World-hating: apocalypse and trauma in We Need to Talk about Kevin

Lynne Ramsay’s 2011 film We Need to Talk about Kevin alternates between two narrative times, one occurring before its protagonist Eva’s son commits a terrible crime, and one after. The film invites us to read the crime as a traumatic event in Eva’s life, an event of such terrible force that it transforms Eva’s identity. This essay uses Jacob Taubes’s understanding of Gnosticism to suggest that this event does not transform who Eva is, but rather how she knows. Like a Gnostic believer, Eva comes to understanding the fundamental ontological evil of community life. Eva’s ‘trauma,’ her alienation from the world she occupies, predates Kevin’s crime, but the aftermath of that crime reveals her alienation to her. The worldview thus presented by the film casts some light on how art house films are marketed. Like many middlebrow products, art house films present marketers with the challenge of concealing the fact that the commodity they are selling is indeed a commodity. This ambivalent distrust of the marketplace is a softened repetition of the Gnostic’s anticosmism, and We Need to Talk About Kevin both performs and thematizes a displacement from the world that is primary, not contingent upon any traumatic event.http://www.mdpi.com/2076-0787/6/4/90/htmPublished versio

Solid phase evolution in the Biosphere 2 hillslope experiment as predicted by modeling of hydrologic and geochemical fluxes

A reactive transport geochemical modeling study was conducted to help predict the mineral transformations occurring over a ten year time-scale that are expected to impact soil hydraulic properties in the Biosphere 2 (B2) synthetic hillslope experiment. The modeling sought to predict the rate and extent of weathering of a granular basalt (selected for hillslope construction) as a function of climatic drivers, and to assess the feedback effects of such weathering processes on the hydraulic properties of the hillslope. Flow vectors were imported from HYDRUS into a reactive transport code, CrunchFlow2007, which was then used to model mineral weathering coupled to reactive solute transport. Associated particle size evolution was translated into changes in saturated hydraulic conductivity using Rosetta software. We found that flow characteristics, including velocity and saturation, strongly influenced the predicted extent of incongruent mineral weathering and neo-phase precipitation on the hillslope. Results were also highly sensitive to specific surface areas of the soil media, consistent with surface reaction controls on dissolution. Effects of fluid flow on weathering resulted in significant differences in the prediction of soil particle size distributions, which should feedback to alter hillslope hydraulic conductivities

Magnetic structure of the antiferromagnetic half-Heusler compound NdBiPt

We present results of single crystal neutron diffraction experiments on the rare-earth, half-Heusler antiferromagnet (AFM) NdBiPt. This compound exhibits an AFM phase transition at $T_{\mathrm N}=2.18$~K with an ordered moment of $1.78(9)$~$\mu_{\mathrm B}$ per Nd atom. The magnetic moments are aligned along the $[001]$-direction, arranged in a type-I AFM structure with ferromagnetic planes, alternating antiferromagnetically along a propagation vector $\tau$ of $(100)$. The $R$BiPt ($R$= Ce-Lu) family of materials has been proposed as candidates of a new family of antiferromagnetic topological insulators (AFTI) with magnetic space group that corresponds to a type-II AFM structure where ferromagnetic sheets are stacked along the space diagonal. The resolved structure makes it unlikely, that NdBiPt qualifies as an AFTI.Comment: As resubmitted to PRB, corrected typos and changed symbols in Fig.

Direct observation of the quantum critical point in heavy fermion CeRhSi3_3

We report on muon spin rotation studies of the noncentrosymmetric heavy fermion antiferromagnet CeRhSi$_3$. A drastic and monotonic suppression of the internal fields, at the lowest measured temperature, was observed upon an increase of external pressure. Our data suggest that the ordered moments are gradually quenched with increasing pressure, in a manner different from the pressure dependence of the N\'eel temperature. At \unit{23.6}{kbar}, the ordered magnetic moments are fully suppressed via a second-order phase transition, and $T_{\rm{N}}$ is zero. Thus, we directly observed the quantum critical point at \unit{23.6}{kbar} hidden inside the superconducting phase of CeRhSi$_3$

Evidence for SrHo2O4 and SrDy2O4 as model J1-J2 zig-zag chain materials

Neutron diffraction and inelastic spectroscopy is used to characterize the magnetic Hamiltonian of SrHo2O4 and SrDy2O4. Through a detailed computation of the crystal-field levels we find site- dependent anisotropic single-ion magnetism in both materials and diffraction measurements show the presence of strong one-dimensional spin correlations. Our measurements indicate that competing interactions of the zig-zag chain, combined with frustrated interchain interactions, play a crucial role in stabilizing spin-liquid type correlations in this series.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figure

COSMOS: the COsmic-ray Soil Moisture Observing System

The newly-developed cosmic-ray method for measuring area-average soil moisture at the hectometer horizontal scale is being implemented in the COsmic-ray Soil Moisture Observing System (or the COSMOS). The stationary cosmic-ray soil moisture probe measures the neutrons that are generated by cosmic rays within air and soil and other materials, moderated by mainly hydrogen atoms located primarily in soil water, and emitted to the atmosphere where they mix instantaneously at a scale of hundreds of meters and whose density is inversely correlated with soil moisture. The COSMOS has already deployed more than 50 of the eventual 500 cosmic-ray probes, distributed mainly in the USA, each generating a time series of average soil moisture over its horizontal footprint, with similar networks coming into existence around the world. This paper is written to serve a community need to better understand this novel method and the COSMOS project. We describe the cosmic-ray soil moisture measurement method, the instrument and its calibration, the design, data processing and dissemination used in the COSMOS project, and give example time series of soil moisture obtained from COSMOS probes

Comment on ‘Examining the variation of soil moisture from cosmic‑ray neutron probes footprint: experimental results from a COSMOS‑UK site’ by Howells, O.D., Petropoulos, G.P., et al., Environ Earth Sci 82, 41 (2023)

The published article by Howells et al. (2023) attempts to empirically derive the lateral footprint for a single cosmic-ray neutron sensor (CRNS), which is part of the COSMOS-UK network (Evans et al. 2016). The main result is the “true” footprint to be 50 m in radius, substantially smaller than previously published estimates. Their conclusion contradicts more than 15 peer-reviewed studies and more than a decade of research on the subject conducted by various international research groups, and thus, it would be considered as a ground-breaking finding if the methods were scientifically sound. However, the methods and arguments presented by the authors have major errors and the presented conclusions are consequently wrong

Corrigendum to "COSMOS: the COsmic-ray Soil Moisture Observing System" published in Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 16, 4079–4099, 2012

No abstract available

A prospective cohort study of dietary patterns of non-western migrants in the Netherlands in relation to risk factors for cardiovascular diseases: HELIUS-Dietary Patterns

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>In Western countries the prevalence of cardiovascular disease (CVD) is often higher in non-Western migrants as compared to the host population. Diet is an important modifiable determinant of CVD. Increasingly, dietary patterns rather than single nutrients are the focus of research in an attempt to account for the complexity of nutrient interactions in foods. Research on dietary patterns in non-Western migrants is limited and may be hampered by a lack of validated instruments that can be used to assess the habitual diet of non-western migrants in large scale epidemiological studies. The ultimate aims of this study are to (1) understand whether differences in dietary patterns explain differences in CVD risk between ethnic groups, by developing and validating ethnic-specific Food Frequency Questionnaires (FFQs), and (2) to investigate the determinants of these dietary patterns. This paper outlines the design and methods used in the HELIUS-Dietary Patterns study and describes a systematic approach to overcome difficulties in the assessment and analysis of dietary intake data in ethnically diverse populations.</p> <p>Methods/Design</p> <p>The HELIUS-Dietary Patterns study is embedded in the HELIUS study, a Dutch multi-ethnic cohort study. After developing ethnic-specific FFQs, we will gather data on the habitual intake of 5000 participants (18-70 years old) of ethnic Dutch, Surinamese of African and of South Asian origin, Turkish or Moroccan origin. Dietary patterns will be derived using factor analysis, but we will also evaluate diet quality using hypothesis-driven approaches. The relation between dietary patterns and CVD risk factors will be analysed using multiple linear regression analysis. Potential underlying determinants of dietary patterns like migration history, acculturation, socio-economic factors and lifestyle, will be considered.</p> <p>Discussion</p> <p>This study will allow us to investigate the contribution of the dietary patterns on CVD risk factors in a multi-ethnic population. Inclusion of five ethnic groups residing in one setting makes this study highly innovative as confounding by local environment characteristics is limited. Heterogeneity in the study population will provide variance in dietary patterns which is a great advantage when studying the link between diet and disease.</p