It is well known that working memory performance changes with age. Two recent computational models of working memory, TBRS* and SOB-CS, developed from young adults WM performances are opposed regarding the postulated causes of forgetting, namely time-based decay and interference for TBRS* and SOB-CS, respectively. In the present study, these models are applied on a set of complex span data produced by young and older adults. As expected, these models are unable to account for the older adult data. An investigation (...) on the effect of the main parameters of these models showed that the poorer performance of older adults does not come from a weaker encoding of item but rather from difficulties during the free time that immediately follows each distractor, as well as from a higher level of confusion between items. These results are discussed with respect to the current theories of working memory and aging. (shrink)

A summary is presented of the subquantum kinetics ether methodology, a type of unified field theory that successfully predicts a large number of physical phenomena. This utilizes a new approach to theory development that emphasizes the use of system theory and places theory development as primary and observation as secondary. The rationale is given for adopting an open system, process-based view of the physical universe and for choosing the Model G reaction system as a prospective “genetic code” for the physical (...) universe. Model G is shown to provide a viable model for the creation of subatomic particles from zero-point energy fluctuations. (shrink)

L'évolution de l'approvisionnement des zoos en animaux est un aspect de l'histoire de ces institutions marginal dans les recherches bien que révélateur des relations entretenues avec la faune. Dans la lignée des récents développements de l'histoire des animaux, il est envisagé ici du côté des animaux et non des seuls humains. Une micro-histoire de la capture des gorilles de l'Est met en évidence les politiques humaines, leurs incidences sur les gorilles et leurs évolutions concomitantes aboutissant à la réduction des captures.

The biographies of animal celebrities published by the historians John Simons and Eric Baratay aim to place animals in and of themselves at the center of academic narratives. Both excavate the lived experiences concealed behind official discourses and collective representations, notably by relying on cross-fertilization with ethological research. They unveil the ways in which information was reshaped in order to portray animal celebrities as benevolent members of human-animal communities, and thereby shed light on the mechanics of animal commodification. The close (...) examination of a few individual animal trajectories enlightens the condition of many historical animals living under human tutelage in the 19th and early 20th century and highlights long-term historical evolutions, such as the succession of animal cultures and generations largely determined by human actions. (shrink)

This article elaborates a local history of zoo feeding practices in order to shed light on the construction of knowledge at the zoo, its intersection with laboratory developments in life sciences, and the nature of zoo sciences. It relies on the case studies of two of the oldest zoological gardens in the world-the Jardin des Plantes Ménagerie in Paris (1793) and the London Zoological Gardens (1828)-both of which formed parts of major scientific institutions, thereby facilitating research on the dialogue between (...) zoo knowledge and life sciences. The article argues that zoos developed around an experimental paradigm that consisted of testing on animals the (nutritional) variables of their survival within a highly constrained institutional framework. From the interwar period, the empirical nature of the zoo feeding economy was marked by slow and uneven changes, associated with the development of nutritional sciences as well as internal hygiene, pathology, and veterinary programmes. Despite transfers and networks of people, methods, experiments, concepts, and animals between zoos and life sciences laboratories, the former remained too impure as a research site to act as an extension of the latter. Zoos, however, needed external laboratories to support themselves with the scientific legitimacy that their “biopolitical modernisation” (Chrulew) required. In addressing programmatic changes as well as their impact upon the animals, this paper argues that trial-and-error experiments are constitutive of the zoo, contributing towards the definition of the nature of both zoo management and zoo sciences. (shrink)

« Un désert qui monologue », ainsi se définissait Violette Leduc, cette femme que trop ont refusé d'écouter, cet auteur que trop peu de ses contemporains ont comprise. Vingt-sept ans après son décès, Carlo Jansiti lui rend, avec la biographie qu'il vient de publier, un hommage posthume, sobre mais poignant. Il redonne du relief à une forte personnalité et à une figure attachante, qui scandalisa ses contemporains par sa marginalité et son originalité, et fut souvent mal jugée par eux. (...) L... (shrink)

Anne-Emmanuelle Demartini est professeure d’histoire contemporaine à l’université Paris 3 et avait consacré sa thèse au criminel Lacenaire ; elle y décortiquait la construction d’un monstre polymorphe et surtout l’utilisait pour interroger l’imaginaire social de la monarchie de Juillet. Avec ce nouvel ouvrage, centré sur la parricide Violette Nozière, elle réussit de nouveau à déployer tout l’imaginaire social des années 1930 et propose in fine « une manière de faire de l’histoire avec une af...

In _Politics with Beauvoir_ Lori Jo Marso treats Simone de Beauvoir's feminist theory and practice as part of her political theory, arguing that freedom is Beauvoir's central concern and that this is best apprehended through Marso's notion of the encounter. Starting with Beauvoir's political encounters with several of her key contemporaries including Hannah Arendt, Robert Brasillach, Richard Wright, Frantz Fanon, and Violette Leduc, Marso also moves beyond historical context to stage encounters between Beauvoir and others such as Chantal Akerman, (...) Lars von Trier, Rahel Varnhagen, Alison Bechdel, the Marquis de Sade, and Margarethe von Trotta. From intimate to historical, always affective though often fraught and divisive, Beauvoir's encounters, Marso shows, exemplify freedom as a shared, relational, collective practice. _Politics with Beauvoir_ gives us a new Beauvoir and a new way of thinking about politics—as embodied and coalitional. (shrink)

This article presents a dialogue between Roland Barthes and Paolo Fabbri, which took place on 18 December 1965 in Florence, Italy. Barthes offers an engaging account of his structuralist approach to narrative, as was later published in essay form, ‘Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narrative’, included in a special issue of Communications (Issue 8, 1966). In a cordial exchange with Fabbri, Barthes provides a more candid presentation of method than found in print, along with critical reflection of the underlying (...) importance of the structuralist approach, as perceived at the time. The interview took place as part of a small conference on narrativity. Participants included Algirdas Julien Greimas, Claude Bremond, Umberto Eco, Jules Gritti, Violette Morin, Christian Metz, and Tzvetan Todorov. Subsequently, a number of these participants contributed articles to the same issue of Communications, on the structural analysis of narrative. (shrink)

Bill Viola _Reasons for Knocking at an Empty House, Writings 1973-1994_ Edited by Robert Violette in collaboration with the author Introduction by Jean-Christophe Ammann Thames and Hudson, 1995/reprinted 1998 ISBN: 0-500-27837-7 301 pp.

The practice of inserting bits of lyric verse within Old French narrative romances appears to have begun with Jean Renart, the supposed author of the Roman de la rose ou de Guillaume de Dole, which most scholars date around 1228. It was soon imitated by Gerbert de Montreuil in his Roman de la violette and became widespread during the balance of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, appearing in upwards of fifty works. This technique of lyric insertions in romance continues (...) the earlier use of variable refrains within lyric songs and anticipates, perhaps, the insertion of snatches from Latin poetry in the Essais of Montaigne. Little studied until recently, the phenomenon was the focus of a colloquium at the Newberry Library in Chicago, in October 1991, with the title “Music and Narrative in Medieval Romance: The Poetics of Lyric Insertions.” The present study was read at that colloquium. (shrink)

Intrigues politico-financières, crimes de sang, outrages aux bonnes mœurs, les années 1920 et 1930, en France, furent marquées par les scandales, savamment mis en scène par la presse à sensation. Si certaines affaires – Marthe Hanau, Stavisky, Violette Nozière – ont durablement marqué la mémoire collective, d’autres, en revanche, sont tombées dans l’oubli. C’est l’un de ces faits divers, qui défraya un temps la chronique, que ressuscite pour nous La garçonne et l’assassin. Le récit suit les...

Sur la couverture du livre, le e de sages est en violet avec un caractère rehaussé et il en est de même dans le texte. La première note explicite ce choix typographique (mais on ne peut ici reproduire la couleur…) : « Les lettre violettes marquant le féminin visent à restituer la présence des femmes masquée à l’accoutumée par la primauté grammaticale accordée au masculin » (p. 7). Le parti pris est original, comme l’est ce livre qui veut associer « (...) science et rêve », par un commentaire, à l’a... (shrink)

The Useless Mouths" and Other Literary Writings brings to English-language readers literary writings--several previously unknown--by Simone de Beauvoir. Culled from sources including various American university collections, the works span decades of Beauvoir's career. Ranging from dramatic works and literary theory to radio broadcasts, they collectively reveal fresh insights into Beauvoir's writing process, personal life, and the honing of her philosophy. The volume begins with a new translation of the 1945 play The Useless Mouths, written in Paris during the Nazi occupation. (...) Other pieces were discovered after Beauvoir's death in 1986, such as the 1965 short novel "Misunderstanding in Moscow," involving an elderly French couple who confront their fears of aging. Two additional previously unknown texts include the fragmentary "Notes for a Novel," which contains the seed of what she later would call "the problem of the Other," and a lecture on postwar French theater titled Existentialist Theater. The collection notably includes the eagerly awaited translation of Beauvoir's contribution to a 1965 debate among Jean-Paul Sartre and other French writers and intellectuals, "What Can Literature Do?". (shrink)