The Paleocene cephalopod fauna from pebble point, Victoria (Australia)-fulcrum between two Eras

Three species belonging to three genera of early Cenozoic nautilid cephalopods are described from Paleocene aged beds of the Pebble Point and Dilwyn formations, Victoria, Australia: Aturoidea distans Teichert, Eutrephoceras victorianum Teichert, both previously known from these deposits, and Nautilus praepompilius Shimansky, previously unknown from Australia. Here we present new occurrence and paleoecological information about these three taxa based on previously and newly collected specimens from Pebble Point Formation beds, as well as presenting the first paleotemperature analyses for Australian nautiloid cephalopods of any age. We sampled for shell carbonates from the single known specimen of Nautilus praepompililus, as well as from a specimen of Aturoidea distans from the Pebble Point beds. The A. distans samples showed temperature of calcification to have been between 20 and 25°C; and for N. praepompilius the temperatures were between 18 and 21°C. There were too few samples to provide statistical analyses, yet the implication is that these two taxa inhabited different depths during calcification. For comparison, we have sampled shell carbonates from the only known extant site where two different nautilid genera coexist, Manus Island, Papua New Guinea. There, specimens of Nautilus pompilius and Allonautilus scrobiculatus calcified (1984 specimens) at temperatures of 12 to 17°C, conforming to previous measurements in the literature and significantly colder than any of the Paleocene specimens sampled here

Generalized binary arrays from quasi-orthogonal cocycles

Generalized perfect binary arrays (GPBAs) were used by Jedwab to construct perfect binary arrays. A non-trivial GPBA can exist only if its energy is 2 or a multiple of 4. This paper introduces generalized optimal binary arrays (GOBAs) with even energy not divisible by 4, as analogs of GPBAs. We give a procedure to construct GOBAs based on a characterization of the arrays in terms of 2-cocycles. As a further application, we determine negaperiodic Golay pairs arising from generalized optimal binary sequences of small length.Junta de Andalucía FQM-01

On quasi-orthogonal cocycles

We introduce the notion of quasi-orthogonal cocycle. This is motivated in part by the maximal determinant problem for square {±1}-matrices of size congruent to 2 modulo 4. Quasi-orthogonal cocycles are analogous to the orthogonal cocycles of algebraic design theory. Equivalences with new and known combinatorial objects afforded by this analogy, such as quasi-Hadamard groups, relative quasi-difference sets, and certain partially balanced incomplete block designs, are proved.Junta de Andalucía FQM-01

The Intensification of the Novel: Ayn Rand's and Ivo van Hove's The Fountainhead

This chapter reads the recent theatrical adaptation of Ayn Rand's 1943 novel _The Fountainhead_ by Toneelgroep Amsterdam (TGA). It considers the adaptation as a new departure for its director, Ivo van Hove who, prior to 2014, had consistently claimed that he had no interest in bringing novels to the stage. The chapter then goes on to consider the specifics of how van Hove reads Rand's novel as an argument for human creativity and freedom in a way that is resonant with the ideology of films (many from the 1960s and 70s) that TGA have adapted. It considers the specifics of Van Hove's adaptation under the four headings of Cinema, Writing, Love and Light