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Time and Identity in “Ulysses” and the “Odyssey” offers a unique in-depth comparative study of two classic literary works, examining essential themes including change, the self, and humans’ dependence on and isolation from others. Stephanie Nelson shows that in these texts, both Joyce and Homer address identity by looking at the paradox of time—that people are constantly changing yet remain the same across the years. In Nelson’s analysis, both Ulysses and the Odyssey explore dichotomies such as the permanence of names and shifting of stories, independence and connection, and linear and cyclical narrative. Nelson discusses Homer’s contrast of ordinary to mythic time alongside Joyce’s contrast of “clocktime” to experienced time. She analyzes the characters Odysseus and Leopold Bloom, alienated from their previous selves; Telemachus and Stephen Dedalus, trapped by the past; and Penelope and Molly Bloom, able to recast time through weaving, storytelling, and memory. These concepts are also explored through Joyce’s radically different narrative styles and Homer’s timeless world of the gods. Nelson’s thorough knowledge of ancient Greece, Joyce, narratology, oral tradition, and translation results in a volume that speaks across literary specializations. This book makes the case that Ulysses and the Odyssey should be read together and that each work highlights and clarifies aspects of the other. As Joyce’s characters are portrayed as both flux and fixity, readers will see Homer’s hero fight his way out of myth and back into the constant changes of human existence.

Humans try to fix identity through names and stories, but with both there is a danger: on the one hand of freezing identity and on the other of becoming purely constructed and relative. The play with names that characterizes Odysseus and Bloom reveals their essential relation to others, as does their sensitivity to stories, but also threatens their sense of identity as Odysseus continually re-creates himself and Bloom allows himself to become absorbed in the viewpoint of others. For both, however, recasting their own stories also allows them to reconnect with their identities. For Odysseus this occurs in retelling his Wanderings to the Phaeacians, and for Bloom in a rewriting of the stories of Parnell, Don Giovanni, and Rip van Winkle, the last of which modifies his absorption in linear time with a cyclical view implied by the basic human fact of sleep.

Ulysses and the Odyssey are finally similar in being essentially comic works, invested in both comedy’s interest in breaking through the fourth wall and in its valorisation of the human in its most ordinary aspect. In this regard as well both works are open-ended and juxtapose a linear narrative with an overall cyclical vision of human life. The fundamental interest of both works in the nature of language also enters in here, as language is both in time and timeless and blends a “meta” level with a level of essential human connectivity—and above all as language, like comedy, like identity is essentially paradoxical.

On a “meta” level, the questions of time and identity central to these works are dealt with through Joyce’s radically different narrative styles and Homer’s gods. Alongside the Odyssey’s pairing of Athena and Poseidon as fixity and flux, gods and styles are simultaneously multiple, pointing to a “polyrealism” that underlies both works, and also a unity, one that allows for a coming together of characters apparently divided by their subjective realities. As this happens on the level of the “Arranger” in Joyce, it occurs in Homer as the gods operate both inside and outside the story and inside and outside its human actors. In both works it also occurs in a play with the ideas of fate and coincidence. The “fusing” of Stephen and Bloom described by Joyce in his Linati schema also occurs on the level of epic language, as in the reverse similes that bring Odysseus and Penelope together on a level unknown to themselves.

In his exploration of the nature of identity, Homer employs a contrast of ordinary time, the time of the poet and his audience, to “mythic” time, the heroic time of his stories. Similarly, Joyce’s initial style contrasts “clocktime” to time as it is experienced, Bergson’s duree. In both cases, however, the distinction collapses, for Joyce in the varied narrative styles of Ulysses’ “Arranger” and for Homer as the story of Odysseus fighting his way out of myth itself becomes a subject of song. Both works contrast flux and fixity as poles threatening identity, but while Homer contrasts human life to the timeless world of the gods, Joyce adds a new dimension to the epic tradition by questioning the absolute and ignoring both the break in time posited by Christianity and his own generation’s view of WWI as a seismic change.

While Odysseus and Bloom are alienated from their past selves, Telemachus and Stephen Dedalus appear trapped by the past and unable to move on. Both are caught between mothers who hold them back and fathers they cannot aspire to match, further complicated for Stephen by the role that Joyce sets for him, as the future author of Ulysses. In both cases the past that entraps the characters is represented in the material world of objects by which they are surrounded, a world that Telemachus clings to, but which, as it becomes literary debt, Stephen attempts to escape. Telemachus’ relation to his father is ambivalent, and finally separate from his relation to Penelope, while Stephen, adopting the model of Hamlet rather than that of the Odyssey, attempts, in vain, to take the role of father for himself.

Rather than a study of how Joyce used Homer, this work compares the essential themes that both works explore: change, identity, and our dependence on and isolation from others. It also situates the relation of Ulysses to the Odyssey within a self-reflexive series of epics, beginning with the oral tradition from which the Homeric poems grew, stretching to Virgil, Dante, and Milton, and including Ovid’s Metamorphoses as a notable outlier.

From Prometheus’s first tricking of Zeus in the Theogony, when he foregrounds that the gods only receive the bones and hide of the sacrifice, while the humans eat the meat, cattle have an amazingly equivocal role in Greek culture. Unlike horses, which were not used for work, for food, or for sacrifice, cattle spanned all these realms—a partner in the growing of grain (the quintessential human work, as Hesiod sees it) and also as both a bridge to the divine on the one side, and an element of our purely animal, carnivorous nature on the other. The scene in the Odyssey in which the meat of the slaughtered cattle of the Sun still bellows on the spit exemplifies the latter divide, while Odysseus’s (rather unkingly) challenge to the suitor, Eurymachus, wishing they might compete in plowing with “oxen to be driven, those of the best/large and ruddy, well fed with grass, and equal in age and power, and no ways contemptible in strength” (Odyssey18.371–73) returns him firmly to the non-magic world of Ithaca, dayto-day humanity, change, and dependence.

BackgroundHands-on culinary medicine education for medical trainees has emerged as a promising tool for cardiovascular health promotion.PurposeTo determine whether virtual culinary medicine programming associates with Mediterranean diet (MedDiet) adherence and lifestyle medicine competencies among medical trainees across the USA.MethodA total of 1433 medical trainees across 19 sites over a 12-month period were included. The Cooking for Health Optimisation with Patients-Medical Trainees survey composed of 61 questions regarding demographics, nutritional attitudes, dietary habits including MedDiet score and lifestyle medicine counselling competencies. Multivariable logistic regression assessed the association of virtual culinary medicine education with MedDiet intake and nutritional attitudes.ResultsThere were 519 medical trainees who participated in virtual culinary medicine education and 914 medical trainees who participated in their standard nutrition curricula. More than one-half of participants were women (n=759) and the mean age was 27 years old. Compared with students enrolled in traditional nutrition curricula, participants in virtual culinary medicine education were 37% more likely to adhere to MedDiet guidelines for fruit intake (OR 1.37, 95% CI 1.03 to 1.83, p=0.03). Virtual culinary medicine education was associated with higher proficiency in lifestyle medicine counselling categories, notably recommendations involving fibre (OR 4.03; 95% CI 3.05 to 5.34), type 2 diabetes prevention (OR 4.69; 95% CI 3.51 to 6.27) and omega fatty acids (OR 5.21; 95% CI 3.87 to 7.02). Virtual culinary medicine education had a similar, although higher magnitude association with MedDiet counselling competency (OR 5.73, 95% CI 4.26 to 7.70) when compared with historical data previously reported using hands-on, in-person culinary medicine courseware (OR 4.97, 95% CI 3.89 to 6.36).ConclusionsCompared with traditional nutritional educational curricula, virtual culinary medicine education is associated with higher MedDiet adherence and lifestyle medicine counselling competencies among medical trainees. Both virtual and hands-on culinary medicine education may be useful for cardiovascular health promotion.

This research paper examines how the distinct cultures of Japan, Mexico and Great Britain influence companies’ respective marketing strategies. These three countries were chosen specifically because of their vast cultural differences and their location on three different continents. First, the paper will compare each country’s economic outlook in order to more thoroughly understand each country’s market and consumer behavior. Next, each country’s culture will be explored through several distinguishing aspects such as religion, family structure, gender roles, society, etc. A summary of each country’s consumer behavior and consumer ethics will be given. Next, specific examples of companies that have led successful marketing campaigns in each country will be analyzed in order to determine how they used cross-cultural marketing. The companies used were Coca-Cola for Mexico, Kit-Kat and Louis Vuitton for Japan and Five-Guys for Great Britain. These results can help companies which are trying to launch their products in international markets understand different consumer behavior and markets world-wide.

Time is an inherent, constitutive aspect of narrative, whether the narrative concerns fiction or fact. To speak of narrative is to invoke time and multiple temporalities. Aristotle’s emphasis on action as a primary component of narrative implicitly acknowledges time as fundamental, since any action requires time. Whether narrative is seen as a series of connected events or as primarily the creation of a storyworld, the functional and structural roles of time stand. As a result of this, time has been one of the most analyzed, researched, and theorized subjects in the field of narrative theory. Discussions concerning such narrative concepts as story, plot, character, or point of view can hardly avoid considering temporal dynamics. And the elemental nature of time in narrative remains constant whether narrative is conceived more narrowly as depending on the presence of a narrator or is defined as the conjunction of a story and its representation. To consider the ways in which narratives involve the interrelationships of different temporalities is also to be reminded of the disjunction between so-called “real” or clock time and time as it is experienced. In contrast to the uniform directionality of clock time, time as it is experienced is constantly intertwined with memory and anticipation: that is, any experienced present is also interwoven with multiple pasts and futures. Narrative time captures this experience. Since a narrative is always a representation, a particular and subjective presentation of a story, the chronological sequence of events in a narrative may be represented in an infinite variety of ways. A given story can be told from its beginning moving through to its conclusion, or it can start with the end and build the story by revisiting earlier events, or it may start in the middle and proceed toward its end and at various points tack backward to earlier points, or it can do any combination of these. A representation of a story can create two storylines in parallel, the narrative crosscutting between the concurrent storylines, just as individuals can participate in one spatial-temporal setting while also immersed in another, whether technologically (as on the telephone or Internet) or mentally. In this way narrative time is in many ways truer to human experience than what is conventionally thought of as real time, namely the uniform absolute time undermined by Einstein’s discovery of relativity. What seems indisputable is that humans are hardwired to create and communicate with narrative; they habitually generate and trade in narratives as a way of making meaning of experience and of building connections with fellow humans. As a result, humans also constantly manipulate time, making sense of past, present, and future experiences through narrative. Just as anticipation of the future relies on the sense one makes of the present, the act of remembering has more to do with making narrative meaning than with accessing some fixed or stable mental recording of an event. Time is something an audience actively creates rather than something it passively experiences, and this may be borne out most vividly in the continuous activity of making narratives.

Metaphors frequently link negative affect with darkness and associations of this type have been established in several experimental paradigms. Given the ubiquity and strength of these associations, people who prefer dark to light may be more prone to negative emotional experiences and symptoms. A five study investigation (total N = 605) couches these ideas in a new theoretical framework and then examines them. Across studies, 1 in 4 people preferred the perceptual concept of dark over the perceptual concept of light. These dark-preferring people scored higher in neuroticism (Studies 1 and 2) and experienced greater depressive feelings in daily life (Study 3). Moreover, dark preferences shared a robust relationship with depressive symptoms (Study 4) as well as generalised anxiety symptoms (Study 5). The results provide novel insights into negative affectivity and extend conceptual metaphor theory in a way that is capable of making individual difference predictions.

The considerable number of families served continues to place systemic challenges on the child welfare system. Jurisdictions are turning to new strategies to increase family engagement in services and to leverage taxed or limited resources. Signs of Safety® is a strengths-based and safety-focused approach to child protection work that is grounded in partnership and collaboration. This exploratory pilot study with a referred participant sample used interviews with 26 parents and 32 safety network members to explore respondents' perceptions and use of a safety plan and safety network, core components of the Signs of Safety framework. Findings from this pilot investigation include insights about how safety plans and safety networks are established, how they function, and opportunities for enhancing their use with families with the goal of providing supports that increase the likelihood of continued safety for children after case closure. Preliminary results also suggest these tools may contribute to reduced re-reports to child protection.

Hesiod’s Works and Days had its greatest influence on English poetry through the Georgics. While Hesiod’s early translators into English—Chapman in 1618, Cooke in 1728, and Elton in 1815—were primarily interested in Hesiod as a theological and moral thinker, it was Virgil’s focus on an essentially problematic relation of the human and nature, as seen in the role of labor and the relation of farming to war and politics, that persisted in the English georgic tradition. Virgil established his vision, however, through a deliberate contrast with Hesiod’s idea of a seamless connection of the human world, through farming, with the greater cosmos. In this way, Hesiod may be said to have deeply influenced the later georgic tradition, albeit through inversion.

Background Community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) causes substantial clinical and economic burden. While several studies have reported the cost to treat CAP, there is little information on the cost to treat by age, risk profile, and hospitalization in US adults aged ≥50 years. Objective To quantify the cost, from a payer perspective, of treating CAP at the episode level, stratified by age, risk profile, and hospitalization. Methods A retrospective study of claims data from a large US health plan (1 January 2006–31 December 2008) was conducted. Patients aged ≥50 years having at least one medical claim with a primary diagnosis for pneumonia were identified. A CAP episode was defined as the period between the first and last pneumonia ICD-9 code with a chest X-ray claim. Episode-level variables included risk stratum based on presence of an immunocompromising/chronic condition, age group, number and length of inpatient and outpatient CAP episodes, and all-cause and CAP-related healthcare costs (adjusted to 2011 costs). Results Among the 27,659 study patients, 28,575 CAP episodes (20,454 outpatient; 8,121 inpatient) occurred. Mean age of patients with a CAP episode was 62.6. Low-risk patients accounted for 44.4 % of all CAP episodes. Mean CAP episode length was 31.8 days for an inpatient episode and 10.2 days for an outpatient episode. Mean all-cause total healthcare cost for an inpatient CAP episode ranged from $11,148 to $51,219 depending on risk stratum and age group. Mean outpatient episode-related costs were much lower than inpatient episode-related costs. Conclusions Cost to treat CAP requiring hospitalization is high regardless of age or the presence of underlying comorbidities. Given that almost half of the patients in this study did not have traditional risk factors for CAP, it is clear that better preventative strategies are needed. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s40258-013-0026-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.