This is Research; Patterson: Land Liminality Loss

Canada’s historical and contemporary crisis and the impact of related trauma on bodies result from an inherited colonial legacy. The construction is about power. Many who fled and/or were lured to Canada bear the trappings of the rewards they reaped from this place to which they migrated. But didn’t the acquisition of privilege and power have something to do with why they left in the first place

Time-frequency analysis of chaotic systems

We describe a method for analyzing the phase space structures of Hamiltonian systems. This method is based on a time-frequency decomposition of a trajectory using wavelets. The ridges of the time-frequency landscape of a trajectory, also called instantaneous frequencies, enable us to analyze the phase space structures. In particular, this method detects resonance trappings and transitions and allows a characterization of the notion of weak and strong chaos. We illustrate the method with the trajectories of the standard map and the hydrogen atom in crossed magnetic and elliptically polarized microwave fields.Comment: 36 pages, 18 figure

Using simulation to estimate the power of a badger vaccine trial

The aim of this study was to estimate the power of a badger vaccine field trial using simulation techniques. The effects of sample size, sensitivity and specificity of the diagnostic test, transmission rate between unvaccinated badgers, Vaccine Efficacy for Susceptibility (VES) and Vaccine Efficacy for Infectiousness (VEI) on study power were determined. The most striking result was the large effect of the specificity of the diagnostic test on study power. Sample size had a small effect on power. Study power increased with increasing transmission rate between non-vaccinated badgers. Changes in VES had a higher impact on power than changes in VEI. In summary, study power in group randomized trials depends not only on sample size but on many other parameters. In the current vaccine trial, power was highly dependent on the specificity of the diagnostic test. Therefore, it is critical that the diagnostic test used in the badger vaccine trial is optimized to maximise test specificity

The Islamic State as an empire of nostalgia

Primary empires were the product of internal development and self-sustaining through the exploitation of their own resources, but there were also historically a large number of “shadow empires.” These were imperial polities that were the products of secondary empire formation, which came into existence as a response to the formation of primary empires elsewhere and could not exist except in interaction with them. One unusual subset of these were “empires of nostalgia” that claimed an imperial tradition and the outward trappings of an extinct empire, but did not themselves meet the basic requirements of an imperial state such as direct control of territory, true centralized rule, or significant urban centers. The most famous European example was the Carolingian Empire established by Charlemagne and its long lived successor, the Holy Roman Empire, which survived as an institution for a thousand years. The Islamic State’s proclamation of itself as a reborn caliphate is now a contemporary example built on nostalgia in the Islamic world for a long-dead empire that still exerts a strong cultural attraction upon many Muslims. The Islamic State justifies its actions and ideologies by attempting to ground them in a lost golden age that they propose to restore

Vanishing in Plain Sight

Playfully negotiating the historical constructs of theatrical vanishing and its disturbingly female trappings this paper centers on the creation of Bautier de Kolta’s l’Escamotage D’une Dame, an illusion used to screen the anxieties of the male British populous, irked by a buoyant surplus in unmarried, white, middle class women, in the late 1880s. Introducing texts such as W. R Greg’s Why are women Redundant? This paper makes ever more apparent the political, violent and sexual connotations of the female body in magical feats of performative disappearance. From the photographic curios of hidden mothers to the dark room of the séance, the conversation unfurls around the many forms of female vanishing, culminating in a discussion of the contemporary artwork Escamotage (Grace A Williams, 2015) that takes the Persian rug as both a motif of magical vanishing and a tool for the exposure of form. This paper was originally delivered as a performance from within a ‘Zig-Zag’ illusion box, in collaboration with artist David Cheeseman. The first critical analysis of women’s role within magical illusions, delivered by a female artist from within a magical prop that continues to dismember female bodies for entertainment in the contemporary magic market

Spin-orbit coupling for tidally evolving super-Earths

We investigate the spin behavior of close-in rocky planets and the implications for their orbital evolution. Considering that the planet rotation evolves under simultaneous actions of the torque due to the equatorial deformation and the tidal torque, both raised by the central star, we analyze the possibility of temporary captures in spin-orbit resonances. The results of the numerical simulations of the exact equations of motions indicate that, whenever the planet rotation is trapped in a resonant motion, the orbital decay and the eccentricity damping are faster than the ones in which the rotation follows the so-called pseudo-synchronization. Analytical results obtained through the averaged equations of the spin-orbit problem show a good agreement with the numerical simulations. We apply the analysis to the cases of the recently discovered hot super-Earths Kepler-10 b, GJ 3634 b and 55 Cnc e. The simulated dynamical history of these systems indicates the possibility of capture in several spin-orbit resonances; particularly, GJ 3634 b and 55 Cnc e can currently evolve under a non-synchronous resonant motion for suitable values of the parameters. Moreover, 55 Cnc e may avoid a chaotic rotation behavior by evolving towards synchronization through successive temporary resonant trappings.Comment: Accepted for publication in MNRA

The Trouble With Calasiris: Duplicity and Autobiographical Narrative in Heliodorus and Galen

In this article, I take a new look at the problem of Calasiris’ ‘duplicity’ as depicted in the long autobiographical narrative he delivers to Cnemon in Books 2-5 of Heliodorus’ Aethiopica. A close parallel for Calasiris’ self-presentation can be found in an unlikely source: the medical case histories of the doctor Galen. Through a comparison of Calasiris’ narrative with those of Galen, I demonstrate that both narrators employ similar ‘deceptive’ strategies to showcase their observational and deductive skills to their audience. Calasiris’ foregrounding of such ‘rational’ methods and his downplaying of the prophetic power that others attribute to him suggest that, despite the Aethiopica’s religious trappings, its ideal reader is a secular one

Six Signs of Scientism

As the English word “scientism” is currently used, it is a trivial verbal truth that scientism—an inappropriately deferential attitude to science—should be avoided. But it is a substantial question when, and why, deference to the sciences is inappropriate or exaggerated. This paper tries to answer that question by articulating “six signs of scientism”: the honorific use of “science” and its cognates; using scientific trappings purely decoratively; preoccupation with demarcation; preoccupation with “scientific method”; looking to the sciences for answers beyond their scope; denying the legitimacy or worth of non-scientific (e.g., legal or literary) inquiry, or of writing poetry or making art