“some kind of thing it aint us but yet its in us”: David Mitchell, Russell Hoban, and metafiction after the millennium

This article appraises the debt that David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas owes to the novels of Russell Hoban, including, but not limited to, Riddley Walker. After clearly mapping a history of Hoban’s philosophical perspectives and Mitchell’s inter-textual genre-impersonation practice, the article assesses the degree to which Mitchell’s metatextual methods indicate a nostalgia for by-gone radical aesthetics rather than reaching for new modes of its own. The article not only proposes several new backdrops against which Mitchell’s novel can be read but also conducts the first in-depth appraisal of Mitchell’s formal linguistic replication of Riddley Walker

Concern About Eating Genetically Engineered Food

Concern about eating genetically engineered food is explored for a sample of residents from Florida and North Carolina. Previous research on consumers\u27 food safety concerns and perceived risk associated with food production suggests that concern about genetically engineered food is influenced by three factors. Concern is influenced by how well informed consumers are about food technology, their capacity to understand that information, and the compatibility of genetic engineering with consumers\u27 moral beliefs. Utilizing logistic regression, women and persons who viewed genetic engineering to be morally wrong were found to have greater concern about eating genetically engineered foods. Awareness and educational attainment also decreased concern about among North Carolina residents. For the Florida sample, awareness had no effect on concern, and education decreased concern for only one of two types of food. Although addressing concerns based on moral beliefs may be problematic, efforts to better inform consumers, especially women, might reduce their concern

Mendocino power plant site ecological study final report

A preoperational ecological study of a proposed nuclear power plant site on the Mendocino County coast was initiated in September 1971. The study resulted from an agreement between the Pacific Gas and Electric Company and the California Department of Fish and Game signed in July 1971. In the agreement, Pacific Gas and Electric Company provided funds for the Department's studies of the site. Studies of the subtidal animal and plant communities were conducted by divers from September 1971 through March 1973; intertidal animal and plant populations were surveyed from November 1971 through February 1973. Sportfisheries for abalone and finfish were surveyed during 1972 and Spring of 1973. Stomach contents of many of the more abundant subtidal and intertidal fishes were examined. All of these studies were designed to determine the dominant species of plants, invertebrates and fishes in the various communities, their relative abundance, and where applicable, size composition, predators and competitors. The parameters developed from these studies would be used for comparison with similar studies conducted after the proposed plant went into operation to determine what effect construction and operation of the plant might have on the various plants and animals studied. (291pp.

Non-adaptive Measurement-based Quantum Computation and Multi-party Bell Inequalities

Quantum correlations exhibit behaviour that cannot be resolved with a local hidden variable picture of the world. In quantum information, they are also used as resources for information processing tasks, such as Measurement-based Quantum Computation (MQC). In MQC, universal quantum computation can be achieved via adaptive measurements on a suitable entangled resource state. In this paper, we look at a version of MQC in which we remove the adaptivity of measurements and aim to understand what computational abilities still remain in the resource. We show that there are explicit connections between this model of computation and the question of non-classicality in quantum correlations. We demonstrate this by focussing on deterministic computation of Boolean functions, in which natural generalisations of the Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) paradox emerge; we then explore probabilistic computation, via which multipartite Bell Inequalities can be defined. We use this correspondence to define families of multi-party Bell inequalities, which we show to have a number of interesting contrasting properties.Comment: 13 pages, 4 figures, final version accepted for publicatio

The human ankyrin 1 promoter insulator sustains gene expression in a β-globin lentiviral vector in hematopoietic stem cells.

Lentiviral vectors designed for the treatment of the hemoglobinopathies require the inclusion of regulatory and strong enhancer elements to achieve sufficient expression of the β-globin transgene. Despite the inclusion of these elements, the efficacy of these vectors may be limited by transgene silencing due to the genomic environment surrounding the integration site. Barrier insulators can be used to give more consistent expression and resist silencing even with lower vector copies. Here, the barrier activity of an insulator element from the human ankyrin-1 gene was analyzed in a lentiviral vector carrying an antisickling human β-globin gene. Inclusion of a single copy of the Ankyrin insulator did not affect viral titer, and improved the consistency of expression from the vector in murine erythroleukemia cells. The presence of the Ankyrin insulator element did not change transgene expression in human hematopoietic cells in short-term erythroid culture or in vivo in primary murine transplants. However, analysis in secondary recipients showed that the lentiviral vector with the Ankyrin element preserved transgene expression, whereas expression from the vector lacking the Ankyrin insulator decreased in secondary recipients. These studies demonstrate that the Ankyrin insulator may improve long-term β-globin expression in hematopoietic stem cells for gene therapy of hemoglobinopathies