The classification and prediction of macroinvertebrate communities in British rivers

This article describes the progress of the River Communities Project which commenced in 1977. This project aimed to develop a sensitive and practical system for river site classification using macroinvertebrates as an objective means of appraising the status of British rivers. The relationship between physical and chemical features of sites and their biological communities were examined. Sampling was undertaken on 41 British rivers. Ordination techniques were used to analyze data and the sites were classified into 16 groups using multiple discrimination analysis. The potential for using the environmental data to predict to which group a site belonged and the fauna likely to be present was investigated

SEA/WOMAN

A new laboratory research performance by Anna Furse, Athletes of the Heart, UK) in collaboration with Maja Mitic (DAH Teatar, Serbia) and Antonella Diana (Teatret OM, Denmark) based on Henrik Ibsen's 'The lady from the sea' (1888). The project is an AHRC/ACE funded project as part of the Pinter Centre for Performance and Creative Writing's Fractured Narratives project. It has been touring in the UK and to Beirut, Lebanon

Staying in Touch

In this paper – that draws from and elaborates on a 2011 chapter ‘Being Touched’ – explores the touch sense today in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, from its cultural, physical, social, psychological affects and meanings as well as the semantics of the term itself in the English language and what this reveals. If as Classen proposes, touch might be the “hungriest sense of post modernity” (Classen, 2005, p.2) in normal society, during the pandemic this reached levels of global famine. Introducing Deleuze and Guattari’s ideas on ‘haptic’ space and how they comprehend space as ‘smooth’ or ‘striated’ , I use their metaphors to compare and contrast two diametrically differing dance forms; classical ballet and Contact Improvisation (CI). The latter opens to discussion of Asian martial art forms that influenced the development of CI. I conclude with my central purpose in this piece: to suggest that touch, when read from an interdisciplinary perspective, might register as a sense with far-reaching significance beyond either its physiological or psychological connotations; and when practised professionally offers an alternative social model to hierarchical power relationships on the one hand, and might counter the undermining affect of a technological capitalist society on individual experience

MIMO transmission equation

Journal ArticleMultiple-input, multiple-output (MIMO) antenna systems such as the one depicted in Fig. 1 offer capacity benefits over their single-input, single-output (SISO) counterparts [1], thus attracting considerable current research. MIMO performance depends on a wide range of parameters [1] including radiation efficiency, correlation [2], mutual coupling [3], matching efficiency and polarization misalignment [4]. No single simulation method has been described that includes each of these effects so critical to handset array designs. This work synthesizes a comprehensive model to incorporate each of these effects. In order to manage the complexity of such a model, the MIMO Transmission Equation is introduced-similar to the well-known Friis Transmission Equation

Don Juan Who?

DON JUAN.WHO?/DON JUAN.KDO? in 2007 with Mladinsko Theatre, Ljubljana, Slovenia. It premiered in Ljubljana in September and previewed at The Shunt Vaults in London on October 2007. Produced by ArtsAgenda, Executive producer Mik Flood, further touring, including to the UK is planned for 2008 with FeEAST and beyond. For further information visit: www.athletesoftheheart.org where a link to the original Don Juan site can also be found

Problem and treatment of DC offsets in FDTD simulations

Journal ArticleThis paper discusses the causes of and some solutions to the commonly observed problem of dc field offsets in finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) simulations. DC electric and magnetic field offsets are shown to be valid calculated responses of the modeled systems, resulting from interaction between the turn-on characteristics of the source and the properties of the models. The dc offsets may be avoided in the time domain by tailoring the source waveforms or in the frequency domain by post-processing the FDTD output

Cyber Studio

From a project concept by Anna Furse with Zeljko Hrs. The term 'cyber studio' was used by Anna Furse, Artistic Director of Athletes of the Heart, UK, who commissioned this programme to facilitate collaboration across 3 countries by a company of dispersed performers for the purposes of creating a text for her production DON JUAN.WHO?/DON JUAN.KDO? in 2007 with Mladinsko Theatre, Ljubljana, Slovenia. The 'Cyber Studio' assembled by Marko Plahuta was conceived to mimic all the requirements of an ideal theatrical research environment ie a space for live practice, a space to record and store such practice, a space for reflective writing and a facility for collecting research in various media. We also wanted to have a public face during our two year research process, which was our blog. The manual explains basic procedures to create an interactive, multiuser computer environment for collaboration in groups with an emphasis on live performance creation ( though it may be used simply for collective research and/or cyber-performance). It also details main software requirements for setting up such an environment. The purpose of the environment we created was to enable a group of artists scattered around the world to collaborate on a theatrical piece. In our project anonymity was essential in our collaborative online writing process. As was the possibility of storing our live writing sessions for future editing. We found the open source 'Upstage' programme extremely user friendly, and eventually worked more in the dialogue box than the stage, though avatars did assist in our 'masquerade'. The Studio provided: * Components of collaborative environment: Upstage - a tool for writing the show/ live improvisation and/or rehearsal * Blog - a multiuser blog that worked as a publishing platform for the authors and actors to publish their thoughts, comments, questions and creative material. * File repository (wiki) – a multiuser environment to store Word documents, pictures, movies and all material that for various reasons (size, ease of publishing, creative reasons) was not suitable for the blog

Convulsive Beauty

Introduction to Nobody Knows But Everybody Remembers by Mark Long - a biographical book on People Show, the UK's first performance art company

Don.Juan.Who?/ Don.Juan. Kdo?: From Cyberspace to Theatre Space

Like so many things we make, this project began with the smallest of ingredients – a word and a hunch. In 1997 I was in Vienna with a production I had directed for the city arts complex Cankarjev Dom in Ljubljana. An adaptation of Peter Handke’s Kasper (Speech Torture), created in an ex-Yugoslav country with the brutal Balkan conflict still rattling on in the east. Our project referred to the rape camps, ethnic cleansing, as well as the rapid modernisation and Americanisation of former communist countries such as was evident in Slovenia. In one of many conversations during the process with one of the actors, Zeljko Hrs, about men and war and sexual politics, I learnt the word inat that translates amongst other things as ‘pugnacious male stubborn pride’ – the stuff of warmongering, by which Zeljko would explain how his former country had fallen apart

A Fast Monte Carlo Simulation for the International Linear Collider Detector

The following paper contains details concerning the motivation for, implementation and performance of a Java-based fast Monte Carlo simulation for a detector designed to be used in the International Linear Collider. This simulation, presently included in the SLAC ILC group's org.lcsim package, reads in standard model or SUSY events in STDHEP file format, stochastically simulates the blurring in physics measurements caused by intrinsic detector error, and writes out an LCIO format file containing a set of final particles statistically similar to those that would have found by a full Monte Carlo simulation. In addition to the reconstructed particles themselves, descriptions of the calorimeter hit clusters and tracks that these particles would have produced are also included in the LCIO output. These output files can then be put through various analysis codes in order to characterize the effectiveness of a hypothetical detector at extracting relevant physical information about an event. Such a tool is extremely useful in preliminary detector research and development, as full simulations are extremely cumbersome and taxing on processor resources; a fast, efficient Monte Carlo can facilitate and even make possible detector physics studies that would be very impractical with the full simulation by sacrificing what is in many cases inappropriate attention to detail for valuable gains in time required for results