Netta syrett's lesbian heroine

This article discusses Judgment Withheld (1934) in which Netta Syrett makes it clear that the most likeable character, Mimi Landsfeld, is a lesbian. This was unusual, other writers being too afraid of prosecution to depict lesbianism sympathetically, particularly after Radclyffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness was banned in 1928. The article also shows how Syrett combined her established reputation as a writer of popular fiction with offering her middlebrow readers varied and controversial portrayals of sexual relationships, including homosexuality. The article concludes with comments on Syrett's personal life, thereby placing her novels in context.     

A biomechanical analysis of the causes of traumatic brain injury in infants and children

There is significant disagreement among medical professionals regarding the mechanisms for infant brain injury. This disagreement is due in part to the failure by some to acknowledge and incorporate known biomechanical data and models into hypotheses regarding causes. A proper biomechanical understanding of the mechanisms of traumatic brain injury (TBI) challenges many published and testified assumptions regarding TBI in infants and children. This paper analyzes the biomechanical relationship between the causes of TBI in infants and children, and their physiological consequences. Loading characteristics, injury parameters and criteria, scaling, failure characteristics, differences between infants and adults, and impact due to falls are described and discussed in the context of the laws of mechanics. Recent studies are critiqued with reference to their contribution to an understanding of brain injury mechanisms. Finally, methods for improving our currently incomplete knowledge of infant head injuries, and their mechanisms, consequences and tolerances are proposed. There is an urgent need for close collaboration between physicians and biomechanicians to objectively and scientifically evaluate infant head injuries to further define their mechanical bases, and to assist in their diagnosis and treatment.     

How Scandalous <Emphasis Type="Italic">Is</Emphasis> Knowledge of Evolutionary Psychology?

Biological science is deepening our understanding of life at a brisk rate, but interdisciplinary discourse is not keeping pace. This essay offers an account of themes from evolutionary biology that can enrich appreciation of the complexities of human behavior. Because this topic touches fields with different and more traditional perspectives, frictions and misunderstandings exist, and I have employed examples from a single source in order to clarify the science. In her critique of evolutionary psychology published in her book Scandalous Knowledge, the social theorist Barbara Herrnstein Smith has set forth views that are not in harmony with either evolutionary biology or cognitive neuroscience. She asserts that specialized features of mental processing postulated by evolutionary psychologists are without empirical justification; further, she dismisses the concept as embracing “non-physical mental organs.” There exist, however, numerous examples of how brains process information in specific, functional ways, frequently characteristic of the species. Furthermore, the charge of “non-physical mental organs” is not only wrong; it reveals a failure to recognize that biology has two complementary modes of explanation. One is historical and addresses cause in terms of the historical course of evolution and the process of natural selection. The other is proximate and includes many levels of analysis from molecular to social. Because brains have evolutionary histories, the ‘function’ of a particular aspect of mental processing can have a hypothetical explanation in terms of adaptive advantage that is independent of any knowledge of the underlying neural circuitry. A computational model of the brain and representational processing of sensory information, however, are both compatible with observed properties of neurons in the retina and visual cortex as well as with evolutionary processes. Finally, study of the mental processes of non-human primates provides insight into the evolution of our own minds.