Closer to the body: reflections on skript and extracts from collected writings

In this two part article we reflect upon the experience of writing-dancing with audiences and artists in the context of our installation work skript (commissioned by Dance4, Nottingham, 2013). Part one considers how skript engages embodied, felt sense, improvisational and collaborative modalities in relation to the act of writing. As such we consider the ways in which the particular interface of language and embodiment, which is the focus of skript, might allow a knowing of ‘something’ otherwise – be that something a sense of our own bodies, a dance work, a performance experience or perhaps just that moment in time. In part two we share extracts of some of the writings that were collaboratively generated as part of skript. We focus on the work of three performance/movement artists: Guy Dartnell, Miguel Pereira and Rosalind Crisp. These dance-writings are published as they were written in real time, in the moment of engagement. They are edited only for length and at times to correct typographical errors (but only if the errors seemed to disturb the flow of the ideas) rather than to simply ‘tidy’ the text or the grammar. The writings are relational, improvisational and at times fragmentary. For more writings see: www.writing-dancing.blogspot.com

Creative Articulations Process (CAP)

This article outlines the ‘Creative Articulations Process’ (CAP), offering ways of coming into knowing in/through/about one’s own dance practice. This process, developed by the authors in the context of The Choreographic Lab, seeks to enrich creative activities through an elaboration tacit knowledge and practice as research. The article establishes the foundations of the process, briefly introducing the work of Hincks, Gendlin and Damasio, alongside others. It then goes on to take the reader through the six facets that form CAP – ‘Opening’, ‘Situating’, ‘Delving’, ‘Raising’, ‘Anatomizing’ and ‘Outwarding’. The article is written to encourage an active engagement, providing strategies and prompts for the artist/researcher

Cultivating Sustainable Coffee: Persistent Paradoxes

This chapter discusses the relationship and interconnections among changing the livelihoods of farmers, initiatives for sustainable coffee, and the production of shade-grown coffee. It examines the advantages and opportunities for farmers and producers engaged in coffee certification and diversification programs. The role of Fair Trade and organic networks in creating awareness of biodiversity conservation, the social and environment costs of coffee systems, and the need for supporting small farmers are also discussed. The methods to increase accountability and improve the efficiency of coffee cooperatives are presented in this chapter, as are the importance of understanding the sustainability initiatives and their implications for the regulators, along with the use of land patterns for coffee cultivation

3D Spectroscopic Observations of Star-Forming Dwarf Galaxies

We give an introduction into the observational technique of integral field or 3D spectroscopy. We discuss advantages and drawbacks of this type of observations and highlight a few science projects enabled by this method. In the second part we describe our 3D spectroscopic survey of Blue Compact Dwarf Galaxies. We show preliminary results from data taken with the VIMOS integral field unit and give an outlook on how automated spectral analysis and forthcoming instruments can provide a new view on star formation and associated processes in dwarf galaxies.Comment: To appear in the proceedings of the JENAM 2010 Symposium "Dwarf Galaxies: Keys to Galaxy Formation and Evolution" (Lisbon, 9-10 September 2010), P. Papaderos, S. Recchi, G. Hensler (eds.), Springer Verlag (2011), in pres

Long-lived lop-sided modes of annular disks orbiting a central mass

We demonstrate the existence of long-lived, large-amplitude eccentric modes in massive, annular particle disks in orbit about a central mass. The lopsided modes we have found precess slowly in the prograde direction at a rate which increases with disk mass and decreases with the amplitude of the distortion. The lopsidedness generally survives for as long as we run the calculations and may last indefinitely; we found no significant decay in over 700 disk-particle orbits in one case. These strongly non-linear modes are readily created using a number of different perturbing rules, but we find no evidence for linear instabilities in unperturbed disks. Our results suggest that Tremaine's eccentric disk model for the nucleus of M31 may be viable, but none of our models matches all aspects of the observational data.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, to appear in ApJ Letters, LaTeX (uses emulateapj.sty

Food security and smallholder coffee production: current issues and future directions

In recent years, there has been growing discussion within the specialty coffee industry about the preva- lence of seasonal food insecurity in coffee growing communities. The idea that coffee producers lack re- sources to feed themselves and their families flies in the face of Fair Trade and other sustainable coffee ini- tiatives, which were designed to ensure a viable livelihood and improved conditions for small-scale coffee farmers around the world. Though these certifications represent an important step toward delivering better prices to farmers, they are inadequate tools to stand alone against the formidable and entrenched barriers faced by this population. Small-scale farmers are esti- mated to produce 70% of the world\u27s coffee supply (Eakin et al, 2009), within an industry supported by up to 25 million coffee producers. If you also include coffee harvesters, processors, and industry workers, the total is closer to 100 million people whose livelihoods depend on the crop in some way (Jha et al, 2011)

Screw dislocation in zirconium: An ab initio study

Plasticity in zirconium is controlled by 1/3 screw dislocations gliding in the prism planes of the hexagonal close-packed structure. This prismatic and not basal glide is observed for a given set of transition metals like zirconium and is known to be related to the number of valence electrons in the d band. We use ab initio calculations based on the density functional theory to study the core structure of screw dislocations in zirconium. Dislocations are found to dissociate in the prism plane in two partial dislocations, each with a pure screw character. Ab initio calculations also show that the dissociation in the basal plane is unstable. We calculate then the Peierls barrier for a screw dislocation gliding in the prism plane and obtain a small barrier. The Peierls stress deduced from this barrier is lower than 21 MPa, which is in agreement with experimental data. The ability of an empirical potential relying on the embedded atom method (EAM) to model dislocations in zirconium is also tested against these ab initio calculations

Modelling the hydrodynamic and morphological impacts of a tidal stream development in Ramsey Sound

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from the publisher via the DOI in this recordA number of sites around the UK are being considered for development of tidal stream energy, one of which is Ramsey Sound off the coast of Pembrokeshire, South Wales. The Sound was used to test the prototype of the Delta Stream by Tidal Energy Ltd. After initial testing, a 10 MW tidal array was proposed at St David’s Head. To investigate any possible environmental impacts of the array due to energy extraction, a case study of the Pembrokeshire coast was performed using a high-resolution depth averaged hydrodynamic model, Telemac2D, to investigate changes to hydrodynamics and morphodynamics. Results show that the proposed array of nine tidal energy converters will cause alterations to eddy propagation leading to changes in the velocity field up to 24km from the tidal array. Changes in morphodynamics are predicted through alterations to the bed shear stress. Changes to the mean and maximum bed shear stress, over a 30-day period, are found to be more localised and extend 12km from the array. These changes indicate that the proposed tidal array will lead to localised sediment accumulation and will act as a barrier to sediment transport, with potential consequences for the benthic ecology of the region.The authors thank Cardiff University for providing ADCP data through Ramsey Sound. The work was funded by the Industrial Doctorate Centre for Offshore Renewable Energy which is funded by the Energy Technologies Institute and the RCUK Energy Programme, grant number (EP/J500847/1). This work was carried out on the High Performance Computing Cluster supported by the Research and Specialist Computing Support service at the University of East Anglia

Two-sided estimates of minimum-error distinguishability of mixed quantum states via generalized Holevo-Curlander bounds

We prove a concise factor-of-2 estimate for the failure rate of optimally distinguishing an arbitrary ensemble of mixed quantum states, generalizing work of Holevo [Theor. Probab. Appl. 23, 411 (1978)] and Curlander [Ph.D. Thesis, MIT, 1979]. A modification to the minimal principle of Cocha and Poor [Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Quantum Communication, Measurement, and Computing (Rinton, Princeton, NJ, 2003)] is used to derive a suboptimal measurement which has an error rate within a factor of 2 of the optimal by construction. This measurement is quadratically weighted and has appeared as the first iterate of a sequence of measurements proposed by Jezek et al. [Phys. Rev. A 65, 060301 (2002)]. Unlike the so-called pretty good measurement, it coincides with Holevo's asymptotically optimal measurement in the case of nonequiprobable pure states. A quadratically weighted version of the measurement bound by Barnum and Knill [J. Math. Phys. 43, 2097 (2002)] is proven. Bounds on the distinguishability of syndromes in the sense of Schumacher and Westmoreland [Phys. Rev. A 56, 131 (1997)] appear as a corollary. An appendix relates our bounds to the trace-Jensen inequality.Comment: It was not realized at the time of publication that the lower bound of Theorem 10 has a simple generalization using matrix monotonicity (See [J. Math. Phys. 50, 062102]). Furthermore, this generalization is a trivial variation of a previously-obtained bound of Ogawa and Nagaoka [IEEE Trans. Inf. Theory 45, 2486-2489 (1999)], which had been overlooked by the autho