"Je ne vous dirai point, mon très cher fils" Correspondance de Catherine de Charrière de Sévery 1780-1783

This dissertation examines the principles of education imbued in a three year correspondence between an eighteenth century woman and her teenage son from the French speaking region of Vaud, current day Switzerland. Despite her great respect for the literature and ideas of the new pedagogues of the Enlightenment, especially J.J. Rousseau and Mme de Genlis, Catherine de Charrière de Sévery maintained the traditional perspective of education of the Ancien Régime. To explore the concepts of education and instruction through the epistolary practice, this research is based on the corpus of 107 letters that Mme de Sévery wrote to her son Vilhelm between 1780 and 1783. Additional documents - among them Mme de Sévery’s diaries - from the particularly rich archival holdings of this aristocratic family have been used to complement her correspondence. Most previous studies on family correspondence have dealt with mothers to daughters, or fathers to sons, whereas this research is centered on letters between a mother and her son. The location of this family – Lausanne and the Pays de Vaud – provides a particular regional perspective due to two factors: immersion into a region uniformly Protestant, and the dual-influence of Germanic and French cultures. The study analyzes the educational principles that appear throughout Mme de Sévery’s letters by comparison with three literary works of the 18th century: a familiar correspondence, the Lettres du Lord Chesterfield à son fils (1776); the fundamental education treatise by J.J. Rousseau, Émile, ou de l’Éducation (1762); and a pedagogical treatise written by Mme de Genlis as an epistolary novel, Adèle et Théodore, ou lettres sur l’éducation. Using letters as the main tool to guide her son’s upbringing, Mme de Sévery highlights the moral and family values that are most important to her and leads him to find his place in society.

Effects of 17-α-ethynylestradiol on Hybrid Striped Bass Sperm

Gemstone Team FISH

Investigation of Blast Wave Propagation: Correlating External Pressures to Brain Injury Predictors

Blast-induced Traumatic Brain Injury (bTBI) is the signature injury of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars; however, current understanding of bTBI is insufficient. In this study, novel analysis methods were developed to investigate correlations between external pressures and brain injury predictors. Experiments and simulations were performed to analyze placement of helmet-mounted pressure sensors. A 2D Finite Element model of a helmeted head cross-section was loaded with a blast wave. Pressure time-histories for nodes on the inner and outer surfaces of the helmet were cross-correlated to those inside the brain. Parallel physical experiments were carried out with a helmeted headform, pressure sensors, and pressure chamber. These analysis methods can potentially lead to better helmet designs and earlier detection and treatment of bTBI.