Constructing habitus: promoting an international arts trend at the Singapore Arts Festival

The Singapore Arts Festival (SAF) is Singapore’s largest government-supported international arts festival. SAF presents the best in international and local arts, in an attempt, to develop what it perceives to be a lack of cultural knowledge of the Singaporean arts-going public. Using Pierre Bourdieu’s key concept of ‘habitus’ together with an analysis of the programming of the festival, this paper will highlight how the festival seeks to create a specific cultural taste in Singaporean art-goers through privileging and promoting works that are internationally marketable to European countries. The paper will conclude that this programming style occurs at the expense of Singaporean artists and hinders the development of the city’s state cultural and artistic development

RELEASE: A High-level Paradigm for Reliable Large-scale Server Software

Erlang is a functional language with a much-emulated model for building reliable distributed systems. This paper outlines the RELEASE project, and describes the progress in the first six months. The project aim is to scale the Erlang’s radical concurrency-oriented programming paradigm to build reliable general-purpose software, such as server-based systems, on massively parallel machines. Currently Erlang has inherently scalable computation and reliability models, but in practice scalability is constrained by aspects of the language and virtual machine. We are working at three levels to address these challenges: evolving the Erlang virtual machine so that it can work effectively on large scale multicore systems; evolving the language to Scalable Distributed (SD) Erlang; developing a scalable Erlang infrastructure to integrate multiple, heterogeneous clusters. We are also developing state of the art tools that allow programmers to understand the behaviour of massively parallel SD Erlang programs. We will demonstrate the effectiveness of the RELEASE approach using demonstrators and two large case studies on a Blue Gene

Computer simulation of diffusion processes in tilt spatio-periodic potentials

Нещодавно було показано, що в істотно нерівноважних системах коефіцієнт дифузії може вести себе немонотонно з температурою. Одним із прикладів таких систем з аномальною температурної залежністю є рух броунівських часток в просторово-періодичних структурах. Метою статті було дослідження зміни температурної залежності дифузії в недодемпфованих системах з низьким коефіцієнтом тертя. В роботі методами комп'ютерного моделювання вивчено зміна коефіцієнта дифузії частинок в широкому діапазоні температур в нахилених просторово-періодичних потенціалах для різних значень коефіцієнта тертя. Показано, що дифузія досягає максимуму при певній величині зовнішньої сили. Її значення залежить від величини коефіцієнта тертя. Показано, що на відміну від звичайної залежності Аррениуса, в разі нахиленого періодичного потенціалу, максимальний коефіцієнт дифузії зростає, а не зменшується з пониженням температури експоненціальним чином. Встановлено, що така залежність характерна для всіх недодемпфованих систем. Показано, що для просторово-періодичних структур існує обмежена ділянка сил, в якому спостерігається зростання коефіцієнта дифузії зі зменшенням температури. Це область так званої температурно-аномальної дифузії (ТАД). Визначено ширина і положення області ТАД в залежності від коефіцієнта тертя γ і параметрів системи. Показано, що зі зменшенням γ, ширина області ТАД зменшується пропорційно γ. При цьому коефіцієнт дифузії в області ТАД, навпаки зростає ~γ. Отримані дані про температурно-аномальної дифузії мають важливе значення для різних областей фізики і техніки та відкривають перспективи створення новітніх технологій управління процесами дифузії.It was recently shown that in essentially nonequilibrium systems, the diffusion coefficient can behave nonmonotonically with temperature. One example of such systems with anomalous temperature dependence is the motion of Brownian particles in spatially periodic structures. The aim of the article was to study the change in the temperature dependence of diffusion in underdamped systems with a low coefficient of friction. In this paper, computer simulation methods are used to study the change in the diffusion coefficient of particles in a wide range of temperatures in oblique spatially periodic potentials for different values of the friction coefficient. It is shown that diffusion reaches a maximum at a certain external force. Its value depends on the coefficient of friction. It is shown that, in contrast to the usual Arrhenius dependence, in the case of an inclined periodic potential, the maximum diffusion coefficient increases while temperature is decreasing exponentially. It is established that such a dependence is common to all underdamped systems. It is shown that for spatially periodic structures there is a limited portion of forces in which an increase in the diffusion coefficient while decreasing temperature is observed. This is the area of the so-called temperature-anomalous diffusion (TAD). The width and position of the TAD region are determined depending on the friction coefficient γ and the system parameters. It has been shown that a decrease in γ, width TAD region decreases proportionally γ. In this case, the diffusion coefficient in the TAD region, on the contrary, increases ~γ. The data obtained on the temperature and the anomalous diffusion are important for various fields of physics and engineering, and opens new prospects for a diffusion process control technology

AC-KBO Revisited

Equational theories that contain axioms expressing associativity and commutativity (AC) of certain operators are ubiquitous. Theorem proving methods in such theories rely on well-founded orders that are compatible with the AC axioms. In this paper we consider various definitions of AC-compatible Knuth-Bendix orders. The orders of Steinbach and of Korovin and Voronkov are revisited. The former is enhanced to a more powerful version, and we modify the latter to amend its lack of monotonicity on non-ground terms. We further present new complexity results. An extension reflecting the recent proposal of subterm coefficients in standard Knuth-Bendix orders is also given. The various orders are compared on problems in termination and completion.Comment: 31 pages, To appear in Theory and Practice of Logic Programming (TPLP) special issue for the 12th International Symposium on Functional and Logic Programming (FLOPS 2014

Inclusive growth in English cities: mainstreamed or sidelined?

<p>The concept of inclusive growth is increasingly presented as offering prospects for more equitable social outcomes. However, inclusive growth is subject to a variety of interpretations and lacks definitional clarity. In England, via devolution, cities are taking on new powers for policy domains that can influence inclusive growth outcomes. This opens up opportunities for innovation to address central issues of low pay and poverty. This paper examines the extent to which inclusive growth concerns form a central or peripheral aspect in this new devolution through the content analysis of devolution agreements. It concludes that inclusive growth concerns appear to be largely sidelined.</p

Cellular and Matrix Mechanics of Bioartificial Tissues During Continuous Cyclic Stretch

Bioartificial tissues are useful model systems for studying cell and extra-cellular matrix mechanics. These tissues provide a 3D environment for cells and allow tissue components to be easily modified and quantified. In this study, we fabricated bioartificial tissue rings from a 1 ml solution containing one million cardiac fibroblasts and 1 mg collagen. After 8 days, rings compacted to <1% of original volume and cell number increased 2.4 fold. We initiated continuous cyclic stretching of the rings after 2, 4, or 8 days of incubation, while monitoring the tissue forces. Peak tissue force during each cycle decreased rapidly after initiating stretch, followed by further slow decline. We added 2 μM Cytochalasin-D to some rings prior to initiation of stretch to determine the force contributed by the matrix. Cell force was estimated by subtracting matrix force from tissue force. After 12 h, matrix force-strain curves were highly nonlinear. Cell force-strain curves were linear during loading and showed hysteresis indicating viscoelastic behavior. Cell stiffness increased with stretching frequency from 0.001–0.25 Hz. Cell stiffness decreased with stretch amplitude (5–25%) at 0.1 Hz. The trends in cell stiffness do not fit simple viscoelastic models previously proposed, and suggest possible strain-amplitude related changes during cyclic stretch