Offending White Men: Racial Vilification, Misrecognition, and Epistemic Injustice

In this article I analyse two complaints of white vilification, which are increasingly occurring in Australia. I argue that, though the complainants (and white people generally) are not harmed by such racialized speech, the complainants in fact harm Australians of colour through these utterances. These complaints can both cause and constitute at least two forms of epistemic injustice (willful hermeneutical ignorance and comparative credibility excess). Further, I argue that the complaints are grounded in a dual misrecognition: the complainants misrecognize themselves in their own privileged racial specificity, and they misrecognize others in their own marginal racial specificity. Such misrecognition preserves the cultural imperialism of Australia’s dominant social imaginary—a means of oppression that perpetuates epistemic insensitivity.Bringing this dual misrecognition to light best captures the indignity that is suffered by the victims of the aforementioned epistemic injustices. I argue that it is only when we truly recognize difference in its own terms, shifting the dominant social imaginary, that “mainstream Australians”can do their part in bringing about a just society

Detrital zircon and apatite (U‐Th)/He geochronology of intercalated baked sediments: a new approach to dating young basalt flows

Simple numerical models suggest that many basaltic lava flows should sufficiently heat the sediments beneath them to reset (U‐Th)/He systematics in detrital zircon and apatite. This result suggests a useful way to date such flows when more conventional geochronological approaches are either impractical or yield specious results. We present here a test of this method on sediments interstratified with basalt flows of the Taos Plateau Volcanic Field of New Mexico. Nineteen zircons and apatites from two samples of baked sand collected from the uppermost 2 cm of a fluvial channel beneath a flow of the Upper Member of the Servilleta Basalt yielded an apparent age of 3.487 ± 0.047 Ma (2 SE confidence level), within the range of all published 40Ar/39Ar dates for other flows in the Upper Member (2.81–3.72 Ma) and statistically indistinguishable from the 40Ar/39Ar dates for basal flows of the Upper Member with which the studied flow is broadly correlative (3.61 ± 0.13 Ma). Given the high yield of 4He from U and Th decay, this technique may be especially useful for dating Pleistocene basalt flows. Detailed studies of the variation of (U‐Th)/He detrital mineral dates in sedimentary substrates, combined with thermal modeling, may be a valuable tool for physical volcanologists who wish to explore the temporal and spatial evolution of individual flows and lava fields.</p

Work minimization accounts for footfall phasing in slow quadrupedal gaits

Quadrupeds, like most bipeds, tend to walk with an even left/right footfall timing. However, the phasing between hind and forelimbs shows considerable variation. Here, we account for this variation by modeling and explaining the influence of hind-fore limb phasing on mechanical work requirements. These mechanics account for the different strategies used by: (1) slow animals (a group including crocodile, tortoise, hippopotamus and some babies); (2) normal medium to large mammals; and (3) (with an appropriate minus sign) sloths undertaking suspended locomotion across a range of speeds. While the unusual hind-fore phasing of primates does not match global work minimizing predictions, it does approach an only slightly more costly local minimum. Phases predicted to be particularly costly have not been reported in nature

Terrestrial analogs and thermal models for Martian flood lavas

The recent flood lavas on Mars appear to have a characteristic “platy-ridged” surface morphology different from that inferred for most terrestrial continental flood basalt flows. The closest analog we have found is a portion of the 1783–1784 Laki lava flow in Iceland that has a surface that was broken up and transported on top of moving lava during major surges in the eruption rate. We suggest that a similar process formed the Martian flood lava surfaces and attempt to place constraints on the eruption parameters using thermal modeling. Our conclusions from this modeling are (1) in order to produce flows &gt;1000 km long with flow thicknesses of a few tens of meters, the thermophysical properties of the lava should be similar to fluid basalt, and (2) the average eruption rates were probably of the order of 104 m3/s, with the flood-like surges having flow rates of the order of 105–106 m3/s. We also suggest that these high eruption rates should have formed huge volumes of pyroclastic deposits which may be preserved in the Medusae Fossae Formation, the radar “stealth” region, or even the polar layered terrains

Sediment transport and erosion in the Fourchon area of Lafourche parish

NASA aerial photography in the form of color infrared and color positive transparencies is used as an aid in evaluating the rate and effect of erosion and sediment transport in Bay Champagne Louisiana

Moving people to deliver services : how can the WTO help?

The previous General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) negotiations produced little liberalization of the movement of individual service providers (mode 4), and the potentially large global gains from suchmovement remain unrealized. In the current negotiations, as part of the Doha Development Agenda, developing countries are seeking greater openness in their area of comparative advantage: the movement of providers unrelated to commercial presence abroad. At the same time, many multinational firms would like easier intra-corporate movement of their personnel. We describe how this coincidence of interest could be harnessed to deliver greater openness at least for skilled service providers.Environmental Economics&Policies,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Decentralization,Public Health Promotion,Banks&Banking Reform,Trade and Services,Environmental Economics&Policies,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Governance Indicators,Banks&Banking Reform

Interpretation of dispersion relations for bounded systems

Constructing normal modes for bounded systems from infinite dispersion relation roots for interpretation of plasma wave and instability studies on finite cylinder

Bistability of an In Vitro Synthetic Autoregulatory Switch

The construction of synthetic biochemical circuits is an essential step for developing quantitative understanding of information processing in natural organisms. Here, we report construction and analysis of an in vitro circuit with positive autoregulation that consists of just four synthetic DNA strands and three enzymes, bacteriophage T7 RNA polymerase, Escherichia coli ribonuclease (RNase) H, and RNase R. The modularity of the DNA switch template allowed a rational design of a synthetic DNA switch regulated by its RNA output acting as a transcription activator. We verified that the thermodynamic and kinetic constraints dictated by the sequence design criteria were enough to experimentally achieve the intended dynamics: a transcription activator configured to regulate its own production. Although only RNase H is necessary to achieve bistability of switch states, RNase R is necessary to maintain stable RNA signal levels and to control incomplete degradation products. A simple mathematical model was used to fit ensemble parameters for the training set of experimental results and was then directly applied to predict time-courses of switch dynamics and sensitivity to parameter variations with reasonable agreement. The positive autoregulation switches can be used to provide constant input signals and store outputs of biochemical networks and are potentially useful for chemical control applications

Jet noise source distribution for coplanar nozzles: experiments and predictions

In this paper we study the mechanism of jet noise production in coaxial flows. We shall present various experimental results for isothermal and heated coplanar jet flows of four area ratios (0.81, 2, 3, and 4), operating at different velocity ratios, ranging from 0.60 up to 1.26. A polar array technique has been used to find the axial distribution of the jet sources. In order to better under- stand the behavior of the experimental results, some computational fluid dynamics simulations are performed, and a basic theoretical model based on Lighthill’s Acoustic Analogy is also developed. It is shown that some significant changes occur to the flow structure and therefore the jet noise source distribution at velocity ratio of about 0.8, and also for the nozzles with area ratio of 2 to 4. It has also been shown that the most important high and low frequency sources for low velocity ratio flows are aggregated in a region about seven to ten secondary diameters downstream, while at higher velocity ratios sources are continuously spread from about one up to ten secondary diameters downstream. The effect of the primary flow temperature is also examined