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News from the meteor library: A Global Fireball Observatory
Posted by Paul Roggemans | Apr 3, 2020 | Fireballs, Meteor Library, News | 0 |
Roberto Gorelli points our attention at a recently published meteor related paper.
A Global Fireball Observatory
This paper has been submitted for publication by H. A. R. Devillepoix, M. Cupák, , P. A. Bland, , E. K. Sansom, M. C. Towner, R. M. Howie, B. A. D. Hartig, T. Jansen-Sturgeon, P. M. Shober, S. L. Anderson, G. K. Benedix, D. Busan, R. Sayers, P. Jenniskens, J. Albers, C. D. K. Herd, P. Carlson, P. J. A. Hill, P. G. Brown, Z. Krzeminski, G. R. Osinski, H. Chennaoui Aoudjehane, T. Shisseh, Z. Benkhaldoun, A. Jabiri, M. Guennouni, A. Barka, H. Darhmaoui, L. Daly, G. S. Collins, S. McMullan, M. D. Suttle, C. Shaw, J. S. Younga, M. Alexander, A. D. Mardon, T. Ireland, G. Bonning, L. Baeza, T. Y. Alrefay, J. Horner, T. D. Swindle, C. W. Hergenrother, M. D. Fries, A. Tomkins, A. Langendam, T. A. Rushmer, C. O'Neill, D. Janches and J. L. Hormaechea.
Abstract: The meteorite collections contain a very rich picture of what the early Solar System would have been made of, however the lack of spatial context with respect to their parent population for these samples is an issue. The asteroid population is equally as rich in surface mineralogies, and mapping these two populations (meteorites and asteroids) together is a major challenge for Planetary Science. Directly probing asteroids achieves this at a high cost. Observing meteorite falls and calculating their pre-atmospheric orbit on the other hand, is a cheaper way to approach the problem. The Global Fireball Observatory (GFO) collaboration was established in 2017 and brings together multiple institutions (from Australia, USA, Canada, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, the UK, and Argentina) to maximise the area for fireball observation time and therefore meteorite recoveries. The members have a choice to operate independently, but they can also choose to work in a fully collaborative manner with other GFO partners. This efficient approach leverages the experience gained from the Desert Fireball Network (DFN) pathfinder project in Australia. The state-of-the art technology (DFN camera systems and data reduction) and experience of the support teams is shared between all partners, freeing up time for science investigations and meteorite searching. With all networks combined together, the GFO collaboration already covers 0.6% of the Earth's surface for meteorite recovery as of mid-2019, and aims to reach 2% in the early 2020s. After 5 years of operation, the GFO will have observed a fireball from virtually every meteorite type. This combined effort will bring new, fresh, extra-terrestrial material to the labs, yielding new insights about the formation of the Solar System.
You can download this paper for free: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2004.01069.pdf (15 pages).
Older meteor library news:
Realistic gravitational focusing of meteoroid streams, by Althea V. Moorhead, Tiffany D. Clements, and Denis Vida (14 March 2020).
On the delivery of DART-ejected material from asteroid (65803) Didymos to Earth, by Paul Wiegert (5 March 2020).
Physically based alternative to the PE criterion for meteoroids, by Manuel Moreno-Ibáñez, Maria Gritsevich, Josep M. Trigo-Rodríguez, Elizabeth A. Silber. (3 March 2020).
Hemolithin: a Meteoritic Protein containing Iron and Lithium, by Malcolm. W. McGeoch, Sergei Dikler and Julie E. M. McGeoch (28 February 2020).
Orbital dynamics of highly probable but rare Orionid outbursts possibly observed by the ancient Maya, by J. H. Kinsman and D. J. Asher (22 February 2020).
A new method for measuring the meteor mass index: application to the 2018 Draconid meteor shower outburst, by D. Vida, M. Campbell-Brown, P. G. Brown, A. Egal, and M. J. Mazur (11 February 2020).
A Two Year Survey for VLF Emission from Fireballs, by C. Y. Sung, P. Brown and R. Marshall (11 February 2020).
Observational Signatures of Sub-Relativistic Meteors, by Amir Siraj and Abraham Loeb (6 February 2020).
Supercatastrophic disruption of asteroids in the context of SOHO comet, fireball and meteor observations, by Paul Wiegert, Peter Brown, Petr Pokorny, Quanzhi Ye, Cole Gregg, Karina Lenartowicz, Zbigniew Krzeminski and David Clark. (28 January 2020).
Physical properties of Taurid meteoroids of various sizes, by Jiří Borovička and Pavel Spurný. (27 January 2020).
The orbital clusters among the near Earth asteroids, by Tadeusz J. Jopek. (27 January 2020).
Parker Solar Probe Observations of a Dust Trail in the Orbit of (3200) Phaethon, by Karl Battams, Matthew M. Knight, Michael S.P. Kelley, Brendan M. Gallagher, Russell A. Howard, and Guillermo Stenborg. (22 December 2019).
Meteoroid Stream Formation Due to the Extraction of Space Resources from Asteroids, by Logan Fladeland, Aaron C. Boley, and Michael Byers. (2 December 2019).
Estimating trajectories of meteors: an observational Monte Carlo approach – II. Results, by Denis Vida, Peter G. Brown, Margaret Campbell-Brown, Paul Wiegert and Peter S. Gural. (27 November 2019).
Estimating trajectories of meteors: an observational Monte Carlo approach – I. Theory, by Denis Vida, Peter S. Gural, Peter G. Brown, Margaret Campbell-Brown and Paul Wiegert. (11 November 2019).
Meteor shower activity profiles and the use of orbital dissimilarity (D) criteria, by Althea V. Moorhead. (25 October 2019).
A fireball and potentially hazardous binary near-Earth asteroid (164121) 2003 YT1, by Toshihiro Kasuga, Mikiya Sato, Masayoshi Ueda, Yasunori Fujiwara, Chie Tsuchiya, and Jun-ichi Watanabe. (18 October 2019).
Spectral and orbital survey of medium-sized meteoroids, by Pavol Matlovic, Juraj Tóth, Regina Rudawska, Leonard Kornoš and Adriana Pisarcíková. (7 August 2019).
Rising from Ashes or Dying Flash? Mega Outburst of Small Comet 289P/Blanpain in 2013, by Quanzhi Ye (叶泉志) and David L. Clark. (19 June 2019).
Discovery of a Meteor of Interstellar Origin, by Amir Siraj and Abraham Loeb. (10 June 2019).
A Mathematical Model for Simulating Meteor Showers, by M. Cardinot and A. Namen. (4 June 2019).
The 2019 Taurid resonant swarm: prospects for ground detection of small NEOs, by David Clark, Paul Wiegert and Peter G. Brown. (28 May 2019).
Analysis of the June 2, 2016 bolide event over Arizona, by Csaba Palotai, Ramanakumar Sankar, Dwayne L. Free, J. Andreas Howell, Elena Botella and Daniel Batcheldor. (25 May 2019).
Identifying Interstellar Objects Trapped in the Solar System through Their Orbital Parameters, by Amir Siraj and Abraham Loeb. (5 May 2019).
Meteor Shower Modeling: Past and Future Draconid Outbursts, by A. Egal, P. Wiegert, P. G. Brown, D. E. Moser, M. Campbell-Brown, A. Moorhead, S. Ehlert and N. Moticska. (1 May 2019).
Meteoroid structure and fragmentation, by M. D. Campbell-Brown. (24 March 2019).
Solar cycle variation in radar meteor rates, by M. D. Campbell-Brown. (26 February 2019).
A New Meteoroid Model, by Valeri V. Dikarev, Eberhard Grün, William J. Baggaley, David P. Galligan, Markus Landgraf, Rüdiger Jehn. (12 February 2019).
Lunar impacts, by Costantino Sigismondi. (12 February 2019).
Lunar impact flashes, by C. Avdellidou and J. Vaubaillon. (10 February 2019).
The Geminid parent body: (3200) Phaethon, by Patrick A. Taylor, Edgard G. Rivera-Valentín, Lance A.M. Benner, Sean E. Marshall, Anne K. Virkki, Flaviane C.F. Venditti, Luisa F. Zambrano-Marin, Sriram S. Bhiravarasu, Betzaida Aponte-Hernandez, Carolina Rodriguez Sanchez-Vahamonde and Jon D. Giorgini. (10 February 2019).
Sun approaching asteroids and meteor streams, by Quanzhi Ye and Mikael Granvik. (10 February 2019).
Waiting to make an impact: A probable excess of near-Earth asteroids in 2018 LA-like orbits, by C. de la Fuente Marcos and R. de la Fuente Marcos. (18 December 2018).
What mechanisms dominate the activity of Geminid Parent (3200) Phaethon?, by LiangLiang Yu, Wing-Huen Ip and Tilman Spohn. (6 November 2018).
The Draconid meteoroid stream 2018: prospects for satellite impact detection, by Auriane Egal, Paul Wiegert, Peter G. Brown, Danielle E. Moser, Althea V. Moorhead and William J. Cooke (21 September 2018).
Modeling the measurement accuracy of pre-atmosphere velocities of meteoroids, by Denis Vida, Peter G. Brown and Margaret Campbell-Brown (15 July 2018).
The Mayas and Eta Aquariids in AD 250-909, by J.H. Kinsman and D.J. Asher (31 July 2017).
PreviousResults of spectral observations of the Geminids meteor shower in December 2019
NextMeteor Activity Outlook for 4-10 April 2020
2016: the first three months
Large fireball after sunset
Fireball over the south of Spain on January 29
eMeteorNews now listed on ADS Abstract Service


The Council for Healthcare Regulatory Excellence's review of the General Social Care Council's conduct department, revealed a long history of failings. Social work leaders are already debating how the regulator should move forward from such a critical assessment – including some who said they were not surprised at the seriousness of the revelations.
Roger Kline, trade union official for social care at Aspect, said: "The report will not come as a surprise to anyone who has had experience of the GSCC's conduct procedures in recent months.
Helga Pile, national officer for social work at Unison, said: "Unison welcomes the recommendation that cases should be referred to the conduct committee only if there is a realistic prospect of a sanction being imposed. Our members have, at times, faced an agonising wait to get their names cleared, when no real evidence was ever presented to the watchdog in the first place.
"The union also agrees with the proposal to provide the conduct committees with the power to impose a wider range of sanctions, such as conditions on registration of social workers. We agree that this is often the most effective sanction to protect the public and to help the social worker improve their standards.
A joint statement from the president of the Association of Directors of Children's Services, Kim Bromley-Derry, and his counterpart at the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services, Jenny Owen, said: "Public confidence in the regulatory system lies at the heart of the public's perception of the work we do.


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The University is not for profit
Sophie Cassel
"Student societies have repeatedly insisted on the hypocrisy of the University branding itself as a place for "world changers", while it continues to justify these investments on account of their profitability."
The University of Glasgow campus has been far from calm as of late. A quick glance at the posters plastered onto University buildings, which read "Time's up on Dirty Money", "Support the Strike", or "Why has UofG not Divested Yet?" gives an insight into the current mood. With growing frequency, campaigns and actions are materialising throughout the student and staff body. At the beginning of the academic year, student coalitions formed in protest against the University's investments in fossil fuel industries, banks, and arms companies, despite its declaration of a climate emergency in May 2019. The Slave Free Campus campaign sprung into being in December, making public that the University shop sells clothing produced in exploitative conditions. Amidst these student-led actions, University staff participated in this year's second UCU-initiated strike action over casualisation, pensions, equality, and workloads. Although these issues appear to be disconnected, students and staff insist that the actions on campus are closely linked. They are all symptomatic of the increasing marketisation of the University.
Over the past few decades, universities across the UK have undergone extensive structural transformations in an attempt to remodel themselves in line with the free market. Universities must now regard each other as competitors and prioritise economic growth to ensure their
success. Theodore Wilcocks, president of the society Glasgow Refugee and Asylum Seeker Solidarity (GRASS), said that this has created a conflict within higher education. He noted that on the one hand it is expected of an institution as powerful as the University of Glasgow to have a duty of care and a humanitarian responsibility to its staff and students. He said that on the other hand, "the marketisation of the University is driving things away from that because its political ideology now seems to be more concerned with minimising risk and maximising profit, and running things in the style of a corporation."
Lecturers standing at the UCU picket line stressed that the University's focus on profit margins comes at the increasing expense of staff and students. Dr Piotr Wegorowski, a lecturer in Applied Linguistics, said that casualisation, increases in class sizes and reduced staff-student ratios are all consequences of the changes brought about by marketisation.
Dr Wegorowski said: "This time last year I was teaching on two fixed term contracts at two different institutions. I was working something like 70 hours a week and that is just not the way it should be and I think that is something we really should resist."
He emphasised that this is a system-wide issue which is not unique to the University of Glasgow. Dr Hannah Mathers, a lecturer in Geography and Earth Science, commented that "it is hard to see what the University's agenda is if you as a student are experiencing teaching that is under par because staff are overstretched, or you as a staff are not feeling resourced or feeling supported to do your job properly". She insisted that "there is a conflict between what the University sees as important going forward and what staff and students would appreciate".
Student campaigns have brought to attention how the University's focus on maximising investment return drives its investments in globally harmful industries. At the beginning of the year, Glasgow University Arms Divestment Coalition (GUADC) was formed in response to an article by The Glasgow Guardian, which highlighted that the University invests £3.1m in arms companies and military services providers. Students have also confronted the University regarding its investments of £3m in HSBC and £2m in Barclays, despite both banks fuelling destructive environmental practices through their investments and funding. Student societies have repeatedly insisted on the hypocrisy of the University branding itself as a place for "world changers", while it continues to justify these investments on account of their profitability.
David Gabra, a second year English Literature and Philosophy student and member of GUADC, said that decision-making processes are sequestered to a small section of the senior management. Gabra argues this is reflective of how the free-market concentrates power among a very small percentage of people.
Gabra said: "In court, there are 25 folks sitting up there, 15 of whom are long-serving business people, serving the business interests of the University. And they don't reflect the things that we believe in, and they can't be removed. They can't be elected. They just sit there and they make these decisions and these decisions are final. We have no say in it."
Miles Grant, a third year studying Computer Science who is also a member of GUADC, echoed this, adding that: "The University being so hierarchical, the fact that this has even happened to begin with, is because decisions like this have been shafted off to a small group of people, not just for convenience, but because power is supposed to be concentrated in a small place." He said that when students heard about the University's investments in destructive industries, they were shocked at the University's actions. This is also reflected in the 1700+ signatures which the GUADC petition has already collected.
The Slave Free Campus campaign shed light on the fact that while the University fails to offer adequate employment and pay to its staff, it continues to make unnecessary and unethical profits. Euan Healey, a second year History and Politics student and spokesperson for Slave Free Campus, said: "If the aim of the University is academia, then selling stuff in the University shop is an excessive bit and so there is no reason to do it unethically. If you are going to do that as an extra function to the University, at least do it in a way which doesn't throw a bad light on everything else that the University does."
The resistance from students and staff against the University's current structure appears to be rooted in the hope for the University they wish to create; where creativity and critical thinking is encouraged, and where education enriches society rather than the economy.
Dr. Sarah Weakly, a postdoctoral researcher, insisted on the importance of students and staff working together to achieve this goal. She said: "If we work together, a lot of these issues can be solved at the same time, whether it's a joint letter to all of the Russell Group Universities, whether it's joint demonstrations about the way that education is being marketised. I think there is a lot of value in that. If we work together a bit more we can have a stronger voice to pressure the University."

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❌ GERMANY 1930 – 2018: In an interview with Radio Berlin, German Jewish leader warned residents not to wear kippah in public areas amid spate of anti-Semitic attacks carried out by IslamoNazis.
President of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Josef Schuster, said he would advise people visiting big cities against wearing Jewish skullcaps, following an anti-Semitic attack by a Syrian 'refugee' last week on an Arab Israeli young man wearing it.
The 21-year-old victim of the anti-Semitic attack on the streets of Berlin has told German media that, despite the fact that he was wearing a kippah, he was not Jewish, but an Israeli Arab wearing the kippah as an experiment.
"I'm not Jewish, I'm an Israeli, I grew up in Israel in an Arab family," the man told German broadcaster Deutsche Welle.
He was conducting what he termed an "experiment" in response to a warning from a friend that wearing a kippah in Germany was unsafe, saying he refused to believe this.
"Honestly, I'm surprised a thing like this could happen," he said in the interview.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel called attack in the city's trendy Prenzlauer Berg neighborhood "a very horrible incident" and vowed the government would respond "with full force and resolve" against growing anti-Semitism in Germany.


Fourteen years after Arch Oboler touched off the 3-D boom of the 1950s with Bwana Devil, the first feature-length film in the modern, polarized process, he returned with The Bubble, a science-fiction film intended as a showcase for a refined system called 4-D Space-Vision, which made it possible to project a widescreen 3-D image from a single strip of film. Based on an original story by Oboler that in many ways anticipates Stephen King's Under the Dome, the film was both ahead of its time and behind it, and even a title change—to Fantastic Invasion of Planet Earth—didn't draw large audiences to Oboler's offbeat blend of politics and suspense. Out of circulation for many years, The Bubble has now been restored from the original camera negative by the 3-D Film Archive (see 3dfilmarchive.com for a full account) and now looks sharper, brighter, and more dimensional than it ever has before.


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Confabulations: Art Practice, Art History, Critical Medical Humanities
Posted On 21 January 2022 23 August 2022 By Aly Fixter
Convenors Fiona Johnstone, Allison Morehead and Imogen Wiltshire reflect on the Confabulations programme so far.
Launched in October 2021, Confabulations: Art Practice, Art History, Critical Medical Humanities aims to make explicit the contributions that artists and art historians can make to debates and developments in critical medical humanities and, in turn, offer ways of expanding the possibilities of art practice and art history. With a title inspired by the work of John Berger, Saidiya Hartman, as well as psychological processes of imagination, Confabulations calls on artists and art historians who are 'medical humanities curious' as well as those who already identify with the field.[1] Through this initiative, we – the convenors – aim to make and hold space for experimentation, risk, and dialogue in order to foster a community of practitioners and scholars hoping to shape future relations and interdependencies among art practice, art history, and critical medical humanities.
Confabulations in 2021
For our inaugural event the art historian Gemma Blackshaw and art writer Alice Butler delivered a performed dialogue of work in progress. Their presentation took the form of an epistolary exchange between two historical 'sick women correspondents': the nineteenth-century dancer, singer, and TB tourist Bessie Bruce; and the dancer, actress, and writer Cookie Mueller, who died from causes related to AIDS in 1989. Foregrounding letter writing as creative research method, Blackshaw and Butler reflected on embodied and auto-theoretical practices of feminist art history as praxis and care.
In November 2021 Confabulations hosted the participatory workshop 'Feelings, Objects, Altars', curated by Julie Hollenbach and Robin Alex McDonald, and guided by artist Justice Walz. The workshop built on Ann Cvetkovich's concept of the bibliographic altar as an affective research tool to explore depression, expanding the concept to apply to artworks such as Tracy Emin's My Bed and Justice Walz's Anxiety Escape Kit. Following a theoretical and art historical framing, participants were invited to assemble their own bibliographic altars and reflect on the process in small groups.
Justice Walz, Anxiety Escape Kit, 2017. As displayed in The Sustenance Rite. Photo by Toni Hafkenscheid.
The final event of 2021 explored medical imaging practices in relation to the contemporary clinical encounter. Presentations from Silvia Casini (author of Giving Bodies Back to Data, MIT 2021) and artists Beverley Hood (Immobile Choreography) and Liz Orton (Digital Insides / Every Body is an Archive) were followed by a roundtable conversation that explored operational images and machine vision; the phenomenological experience of being imaged; arts-science collaborations; and the value of artists' contributions to knowledge generation in the medical humanities.
Bringing the distinct worlds of art and academia together
At the start of 2022, we thought it fitting to take a moment to collectively confabulate(!) on the series so far.
Fiona: Many of the artists participating in Confabulations have worked on topics relating to health and illness for quite significant period of time, yet until now have typically addressed their work to an artworld audience rather than a medical humanities audience. It has been really exciting to make those two quite distinct worlds come together.
Allison: Exactly! Many contemporary artists work on issues related to health and medicalised bodies, without explicitly engaging the medical or health humanities; similarly, many art historians draw on and participate in conversations in the history of medicine, but don't see themselves as contributing to or benefiting from the exciting work emerging, in particular, from the critical medical humanities. We want to see what happens when we deliberately open the door for transhistorical and transdisciplinary, art-led conversations on health- and medical-related experience, knowledge, care, research, and education.
Imogen: Yes, absolutely, and from this perspective it has been fantastic that the series has had multiple audiences so far; the three events were attended by artists, art historians and medical humanities researchers, as well as clinicians, with no one single discipline or profession dominating, which has meant that a range of insights have been brought to the Q&As. I'm also really pleased that the events have drawn audiences, as well as speakers, at all career stages; I think this is particularly important in view of our aim of shaping future relations across art practice, art history and critical medical humanities.
Fiona: For me, one of the most fascinating things to emerge from our programme has been the range of methodological approaches. I don't mean this in a disciplinary sense particularly, but in the sense of material methods that could potentially be useful for researchers in a variety of fields. For example, Blackshaw and Butler's presentation, 'Correspondence as Care', drew my attention to the possibilities of physical letter writing as a collaborative research technique. During the first Covid-19 lockdown, when making the time for formal research felt almost impossible, Blackshaw and Butler began to write to each other about their overlapping research interests. The embodied physicality of the correspondence and the release from the immediacy of digital communication offered Blackshaw and Butler a slow and sensuous way of inhabiting their research material. I'm attracted to this kind of unhurried scholarship, which feels like a much-needed antidote to the pace of academic life!
Emily Dickinson, Long Years apart, Amherst Manuscript 277, Amherst College, Amherst, Massachusetts.
Allison: The series definitely emerges from these pandemic times, including directly from our collaboration with the Early Career Researcher network Thinking Through Things: Object Encounters in the Medical Humanities, which had to move to online delivery in late 2020. It also emerges from the urgent need to do things differently in academia, to resist the capitalist drive towards "productivity" and "outputs" as a means to question and counter academia's racism, sexism, and ableism. I see enormous value in assuming nothing about what new methods of being and doing might come about when we allow ourselves to function otherwise. This was really brought home to me with the 'Feelings, Objects, Altars' workshop, in which participants grouped objects from their homes to create bibliographic altars and then shared their altars with each other. This workshop also struck me as important in the way it allowed for intergenerational confabulations, bringing together the work of established scholar Ann Cvetkovich – who attended the workshop and cheered everyone on – and emerging scholars, artists, and curators who are making an urgent case for new methods.
Imogen: Connected to this impetus to do things differently, what has indeed struck me on a very broad level about the three sessions are the questions they posed about the what, the how, and the why of research, and the creative and exciting possibilities they proposed. In 'Feelings, Objects, Altars' Hollenbach, McDonald and Walz created such an effective space for actively embracing, considering and, importantly, sharing the affective dimensions of research and writing itself, something which academic institutions and formats do not often make room for. On the topic of methodology, like Fiona, I was also inspired by Blackshaw and Butler's correspondence as a slower, embodied form that in this case achieves an evocative amplification of voices across and through lapses in time. I found their rethinking of letter writing as creative, art historical practice hugely stimulating for the new possibilities it opens up. Meanwhile, the suggestion made by Beverley Hood in 'Medical Imaging and the Contemporary Clinical Encounter' of art as 'an early warning system' has stayed with me as one way of thinking about how art operates in the entangled space of critical medical humanities.
Image © Beverley Hood, Immobile Choreography, 2019.
Fiona: The sessions engaged – in sometimes surprising ways – with a range of concepts that are central to medical humanities scholarship. Blackshaw and Butler's presentation explored the challenges of 'reconstructing' the lived experience of two historical 'sick women'. The autobiographical artwork is often presumed to offer unmediated access to lived experience; Blackshaw and Butler showed how lived experience is actively constructed through the art-making process, rather than constituting a pre-existing actuality. This brought to mind Stuart Hall's assertation that there is no "true" representation of people or events in an art work; for Hall, culture is not a direct transcription of lived experience, but the means through which subjects seek to order and make sense of that lived experience.[2]
Allison: This concept of lived experience is so important right now to medical humanities scholarship and more broadly to social justice movements both within academia and without. It is my hope that through some of the conversations we have scheduled for 2022, we can help ensure that lived experience as a way of thinking deeply and complexly about embodied and connected experience doesn't get blunted by institutional co-opting, which tends to individualize and commodify lived experience. I'm also really looking forward to 'Being Horizontal', which I think will connect up in interesting ways with the bibliographic altar workshop, and of course 'Patient-Doctor Intimates', which pairs an artist-filmmaker with an art historian, who bring different methods to bear on the question of healthcare intimacies.
Imogen: I would add, finally, that another subject that was interwoven across the three sessions, and on which there has also been attention recently, is that of the different forms of and approaches to care. Blackshaw and Butler probed correspondence as a form of literary care, and in 'Feelings, Objects, Altars' we thought about our own 'sets of sources that become precious', as material objects that offer 'care, refuge, comfort and company.' For me, a perhaps more unexpected element of 'Medical Imaging and the Contemporary Clinical Encounter' was the discussion of care, not only as something given by medical professionals but also, interestingly, as action undertaken prior to the clinical encounter in relation to the medical technologies that anticipate the body. Along with the concept of lived experience, I think that care in its complexities and ambiguities will be an area that future sessions will also explore further.
Events scheduled for early 2022 include:
Daniel Regan, from the series "Insula" © the artist.
'What is "Lived Experience"?' (12 January 2022): a conversation between artist, mental health activist, and community organizer Daniel Regan, and the academic historian of contemporary medical psychiatry Chris Millard, on the significance and genealogy of the concept of 'lived experience' in art, medical, and academic spaces. NB. This event has now taken place. A recording is available on the Confabulations website until the end of January 2022.
Harold Offeh, still from "Lounging" © the artist.
'Being Horizontal: Vulnerability, Interdependence and Resistance' (9 February 2022), is curated by artist Nora Heidorn and comprises films by Nashashibi/Skaer, Teatro da Vertigem and Kinkaleri, a live-to-camera performance by artist Harold Offeh, and a roundtable with Heidorn, Offeh and Felicity Callard.
Vanessa Bell, Portrait of Dr Marie Moralt (first exhibited as Portrait of Mrs M.), 1919. Oil on canvas, 68.2 x 56.8 cm. Photo: © The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. Artistic copyright: © Estate of Vanessa Bell / SOCAN (2021).
'Patient-Doctor Intimates' (9 March 2022) pairs an artist, Olivia Turner, with a historian of modern art, Alison Syme. The session includes a screening of Turner's short film work, O (Symptom) and a paper by Syme on the relationship and collaborations between Bloomsbury artist Vanessa Bell and a "lady doctor," Marie Moralt, opening up a conversation on the entangled relationships among women patients, doctors, care-receivers and care-givers.
Confabulations is co-directed by Dr Fiona Johnstone (Institute for Medical Humanities, Durham University); Dr Allison Morehead (Department of Art History, Queen's University, Katarokwi (Kingston), Canada); and Dr Imogen Wiltshire (Department of History of Art and Film, University of Leicester). It is supported by funding from Durham University's Institute for Medical Humanities; Queen's University, Katarokwi (Kingston), Canada; the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada; and the University of Leicester ISSF Wellcome Funding. Event facilitation support is provided by Durham University's Institute for Medical Humanities.
Further information, including details of our past and future programme, can be found on the Confabulations website.
[1] Berger, John. Confabulations (London: Penguin, 2016); Hartman, Saidiya, "Venus in Two Acts," Small Axe 26 (2008): 1-14.
[2] Stuart Hall, "The Work of Representation" in Stuart Hall (ed.) Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices. London, Thousand Oaks and New Delhi: SAGE. 1997, pp. 13-74. See also Kobena Mercer, "Stuart Hall and the Visual Arts", Small Axe, 19.1 (2015): 78-87.
Tagged: art art and medicine arts and health critical medical humanities interdisciplinarity visual art visual medical humanities
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2015 Miss Anambra 'Face of Democracy', Chidinma Okeke, who was a few months ago captured on camera performing s*x acts with a cucumber alongside her female friend, will be appearing in a court in Lagos.
According to a U.S.-based Nigerian lawyer, Emeka Ugwuonye, the controversial Miss Anambra 2015, Chidinma Okeke, who made major headlines after her viral lesbian s*xtape was leaked online, will be arraigned in a Lagos court this morning, January 17, 2017.
PrevReal Reason Why Gambia's Foreign Minister Resigns Two Days to Handover..


Ben Collins-Sussman, Subversion godfather and one of the men behind Google Code wrote an interesting article about Programmer insecurity in which he realizes that the whole concept about "Release early, release often" is not as common as we think it is.
Yes it is, and overcoming the barrier to allow people to point out your mistakes to you for fixing is quite a hard step for a lot of people.
One main reason is that the job market doesn't necessarily help us in getting there: bad managers still promote developers in terms of what they can produce in a certain amount of time or how much they know themselves. Clever managers encourage knowledge sharing and make sustainability of your code a necessity for promotion. If you can deliver good code and you can make yourself replaceable by people reporting to you, that is good for the company and the product. It also means that you can have a holiday once in a while. However, far too often this way of progressing is seen as weakness or "losing touch" or "becoming a manager and not a coder" by your programming peers. Coalfaces we ain't, so let's stop with this.
Back to opening up your code early and often and invite feedback all the time. I do appreciate that some people don't want to do that. It is not about releasing "perfect code" but it actually is about protecting your idea or principles.


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Participant Profile: Colleen Johnson
Colleen Johnson's journey from a self-described "coach potato" to a marathon-runner all began with a diagnosis of a rare and aggressive form of endometrial cancer.
It was then that Colleen, a retired University of Memphis professor, turned to Linda Smiley, MD, FACOG, a gynecologic oncologist. Colleen's two-pound, "Grade 3" tumor was the size of a cantaloupe and considered "high risk". This type of cancer required a comprehensive treatment plan, including an aggressive combination of surgery, radiation therapy, and systematic, hormonal therapy.
Colleen knew the 5-year survival rate for women with her aggressive stage of cancer was only 20%, but she would not let the numbers dampen her fighting spirit. "Those are NOT numbers to live by," said Colleen, "And I did NOT want to die." She knew she needed to do everything possible to have a chance of beating cancer.
She began educating herself on ways to improve her prognosis. Soon, she discovered a large body of research demonstrating that maintaining a healthy lifestyle and engaging in regular, vigorous exercise can actually slow the return of cancer in many patients studied. According to Colleen, "Losing weight – for somebody who had been obese all their adult life – is a very difficult thing to do. At my max weight I was 242 pounds." But with the help of nutritionist Anita Vincent, Colleen set out to lose weight and maintain a healthy lifestyle. She started walking, then running, and the first day that she was able to run 1/8 of mile she said she "couldn't have been happier if she had won the Boston Marathon." That was when she decided to take up distance running.
Colleen ran her first 5K only eleven months after surgery and only six months after completing radiation therapy at West Cancer Center.
"I chose running as my exercise of choice because signing up for a race like West FIGHT ON gave me tangible goals to work towards as I continue to fight to keep my cancer from coming back."
At the age of 61 – and in the four and a half years since her cancer diagnosis – Colleen has successfully completed ten full marathons, 29 half marathons, and seven ultra-marathons including an ultra with a distance over 100 miles. In 2016 she was one of only seven women over the age of sixty to complete a race of 100 miles or more. Not only is she a proud member of this elite group of runners but she is the ONLY cancer survivor among these seven women.
"I eventually lost about 100 pounds from my peak weight. My weight loss coupled with my long distance running has brought my blood pressure down and has totally reversed my type 2 diabetes. And, most important of all, I am now 4 ½ years cancer free."
This year she will be running 105 miles, the equivalent of four marathons at A Race for the Ages in Manchester, TN just a mere twelve days before participating in West FIGHT ON event this September.
Colleen plans on running at West FIGHT ON on September 16, 2017 at Shelby Farms Park as a celebration of her cancer journey. West FIGHT ON raises funds for the University of Tennessee / West Institute for Cancer Research, the non-profit, fundraising arm of West Cancer Center. Funds are used for discovery, innovation and advancement in the field of adult cancer research and patient education, care and support.
"I Fight On for the 10,970 ladies who will DIE of endometrial cancer in 2017!" says Colleen. When she runs she wears a shirt that says "From cancer to a marathon: Fighting my cancer one mile at a time"on the front and "In memory of the 10,970 ladies who will die this year of endometrial cancer" on the back. She says she not only runs for every single one of those women on the back of her shirt, but she runs to keep herself off of it.
Join Colleen and over 2,000 others from the Mid-South in the fight against cancer by registering for West FIGHT ON at www.WestFightOn.org. Whether you cycle, run, walk or simply cheer on our participants you are showing your support for all those whose lives have been touched by cancer.
Sedgwick joins UT/West Institute in mission to eradicate cancer
Participant Profile: Matthew Stevens
Participant Profile: Meleia Knight
Frequently Asked Questions about Sun Safety
Team Profile: Petals for Pam
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Please lemme go with you.
Did you go to class today?
Jya go to class today?
Don't you think that exam was hard.
Doncha think that exam was hard.
I'm planning to get you some new clothes.
I'm planning to getcha some new clothes.
I already got you some new clothes.
I already gotcha some new clothes.
I wancha to do your homework.
Waddaya think of this restaurant?
I could have eaten one more donut.
I coulda eaten one more donut.
I would have come if I wasn't working.
I woulda come if I wasn't working.
I kind of like eating at restaurants.
I kinda like eating at restaurants.
What kinds of food do you usually eat at restaurants.
What kindsa food do you usually eat at restaurants.
I'm going to have to work every day next week.
I'm gonna have to work every day next week.
I got to get up early to go work.
I gotta get up early to go work.
She has to work more than the manager.
She hasta work more than the manager.
You ought to find a better job.
You oughta find a better job.
I really want to find a better job.
I really wanna find a better job.
I really don't know the answer to the question.
I really dunno the answer to the question.
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U.S. democracy watchdog The Carter Center announced on Wednesday the closure of its office in Egypt due to an "increasingly restrictive" political environment in the Arab world's biggest nation.
"The Carter Center announced today that it has closed its field office in Egypt after nearly three years and that it will not deploy an observation mission to assess Egypt's parliamentary elections anticipated later this year," the center said in a statement on its website.
Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter said: "The current environment in Egypt is not conducive to genuine democratic elections and civic participation."
"I hope that Egyptian authorities will reverse recent steps that limit the rights of association and assembly and restrict operations of Egyptian civil society groups," Carter added.
"There has been a crackdown on dissidents, opposition groups, and critical journalists, together with heightened restrictions on core freedoms of expression, assembly, and association," the center added.
"Particularly troubling are the mass arrests of Muslim Brotherhood supporters; the passage in late 2013 of the so-called protest law, which places broad restrictions on the freedoms of assembly and expression," it added.
Egypt's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it was "surprised" by the Carter Center's move.
"The Foreign Ministry is surprised and astonished that the management of The Carter Center for Democracy has decided to close its office in Cairo," the ministry said in an Arabic statement.
The foreign ministry also denounced what it said were "false claims" and "blatant contradictions" of The Carter Center.
The center opened its office in Egypt in 2011 following the Jan. 25 uprising that ousted former president Hosni Mubarak. Since then, it organized observations mission for a series of elections.
"The Egyptian authorities are trying to shift towards democracy but due to security and political stability concerns, the country has to restrict certain extremists or political parties such as the Muslim Brotherhood, for the sake of Egypt," Saraya told Al Arabiya News.
"These foreign organizations and figures do not understand that and consider that Sisi is restricting freedoms in Egypt," Saraya said.
He said the government is unlikely make amendments to its protest law or reverse course in its crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood.
U.S. detours on Egypt: stability before democracy?