FROM IRREDUNDANCE TO ANNIHILATION: A BRIEF OVERVIEW OF SOME DOMINATION PARAMETERS OF GRAPHS

Durante los últimos treinta años, el concepto de dominación en grafos ha levantado un interés impresionante. Una bibliografía reciente sobre el tópico contiene más de 1200 referencias y el número de definiciones nuevas está creciendo continuamente. En vez de intentar dar un catálogo de todas ellas, examinamos las nociones más clásicas e importantes (tales como dominación independiente, dominación irredundante, k-cubrimientos, conjuntos k-dominantes, conjuntos Vecindad Perfecta, ...) y algunos de los resultados más significativos.   PALABRAS CLAVES: Teoría de grafos, Dominación.   ABSTRACT During the last thirty years, the concept of domination in graphs has generated an impressive interest. A recent bibliography on the subject contains more than 1200 references and the number of new definitions is continually increasing. Rather than trying to give a catalogue of all of them, we survey the most classical and important notions (as independent domination, irredundant domination, k-coverings, k-dominating sets, Perfect Neighborhood sets, ...) and some of the most significant results.   KEY WORDS: Graph theory, Domination

Water conservation in Brisbane's residential landscapes : towards the optimisation of water in front garden design

One of the most critical issues that the world faces as it enters the new millennium is the provision of a continued supply of fresh water – the source of all life. The depletion problem of this resource through uneducated use is world-wide as well as being specific to Australia. This study centres on this issue in the Australian context with particular reference to gardening practices in Brisbane, the capital city of Queensland. The study examines methods by which fresh water can be saved through innovative garden design options. The cultural philosophies which underpin Brisbane’s suburban residential front gardens were investigated through an examination of literature, painting, and letters of the early settlement days in Australia and, in particular in Queensland. The findings were used to establish the theoretical framework for a qualitative study of seventy two Brisbane gardeners and their gardens. These gardens were selected from sites in a corridor of seven suburbs occupying a south-east segment of the city. The corridor included these components – an outward historical growth pattern, a range of socio-economic and cultural issues, varying soil types, topographical forms and a variety of residential forms and styles with a range of compass frontages. Each selected gardener was encouraged to ‘talk’ about the garden and its design and ‘making’ and the comments were analysed in the light of the author’s theoretical investigations. The results of this investigation provided an understanding of current gardening practices which also involve the use of 50-60 per cent of Brisbane’s domestic water on the garden. The findings suggest that Brisbane’s, and indeed, Australian gardens are based on philosophical notions that have Eurocentric foundations. Alternative and innovative water saving practices were explored and these techniques were modified to suit the design and construction of Brisbane gardens, whilst still satisfying the cultural values behind existing garden practices. The conclusions suggest that if gardeners are to be convinced about adopting water saving techniques, future garden designs must meet existing norms in terms of form and function as well as being able to conserve water

Delirious USA: the representation of capital in the fiction of Don DeLillo

In this thesis I offer a new reading of Don DeLillo’s fiction through an engagement with contemporary Marxist literary theory and political economy. Beginning in the 1960s, the thesis traces the launch, expansion, and shattering of DeLillo’s narrative apparatus as it recomposes itself across the genres of the short story, the conspiratorial thriller, the historical novel, and the novel of time. Developing on theories of the novel as a capitalist epic, the thesis takes the insistent appearance of surplus populations in DeLillo’s work as an opportunity to reflect on, but also to revise and reconceptualise, Marxist accounts of the novel and its philosophy of history. The DeLillo that emerges from this thesis is less an exemplar of postmodernism and more a novelist of the dispossessed whose central representational task is the invention of a multitude. Chapter One contends that DeLillo’s early short stories from the 1960s acquire a new recognisability in the wake of his late turn towards an aesthetic of suspension. The chapter questions whether the forms of stasis depicted in DeLillo’s short fiction generate new historical futures or if they contribute to a de-collectivised eternal present that later consumes his work. Chapter Two addresses DeLillo’s off-kilter conspiracy novels and reads their discovery of pockets of uneven development through and against the concept of ‘cognitive mapping’. Chapter Three examines the formal means by which DeLillo appropriates Georg Lukács’s classic account of the historical novel and reconfigures it through an irrational historicism that hinges on the non-presupposition of the people. Chapter Four considers the extent to which the non-anthropogenic subjects of history that constrain and inform DeLillo’s twenty-first century fiction constitute political resignation or if they intimate historical futures beyond a catastrophic present. The thesis concludes with a brief reflection on passages out of DeLillo’s epic representation of capitalism

Delirious USA: the representation of capital in the fiction of Don DeLillo

In this thesis I offer a new reading of Don DeLillo’s fiction through an engagement with contemporary Marxist literary theory and political economy. Beginning in the 1960s, the thesis traces the launch, expansion, and shattering of DeLillo’s narrative apparatus as it recomposes itself across the genres of the short story, the conspiratorial thriller, the historical novel, and the novel of time. Developing on theories of the novel as a capitalist epic, the thesis takes the insistent appearance of surplus populations in DeLillo’s work as an opportunity to reflect on, but also to revise and reconceptualise, Marxist accounts of the novel and its philosophy of history. The DeLillo that emerges from this thesis is less an exemplar of postmodernism and more a novelist of the dispossessed whose central representational task is the invention of a multitude. Chapter One contends that DeLillo’s early short stories from the 1960s acquire a new recognisability in the wake of his late turn towards an aesthetic of suspension. The chapter questions whether the forms of stasis depicted in DeLillo’s short fiction generate new historical futures or if they contribute to a de-collectivised eternal present that later consumes his work. Chapter Two addresses DeLillo’s off-kilter conspiracy novels and reads their discovery of pockets of uneven development through and against the concept of ‘cognitive mapping’. Chapter Three examines the formal means by which DeLillo appropriates Georg Lukács’s classic account of the historical novel and reconfigures it through an irrational historicism that hinges on the non-presupposition of the people. Chapter Four considers the extent to which the non-anthropogenic subjects of history that constrain and inform DeLillo’s twenty-first century fiction constitute political resignation or if they intimate historical futures beyond a catastrophic present. The thesis concludes with a brief reflection on passages out of DeLillo’s epic representation of capitalism