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The influential final proposition of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus defines silence negatively, as the other of language. Contrary to this externalising trend of thought is the theme of silence as a quality of interiority and intimacy, as with John Cage’s anecdote of an anechoic chamber, wherein silence became the ceaselessly sonorous plenitude of the body, as opposed to an absence. What unites these two contrastive accounts, however, is a logic of exposure: with the former, language is exposed to its outside; with the latter, exposure takes place as auditory auto-affection. I ask how this underlying logic of exposure—silence as exposure and exposure as silence—might be recuperated and strategized against prevailing discourses of linguistic inescapability. The first chapter negotiates two opposing modalities of silence in 20th century philosophy and literary theory, that is, ‘apophasis’ (or negative theology) and ‘reticence’ (which I understand through Heidegger’s use of the term Verschwiegenheit). Apophasis corresponds to a silence of ineffable transcendence, whereas reticence, keeping-silence, implies a silence of immanence. From this dichotomy, I develop the figure of a paradoxical ‘silent voice’, the trembling interminability of the possibility of speech anterior to speech, which conforms to Jean-Luc Nancy’s liminal figure of ‘transimmanence’. Chapter 2 develops the term ‘silent voice’ through a reading of Samuel Beckett’s prose piece Company, whose narrator is exposed—rather than interpellated—to silence, itself, as a phatic address. In chapter 3, I develop the notion of phatic silence through a series of comparative readings of Roland Barthes and Jean-Luc Nancy, through which I analyse the dynamics of silence, community (or ‘being-with’) and singularity, with particular methodological emphasis on Barthes’s unpicking of the binary of silere (pre-lingual, inviolate silence) and tacere (verbal silence, silence exposed to language). In chapter 4 I shift to a discussion of poetry, and analyse how Wallace Stevens stages the exposure of poetic language to three interrelated determinations of silence: anterior silence, external silence, and animal silence.

The characteristics of the chemical compounds known as the cardiac glycosides are reviewed, with particular reference to the digitalis group. The clinical use of digitalis is outlined from its origins in folk medicine to the present day. It is pointed out that digitalis is in common use in the treatment of heart disease but the ratio is small between the dosage which produces the desired clinical effect and that which causes toxicity. The pharmacokinetics of the most commonly used cardiac glycoside, digoxin, are summarised. Digoxin was one of the first preparations formulated with the use of the mass-production tabletting process and the features of this type of formulation are described. The concepts of bioavailability of drug formulations and its methods of measurement are discussed and the progress of awareness of its clinical relevance is reviewed. A description is given of how difficulty in achieving full digitalisation in a patient suffering from paroxysms of atrial fibrillation led to the realisation that absorption of digoxin in that patient was impaired. Changing the brand of digoxin tablet used by this patient to Lanoxin gave more rapid absorption and higher steady state plasma digoxin concentrations. When the patients' original tablets were ground to a fine powder and administered within a capsule there were further increases in absorption rate and steady state concentrations. Similar results were found in a second patient. However, in a further group of 5 patients with low plasma digoxin concentrations or inadequate control of atrial fibrillation no significant rise in plasma digoxin concentrations were seen after changing to Lanoxin. The plasma digoxin concentrations in a survey of out-patients using Lanoxin and a variety of other brands were lower than those reported a few years earlier in similar patients on equivalent digoxin doses. An explanation of those findings was not apparent until the Burroughs Wellcome Company, manufacturers of Lanoxin, revealed that modications in the production process of Lanoxin were thought to have pronounced effects on bioavailability. In 1972 they announced that a change in production technique a few weeks earlier had doubled the bioavailability of Lanoxin. It became known that an earlier change in 1969 had probably halved Lanoxin bioavailability. The results in the out-patients' survey supported this view of the effect of the 1969 change and suggested that major differences in bioavailability again existed between Lanoxin and many other brands of digoxin tablet. A comparison of 'newer Lanoxin' made since the most recent production change and 'older Lanoxin' manufactured just before this change confirmed that newer Lanoxin gave higher steady state plasma digoxin concentrations and absorption was more rapid. The mean increase in bioavailability was 70%, but individual patients showed marked variation in their response to a change in formulation, with some showing several-fold increases in digoxin concentration. Newer Lanoxin had a much faster in vitro dissolution rate than older Lanoxin, although both had disintegration rates within the limits stipulated by the British Pharmacopoeia. Measurement of the dissolution rate of 15 other brands of digoxin tablet marketed in the United Kingdom showed a wide distribution of values. A trial to compare the bioavailability and clinical efficacy of 7 digoxin brands was carried out in 2 groups of cardiac patients, using steady state plasma digoxin concentration as the measure of bioavailability. This confirmed the difference between older and newer Lanoxin and showed that the bioavailability of the other brands ranged from a bioavailability similar to older Lanoxin to a bioavailability almost equal to the newer Lanoxin, The differences in plasma digoxin concentration were associated with significant differences in the ventricular rate of those patients who had atrial fibrillation. There was a close correlation between bioavailability of these brands and in vitro dissolution rate: there was a correlation coefficient of 0.88 between mean steady state plasma digoxin concentration and the percentage of the dose in solution at 30 minutes. The profile of the relationship between dissolution rate and bioavailability suggested that there might be an upper limit of dissolution rate beyond which no further increase in digoxin absorption would occur. A study was made of newer Lanoxin and 4 formulations designed to provide very rapid in vitro dissolution. Absorption curves showed that these formulations were all rapidly absorbed.

This is a study of the development of the United States debate on two of the Yalta agreements concluded in February 1945 by the Allied leaders, Roosevalt, Churchill and Stalin. The development of these issues of prior to the Yalta Conference is examined in order to demonstrate their contrasting origins and objectives. Thereafter the debate is seen as a commentary on the agreements in assessing their success or failure. In the view or his critics the wartime President, Franklin Delano Roosevalt, had suffered a diplomatic defeat in making unwarrantable concessions to Soviet Russia at the expense of two other "allies", China and Poland. The thesis demonstrates how the Polish agreement was an early object or criticism by Polish-Americans, by their organisations, and by sympathetic Representatives and Senators whose initial opposition at the granting of Polish territory was heightened by the failure of the Trumen administration to obtain implementation of provisions regarding democratic Polish elections. The administration is seen as having played little part in this initial debate, defence of Yalta being left to others. With the· apparent failure of American foreign policy in China following the Marshall Mission, a second Yalta issue, the secret Far Eastern Agreement, came into focus. The initial Polish-American and conservative Republican opposition was now to be augmented by a pro-Chiang Kai-Shek group which asserted that Communist gains in Manchuria bad been facilitated by a Soviet Union granted concessions in the province at Yalta. The thesis argues that Yalta did not appear as an important issue in the 1948 Presidential elections, due to a combination of factors including the official Republican support for a bipartisan policy, the Democratic stress on domestic issues and the heightening of Cold War tension on the Czech and Berlin crises. Thereafter Thomas Dewey's defeat, coupled with the loss of China and evidence of Communist espionage activity in the United States itself, stimulate a resurgence of the Yalta issue. Eventually the administration is forced to defend the agreements in a series of congressional hearings, against an opposition furious at the Communist "aggression" in Korea and encouraged by the authoritative ex-diplomats, Arthur Bliss Lane and Patrick J. Hurley. Success for the Yalta opposition is apparently signalled by the inclusion of a Yalta repudiation plank in the 1952 Republican platform, to be followed by official support for repudiation during the presidential election campaign. However the thesis shows how the new administration reversed its policy and gave tacit support to the Yalta agreements. Defeated on the Bricker Amendment and unable to make any effective political capital out of the Yalta papers' publication, the opposition to Yalta disintegrated. By 1955 the issue had ceased to have any significance as a factor in United States' domestic politics.

The anion distribution in pure and mixed sodium, lithium, calcium and zinc phosphate glasses has been determined by paper chromatographic techniques. The heat of formation of the phosphate crystals and glasses has also been determined by solution calorimetry. There has been shown to be a relationship between the shape of the heat of formation curve and the distribution of anions in a single cation phosphate melt. It is shown that the formation of a distribution does not only involve an entropy change but also an enthalpy change, a relative measure of which can be obtained from the heat of formation curves. The order of magnitude of the enthalpy change can be determined from the change in coulombic interactions and also from the entropy change involved in the formation of a distribution. The experiments on mixed phosphate glasses have shown that in sodium-lithium, lithium-calcium, and calcium-zinc mixtures, the distribution of anions is a straight line function of the mole fraction of metal oxides present.• In sodium-zinc mixtures, however, the anion distribution is irregular. In those mixtures where the anion distribution is regular, the heat of mixing is zero within experimental limits. The heat of mixing is negative for the sodium-zinc phosphates. The change of anion distribution and the heat effect on mixing have also been related to the shapes of the heat of formation curves of the components.

The main aims have been to separate membrane fragments as found in liver homogenates, and to develop and apply methods for cytochemical examination of the fractions obtained. Fixation of tissue fractions in glutaraldehyde and incubation in lead-containing media resulted in a marked inhibition of enzyme activities in biochemical and cytochemical assays. Acceptable cytochemical results were obtained with unfixed fractions and also with sections prepared by a novel method. Incubation studies indicated no increase with time in the proportion of microsomal membrane fragments exhibiting 5'-nucleotidase or glucose-6-phosphatase activities, but a lag period was noted for glucose-6-phosphatase. Zonal centrifugation of 'post-lysosomal' fractions in a 'B-IV' rotor with a sucrose gradient gave three main peaks corresponding to soluble material, smooth-surfaced membrane fragments and rough-surfaced fragments. 5'-Nucleotidase (a plasma membrane marker) and glucose-6-phosphatase (a cytomembrane marker) were demonstrated biochemically and cytochemically in the smooth-surfaced fraction. Separation of 5'-nucleotidase and glucose-6-phosphatase was obtained in the presence of magnesium but not with caesium. No marked change in the position of the enzyme peaks resulted from the use of 0.12 M sucrose or 0.14 M NaCl in place of 0.25 M sucrose, or from different centrifugation times. Effective separation of 5'-nucleotidase and glucose-6-phosphatase was obtained by using sigmoid gradients. The resolution was not improved by the presence of deoxycholate. The distribution of ADPase and magnesium-activated ATPase closely paralleled 5'-nucleotidase, while IDPase and UDPase showed a distribution intermediate between that of glucose-6-phosphatase and 5'-nucleotidase. Fractionation of a crude nuclear preparation led to the demonstration of 5'-nucleotidase on sheets of plasma membrane and bile canaliculi, while glucose-6-phosphatase activity was detected in small vesicles adhering to the plasma membrane. Cytochemical observations on hepatoma sections gave no evidence that the localizations of 5'-nucleotidase, glucose-6-phosphatase and ATPase within the 'parenchymal' cells differed from those found in normal liver. Zonal centrifugation of a 'post-lysosomal' fraction from a transplanted hepatoma showed a similar pattern to that of normal liver, as did a cytochemical study of hepatoma fractions.

Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) is identified as dismissing translation, applying to all "translation" the restricted expression of translation within the discredited Grammar Translation Method (GTM). Recent, negative classifications of the GTM are considered and, this dissertation observes, the concept of the GTM is shown as prone to being mythologized. A summary definition of the GTM is offered. Of the five Prussian language teachers viewed by history as originating the GTM, Joahnn Valentin Meidinger and, to a lesser degree, Heinrich Gottfried Ollendorff are shown offering methods and an approach to translation that are most similar to the definition of the GTM used today. Johann Heinrich Philipp Seidenstücker, Johann Franz Ahn, and Carl Julius Ploetz are found also to stand in the lineage of the GTM, but with important qualifications. The name "Grammar Translation Method" is asserted by this dissertation to originate in the Reform Movement, specifically, Wilhelm Viëtor’s Der Sprachunterricht muß umkehren! (1882) and a lecture of Viëtor’s from 1899. Viëtor is noted characterizing "traditional" methodologies with the terms "Grammatik" and "Übersetzung," beginning with Meidinger’s Practische Französische Grammatik (1783). Translation is found to remain problematic for the Reform Movement. A separate, concurrent movement, resulting in the Direct Method, is seen banishing all use of translation, and arguably lives on in CLT today. The formulation of a novel definition of the translation of texts is attempted. This definition, along with opinions from Translation Studies, is applied to a statement by Viëtor, where translation is particularly problematized, with the goal of mitigating this problematic. The dissertation recommends that CLT similarly use this definition of translation, so as to mitigate its own skepticism towards translation.

The Earth's polar ionosphere is a highly dynamic region of the upper atmosphere, and acts as the closure of the greater magnetospheric current system. This region plays host to many electrodynamic effects that impact terrestrial systems, such as power grids, railroads, and pipelines. These effects are fundamentally related to the currents, electric fields, and conductivity present in the polar ionosphere. Understanding and predicting the electrodynamics of this region is vital to being able to determine the physical impacts on terrestrial systems and provide predictions to government and commercial entities. Empirical models play a key role in the research and forecasting of the solar wind and interplanetary magnetic field's impact on the polar ionosphere, and is an active area of development and research. Recent interest in polar ionospheric conductivity has led to a community-wide campaign to develop our understanding of this portion of the electrodynamic system. Characterizing the interactions between the solar wind and the polar ionosphere is a difficult task, as the region of interest is highly data starved in many respects. In particular, satellite based data products are scarce due to being costly and logistically difficult. Recent advancements in data sources (such as the Swarm and CHAMP satellite missions) as well as continued research into the physical relationships between solar wind and interplanetary magnetic field drivers have provided the opportunity to develop new, novel tools to study this region of interest. In this dissertation, two polar ionosphere models are described in Chapters 3 and 4, along with the original research that their construction has produced in Chapter 1. These two models are combined to provide a foundation for future research in this area, which is described in Chapter 5.

The Russian Federation has recently implemented a foreign policy strategy aimed at subverting the West’s ability to deter Russia from destabilizing its neighbors. This strategy combines elements of conventional military strategy with “weaponized information” in order to achieve success in the political and military arenas of conflict. “Weaponized Information” goes beyond the “network-centric” warfare envisioned by cyber security experts, focused instead upon the development of “fake news,” disinformation, and encouraging conflicting media narratives. This thesis explores this strategy through Thomas Schelling’s framework of deterrence elucidated in Arms and Influence and uses recent events in Ukraine, Syria, the United States, and Europe to describe the development and implementation of “weaponized information” in 21st Century international conflicts.

Estimates of the number of U.S. deaths each year resulting from medical errors range from 44,000 (Institute of Medicine, 1999) to 195,000 (HealthGrades, 2004). Additionally, instances of medical harm are estimated to occur at a rate of approximately 15 million per year in the U.S., or about 40,000 per day (Institute for Healthcare Improvement, 2007). Although several organizational behavior management (OBM) intervention techniques have been used to improve particular behaviors related to patient safety, there remains a lack of patient-safety-focused behavioral interventions among healthcare workers. OBM interventions are often applied to needs already identified within an organization, and the means by which these needs are determined vary across applications. The current research addresses gaps in the literature by applying a broad needs-assessment methodology to identify patient-safety intervention targets in a hospital and then translating OBM intervention techniques to identify and improve the prevention potential of responses to reported medical errors. A content analysis of 17 months of descriptions of follow-up actions to error reports for nine types of the most-frequently-occurring errors was conducted. Follow-up actions were coded according to a taxonomy of behavioral intervention components, with accompanying prevention scores based on criteria developed by Geller et al. (1990). Two error types were selected for intervention; based on the highest frequency of reporting and lowest average follow-up prevention score. Over a three-month intervention period, managers were instructed to respond to these two error types with active communication, group feedback, and positive reinforcement strategies. Results indicate improved prevention potential as a consequence of improved corrective action for targeted errors. Future implications for identifying and classifying responses to medical error are discussed.

The opening scene of The Portrait of a Lady takes place upon the broad, sunlit lawns of Gardencourt. Yet, even in this expansive setting, the most essential character in the novel, the protagonist, is, curiously, no more than a narrow, shadowy speculation symbolized by a few odd words found in a telegram of dubious value. The only worth of these words comes in the amount of curiosity they can arouse in the other characters and in the reader. For it appears that, with this slow but significantly unusual means of introducing Isabel, the author intends her for more than a mere foil in a worldly triangle. Henry James does not squander his characters and while the plot of this novel, for example, suggests a debt to the traditional sentimental novel, the characters transcend such a strict formula and take on great depth and mass. Thus, as the reader progresses through the tale, he is continually surprised, and gratified, to discover that the characters emerge as real personalities, each possessing, his own set of ideas, sensibilities, an visions. When these personalities are brought together there can be no chance for a sentimental novel.