Grand Plans in Glass Bottles: The Economic, Social, and Technological History of Beer in Egypt 1880-1970

Contrary to common perceptions, the history of beer (and indeed of other alcoholic beverages) in the Muslim-majority context of Egypt has not been a history of government officials desperately seeking to extirpate the evil of alcohol as rumrunners, backyard brewers, and moonshiners stayed one step ahead. Rather it was a history of a commercially-marketed product that enjoyed relatively wide popularity and robust growth from 1880 to 1980, and sat at the cutting edge of technological innovation in Egypt in that same period. Its success was not only evident from the profitability of the companies that sold it, but also from its increasing appearances in all popular forms of art and media. The title of my dissertation is Grand Plans in Glass Bottles: An Economic, Social, and Technological history of Beer in Egypt, 1880-1970 . My dissertation studies Egypt during an exciting period, when the country was transitioning from being a quasi-colonial state, under British Occupation after 1882 and, until 1914, under Ottoman influence as well, to being an independent country within a highly competitive global economy. Using American, Dutch, and Egyptian archival sources, as well as Arabic literary sources, I focus on two closely linked companies, Crown and Pyramid Breweries. Originally founded by Belgian expatriates in Egypt, these two firms in their various incarnations developed the Egyptian beer industry and cultivated a wide customer base. I take the story past the 1950s, when the Egyptian government under Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized the beer industry (which was by then led by Stella Beer and owned primarily by Heineken) much as it nationalized the Suez Canal. Through the study of this beverage, my research connects the history of Egypt to Belgium, Netherlands, Britain, and elsewhere; the history of a business to developments in technology, politics, and consumer culture; and the history of the people - of everyday Egyptians - to business elites. Viewed through a mug of beer, we can tell the economic, political, and cultural history of Egypt at large

New path description for the M(k+1,2k+3) models and the dual Z_k graded parafermions

We present a new path description for the states of the non-unitary M(k+1,2k+3) models. This description differs from the one induced by the Forrester-Baxter solution, in terms of configuration sums, of their restricted-solid-on-solid model. The proposed path representation is actually very similar to the one underlying the unitary minimal models M(k+1,k+2), with an analogous Fermi-gas interpretation. This interpretation leads to fermionic expressions for the finitized M(k+1,2k+3) characters, whose infinite-length limit represent new fermionic characters for the irreducible modules. The M(k+1,2k+3) models are also shown to be related to the Z_k graded parafermions via a (q to 1/q) duality transformation.Comment: 43 pages (minor typo corrected and minor rewording in the introduction

Nonlocal operator basis from the path representation of the M(k+1,k+2) and the M(k+1,2k+3) minimal models

We reinterpret a path describing a state in an irreducible module of the unitary minimal model M(k+1,k+2) in terms of a string of charged operators acting on the module's ground-state path. Each such operator acts non-locally on a path. The path characteristics are then translated into a set of conditions on sequences of operators that provide an operator basis. As an application, we re-derive the vacuum finite fermionic character by constructing the generating function of these basis states. These results generalize directly to the M(k+1,2k+3) models, the close relatives of the unitary models in terms of path description.Comment: 22 pages, new title and abstract; section 1 rewritten and section 2.2 improved; version to appear in J. Phys.

Higher spin vertex models with domain wall boundary conditions

We derive determinant expressions for the partition functions of spin-k/2 vertex models on a finite square lattice with domain wall boundary conditions.Comment: 14 pages, 12 figures. Minor corrections. Version to appear in JSTA

On the domain wall partition functions of level-1 affine so(n) vertex models

We derive determinant expressions for domain wall partition functions of level-1 affine so(n) vertex models, n >= 4, at discrete values of the crossing parameter lambda = m pi / 2(n-3), m in Z, in the critical regime.Comment: 14 pages, 13 figures included in latex fil

Using UK Green Deal Assessment Data of a Stock of Dwellings to Run a Batch of Building Energy Models

Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council ; UK Research Council’s Energy programm

Three-point function of semiclassical states at weak coupling

We give the derivation of the previously announced analytic expression for the correlation function of three heavy non-BPS operators in N=4 super-Yang-Mills theory at weak coupling. The three operators belong to three different su(2) sectors and are dual to three classical strings moving on the sphere. Our computation is based on the reformulation of the problem in terms of the Bethe Ansatz for periodic XXX spin-1/2 chains. In these terms the three operators are described by long-wave-length excitations over the ferromagnetic vacuum, for which the number of the overturned spins is a finite fraction of the length of the chain, and the classical limit is known as the Sutherland limit. Technically our main result is a factorized operator expression for the scalar product of two Bethe states. The derivation is based on a fermionic representation of Slavnov's determinant formula, and a subsequent bosonisation.Comment: 28 pages, 5 figures, cosmetic changes and more typos corrected in v

(l,q)(l,q)-Deformed Grassmann Field and the Two-dimensional Ising Model

In this paper we construct the exact representation of the Ising partition function in the form of the $SL_q(2,R)$-invariant functional integral for the lattice free $(l,q)$-fermion field theory ($l=q=-1$). It is shown that the $(l,q)$-fermionization allows one to re-express the partition function of the eight-vertex model in external field through functional integral with four-fermion interaction. To construct these representations, we define a lattice $(l,q,s)$-deformed Grassmann bispinor field and extend the Berezin integration rules to this field. At $l=q=-1, s=1$ we obtain the lattice $(l,q)$-fermion field which allows us to fermionize the two-dimensional Ising model. We show that the Gaussian integral over $(q,s)$-Grassmann variables is expressed through the $(q,s)$-deformed Pfaffian which is equal to square root of the determinant of some matrix at $q=\pm 1, s=\pm 1$.Comment: 24 pages, LaTeX; minor change

Crystal isomorphisms in Fock spaces and Schensted correspondence in affine type A

We are interested in the structure of the crystal graph of level $l$ Fock spaces representations of $\mathcal{U}_q (\widehat{\mathfrak{sl}_e})$. Since the work of Shan [26], we know that this graph encodes the modular branching rule for a corresponding cyclotomic rational Cherednik algebra. Besides, it appears to be closely related to the Harish-Chandra branching graph for the appropriate finite unitary group, according to [8]. In this paper, we make explicit a particular isomorphism between connected components of the crystal graphs of Fock spaces. This so-called "canonical" crystal isomorphism turns out to be expressible only in terms of: - Schensted's classic bumping procedure, - the cyclage isomorphism defined in [13], - a new crystal isomorphism, easy to describe, acting on cylindric multipartitions. We explain how this can be seen as an analogue of the bumping algorithm for affine type $A$. Moreover, it yields a combinatorial characterisation of the vertices of any connected component of the crystal of the Fock space

On two-point boundary correlations in the six-vertex model with DWBC

The six-vertex model with domain wall boundary conditions (DWBC) on an N x N square lattice is considered. The two-point correlation function describing the probability of having two vertices in a given state at opposite (top and bottom) boundaries of the lattice is calculated. It is shown that this two-point boundary correlator is expressible in a very simple way in terms of the one-point boundary correlators of the model on N x N and (N-1) x (N-1) lattices. In alternating sign matrix (ASM) language this result implies that the doubly refined x-enumerations of ASMs are just appropriate combinations of the singly refined ones.Comment: v2: a reference added, typos correcte