The Perils of Moviegoing in America, 1896-1950

The Perils of Moviegoing in America is a film history that examines the various physical and (perceived) moral dangers facing audiences during the first fifty years of film exhibition.

Chapter 1: “Conflagration”
As early as 1897, a major fire broke out at a film exhibition in San Francisco, with flames burning the projectionist and nearby audience members. From that point until the widespread adoption of safety stock in 1950, fires were a very common movie-going experience. Hundreds of audience members lost their lives in literally thousands of theatre fires, ranging from early nickelodeons to the movie palaces of the thirties and forties.

Chapter 2: “Thieves Among Us”
Bandits robbed movie theatres on hundreds of occasions from the early days of film exhibition through the end of the Great Depression. They held up ticket booths, and they dynamited theatre safes. They also shot theatre managers, ushers, and audience members, as a great many of the robberies occurred while movies were playing on the screens inside.

Chapter 3: “Bombs Away”
Bombings at movie theatres became common in small towns and large cities on literally hundreds of occasions from 1914 to the start of World War II. Some were incendiary bombs, and some were stench bombs; both could be fatal, whether due to explosions or to the trampling of panicked moviegoers

Chapter 4: “It’s Catching”
Widespread movie-going in the early 20th century provoked an outcry from numerous doctors and optometrists who believed that viewing films could do irreparable harm to the vision of audience members. Medical publications (including the Journal of the American Medical Association) published major studies on this perceived problem, which then filtered into popular-audience magazines and newspapers.

Chapter 5: “The Devil’s Apothecary Shops”
Sitting in the dark with complete strangers proved worrisome for many early filmgoers, who had good reason to be concerned. Darkness meant that prostitutes could easily work in the balconies of some movie theatres, as could “mashers” who molested female patrons (and sometimes children) after the lights were dimmed. That was all in addition to the various murderers who used the cover of darkness to commit their crimes at movie theatres.

Chapter 6: “Blue Sundays”
Blue laws were those regulations that prohibited businesses from operating on Sundays. Most communities across the US had such legislation on their books, which by the nickelodeon era were at odds with the thousands of filmgoers who went to the movies every Sunday. Theatre managers were often arrested, making newspaper headlines over and over again. Police sometimes even arrested entire film audiences as accomplices in the Blue Law violations.

Chapter 7: “Something for Nothing”
In an effort to bolster ticket sales, many movie theatres in the 1910s began to hold lotteries in which lucky audience members won cash prizes; by the time of the Great Depression, lotteries like “Bank Night” became a common aspect of the theatre-going enterprise. However, reception studies have generally overlooked the intense (and sometimes coordinated) efforts by police, politicians, and preachers to end this practice, which they viewed as illegal and immoral gambling.

Modulational instability and localized excitations involving two nonlinearly coupled upper-hybrid waves in plasmas

The nonlinear coupling between two perpendicularly propagating ( with respect to the external magnetic field direction) upper-hybrid ( UH) waves in a uniform magnetoplasma is considered, taking into account quasi-stationary density perturbations which are driven by the UH wave ponderomotive force. This interaction is governed by a pair of coupled nonlinear Schrodinger equations ( CNLSEs) for the UH wave envelopes. The CNLSEs are used to investigate the occurrence of modulational instability. Waves in the vicinity of the UH resonance are considered, so that the group dispersion terms for both waves are approximately equal, but the UH wave group velocities may be different. It is found that a pair of unstable UH waves ( obeying anomalous group dispersion) yields an increased instability growth rate, while a pair of stable UH waves ( individually obeying normal group dispersion) remains stable for equal group velocities, although it is destabilized by a finite group velocity mismatch. Stationary nonlinear solutions of the CNLSEs are presented.

Helix pomatia agglutinin lectin-binding oligosaccharides of aggressive breast cancer

Predicting long-term outcome after breast-cancer diagnosis remains problematic, particularly for patients with clinically small, axillary lymph node- negative tumours, Evidence suggests that the lectin Helix pomatia agglutinin (HPA) identifies oligosaccharides associated with poor-prognosis cancer. Our aim was to identify oligosaccharides that bind HPA in aggressive breast cancers. Breast-cancer cell lines (MCF-7, BT-549 and BT-20) and a cell line From human milk (HBL-100), which showed a range of HPA-binding intensities, were used to extract HPA-binding glycoproteins, Oligosaccharides were released using anhydrous hydrazine and separated on a range of HPLC matrices. We investigated whether HPA-binding oligosaccharides from cell lines were present in human breast-cancer tissues, using 69 breast-cancer specimens from patients with between 5 and 10 years' follow-up. A monosialylated oligosaccharide was over-expressed in the cell line that bound HPA strongly. Further analysis by normal-phase HPLC showed that the 2-aminobenzamide-conjugated oligosaccharide had a hydrodynamic volume of 4.58 glucose units (HPAgly 1), Increased expression of HPAgly 1 was associated with HPA staining of breast-cancer specimens (Student's t-test p = 0.025). Analysis of oligosaccharide levels and disease-free survival after treatment for breast cancer indicated a shorter disease-free interval for patients with elevated levels of HPAgly 1, This is the first time that histochemical lectin staining has been correlated with biochemical mapping of oligosaccharides, Using this approach, we have identified a monosialylated HPA lectin-binding oligosaccharide present in breast-cancer cells grown in vitro which is elevated in breast-cancer specimens that bind the lectin, (C) 2001 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

T-box 2 represses NDRG1 through an EGR1-dependent mechanism to drive the proliferation of breast cancer cells

T-box 2 (TBX2) is a transcription factor involved in mammary development and is known to be overexpressed in a subset of aggressive breast cancers. TBX2 has previously been shown to repress growth control genes such as p14(ARF) and p21(WAF1/cip1). In this study we show that TBX2 drives proliferation in breast cancer cells and this is abrogated after TBX2 small interfering RNA (siRNA) knockdown or after the expression of a dominant-negative TBX2 protein. Using microarray analysis we identified a large cohort of novel TBX2-repressed target genes including the breast tumour suppressor NDRG1 (N-myc downregulated gene 1). We show that TBX2 targets NDRG1 through a previously undescribed mechanism involving the recruitment of early growth response 1 (EGR1). We show EGR1 is required for the ability of TBX2 to repress NDRG1 and drive cell proliferation. We show that TBX2 interacts with EGR1 and that TBX2 requires EGR1 to target the NDRG1 proximal promoter. Abrogation of either TBX2 or EGR1 expression is accompanied by the upregulation of cell senescence and apoptotic markers. NDRG1 can recapitulate these effects when transfected into TBX2-expressing cells. Together, these data identify a novel mechanism for TBX2-driven oncogenesis and highlight the importance of NDRG1 as a growth control gene in breast tissue. Oncogene (2010) 29, 3252-3262; doi: 10.1038/onc.2010.84; published online 29 March 2010

Using simulation to assess cardiac first-responder schemes exhibiting stochastic and spatial complexities

A Monte-Carlo simulation-based model has been constructed to assess a public health scheme involving mobile-volunteer cardiac First-Responders. The scheme being assessed aims to improve survival of Sudden-Cardiac-Arrest (SCA) patients, through reducing the time until administration of life-saving defibrillation treatment, with volunteers being paged to respond to possible SCA incidents alongside the Emergency Medical Services. The need for a model, for example, to assess the impact of the scheme in different geographical regions, was apparent upon collection of observational trial data (given it exhibited stochastic and spatial complexities). The simulation-based model developed has been validated and then used to assess the scheme's benefits in an alternative rural region (not a part of the original trial). These illustrative results conclude that the scheme may not be the most efficient use of National Health Service resources in this geographical region, thus demonstrating the importance and usefulness of simulation modelling in aiding decision making.

Chopper: From the Inside: Discourses of the "Celebrity" Criminal Mark Read

Popular culture has been inundated with stories and images of True Crime for a long time, which is testament to people’s enduring fascination with criminals and their deviant actions. In such stories, which present actual cases of notorious crimes in a style that often resembles fiction, criminals are either reviled as monsters or lauded as cultural icons. More recently, popular autobiographical accounts by criminals themselves have begun to emerge within this True Crime genre. Typically self-celebratory in nature, such representations construct a rather glamorized public image of the author. This article undertakes a multimodal analysis of what has been classed as one typical example of this True Crime sub-genre, Australian Mark Brandon Read’s autobiographical account Chopper: From the Inside. It thereby seeks to demonstrate that the book, while glamorizing and mythologizing its protagonist, simultaneously offers scope for a qualitative understanding of Read’s life of crime and the sensual dynamics of his violent offending. To this end, the analysis focuses on some of the linguistic and pictorial strategies Read employs in constructing a public image of himself that alternates between the dangerous ‘hardman’ and the ‘larrikin’ criminal hero. However, it is also shown that Read’s account reveals a degree of critical self-reflection. In addition to the multimodal analysis, the article also endeavours to explore the link between celebrity and crime, thereby engaging with the nature of popular culture’s fascination with celebrated criminals.

Behaviour of Brent geese Branta bernicla hrota and wigeon Anas penelope feeding on intertidal Zostera spp

Mixed flocks of pale-bellied Brent geese (Branta bernicla hrota) and wigeon (Anas penelope L.) feeding on intertidal Zostera spp were studied during October 1993 with respect to tidal position, feeding method and duration, and competitive: interactions within and between species. Owing to many disturbance incidents affecting the use of the site by wildfowl, only complete data on flow tides were presented. Brent geese fed over a greater period of the tidal cycle than wigeon. Differences in feeding methods indicated that Brent geese exploited the rhizomes, which are energetically more profitable than the shoot on which wigeon fed. Aggressive interactions were recorded within species but there were no records of aggression between species. More subtle competition for space, however, may have occurred during feeding. Brent geese could reach Zostera spp For a short period after increasing depth of water prevented access by wigeon. However, individual wigeon were observed foraging near feeding Brent geese, picking up the scraps oi material discarded by the latter, and small numbers of wigeon may benefit from the presence of the geese. These benefits for some individual wigeon are not considered to compensate for the disadvantages to the latter species population as a whole in feeding on poorer-quality food for a shorter period of the tidal cycle. This disadvantage is likely to have contributed to the decline in the wigeon population on Strangford Lough, Co. Down, while numbers of Brent geese have been maintained at a high level.