Cinema and the Work of Doré

According to Ray Harryhausen, a special effects expert in the film industry, "Gustave Doré would have made a great director of photography . . . He saw things from the point of view of the camera." Doré's work has had a permanent impact on the imaginative realm of film since its very early days. In return, the silver screen has etched Doré into the 20th century imagination. Almost every film about the Bible since The Life and Passion of Jesus Christ produced by Pathé in 1902 refers to his illustrations, and every film adaptation of Dante or Don Quixote has used him as a model, from Georg Wilhelm Pabst and Orson Welles to Terry Gilliam. All films dealing with life in London in the Victorian era by directors ranging from David Lean, to Roman Polanski and Tim Burton draw on the visions in London: a pilgrimage for their sets. A large number of dream fantastical or phantasmagorical scenes take their inspiration from Doré's graphic world, beginning with Georges Méliès' A Trip to the Moon in 1902. In the realm of cartoons and animation, Walt Disney owes a huge debt to Doré. Doré primal forests, from Atala in particular, were also used in the various versions of King Kong from 1933 to the 2005 film by Peter Jackson, who had already drawn on Doré for The Lord of the Rings. Jean Cocteau was also indebted to the illustrations for Perrault's Fairy Tales for his Beauty and the Beast (1945), as was George Lucas for the character Chewbacca in Star Wars (1977) and even the Harry Potter film series. Through his influence on film history, Doré shaped the mass culture imagination.

Use of DNA profiles for investigation using a simulated national DNA database: Part I. Partial SGM Plus profiles.

In traditional criminal investigation, uncertainties are often dealt with using a combination of common sense, practical considerations and experience, but rarely with tailored statistical models. For example, in some countries, in order to search for a given profile in the national DNA database, it must have allelic information for six or more of the ten SGM Plus loci for a simple trace. If the profile does not have this amount of information then it cannot be searched in the national DNA database (NDNAD). This requirement (of a result at six or more loci) is not based on a statistical approach, but rather on the feeling that six or more would be sufficient. A statistical approach, however, could be more rigorous and objective and would take into consideration factors such as the probability of adventitious matches relative to the actual database size and/or investigator's requirements in a sensible way. Therefore, this research was undertaken to establish scientific foundations pertaining to the use of partial SGM Plus loci profiles (or similar) for investigation.

Exploring women's academic careers in cross-national perspective: lessons for equal epportunity eolicies

Purpose - In recent years, several countries and/or higher education institutions have adopted equal opportunity policies to promote women's access to the upper levels of the academic career structure. The purpose of this paper is to argue that there is no universal solution to the glass ceiling that women face within academia. Insofar as the feminisation process evolves according to a variety of models, according to national and occupational context, the solutions adopted in one context may prove to be ineffective elsewhere. Design/methodology/approach - Analysis of the different models of occupational feminisation is based on a secondary analysis of the sociological literature on the subject, combined with recent data on women's access to academic positions in France and Germany. Findings - Although there are similarities in the structure of the academic labour market across countries and in the rate of feminisation of the most prestigious academic positions, the precise mechanisms through which women gain access to an academic career vary significantly from one national context to another. This cross-national variation would tend to suggest that there will also be variation when it comes to defining the most effective policy measures for increasing women's access to the upper echelons of the academic hierarchy. Indeed, different models of gender equality in academia may lead to very different results with regard to existing gender relations. Originality/value - The paper uses the available sociological literature on the feminisation process to examine how different measures adopted to promote women's access to the highest echelons of the academic career structure may have different effects on the reproduction and/or transformation of the dominant sex/gender system.

How to set up and apply reference levels in fluoroscopy at a national level.

A nationwide survey was launched to investigate the use of fluoroscopy and establish national reference levels (RL) for dose-intensive procedures. The 2-year investigation covered five radiology and nine cardiology departments in public hospitals and private clinics, and focused on 12 examination types: 6 diagnostic and 6 interventional. A total of 1,000 examinations was registered. Information including the fluoroscopy time (T), the number of frames (N) and the dose-area product (DAP) was provided. The data set was used to establish the distributions of T, N and the DAP and the associated RL values. The examinations were pooled to improve the statistics. A wide variation in dose and image quality in fixed geometry was observed. As an example, the skin dose rate for abdominal examinations varied in the range of 10 to 45 mGy/min for comparable image quality. A wide variability was found for several types of examinations, mainly complex ones. DAP RLs of 210, 125, 80, 240, 440 and 110 Gy cm2 were established for lower limb and iliac angiography, cerebral angiography, coronary angiography, biliary drainage and stenting, cerebral embolization and PTCA, respectively. The RL values established are compared to the data published in the literature.