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Medieval Latin Psalter manuscripts are closely related to the Liturgy of the Hours and private devotional practices, within which they could be read. The psalms were ideally recited in their entirety within a week, though not continuously from beginning to end, but with interruptions. The Book of Psalms was therefore divided into sections and occasionally single psalms were recited several times. In this respect, access to certain psalms or groups of psalms was particularly important. Unlike modern books, however, medieval Psalter manuscripts usually do not contain page numbers or running titles that would make it easier for the user to find their way through the manuscript. Nevertheless, a closer look reveals other aids that make it possible to find certain sections or highlight individual psalms. In the spirit of Goffman, they can be understood as keys that point to a connection with the potential use of the manuscripts. The aesthetic and content-related keys (or in this case, more appropriately, “patterns”) form a complex visual system through which the manuscript can be made useable for certain practices and through which a specific use is immediately suggested to the viewer. However, the individual patterns and especially the complex systems of visual organisation cannot function if the viewer is not able to link the patterns on the page to the abstract frames (in Goffman’s understanding); on the contrary, it can even be misleading. Focusing on Latin Psalter manuscripts from England, this paper will examine the correlation between visual organisation and the specific use of these manuscripts.

Jules Verne’s Le Rayon vert (1882) is at the same time a scientific novel and a love story, a repertory of knowledge and a criticism of clichés. Telling the amusing attempts of a little group of travelers that tries in vain to catch sight of the “green ray” – the last impression of sunset – on the horizon from the Scottish coast, the author confronts in an ironical way different stereotypical discourses about weather phenomena which coexist in the bourgeois society of the late 19th century. Verne mocks equally scientific, folkloristic and romantic ideas about meteorological observations and uses these opposite explications of the mysteries of nature to characterize his protagonists and to develop the suspense of the narration.

Symbols of fire and flames display an amazing diversity in the literatures of each era. The motif has different functions and various usages coexist. Fire can be the symbol of divine power, of man’s emancipation from the supernatural (as a sign of man’s dominion over fire), of purification (an aspect which can apply to both soul and body), of reason and creativity (a use which applies to works of the spirit and of art), of life (i.e. man’s physical existence), and of passions, feelings, and strong emotions (particularly of love). This essay proposes to offer a synthesis which explores the different contexts in which this multivalent symbol has been used in various European literatures.

This article examines a 5-year collaboration between the Stockholm-based video artists Performing Pictures and Talleres Comunitarios, a studio based in the Oaxacan town of Santa Ana Zegache where local artisans employ traditional skills in the restoration of religious artifacts. In images and text, we trace the exchange of skills, knowledge, and aesthetic sensibility that took place as these two groups of artists collaborated in producing a series of video animations of venerative objects, against a backdrop of religious, social, and political tensions that characterize everyday life in Zegache. In the article and the accompanying series of three short films, “Wonder & Veneration 1–3” (http://vimeo.com/album/2682070), we examine how the artists negotiate questions of aesthetics and religious belief as their collaboration unfolds within the context of the Zegache community, where the Talleres contribute skills of carpentry and painting, while Performing Pictures provides skills of film, animation and micro-electronics. The processes and practices involved in creating three works provides the framework for this examination: the first, an animation of the Virgin of Guadalupe as she appears to a simple peasant, and the second, produced 2 years later, an animation of Santa Ana, local patron saint and mother of Maria, as she teaches her daughter to read the scriptures. Whereas both figures are central to the syncretic religious belief of southern Mexico with its challenge to the entrenched authority of the hispanicized clergy, the local figure of Santa Ana carries even more complex meanings for the community of Zegache. These meanings are embodied in the third work we examine, a small solar-powered chapel that the artists built to display the Santa Ana animation. With the mayor's support and located at the entrance to the town, the chapel embodies a shift of power away from the church, standing as an example of indigenous empowerment in civil society.

The first part of this essay discusses the relationship between gastronomy and literature in a theoretical way: it presents all the arguments put forward to establish a strong correlation between “écriture gastronomique” and “écriture littéraire” – a correlation which seems to be natural, but is nevertheless the result of a sociocultural evolution. Subsequently, the article analyses another kind of relationship – the general interrelation of literature and social reality, because fictional texts always react to a society, which authors portray through a deforming mirror in order to influence their public. In the second part, these theoretical conclusions will be applied to concrete subject matter: the realistic and naturalistic novel of the French Nineteenth century, called “le siècle bourgeois”. Authors like Balzac, Flaubert, Zola and Maupassant imitate the “discours gastronomique” of their period, sometimes in an affirmative way, but often with a critical intention. As an example, this essay examines the representation of the two places of gastronomical consumption: the restaurant as the public area, and the dining room as the private sphere of bourgeois eating culture.

Reusability is considered to be the key for achieving productivity and quality in software, and much has been claimed about the particular contributions of the object-oriented paradigm towards the achievement of these goals. Object-oriented frameworks are coarse-grained reuse units, composed of a set of classes specifically designed to be refined and used as a group. In this paper, we discuss the nature of frameworks necessary to build a particular type of systems, namely Decision Support Systems (DSS), and their organization in a generic OO DSS multi-layer architecture. DSS are systems intended to improve the effectiveness of decision making, but information technologies can only have a major impact on decision making if techniques allowing the easy and rapid development of DSS are available. Much benefit is expected in terms of easiness and rapidity of development by constructing DSS from domain-oriented reusable components, as well as in terms of quality of DSS in this way developed.

Objective: To analyze the characteristics of trauma patients with renal lesions treated at a university hospital in Curitiba. Methods: We conducted a retrospective, cross-sectional study guided by review of medical records of trauma victims who underwent surgical treatment. The variables analyzed were age, gender, mechanism of injury, degree of kidney damage, conduct individualized according to the degree of renal injury, associated injuries, complications and deaths. We classified lesions according to the American Association of Trauma Surgery (TSAA). Results: We analyzed 794 records and found renal lesions in 33 patients, with mean age 29.8 years, most (87.8%) being male. Penetrating trauma accounted for 84.8% of cases. The most common renal injuries were grade II (33.3%), followed by grade I (18.1%), III, IV and V. Nephrectomy treated 45.4% of injuries, 73.3% being total nephrectomy, and 45.4% by nephrorraphy. In 9% treatment was non-surgical. Only 12.1% of patients had isolated renal lesions. Complications ensued in 15.1% and mortality was 6.06%. Conclusion: The surgical approach was preferred due to penetrating trauma mechanism. We achieved low rates of complications and deaths, and neither case could be directly related to kidney damage, and there were patients with multiple lesions. In this sample, we could not observe a direct relationship between kidney damage and complications, deaths or the type of conduct employed.