Fantastic Place and Space in China Miéville’s Fiction. Rhetorics of Emancipatory Spatial Changes in the Miévillean New Weird

This dissertation explores how the literary construction of urban space is taking place in the New Weird fiction. The study analyses how, in six books by contemporary British author China Miéville, and whether literary space can be used for emancipation as a critique of capitalism, and if so, how. The paper draws on the conceptual and terminological approaches of space studies, critical map theory and narratology to explore these six books. It aims to establish a hermeneutic model in which literary space functions as a political critique of capitalist state apparatuses and represented superstructures. The thesis scrutinises the Bas-Lag trilogy (Perdido Street Station (2000); The Scar (2002); and Iron Council (2004)). The City and The City (2009); Un Lun Dun (2007); and This Census-taker (2016). This approach links narratology through its engagement with literary narratives and perspectives, interpretation of the city, place/space, third space and cognitive mapping cognitive space. The paper also considers the political aspects of spatial arrangement between the slum and the centre in the spatial representation of ideological state apparatuses. Miéville uses the New Weird as a means of investigative arena for themes such as politics, ideology and the critique of capitalism. He utilises the framework of Marxism, in which he point out the recognition of the capacity of fantastic literature to contaminate the real with the non-real and thereby reveal to the reader the possibility of seeing the world differently, and of bringing the political aspects of urban life into the for those without power. The dissertation interprets space within the framework of Michel Foucault, Henri Lefebvre and Edward W. Soja. The thesis provides insights into the New spatial arrangements of the New Weird, drawing on the context of spatial studies, critical map theory and narratology, and narrative theories and their political aspects

New results and perspectives on R_{AA} measurements below 20 GeV CM-energy at fixed target machines

Transverse momentum spectra of pi^{+/-} at midrapidity are measured at high p_T in p+p and p+Pb collisions at 158 GeV/nucleon beam energy by the NA49 experiment. This study is complementary to our previous results on the same spectra from Pb+Pb collisions. The nuclear modification factors R_{A+A/p+p}, R_{p+A/p+p} and R_{A+A/p+A} as a function of p_T are extracted and compared to RHIC measurements, thus providing insight into the energy dependence of nuclear modification. The modification factor R_{A+A/p+A} proved to be consistent with our previous results on the central to peripheral modification factor R_{CP}. The limitation of our current p_T range is discussed and planned future upgrades are outlined. Some aspects of the FAIR-CBM experiment are also presented as a natural future continuation of the measurements at very high p_T.Comment: Proceedings of Quark Matter 200

Reconstruction of early phase deformations by integrated magnetic and mesotectonic data evaluation

Markers of brittle faulting are widely used for recovering past deformation phases. Rocks often have oriented magnetic fabrics, which can be interpreted as connected to ductile deformation before cementation of the sediment. This paper reports a novel statistical procedure for simultaneous evaluation of AMS (Anisotropy of Magnetic Susceptibility) and fault-slip data.The new method analyzes the AMS data, without linearization techniques, so that weak AMS lineation and rotational AMS can be assessed that are beyond the scope of classical methods. This idea is extended to the evaluation of fault-slip data. While the traditional assumptions of stress inversion are not rejected, the method recovers the stress field via statistical hypothesis testing. In addition it provides statistical information needed for the combined evaluation of the AMS and the mesotectonic (0.1 to 10m) data. In the combined evaluation a statistical test is carried out that helps to decide if the AMS lineation and the mesotectonic markers (in case of repeated deformation of the oldest set of markers) were formed in the same or different deformation phases. If this condition is met, the combined evaluation can improve the precision of the reconstruction. When the two data sets do not have a common solution for the direction of the extension, the deformational origin of the AMS is questionable. In this case the orientation of the stress field responsible for the AMS lineation might be different from that which caused the brittle deformation. Although most of the examples demonstrate the reconstruction of weak deformations in sediments, the new method is readily applicable to investigate the ductile-brittle transition of any rock formation as long as AMS and fault-slip data are available

Prooxidáns és antioxidáns növényi gének a nem-gazda betegségrezisztenciában - funkció meghatározás géncsendesítéssel = Prooxidant and antioxidant plant genes in non-host resistance - functional identification by gene silencing

Prooxidáns, antioxidáns és programozott sejthalállal kapcsolatos gének mRNS-szintű kifejeződését vizsgáltuk az ún. nem-gazda rezisztenciában (=rezisztencia a más növényfajokat fertőző kórokozókkal szemben), vírus-, baktérium- és gomba kórokozókkal fertőzött dohányfélékben (Nicotiana spp.) és árpában. Kimutattuk, hogy a prooxidáns/antioxidáns egyensúly ebben a hatékony, gyors lefolyású rezisztenciaformában is döntő szerepet játszik: a prooxidánsok - elsősorban a szuperoxid - korai felhalmozódását antioxidáns (pl. szuperoxid-dizmutáz, glutation-S-transzferáz) és sejthalál-gátló (BAX inhibitor) gének által termelt fehérjék ellensúlyozzák. Kutatásaink szerint tehát a nem-gazda rezisztencia egyik kulcslépése lehet a kórokozókat gátló korai prooxidáns-felhalmozódás, ill. ezzel egyidőben a megtámadott növény antioxidáns kapacitásának gyors indukciója. Igazoltuk, hogy egy vírus kórokozó (TMV) ellen ható rezisztencia gén (N) terméke egy nem-gazda rezisztenciát előidéző másik vírus (TNV) fertőzésekor pontosan ellenkező hatást válthat ki, ugyanis fogékonysági faktorként hathat. Az N gént Nicotiana edwardsonii növényekben csendesítve (expresszióját gátolva) ugyanis a TMV-vel szembeni rezisztencia sérült, a TNV-vel szembeni nem-gazda rezisztencia viszont fokozódott. A vírusokkal szembeni nem-gazda rezisztenciát befolyásoló növényi gének azonosítása/jellemzése a jövő rezisztencia-nemesítését teheti még eredményesebbé. | We have investigated expression of plant genes involved in prooxidant and antioxidant effects and inhibition of programmed cell death during non-host resistance (i.e. resistance to pathogens that infect other plant species) to viral, bacterial and fungal pathogens in Nicotiana spp. and barley. We have shown the pivotal role of prooxidant/antioxidant balance during this quick and effective form of resistance: the early accumulation of prooxidants - primarily superoxide - is counteracted by proteins encoded by antioxidant (e.g. superoxide dismutase and glutathione S-transferase) and cell death inhibitor (BAX inhibitor) genes. According to our research a key component of non-host resistance could be the early prooxidant accumulation that inhibits pathogens and the quick induction of the antioxidant capacity of attacked plants. We have pointed to the fact that the product of a plant resistance gene (N) effective against a virus (TMV) could have a completely opposite effect during infection by a virus (TNV) that elicits non-host resistance: in the latter case the same product may function as a susceptibility factor. Following silencing of the N gene in Nicotiana edwardsonii resistance to TMV was compromised, while non-host resistance to TNV was enhanced. Identification and characterization of plant genes that influence non-host resistance to viruses could provide valuable information for resistance breeding in the future

Speech de-identification with deep neural networks

Cloud-based speech services are powerful practical tools but the privacy of the speakers raises important legal concerns when exposed to the Internet. We propose a deep neural network solution that removes personal characteristics from human speech by converting it to the voice of a Text-to-Speech (TTS) system before sending the utterance to the cloud. The network learns to transcode sequences of vocoder parameters, delta and delta-delta features of human speech to those of the TTS engine. We evaluated several TTS systems, vocoders and audio alignment techniques. We measured the performance of our method by (i) comparing the result of speech recognition on the de-identified utterances with the original texts, (ii) computing the Mel-Cepstral Distortion of the aligned TTS and the transcoded sequences, and (iii) questioning human participants in A-not-B, 2AFC and 6AFC tasks. Our approach achieves the level required by diverse applications