ΣΥΣΤΑΣΙΣ ΠΡΑΓΜΑΤΩΝ: The Playwright's Use of the Action in Athenian Tragedy

This thesis contributes to the understanding of the stagecraft and composition of Athenian tragedy through a re-evaluation of its component elements within the structure. I undertake a re-interpretation of the Aristotelian terms for ‘plot’, which allows for a more nuanced examination of events occurring within a tragedy. As Aristotle notes, the systasis of pragmata is the structure of events that forms a tragedy. The muthos is the way in which these events are presented and includes the actions and words of the dramatis personae. Pragmata are constituent elements of both the systasis and muthos. This thesis identifies and evaluates the pragma’s effects upon the movement of the systasis, its contribution to the enrichment of the muthos and its influence on audience engagement with a performance through both enacted and non-enacted forms. My approach involves a rigorous examination of the elements common to an enacted pragma, before identifying the variations therein. While a pragma involves all actions which serve the same general function, every instance of a pragma is unique. Each chapter in turn focuses on a particular pragma, before examining the role of that pragma within an entire tragedy. Enactments of each pragma in extant tragedy are tabled in appendices. The pragma of return home is examined within Andromache; recognition in Sophocles’ Elektra; supplication in Hekabe; and reporting in Women of Trachis. This analysis demonstrates the dynamic role and versatility of different types of pragma within a tragedy, and the playwright’s ingenuity as demonstrated by his deployment of this element. No single approach or methodology can by itself fully interpret an Athenian tragedy, but a focus on a particular pragma illuminates different themes and emphases and ultimately provides us with a better understanding of a tragedy

Addressing water poverty under climate crisis: implications for social policy

Access to safe, clean and affordable water is a basic human right and a global goal towards which climate change poses new challenges that heavily impact the health and wellbeing of people across the globe and exacerbate or create new inequalities. These challenges are shaped by a number of geographical and social conditions that, apart from the risks of weather-driven impacts on water, include water governance and management arrangements in place, including pricing tariffs, and the interplay of social and economic inequalities. Building on examples from Australia, Scotland and England and Wales that illustrate access to water in different types of water provision systems, and regarding to aspects of access, quality and affordability, this paper explores the types of challenges related to water poverty in the context of climate crisis and reflects on the multiple dimensions of water poverty oriented social policy at the interplay of climate change associated risks

Varying c and Particle Horizons

We explore what restrictions may impose the second law of thermodynamics on varying speed of light theories. We find that the attractor scenario solving the flatness problem is consistent with the generalized second law at late time.Comment: Latex file, 8 pages, to be published in Physics Letters

The LBDS Hercules sample of mJy radio sources at 1.4 GHz - II. Redshift distribution, radio luminosity function, and the high-redshift cut-off

{Abridged} A combination of spectroscopy and broadband photometric redshifts has been used to find the complete redshift distribution of the Hercules sample of millijansky radio sources. These data have been used to examine the evolution of the radio luminosity function (RLF) and its high-redshift cut-off. New redshifts have been measured for eleven sources, and a further ten upper limits are given. The total number of sources with known redshifts in the sample is now 47 (65%). We calculated broadband photometric redshifts for the remaining one-third of the sample. For the luminosity range probed by the present study (P_1.4 > 10^24.5 W/Hz/sr), we use the V/V_max test to show conclusively that there is a deficit of high-redshift (z > 2-2.5) objects. Comparison with the model RLFs of Dunlop & Peacock (1990) shows that our data can now exclude pure luminosity evolution. Two of the models of DP90, and the RLF deduced by direct binning of the data, both favour a luminosity dependence for the high-redshift cut-off, with lower-luminosity sources (P_1.4 \simeq 10^24 W/Hz/sr) in decline by z \simeq 1-1.5 while higher-luminosity sources (P_1.4 \simeq 10^{25-26} W/Hz/sr) decline in comoving number density beyond z \simeq 2-2.5.Comment: Revised version submitted to MNRAS. 16 pages, 12 figure

A Flipped SO(10) GUT Model and the Fermion Mass Hierarchy

We present a viable flipped version of the SO(10) model consistent with the phenomenological requirements of having a non-trivial quark mixing matrix, natural doublet-triplet splitting, and a single pair of light electroweak Higgs doublet scalar bosons. In the presence of suitable non-renormalizable superpotential terms the model can reproduce the hierarchy observed in quark masses and mixings as well as an acceptable neutrino mass generated via the seesaw mechanism needed to explain dark matter and solar neutrino data.Comment: tex file, 20 page

Starburst Galaxies and the X-Ray Background

Integrated X-ray spectra of an evolving population of starburst galaxies (SBGs) are determined based on the observed spectra of local SBGs. In addition to emission from hot gas and binary systems, our model SBG spectrum includes a nonthermal component from Compton scattering of relativistic electrons by the intense ambient far-IR and the (steeply evolving) CMB radiation fields. We use these integrated spectra to calculate the levels of contribution of SBGs to the cosmic X-ray background assuming that their density evolves as (1+z)^q up to a maximal redshift of 5. We find that at energies <10 keV this contribution is at a level of few percent for q up to 3, and in the range of 5%-15% for q ~ 4.5. The Compton component is predicted to be the main SBG emission at high energies, and its relative contribution gets progressively higher for increasing redshift.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figures; accepted for publication in A&

Supernova Bounds on Supersymmetric RR-parity Violating Interactions

We re-examine resonant massless-neutrino conversions in a dense medium induced by flavour changing neutral current (FCNC) interactions. We show how the observed $\bar\nu_e$ energy spectra from SN1987a and the supernova $r$-process nucleosynthesis provide constraints on supersymmetric models with $R$ parity violation, which are much more stringent than those obtained from the laboratory. We also suggest that resonant massless-neutrino conversions may play a positive role in supernova shock reheating. Finally, we examine the constraints on explicit $R$-parity-violating FCNCs in the presence of non-zero neutrino masses in the eV range, as indicated by present hot dark matter observations.Comment: latex file, 19 pages, including 5 figure