1,988 research outputs found
Information actors beyond modernity and coloniality in times of climate change:A comparative design ethnography on the making of monitors for sustainable futures in Curaçao and Amsterdam, between 2019-2022
In his dissertation, Mr. Goilo developed a cutting-edge theoretical framework for an Anthropology of Information. This study compares information in the context of modernity in Amsterdam and coloniality in Curaçao through the making process of monitors and develops five ways to understand how information can act towards sustainable futures. The research also discusses how the two contexts, that is modernity and coloniality, have been in informational symbiosis for centuries which is producing negative informational side effects within the age of the Anthropocene. By exploring the modernity-coloniality symbiosis of information, the author explains how scholars, policymakers, and data-analysts can act through historical and structural roots of contemporary global inequities related to the production and distribution of information. Ultimately, the five theses propose conditions towards the collective production of knowledge towards a more sustainable planet
The dagger
This novel excerpt from The Dagger was started as an attempt to understand the rise of alt-right extremist groups in the United States, as well as the conditions that made their rise possible. It aims to accomplish this through the perspective of a fictional young man from a middle-class background, Tom, who reaches adulthood near the apex of the movement’s overt social influence between 2014 and 2017. In the novel, Tom is drawn to a self-help and meditation retreat at a place called Sun Ranch, located in the Inland Empire of Southern California. The retreat, which targets disaffected young men of primarily white backgrounds, is led by a charismatic but reclusive yoga teacher named Curtis. In his lessons, he blends Californian interpretations of Hindu and Buddhist mysticism with fascist political precepts. As the retreat goes on, it becomes increasingly clear that Curtis has more than his students’ wellness in mind, and that he has a plan for the rights-based society he sees as his enemy
Fictocritical Cyberfeminism: A Paralogical Model for Post-Internet Communication
This dissertation positions the understudied and experimental writing practice of fictocriticism as an analog for the convergent and indeterminate nature of “post-Internet” communication as well a cyberfeminist technology for interfering and in-tervening in metanarratives of technoscience and technocapitalism that structure contemporary media. Significant theoretical valences are established between twen-tieth century literary works of fictocriticism and the hybrid and ephemeral modes of writing endemic to emergent, twenty-first century forms of networked communica-tion such as social media. Through a critical theoretical understanding of paralogy, or that countercultural logic of deploying language outside legitimate discourses, in-volving various tactics of multivocity, mimesis and metagraphy, fictocriticism is ex-plored as a self-referencing linguistic machine which exists intentionally to occupy those liminal territories “somewhere in among/between criticism, autobiography and fiction” (Hunter qtd. in Kerr 1996). Additionally, as a writing practice that orig-inated in Canada and yet remains marginal to national and international literary scholarship, this dissertation elevates the origins and ongoing relevance of fictocriti-cism by mapping its shared aims and concerns onto proximal discourses of post-structuralism, cyberfeminism, network ecology, media art, the avant-garde, glitch feminism, and radical self-authorship in online environments. Theorized in such a matrix, I argue that fictocriticism represents a capacious framework for writing and reading media that embodies the self-reflexive politics of second-order cybernetic theory while disrupting the rhetoric of technoscientific and neoliberal economic forc-es with speech acts of calculated incoherence. Additionally, through the inclusion of my own fictocritical writing as works of research-creation that interpolate the more traditional chapters and subchapters, I theorize and demonstrate praxis of this dis-tinctively indeterminate form of criticism to empirically and meaningfully juxtapose different modes of knowing and speaking about entangled matters of language, bod-ies, and technologies. In its conclusion, this dissertation contends that the “creative paranoia” engendered by fictocritical cyberfeminism in both print and digital media environments offers a pathway towards a more paralogical media literacy that can transform the terms and expectations of our future media ecology
On the sizes of generalized cactus graphs
A cactus is a connected graph in which each edge is contained in at most one
cycle. We generalize the concept of cactus graphs, i.e., a -cactus is a
connected graph in which each edge is contained in at most cycles where
. It is well known that every cactus with vertices has at most
edges. Inspired by it, we attempt to
establish analogous upper bounds for general -cactus graphs. In this paper,
we first characterize -cactus graphs for based on the block
decompositions. Subsequently, we give tight upper bounds on their sizes.
Moreover, the corresponding extremal graphs are also characterized. However,
the case of remains open. For the case of 2-connectedness, the range
of is expanded to all positive integers in our research. We prove that
every -connected -cactus graphs with vertices has at most
edges, and the bound is tight if . But, for ,
determining best bounds remains a mystery except for some small values of .Comment: 14 pages, 2 figure
Combination of natural betanidin dye with synthetic organic sensitiser towards dye-sensitised solar cell application
A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Materials Science and Engineering of the Nelson Mandela African Institution of Science and TechnologyBetanidins belong to natural red-purple pigments betacyanins, which experimentally
demonstrated good light adsorption in a visible range and might be suitable for the dye sensitised solar cell (DSSCs). Instability is a well-known drawback of natural dyes, which
impedes their use for DSSCs. A thermodynamic approach helps to understand the betanidin
(Bd) instability which occurs due to spontaneous decarboxylation reaction with
decarboxylated betanidin (dBd) formation. The study considers the improvement of the
sensitiser’s functionality via combination of natural Bd/dBd dyes and synthetic 4-
(Diphenylamino)phenylcyanoacrylic acid (L0) dye. Novel complex D–π–A organic dyes,
L0–Bd and L0–dBd with structural isomers, have been designed via esterification reactions.
The DFT/B3LYP5/6‒31G(d,p) approach has been used to compute geometry, vibrational
spectra and thermodynamic characteristics of the individual isomers and their complexes with
L0. Implementation of TD–DFT method aids in obtaining optoelectronic properties. The
broader coverage of the solar spectrum with greater light-harvesting efficiency was achieved
for the complexes compared to individual dyes. The dyes attachment to the semiconductor
TiO2 was simulated in terms of different adsorption modes to hydrogenated (TiO2)6 cluster.
Binding energies and electronic spectra of the dye@TiO2 systems were computed, and
electron density distributions over frontier molecular orbitals analysed. Binding energy
magnitudes varied within 15‒21 eV for the dye@TiO2 systems
The Distributed Complexity of Locally Checkable Labeling Problems Beyond Paths and Trees
We consider locally checkable labeling LCL problems in the LOCAL model of
distributed computing. Since 2016, there has been a substantial body of work
examining the possible complexities of LCL problems. For example, it has been
established that there are no LCL problems exhibiting deterministic
complexities falling between and . This line of
inquiry has yielded a wealth of algorithmic techniques and insights that are
useful for algorithm designers.
While the complexity landscape of LCL problems on general graphs, trees, and
paths is now well understood, graph classes beyond these three cases remain
largely unexplored. Indeed, recent research trends have shifted towards a
fine-grained study of special instances within the domains of paths and trees.
In this paper, we generalize the line of research on characterizing the
complexity landscape of LCL problems to a much broader range of graph classes.
We propose a conjecture that characterizes the complexity landscape of LCL
problems for an arbitrary class of graphs that is closed under minors, and we
prove a part of the conjecture.
Some highlights of our findings are as follows.
1. We establish a simple characterization of the minor-closed graph classes
sharing the same deterministic complexity landscape as paths, where ,
, and are the only possible complexity classes.
2. It is natural to conjecture that any minor-closed graph class shares the
same complexity landscape as trees if and only if the graph class has bounded
treewidth and unbounded pathwidth. We prove the "only if" part of the
conjecture.
3. In addition to the well-known complexity landscapes for paths, trees, and
general graphs, there are infinitely many different complexity landscapes among
minor-closed graph classes
Mathematical modelling and analysis of soil and plant root interactions
The influence of plants on soil water transport is a relevant factor in a number
of ecological contexts. Examples include: the resistance of crops to drought, the
prevention of floods and the protection of soils from erosion. There exists strong
experimental evidence that interactions between soil and plant roots change a soil’s
hydraulic properties. Nevertheless, it remains a challenge to anticipate the impact
of specific root traits on the infiltration of water through soil.
In an attempt to address the issue above, this thesis presents modifications of
Richards’ equation—the classic model for water transport through soil—to incorporate some effects that root systems are known to have on soil hydraulic properties.
First, a model is developed that incorporates the phenomenon of root-oriented
preferential flow. Using the finite element method and Bayesian optimisation, a
pipeline is developed to calibrate the model against experimental data. Moreover, it
is shown how existing root architectural models can be used in conjunction with our
model to investigate the influence that root system traits have on infiltration and
water uptake. Results suggest that this modification of Richards’ equation leads
to improved agreement of simulations with reference pore water pressure profiles,
which are derived from experimental data regarding the hydraulic conductivity of
vegetated soils.
Following this, the developed model is used to obtain simulations of various
infiltration scenarios. These reveal that, up to a critical point, increasing preferential
flow strength reduces water loss from the rooted zone. Furthermore, evidence is
provided to suggest that root systems with a reduced gravitropic response allow a
greater retention of water in the rooted zone following precipitation and, hence, are
among the most effective at delaying the onset of water deficits.
In another case, an alternative modification is proposed whereby Richards’ equation is coupled with an equation for water transport through roots. This model
accounts for root water uptake and hydraulic lift through a Neumann boundary
condition at the root-soil interface. By using the methods of Rothe and Galerkin,
existence of a solution to this coupled model is then established. Uniqueness is
shown by Kruzkov’s variable doubling method, but applied only in time.UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) grant
EP/L016508/01Scottish Funding Counci
Mi smo preživeli...: Jevreji o Holokaustu. 4
In five books, "We Survived: Yugoslav Jews on the Holocaust" (four of them translated into English), the testimonies of a small number of surviving members of the Jewish community about World War II were collected. The peculiarity of the circumstances in which the entire population of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia was found is reflected in the fact that at the beginning of the war, the country was occupied by five invaders: Germany, Italy, Bulgaria, Hungary, Albania and the fascist satellite formation, the so-called The Independent State of Croatia. These circumstances also led to different ways of surviving and rescuing Jews from these areas. The Jewish Historical Museum of the Federation of Jewish Communities of Yugoslavia / Serbia published these books with the help of donations and volunteer work of the editorial board in which seven of nine members survived the Holocaust. These books are an extraordinary collection of tragic and dramatic experiences about unique choices - the struggle for life, dignity, and freedom in partisans; about concentration camps, about refugee life under constant threat, about help and friendships. They are also a good basis for exploring the Holocaust and the history of Jews from the former Yugoslavia. Each testimony is enriched with a series of photographs and together with the text, they make unique documentation material. As the suffering of Jews on the territory of the former Yugoslavia is poorly known to the general public, these books have the task of filling that space. They thus become a memorial for all the victims whose many names are found only in memory.U seriji od pet knjiga "Mi smo preživeli: Jevreji o Holokaustu" od kojih su četiri prevedene na engleski jezik, sakupljena su svedočenja malobrojnih preživelih članova jevrejske zajednice o vremenu Drugog svetskog rata. Osobenost prilika u kojima se zateklo celokupno stanovništvo Kraljevine Jugoslavije ogleda se u činjenici da je tu državu, početkom rata, okupiralo pet zavojevača: Nemačka, Italija, Bugarska, Mađarska, Albanija i fašistička satelitska tvorevina, tzv. Nezavisna država Hrvatska. Te okolnosti su uslovile i različite načine preživljavanja i spašavanja Jevreja sa ovih prostora. Jevrejski istorijski muzej Saveza jevrejskih opština Jugoslavije/Srbije objavio je ove knjige uz pomoć donacija i uz volonterski rad redakcije u kojoj je sedam od devet članova preživelo Holokaust. One čine izuzetnu kolekciju tragičnih i dramatičnih iskustava o jedinstvenom izboru - borbi za život, dostojanstvo i slobodu u partizanima; o koncentracionim logorima, o izbegličkom životu pod stalnom pretnjom, o pomoći i prijateljstvima. One su i dobra podloga za istraživanje Holokausta i istorije Jevreja sa tla bivše Jugoslavije. Svako svedočenje je obogaćeno nizom fotografija i zajedno sa tekstom čine jedinstveni dokumentacioni materijal. Kako je stradanje Jevreja na tlu bivše Jugoslavije slabo poznato široj publici, ove knjige imaju zadatak da ispune taj prostor. One tako postaju spomenik za sve stradale čija se mnogobrojna imena nalaze samo u sećanjima.From the beginning, the editorial board had nine members, seven of whom survived the Holocaust. Editorial Board members are Aleksandar Gaon, Teodor Kovač, Eta Najfeld, Luci Petrović, Andreja Preger, Eva Timar, Eva Čavčić, Milinko Radević, and Branka Džidić.Cover: detail of the monument to the vanished Jewish communities, at the "Yad Vashem" Memorial Museum, Jerusalem
Caribbean cultural heritage and the nation:Aruba, Bonaire and Curaçao in a regional context
Centuries of intense migrations have deeply impacted expressions of cultural heritage on the ABC islands: Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaçao. This volume queries how cultural heritage on these Dutch Caribbean islands relates to the work of nation building and nation-branding. How does the imagining of a shared political “we” relates to images deliberately produced to market these islands to a world of capital? The contributing authors in this volume address this leading question in their essays that describe and analyze the expressions of the ABC islands. In doing so they compare and contrast nation building and branding on the ABC islands to those taking place in the wider Caribbean. The expressions of cultural heritage discussed range from the importance of sports, music, literature and visual arts to those related to the political economy of tourism, the work of museums, the activism surrounding the question of reparations, and the politics and policies affecting the Caribbean Diasporas in the North Atlantic. This volume adds to the understanding of the dynamics of nation, culture and economy in the Caribbean
POPULATION GENOMICS OF THE GALAPAGOS ISLAND MOCKINGBIRDS AND IMPLICATION FOR CONSERVATION
Islands are considered as natural laboratories for the understanding of the evolutionary process of speciation. The very first muses of Darwin’s insights into evolution by natural selection were the Galapagos mockingbirds (Mimus spp.), a monophyletic group of four endemic species. Three species are restricted to a single island each whereas the fourth species occurs on (almost) all the other islands of the archipelago. These birds, known for their limited long-distance flying capabilities, are considered terrestrial species and serve as a clear example of allopatric evolution occurring on islands. The aim of my PhD research has been to unveil the evolutionary history of the Galapagos mockingbird species and its conservation implications using a whole-genome approach. Therefore, my research focused on generating a de novo reference genome within this monophyletic group in order to establish an adequate framework for subsequent genome-wide analyses (Chapter 2), and with it unveil the natural history of contrasting Galapagos mockingbird populations along the archipelago (Chapter 3). My findings have revealed that after the common ancestor of these species diverged, there was a systematic and directional spread of these species to the islands, which is directly related to the age of the islands. The geological history of the islands and anthropogenic factors have had different impacts on the demography and genetic variability of these species. Typically, smaller populations are more inbred and have higher rates of non-synonymous mutations becoming fixed. However, despite their extremely small sizes, the populations on Darwin, Wolf, and Floreana islands have maintained stable population sizes over many generations, indicating that the accumulation of these mutations has not had any impact on the fitness of these populations
- …