The Twenty-Fifth George Eliot Memorial Lecture: The Larger Meaning of Your Voice: Varieties of Speech in George Eliot

When Ladislaw has watched and listened to Dorothea in the Vatican Museum, he says to the painter Naumann that language is superior to painting and \u27gives a fuller image, which is all the better for being vague.[ ... ] This woman whom you have just seen, for example: how would you paint her voice, pray? But her voice is much diviner than anything you have seen of her.\u27 The novelist does in a way paint the voice, using the visual signs of written language to convey an auditory experience. Written dialogue may be naturalistic and idiomatic in its choice of words and syntax, well-marked by punctuation, but it can never give a full impression of what we hear in life. One of the hardest tasks for the novelist is to convey the many individual qualities of voice, in terms of natural pitch, smoothness and harshness, and so on. Qualities may be affected by physical changes, as the slurred speech of intoxication or the huskiness of a cold; or situationally by whispering or shouting. In all these things the novelist must use the equivalent of stage-directions, indicating by verbal commentary how the character is to be \u27heard\u27 by the reader. George Eliot\u27s sensitivity to speech is outstanding among the great Victorian novelists. I do not propose to examine again the well-trodden ground of her use of dialect, or the idiolects of her characters. What has received less attention is her sensitivity to the nuances of conversation, and her unusual ability to recall the distinctive sounds of voices. She wrote to the French translator of The Mill on the Floss, whom she had met with his mother, that as she read his letter she was \u27hearing the tone of the two voices. I have the happiness of being able to recall beloved faces and accents with great clearness\u27.3 This aural memory is evoked by Mirah in Daniel Deronda when she tries to recall her childhood. \u27Is it not wonderful how I remember the voices better than anything else? I think they must go deeper into us than other things. I have often fancied heaven might be made of voices\u27

Subjective risk and memory for driving situations

This thesis explores the relationship between subjective risk when driving and drivers' subsequent memory for everyday driving situations. Relationships are considered in the context of the wider literature on arousal and memory. In the first study subjects drove a set route around Cambridge giving verbal risk ratings; they then performed an unexpected free recall task. Drivers tended to recall situations which they had previously rated as risky. A series of laboratory studies explored this result. In these studies subjects watched films of actual driving situations in a simulator and were given subsequent recognition tests. In the first laboratory study subjective risk was only associated with improved recognition sensitivity for the most potentially dangerous situations. In generally safe situations feelings of risk appeared to impair recognition. These results were replicated in two further laboratory studies using different judgment tasks and stimuli. These results could be explained by subjective risk causing the focusing of attention in driving with a consequent enhancement of memory for central details at the expense of memory for peripheral details. To directly test the attention focusing hypothesis a laboratory study defined central information with respect to risk in driving situations. Then an on-road study found that drivers did indeed recall more central details than would be expected from risky situations. There thus appear to be two relationships between subjective risk and memory in driving. The first is an overall tendency for subjects to recall risky situations. This is assumed to be largely because such events are rare and distinctive. The second is a tendency for subjects to recall central details of risky situations at the expense of peripheral details. This is consistent with recent studies on attention focusing in eyewitness testimony. Some implications of these results for eyewitness testimony and for the psychology of driving are considered

Progress in High Power Free-Piston Stirling Convertor Development

The U.S. Space Exploration Policy has established a vision for human exploration of the moon and Mars. One option for power for future outposts on the lunar and Martian surfaces is a nuclear reactor coupled with a free-piston Stirling convertor at a power level of 30-40 kWe. A 25 kW convertor was developed in the 1990s under the SP-100 program. This system consisted of two 12.5 kWe engines connected at their hot ends and mounted in tandem to cancel vibration. Recently, NASA began a new project with Auburn University to develop a 5 kWe, single convertor for use in such a possible lunar power system. Goals of this development program include a specific power in excess of 140 We/kg at the convertor level, lifetime in excess of five years and a control system that will safely manage the convertors in case of an emergency. Foster-Miller, Inc. is developing the 5 kWe Stirling Convertor Assembly. The characteristics of the design along with progress in developing the system will be described

Defining the Indefinable: Descriptors of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples’ Cultures and their Links to Health and Wellbeing

This report was funded by the Lowitja Institute and is part of the development of Mayi Kuwayu: The National Study of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Wellbeing; a national longitudinal study exploring the relationship between Aboriginal Torres Strait Islander wellbeing and culture. This review was conducted to explore what cultural factors are important to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and gain an understanding of how these factors relate to health and wellbeing. We examined the Australian literature as well as publications from countries that have experienced similar colonisation events; primarily Aotearoa (New Zealand), Canada and the United States. Our main findings from this synthesis determined six main domains used to describe culture for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. These domains were: Connection to Country; Cultural Beliefs and Knowledge; Language; Family, Kinship and Community; Expression and Cultural Continuity; and Self-determination and Leadership.The Lowitja Institute Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Cooperative Research Centre funded this review under project 16-SDH-05-03

On one-dimensional models for hydrodynamics

To date it has not been possible to prove whether or not the three-dimensional incompressible Euler equations develop singular behaviour in finite time. Some possible singular scenarios, as for instance shock-waves, are very important from a physical point of view, since they imply the connection among the macroscopic and the microscopic scale. Therefore, the appearence of this type of singularity or a similar one might be interpreted as a possible explanation of the transition to turbulence. In order to clarify the question, some one-dimensional models for ideal incompressible hydrodynamics have been introduced and analyzed, and it was proven that shock-waves appear in finite time within this type of flow. In this work we question the validity of these models and analyze the physical meaning that the occurrence of a singularity in an incompressible flow, if it happens, may have

Including Ice Effects in a Storm Surge Modeling System

Source: ICHE Conference Archive - https://mdi-de.baw.de/icheArchiv

Ultraviolet Spectroscopy of Asteroid (4) Vesta

We report a comprehensive review of the UV-visible spectrum and rotational lightcurve of Vesta combining new observations by Hubble Space Telescope and Swift Gamma-ray Burst Observatory with archival International Ultraviolet Explorer observations. The geometric albedos of Vesta from 220 nm to 953 nm are derived by carefully comparing these observations from various instruments at different times and observing geometries. Vesta has a rotationally averaged geometric albedo of 0.09 at 250 nm, 0.14 at 300 nm, 0.26 at 373 nm, 0.38 at 673 nm, and 0.30 at 950 nm. The linear spectral slope as measured between 240 and 320 nm in the ultraviolet displays a sharp minimum near a sub-Earth longitude of 20^{\circ}, and maximum in the eastern hemisphere. This is consistent with the longitudinal distribution of the spectral slope in the visible wavelength. The photometric uncertainty in the ultraviolet is ~20%, and in the visible wavelengths it is better than 10%. The amplitude of Vesta's rotational lightcurves is ~10% throughout the range of wavelengths we observed, but is smaller at 950 nm (~6%) near the 1-\mum band center. Contrary to earlier reports, we found no evidence for any difference between the phasing of the ultraviolet and visible/near-infrared lightcurves with respect to sub-Earth longitude. Vesta's average spectrum between 220 and 950 nm can well be described by measured reflectance spectra of fine particle howardite-like materials of basaltic achondrite meteorites. Combining this with the in-phase behavior of the ultraviolet, visible, and near-infrared lightcurves, and the spectral slopes with respect to the rotational phase, we conclude that there is no global ultraviolet/visible reversal on Vesta. Consequently, this implies a lack of global space weathering on Vesta, as previously inferred from visible-near-infrared data.Comment: 44 pages, 5 figures, 1 tabl

Analysis of Successful Immune Responses in Persons Infected with Hepatitis C Virus

Although hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection is very common, identification of patients during acute infection is rare. Consequently, little is known about the immune response during this critical stage of the disease. We analyzed the T lymphocyte response during and after acute resolving HCV infection in three persons, using interferon (IFN)-γ enzyme-linked immunospot (ELISPOT) and human histocompatibility leukocyte antigen (HLA) peptide tetramer assays. Acute infection was associated with a broadly directed T helper and cytotoxic T lymphocyte (CTL) response, which persisted after resolution of clinical hepatitis and clearance of viremia. At the earliest time point studied, highly activated CTL populations were observed that temporarily failed to secrete IFN-γ, a “stunned” phenotype, from which they recovered as viremia declined. In long-term HCV-seropositive persons, CTL responses were more common in persons who had cleared viremia compared with those with persistent viremia, although the frequencies of HCV-specific CTLs were lower than those found in persons during and after resolution of acute HCV infection. These studies demonstrate a strong and persistent CTL response in resolving acute HCV infection, and provide rationale to explore immune augmentation as a therapeutic intervention in chronic HCV infection