The story of Oh: the aesthetics and rhetoric of a common vowel sound

Studies in Musical Theatre is the only peer-reviewed journal dedicated to musical theatre. It was launched in 2007 and is now in its seventh volume. It has an extensive international readership and is edited by Dominic Symonds and George Burrows. This article investigates the use of the ‘word’ ‘Oh’ in a variety of different performance idioms. Despite its lack of ‘meaning’, the sound is used in both conversation and poetic discourse, and I discuss how it operates communicatively and expressively through contextual resonances, aesthetic manipulation and rhetorical signification. The article first considers the aesthetically modernist work of Cathy Berberian in Bussotti’s La Passion Selon Sade; then it considers the rhetorically inflected use of ‘Oh’ to construct social resonance in popular song;finally, it discusses two important uses of the sound ‘Oh’ which bookend the Broadway musical Oklahoma!, serving to consolidate the allegorical and musico-dramatic narrative of the show

A RANS modelling approach for predicting powering performance of ships in waves

In this paper, a modelling technique for simulating self-propelled ships in waves is presented. The flow is modelled using a RANS solver coupled with an actuator disk model for the propeller. The motion of the ship is taken into consideration in the definition of the actuator disk region as well as the advance ratio of the propeller. The RPM of the propeller is controlled using a PID-controller with constraints added on the maximum permissible RPM increase rate. Results are presented for a freely surging model in regular waves with different constraints put on the PID-controller. The described method shows promising results and allows for the studying of several factors relating to selfpropulsion. However, more validation data is needed to judge the accuracy of the mode

Matching methods to produce maps for pest risk analysis to resources

Decision support systems (DSSs) for pest risk mapping are invaluable for guiding pest risk analysts seeking to add maps to pest risk analyses (PRAs). Maps can help identify the area of potential establishment, the area at highest risk and the endangered area for alien plant pests. However, the production of detailed pest risk maps may require considerable time and resources and it is important to match the methods employed to the priority, time and detail required. In this paper, we apply PRATIQUE DSSs to Phytophthora austrocedrae, a pathogen of the Cupressaceae, Thaumetopoea pityocampa, the pine processionary moth, Drosophila suzukii, spotted wing Drosophila, and Thaumatotibia leucotreta, the false codling moth. We demonstrate that complex pest risk maps are not always a high priority and suggest that simple methods may be used to determine the geographic variation in relative risks posed by invasive alien species within an area of concern

Efficiencies of Quantum Optical Detectors

We propose a definition for the efficiency that can be universally applied to all classes of quantum optical detectors. This definition is based on the maximum amount of optical loss that a physically plausible device can experience while still replicating the properties of a given detector. We prove that detector efficiency cannot be increased using linear optical processing. That is, given a set of detectors, as well as arbitrary linear optical elements and ancillary light sources, it is impossible to construct detection devices that would exhibit higher efficiencies than the initial set.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure

A Review and Meta-Analysis of Age-Based Stereotype Threat: Negative Stereotypes, Not Facts, Do the Damage.

Stereotype threat effects arise when an individual feels at risk of confirming a negative stereotype about their group and consequently underperforms on stereotype relevant tasks (Steele, 2010). Among older people, underperformance across cognitive and physical tasks is hypothesized to result from age-based stereotype threat (ABST) because of negative age-stereotypes regarding older adults’ competence. The present review and meta-analyses examine 22 published and 10 unpublished articles, including 82 effect sizes (N = 3882) investigating ABST on older people’s (Mage = 69.5) performance. The analysis revealed a significant small-to-medium effect of ABST (d = .28) and important moderators of the effect size. Specifically, older adults are more vulnerable to ABST when (a) stereotype-based rather than fact-based manipulations are used (d = .52); (b) when performance is tested using cognitive measures (d = .36); and (c) occurs reliably when the dependent variable is measured proximally to the manipulation. The review raises important theoretical and methodological issues, and areas for future research. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved

Fluctuation Spectra and Force Generation in Non-equilibrium Systems

Many biological systems are appropriately viewed as passive inclusions immersed in an active bath: from proteins on active membranes to microscopic swimmers confined by boundaries. The non-equilibrium forces exerted by the active bath on the inclusions or boundaries often regulate function, and such forces may also be exploited in artificial active materials. Nonetheless, the general phenomenology of these active forces remains elusive. We show that the fluctuation spectrum of the active medium, the partitioning of energy as a function of wavenumber, controls the phenomenology of force generation. We find that for a narrow, unimodal spectrum, the force exerted by a non-equilibrium system on two embedded walls depends on the width and the position of the peak in the fluctuation spectrum, and oscillates between repulsion and attraction as a function of wall separation. We examine two apparently disparate examples: the Maritime Casimir effect and recent simulations of active Brownian particles. A key implication of our work is that important non-equilibrium interactions are encoded within the fluctuation spectrum. In this sense the noise becomes the signal

Effects of hydrocarbon contamination on soil microbial community and enzyme activity

Acknowledgment I would like to gratefully acknowledge the government of Saudi Arabia for the scholarship and financial support.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Unravelling Nanoconfined Films of Ionic Liquids

The confinement of an ionic liquid between charged solid surfaces is treated using an exactly solvable 1D Coulomb gas model. The theory highlights the importance of two dimensionless parameters: the fugacity of the ionic liquid, and the electrostatic interaction energy of ions at closest approach relative to thermal energy, in determining how the disjoining pressure exerted on the walls depends on the geometrical confinement. Our theory reveals that thermodynamic fluctuations play a vital role in the "squeezing out" of charged layers as the confinement is increased. The model shows good qualitative agreement with previous experimental data, with all parameters independently estimated without fitting