White Wall Research Articles

Variaciones en el campo visual del espacio de trabajo del artista forense, durante la realización de retratos hablados mediante video llamadas: proyecciones para Chile y América Latina

Introducción: este artículo expone los resultados de un estudio ya finalizado, cuyo objetivo consistió en determinar si, durante la realización de retratos hablados a través de videollamadas, es posible evidenciar una correlación entre la amplitud del campo visual que tiene el testigo o víctima respecto del espacio de trabajo del artista forense, y el parecido resultante entre el retrato y el rostro de la persona a identificar.
 Enfoque: el énfasis está puesto en la aplicabilidad de estos nuevos medios tecnológicos en el contexto latinoamericano, particularmente hacia la superación de las distancias físicas existentes entre las víctimas y autoridades judiciales de algunos países de la región.
 Metodología: un primer grupo de 24 personas voluntarias situadas en Santiago de Chile tomó parte de entrevistas cognitivas individuales con un artista forense instalado en Dundee (Reino Unido) mediante videollamadas, 24 horas después de haber observado brevemente la fotografía de uno de los personajes de una serie de TV británica no transmitida en Chile. Durante las entrevistas, 12 de ellas tuvieron acceso visual a la imagen del tronco superior del artista y su espacio de trabajo, mientras que las otras 12 solo observaron en la pantalla una muralla blanca. Posteriormente, un segundo grupo de 24 personas, también ubicadas en Chile, evaluó el parecido de los retratos con respecto a las imágenes originales mediante una escala Likert.
 Resultados: los datos obtenidos sugieren que no existe correlación directa entre las variables consideradas, lo cual implica que los cambios en el entorno de realización de las entrevistas no tendrían un efecto significativo en la composición de los retratos.
 Conclusión: la ilusión de copresencia parece no ser imperativa para la creación de rapport entre el entrevistado y el artista forense.

From Memory to Memorial: Shanksville, America, and Flight 93

From Memory to Memorial: Shanksville, America, and Flight 93

Multiple-therapy-resistant major depressive disorder: a clinically important concept.

Many novel therapeutic options for depression exist that are either not mentioned in clinical guidelines or recommended only for use in highly specialist services. The challenge faced by clinicians is when it might be appropriate to consider such 'non-standard' interventions. This analysis proposes a framework to aid this decision.Declaration of interestIn the past 3 years R.H.M.W. has received support for research, expenses to attend conferences and fees for lecturing and consultancy work (including attending advisory boards) from various pharmaceutical companies including Astra Zeneca, Cyberonics, Eli Lilly, Janssen, LivaNova, Lundbeck, MyTomorrows, Otsuka, Pfizer, Roche, Servier, SPIMACO and Sunovion. D.M.B.C. has received fees from LivaNova for attending an advisory board. In the past 3 years A.J.C. has received fees for lecturing from Astra Zeneca and Lundbeck; fees for consulting from LivaNova, Janssen and Allergan; and research grant support from Lundbeck.In the past 3 years A.C. has received fees for lecturing from pharmaceutical companies namely Lundbeck and Sunovion. In the past 3 years A.L.M. has received support for attending seminars and fees for consultancy work (including advisory board) from Medtronic Inc and LivaNova. R.M. holds joint research grants with a number of digital companies that investigate devices for depression including Alpha-stim, Big White Wall, P1vital, Intel, Johnson and Johnson and Lundbeck through his mindTech and CLAHRC EM roles. M.S. is an associate at Blueriver Consulting providing intelligence to NHS organisations, pharmaceutical and devices companies. He has received honoraria for presentations and advisory boards with Lundbeck, Eli Lilly, URGO, AstraZeneca, Phillips and Sanofi and holds shares in Johnson and Johnson. In the past 3 years P.R.A.S. has received support for research, expenses to attend conferences and fees for lecturing and consultancy work (including attending an advisory board) from life sciences companies including Corcept Therapeutics, Indivior and LivaNova. In the past 3 years P.S.T. has received consultancy fees as an advisory board member from the following companies: Galen Limited, Sunovion Pharmaceuticals Europe Ltd, myTomorrows and LivaNova. A.H.Y. has undertaken paid lectures and advisory boards for all major pharmaceutical companies with drugs used in affective and related disorders and LivaNova. He has received funding for investigator initiated studies from AstraZeneca, Eli Lilly, Lundbeck and Wyeth.

This Is Also Tangier

This Is Also Tangier Joseph Pearson (bio) You come from the other side?" a young man later asks me, in the bar in Tangier. ________ On the flight from Lisbon to Morocco, I try to see where Europe ends and Africa begins. The coast must be somewhere below me, but it's lost in the diffusion of clouds. I stare at the cabin wall opposite, where strange shapes, long trapezoids, morph; they're projected from the late sun blazing to the south. I want to say "African sun," but that rings false, like something said in the nineteenth century. The iconic Tangier arrival is, of course, by boat, but these days a flight is less expensive. I bargained away seeing the continent loom from a ferry navigating between the two pillars of Hercules. The first step taken from the boat to land would have felt somehow more decisive. New rules would have applied. I would have felt it in my feet. But up here in the air all I see, at first, is an indistinct, pale band. Then a pronounced beach, an estuary, a perimeter fence. The airplane turns, we plunge into shadow, the light disappears, then, lower, dimly, the hills are articulated, variegated in patches, and winter green. There is surprise when the view fully opens. I do not see an organic maze of a city, but an illuminated geometry, interlocking polygons of suburban housing estates, precise and planned. I feel a twinge of disappointment. Perhaps the scruffy port, with its would-be guides and jostling taxi drivers fighting for my tender, would've been more reassuring than this arrivals hall. It is arid, spotless, tiled with perfect squares, and I wait less than a minute for my stamp. I should be walking from the port up to the Medina. There should be details out of a novel by Paul Bowles, a storm, a palm pounding a wall in the wind. I should reach a hotel without electricity, with just a lonely candle in the window. I should be on my knees in the darkened hallway, searching for where I've dropped the key. Burial In Bowles's Let It Come Down, a sixteen-year-old girl turns to look across the straits to Europe from Tangier. She shudders: "That is where they kill people." The novel was set in the shadow of both the Spanish Civil War and the Second World War. Europe must have seemed a savage land. Now, it is the sea, below [End Page 14] the Medina, that buries those fleeing to Europe. A graveyard lies between the two continents. The Window From the airport, I am in the capsule of an old Mercedes—with torn cloth walls, a silent driver—and the vehicle threatens to go dead at any time, depositing me in some suburb, aimless with my bag, looking for something I do not expect. Then the taxi picks up speed and rounds the coast of the central city. It's past dusk. I see the Medina illuminated, white. We chug up the old alleys; men are rapping on the car windows. I find the hotel easily, just across from the Grande Mosquée. In my room, the shower drain emits a sickly sweet smell. But the space is tidy, with white walls and ironed sheets, a purple embroidered coverlet, an industrially produced kilim rug, and bronze lamp. I go out to explore immediately, into the maze. Everything is closer than I expected: the Petit Socco where the Beat poets picked up their rent boys, and then the Grand Socco almost around the corner. I had wanted to get lost here. I shouldn't have studied the map. I should have left my smartphone in the room. The Grand Socco is busy with night hawkers, dusty carts, lottery ticket sellers. The bar of the Cinema Rif bursts with Moroccan hipsters, men who spill into the square. The ritual evening stroll, a poorly-lit paseo, is more tawdry than on the other side of the Mediterranean. There are more shadows. I criss-cross through side streets. Soon I find myself wandering down a very dark road along a construction site...

Solitary Bone Cyst of the Proximal Humerus with a Concomitant Stiff Shoulder Treated with both Arthroscopic Capsular Release and Arthroscope-Assisted Resection of the Bone Cyst: A Case Report

Solitary bone cysts are benign bone lesions that usually occur in the humerus, calcaneus, and femur of children and adolescents. When present in adults, they are usually diagnosed as incidental findings. In this report, we present an adult case of a solitary bone cyst of the proximal humerus with concomitant refractory stiff shoulder treated with both arthroscopic capsular release and arthroscope-assisted resection of the bone cyst. A 73-year-old woman was referred with a complaint of persistent left shoulder pain and limited range of motion. Magnetic resonance imaging showed an approximately 4.5-cm long diameter cystic bone lesion from the humeral neck to the shaft. At first, arthroscopic synovectomy and pan-capsular release were performed. Next, two 1-cm skin incisions and 8-mm drill holes into the lateral wall of the cyst were created with fluoroscopic guidance. After insertion of the arthroscope through the holes, the white membranous cyst wall was resected with a shaver until bone marrow was observed. Finally, an 8-mm cannulated hydroxyapatite pin was inserted. This is a simple technique that allows direct visualization and complete resection of the cyst wall with two small incisions. Such a technique may be superior to conventional open procedures or those under image guidance.

From The Invisible Thread

from The Invisible Thread Rick Hilles (bio) As I write this, a team of Egyptologistsseems on the brink of unearthing Nefertiti'stomb (behind the far wall of Tutankhamun's,allegedly) and the less ancient but no less vexing disappearance: Peter the Great'sAmber Room (which vanished in the last daysof The Third Reich) seems ready to reappear,though it will be weeks, months, before we know what the Polish vault contains; among that era'sunsolved mysteries is one I've tried to solve for years,the question arising like a serpent's head from a story told by a Shoah survivor, my childhood physician,who somehow withstood seven concentration camps*to tell this story, written down nowhere else but here: where I begin. But how to take you backinside that time? My small town, Ohio,where just an hour away, in Seven Hills,retired Ford mechanic John Demjanjuk— [End Page 105] found guilty of being "Ivan the Terrible,"the notorious Nazi guard of Treblinka,a verdict overturned on evidence withheld—that summer, new charges are filed against him. Reading Robert Jay Lifton's two-decade studyThe Nazi Doctors, which tells how SS doctorsmade underling physicians complicit in atrocities, forcing them to finger prisoners "unfit for work."As the man I'd not seen in two decades revealed:"You learned to say—what wasn't a death sentence!" When asked how long an inmate needed to recover—even from a broken limb—he'd say: "Two weeks."Anything more meant one-way to blue-black smoke!The retired physician had been a kind of tutelary spirit of our home through my childhood and adolescence.Mom loved to tell the story—we always asked her totell it again—of bringing me, in my terrible twos,with my then infant brother. (She couldn't get a sitter!) And how, when he was done examining me, he said:"Well, since the baby's here, I'll take a look at him!"He opened our blue-eyed boy's near constant grin only to discover "an ulcerated case of strep throat—fatal in one so young." Mom, horrified, said: "The babyhasn't cried—or given any clue"—a Stoic even then. Then he gave Mom a choice: she could take the babyto the hospital, or she could keep him at homeand bring him in to see the good doctor every dayand he'd administer the remedy to the baby himself. [End Page 106] "And eef anythingk happen—Day or thee Night—you cole mee, I put on my Pants & thee Shoozeand I come right over to thee house, immediately!"Almost as soon as the good doctor's words vaulted his lips, he became our presiding household spirit.But now, seeing him over three decades later,our shadows lengthening on his walls, behind us the light of sunset hitting the big picture window,turning the white walls red-orange, our faces flushed,I wondered: Might other, darker truths now surface? Reading Nazi Doctors, my eyes lit on one source—a Jewish physician—quoted only as "Tadeusz S"—could this possibly be our good doctor, I'd wondered?"Yes!" he cried, "that's me!" but there were statements attributed to him, he said, "that weren't quite right."(I'll have to leave these corrections for another time.)Then he spoke of SS holding batons over windpipes."There was no saying no—or you'd get the next bullet!" But how to tell you of this next rumbling fault lineI stood on in his company—the now octogenariangeneral practitioner who'd retired mere months after prescribing for Mom's recurring migraines a medicine"contraindicated" by her psychotropic trove of meds,*which landed her in a psych ward. Then a coma. [End Page 107] My first semester of grad school, studying English,of all the classes, I chose to drop Modern Poetry.(We'd barely begun to scale the walls of Roethke.)I'd then learn of a woman, the mental hospital's near lifelong resident, a ward of Massillon State,who only a week or so before had decked Momwhen...

Isothiazolinones are still widely used in paints purchased in five European countries: a follow-up study.

An increasing incidence of contact allergy to methylisothiazolinone (MI) has been seen, caused, in particular, by cosmetic products and paints. A study from 2015 showed that 93.0% of paints bought in five European countries contained MI. New regulations have been discussed for paints in the EU, which may have influenced this market. To re-evaluate the use and concentrations of MI and four other isothiazolinones in water-based wall paints. Water-based white wall paints (n = 60) were purchased in retail stores in five European countries: Denmark, France, Germany, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. The paints were analysed for isothiazolione content by the use of high-performance liquid chromatography coupled to ultraviolet detection, and the results were confirmed with high-performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry. MI was identified in 55 (91.7%) of the paints, with concentrations ranging from 1.1 to 142.7 ppm. The other isothiazolinones were identified in 20.0% [methylchloroisothiazolinone (MCI)] to 88.3% [benzisothiazolinone (BIT)] of the paints. BIT concentrations varied significantly between countries, whereas MI and MCI concentrations did not. There were no statistically significant differences in MI, MCI and BIT concentrations between the current study and the 2015 study. MI and other isothiazolinones are widely used in paints available in Europe. Their use does not seem to be decreasing.

Deployment of Mobile EEG Technology in an Art Museum Setting: Evaluation of Signal Quality and Usability.

Electroencephalography (EEG) has emerged as a powerful tool for quantitatively studying the brain that enables natural and mobile experiments. Recent advances in EEG have allowed for the use of dry electrodes that do not require a conductive medium between the recording electrode and the scalp. The overall goal of this research was to gain an understanding of the overall usability and signal quality of dry EEG headsets compared to traditional gel-based systems in an unconstrained environment. EEG was used to collect Mobile Brain-body Imaging (MoBI) data from 432 people as they experienced an art exhibit in a public museum. The subjects were instrumented with either one of four dry electrode EEG systems or a conventional gel electrode EEG system. Each of the systems was evaluated based on the signal quality and usability in a real-world setting. First, we describe the various artifacts that were characteristic of each of the systems. Second, we report on each system's usability and their limitations in a mobile setting. Third, to evaluate signal quality for task discrimination and characterization, we employed a data driven clustering approach on the data from 134 of the 432 subjects (those with reliable location tracking information and usable EEG data) to evaluate the power spectral density (PSD) content of the EEG recordings. The experiment consisted of a baseline condition in which the subjects sat quietly facing a white wall for 1 min. Subsequently, the participants were encouraged to explore the exhibit for as long as they wished (piece-viewing). No constraints were placed upon the individual in relation to action, time, or navigation of the exhibit. In this freely-behaving approach, the EEG systems varied in their capacity to record characteristic modulations in the EEG data, with the gel-based system more clearly capturing stereotypical alpha and beta-band modulations.

Is perception of visual verticality intact in patients with idiopathic cervical dystonia?

Idiopathic cervical dystonia (CD) is a focal dystonia characterized by an abnormal tilted or twisted head position. This abnormal head position could lead to a distorted perception of the visual vertical and spatial orientation. The aim of this cross-sectional study was to investigate whether the perception of the visual vertical is impaired in patients with CD. The subjective visual vertical test (SVV) was measured in 24 patients with CD and 30 controls. The SVV test is conducted in a completely darkened room. A laser bar is projected on an opposing white wall, which is deviated from the earth's gravitational vertical. Participants were seated with their head unrestrained and were instructed to position this bar vertically. The deviations in degrees (°) are corrected for the side of laterocollis in order to measure the E-effect. We found that patients were able to position the laser bar as equally close to the earth's gravitational vertical as controls (+0.67° SD±2.12 vs +0.29° SD±1.08, p=0.43). No E-effect was measured. Notwithstanding the abnormal position of the head, the perception of the visual vertical in patients with idiopathic CD is intact, possibly because of central neural compensatory mechanisms.

Natural aging of cool walls: Impact on solar reflectance, sensitivity to thermal shocks and building energy needs

Wall finishes with high solar reflectance and thermal emittance, commonly known as cool walls, can reduce the exterior surface temperatures of façades, and consequently the building cooling energy needs and power demand, and lower the sensitivity to degradation. Aging, though, may affect their performance. To investigate this risk, we exposed for four years in Milan, Italy, two series of façade finish coats, white and beige, facing north and south, in vertical and vertical-sheltered position, and we measured their solar spectral reflectance and thermal emittance before and after aging. The solar reflectance of the white finish coats drops from 0.75 to 0.55 in four years, and from 0.46 to 0.38 for the beige coats, while the thermal emittance is unchanged. Then, for a typical residential building with white walls, we computed that the cooling energy needs increase with walls aging by 5% and 11%, respectively, with or without exterior wall insulation. The exterior surface temperature is increased even by 6°C, and the number of sudden surface temperature variations in one hour is boosted. Finally, the moisture content in the external layers is reduced, showing the impact on the heat and mass balance because of the uncertainty in solar absorption due to aging.

A novel design of solar chimney for cooling load reduction and other applications in buildings

Cooling load accounts for more than 70% of the electric energy used in buildings in the Middle East. This paper presents a passive method to reduce the cooling load in buildings. The proposed concept includes adding an external solar shield enclosing an air gap between it and the outer wall of the building. This external solar shield layer would absorb the solar radiation incident on the outer walls of the building and get heated inducing a convective airflow in the gap between the layer and the building. This is an example of solar chimney in a flat geometry with a superficial resemblance to Trombe wall. Conventional Trombe wall channel heats the building external wall and creates a convective flow in-between a transparent glass layer and the heated wall. This hot flow is used either as a warm inlet air to the building in winter or help inducing airflow from inside the building for ventilation in summer. However, in the present work, the solar chimney induced airflow is purely external to the building.The proposed external solar shield starts with a glass layer from outside followed by an opaque porous metallic layer followed by an air channel before the building outer walls. The absorbing porous layer would get heated up quickly and transfer its heat to the air in the gap effectively due to its large surface area. The porous layer thickness is optimized at 15cm while the air gap is optimized at 0.3m. Numerical simulations based on finite volume analysis using ANSYS Fluent were carried out for a wall of 3m height. Comparisons of the performance of buildings with its outer walls shielded by white painted, black painted and glazed walls are presented and discussed with respect to that of buildings with bared outer walls as a control.Putting glazing alone after an air gap, expectedly, increases the heat gained by 47–56% compared to 0.7 emissivity simple bared wall. Single black and white solar shielding walls reduce the heat gain by 30 and 67%, respectively. However, the proposed design of a solar chimney with a glass outer wall followed by a porous foam metal layer on its inner surface, reduced thermal gain by 67–79%. This results in electrical cooling load reduction by about 28%. Furthermore, the heated airflow induced by a solar chimney formed with a 20×3m south wall can be utilized to induce water evaporation of 625–1046kg/day allowing active evaporative cooling and/or water desalination under solar irradiation condition of Dhahran, Saudi Arabia

Microbial communities on painted wet and dry external surfaces of a historic fortress in Niterói, Brazil

Bacteria, algae and fungi colonising dry (F1) and wet (F2) white painted walls in the fortress of Santa Cruz da Barra, Niterói, Brazil, were detected using field emission-scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM) and next generation DNA sequencing (NGS) techniques. Major bacterial phyla Operational Taxonomic Units (OTUs) detected were Chloroflexi in the wet green biofilm F2 (38.85% compared with 7.56% in F1) and Proteobacteria in the dry grey biofilm F1 (57.17% compared with 28.69% in F2). Diatoms were detected at both sites by FE-SEM, but only at F1 by NGS. More algae and cyanobacteria were identified at F1, and this was the only biofilm containing Archaea, possibly related to the high level of salt efflorescences at this site. Although thinner, F1 biofilm showed considerably higher genus richness than the wet biofilm, F2. The thickness and appearance of the biofilms did not correlate with their genomic complexity. Ascomycetes of the Sordariomycetes were major fungi identified at both sites, Khuskia (3.33% OTUs) at F1 and Emericellopsis (7.99% OTUs) at F2, and few filamentous forms were seen by microscopy. However, many fungal OTUs could not be identified to phylum level. Potential bacterial and fungal paint deteriogens were detected at both sites. The results confirmed the importance of using a variety of techniques in the study of microbial communities.

Pinturas romanas procedentes de «Caesaraugusta» (Zaragoza): un taller en el valle medio del Ebro

The paper presents a set of fragments of Roman paintings. The fragments of Roman paintings that we present come from the excavation carried out in the street Dr. Palomar n.o 4. They appeared out of original context, in a secondary deposit, and its relation with a specific space of housing can not be established. However, two walls with the characteristic compositional systems of the 2nd century can be reconstituted. First of them is composed by white wall panels articulated by bands and fillets red and yellow bands and fillets, arranged on a speckled white base. The second set also has a speckled base, with a pink background, and in the middle there are panels decorated with marble imitations alternating with columns. A third group, composed of few fragments that don’t allow a restitution, decorated a starry ceiling on a white background, characteristic of the roofs of thermal and religious buildings, especially lararios . They are made by a provincial workshop whose footprint is found in other cities in the middle valley of the Ebro.

Encouraging Writing on the White Walls: Co‐production in Museums and the Influence of Professional Bodies

AbstractMuseums, along with other public sector organisations, have been urged to co‐produce. Co‐production may offer increased resourcing and greater effectiveness, and enhances public value through stronger relationships between government and citizens. However, co‐production, particularly that which involves collaboration with communities, is largely resisted by public sector organisations such as museums. This research examines the extent to which museums co‐produce and the role played by professional bodies in driving or inhibiting co‐production. It finds that the study of co‐production in museums reveals the influence of ‘institutional inertia’ and the limits to which professional bodies are able to ‘diffuse’ co‐production and change established professional practice.

DOT. La animación en espectáculos de teatro

En el siguiente artículo Beatriz Herráiz nos habla del espectáculo infantil y familiar DOT, creado por la compañía valenciana Maduixa Teatre. La autora ha realizado el diseño y animación audiovisual para esta obra de teatro y danza, cuya escenografía consta únicamente de una pantalla. Toda la acción transcurre en esta pared blanca que adentra al espectador en un mundo de fantasía. Actualmente Beatriz Herráiz investiga las posibilidades de la proyección de imagen en formato pequeño: la microproyección.

The Excursion of the Dead Girls

The Excursion of the Dead Girls Anna Seghers Translated by Helen Fehervary (bio) and Amy Kepple Strawser (bio) "No, from much farther away. From Europe." The man looked at me with a smile, as if I'd replied, "From the moon." He was the owner of the pulqueria at the edge of the village. He stepped back from the table, and as he leaned against the wall, began to study me as if searching for some sign of my bizarre past. Right then it seemed just as bizarre to me as it did to him that I'd come all the way from Europe and wound up in Mexico.—The village was staked like a fortress with giant cacti. Through a gap, I could see gray-brown mountain slopes, stark and wild like a moonscape, casting off any notion that they had ever borne life. Two pepper trees, more ablaze than abloom, glowed at the edge of a desolate gorge. The man was now squatting on the ground beneath the enormous shade of his hat. He was no longer studying me. Neither the village nor the mountains held his attention. He stared without moving at the only thing that still puzzled him: an absolute void. I leaned back against the wall in the narrow strip of shade. Refuge in this country was much too questionable, much too uncertain for it to be called salvation. Months of illness just past had plagued me here, even though the many dangers of the war hadn't managed to harm me. Thanks to the rescue efforts of my friends, I had been spared the conspicuous calamities as well as the hidden calamities that lay in wait.—Although my eyes burned from heat and fatigue, I could see the stretch of path that led from the village into the wild. The path was so white that as soon as I closed my eyes it remained imprinted [End Page 283] in my eyelids. At the edge of the gorge I saw the corner of the white wall that had captured my attention from the roof of my lodging in the village higher up, from where I'd just come. Right away I had inquired about the wall and the rancho, or whatever it was, with its solitary light fallen from the night sky, but no one could tell me. So I set out the next day. Even though weakness and fatigue forced me to catch my breath here, I had to find out for myself what this rancho was about. Idle curiosity was the last vestige of wanderlust from my youth, an impulse from force of habit. As soon as it was satisfied, I'd hike back up to my prescribed lodging. The bench I was sitting on was at this point the farthest spot on my journey, actually the westernmost spot I'd ever reached on earth. My longing for unusual, outlandish adventures that once made me restless had long since been quenched, beyond measure. There was only one adventure that could inspire me now: the journey home. The rancho and the mountains lay in a shimmering haze. I couldn't tell whether this came from specks of dust or my own fatigue, clouding everything so that the near faded and the distant cleared like a Fata Morgana. When I stood up, since my fatigue was now annoying to me, the haze before my eyes drifted. I walked through the gap in the stakes of cacti, then around a dog asleep on the path with outstretched legs, covered with dust and still as a cadaver. It was shortly before the rainy season. The exposed roots of barren, entwined trees about to turn to stone clung to the precipice. The white wall drew nearer. The cloud of dust—or was it my fatigue?—had lessened a bit, but it now grew thicker, not gloomy as clouds in mountain crevices usually are, but shiny and shimmering. I would have thought I was feverish if a gust of wind hadn't blown the clouds like scraps of fog toward other cliffsides. Behind the long white wall shone green. Likely a well or a diverted stream watered the rancho...

BYPASSES

1 0 9 R B Y P A S S E S S C O T T D A L G A R N O I thought this to be a drop-o√ a√air, but when Reception asks her for her living will, I decide to stay. I cannot remember her name, this quiet, duteous woman who I think of now like the shy aunt you never quite got to know. We wait in pre-op three hours before the surgeon shows up, and I take in the word, Mercy, printed upside-down on his head-wrap. He repeats what she already knows – that they cannot determine how many bypasses she will require until they open her chest and take a look. He says this without using the words open or chest and makes clear that he has little idea what surgery might buy her. After a silence that stings she lifts her eyes to ask if she might have a heart transplant. She is aware she is asking for something big – maybe not the moon, but surely one of the moons of Jupiter, it has so many. He blushes with practiced apologies and in a moment is gone. Any hope in the room bleeds out and I see abandonment bead up on the glossy 1 1 0 Y white wall behind her. She reads this, I think, in my eyes. Smiling crookedly, she says, ‘‘I got heart-lucky once. He was sixteen. Came in my bedroom window. Even sang to me. I thought to make him shush, but I couldn’t.’’ ...

Arbor Days: Trumann Landscaping and Accion USA

ACCION USA was a nonprofit organization that began operations in 1991 to provide financing to small businesses that did not have access to traditional sources of credit. In this case, Sarah Gomez, a risk analyst and senior consultant for AUSA, has to evaluate a potential client: Trumann Landscaping. Excerpt UVA-ENT-0188 Jan. 9, 2012 ARBOR DAYS: TRUMANN LANDSCAPING AND ACCION USA Sarah Gomez, a risk analyst and senior loan consultant at ACCION USA (AUSA), admired the glistening slabs of rock in Zach Trumann's studio. The workspace was divided into two sections: One contained two computers on which Trumann and his staff could design, and the other provided room for manual labor. The space was clean with fresh white walls and beams in the ceiling. Gomez had been looking forward to this site visit on an early spring day because she knew that Trumann, owner of Trumann Landscaping, had previous experience running a successful business. In Colorado, Trumann and his cousin owned Trumann Group, a company that focused primarily on commercial landscaping. Although Trumann enjoyed all aspects of the landscaping industry, he was particularly drawn to its artistic and creative tasks. In 2006, he established Trumann Landscaping in Park Slope, Brooklyn, so that he could pursue both construction and design. At any given time, Trumann had around 10 clients. His typical customer owned a brownstone in Manhattan or Brooklyn. Trumann's goals for Trumann Landscaping included being environmentally responsible, practicing “green” landscaping, and remaining true to his unique aesthetic vision. In the past, he had shown a willingness to forgo projects, in fact, if the client's visions were not compatible with his. As Gomez surveyed the work site, she considered Trumann's strength as an applicant. There were two risks she could identify easily with this potential loan. First, China-European Trade Bank (CETB), a global commercial bank headquartered in London, had the first lien on the business because it had previously extended Trumann a line of credit. This meant CETB had first rights to the company's assets if Trumann defaulted (AUSA would be the second lien holder). And second, Trumann's financial paperwork for the first quarter of 2009 was not available. He had just replaced his previous accountant because her bookkeeping was too disorganized. This meant that Gomez would have to rely on numbers from the first quarter of 2008 as she reviewed the application. . . .

Elegy for My Two Step

Elegy for My Two Step Yalie Kamara (bio) Before the spirits left me, I used to sway with some sort of lubricated ease inside a dingycrescent of bodies that wreaked of $2 Dickel shots and buzzed with Tinder pheromones. I've become too slow for the radio tunes that once made me drop it on an Indiana dance-floorwith strangers that never seemed to respect the full moon of a cypher. This year, I watch the clock and my feet. Under the light of my dining room, there is noshadow to hide my disfigured shimmy. Yes, I know I am out of place. These days, I am made of the looseness of the liquid I runaway from—a fluid mess—my knees groove in one direction, while my ankles move in the other. I am so soft and rhythmless, that it's made some of my old friends so mad that they've left me. Still, I tumble as off-beat as the bareice cubes stacked in my red cup.Yes, peace can look clumsy—I am often a matchstick unable to lightagainst the aggressive humping of humid strangers.I sip-swallow the elixir of my brand new sober spit, while my two heels beg for a more merciful gravity.I dance an ugly dance, but my God it is an honest one.There was a season of my girlhood, that I snapped so joyfully, that I bruised my middlefinger. I hunger for the plum color of my birthright to return.And so I stay indoors. And then I try again.In my apartment, there is no dining table where one should be: I use the wood panel finishof the vacant floor as my greatest teacher. [End Page 48] I follow the compass needle tick of my own hips to trace how I got over. Such solitary work.I touch my blessed, undying, self.This body and its pewter silhouette against the patient white wall. A hand reaches out— [End Page 49] Yalie Kamara YALIE KAMARA is a Sierra Leonean-American writer and native of Oakland, California. She currently serves as Assistant Editor of Black Camera: An International Film Journal. She is the author of A Brief Biography of My Name (African Poetry Book Fund/Akashic Books, 2018) and When the Living Sing (Ledge Mule Press, 2017). Some of her poetry, fiction, and translations have been featured in The Poetry Society of America, Vinyl Poetry and Prose, Puerto del Sol, and Indiana University Press. She was a finalist for the 2017 Brunel International African Poetry Prize, a 2017 National Book Critics Circle Emerging Critics Fellow, and a fellow of the 2016 Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop. She received an MFA in creative writing (poetry) from Indiana University, Bloomington, and an MA in French culture and civilization from Middlebury College. She will begin her doctoral studies in English literature and creative writing at the University of Cincinnati in fall 2018. Copyright © 2018 Johns Hopkins University Press

The global menace of asbestos

As a 7-year-old child in suburban Sydney, Australia, Serafina Salucci recalls playing with white wall sheeting material leftover from her dad’s renovation of the family’s garage. She used it like chalk to draw on the driveway, and threw chunks of it back and forth with her brothers. Little did anyone know at the time that the sheeting contained carcinogenic asbestos fibers that would later be blamed for giving Salucci mesothelioma, an incurable cancer attacking the lining of her lungs. Salucci was diagnosed with mesothelioma in 2007, 30 years after her likely exposure to asbestos. She has outlived her doctor’s prognosis and now spends her time raising awareness about the disease and the threat of asbestos in older buildings like houses, hospitals, and schools. If asbestos fibers become airborne, there’s a risk of exposure, she says. “We must safely get rid of it.” Salucci joined hundreds of other people seeking to