental to and following the use of water resources.If it is desired to irrigate a maximum area of land, a priority of sequences must be fixed at an early stage for the measures taken to exploit successively the total inventory of surface and subsurface waters. A general scheme of priorities establishes the following precedences: (a) water supply before drainage and flood control, (b) use of subsurface before surface waters, (c) abstraction from foreland ground‐water horizons before mountain ground water, (d) development of hill before valley springs, and (e) use and creation of underground storage before surface storage.It is not possible to devise a rational drainage scheme and to plan the maximum exploitation of local water resources without operating wells on a year‐round basis. If this premise is accepted, wells must be sited and installed so as to serve several purposes: (a) to extract the average annual replenishment and gradually most of the fossil reserve, (b) to drain marshy lands in the plain, (c) to accept recharge from winter‐spring flows, floods, and foreland wells, and (d) to extract subsurface winter flow in the foreland and to recharge it into mountainwells (recycling).