The Role of Poetry and Language in Hegel\u27s Philosophy of Art

Hegel\u27s view of poetry clarifies the overall role of language in his system and allows him to makes sense of a difficult linguistic issue: how to distinguish between poetry and prose. For Hegel, this distinction is crucial because it illuminates the different ways poetry and prose allow us to understand ourselves as members of an ethical community. In this paper, I argue, using Hegel, that the distinction between poetry and prose can only properly be understood in terms of their fundamentally different kinds of content instead of in terms of any formal differences between the two. Then, I address an objection to Hegel by Paul de Man which uses Hegel\u27s concept of memory to collapse the distinction between poetry and philosophical prose. Finally, I argue that Hegel can respond to this objection by showing how de Man misunderstands how philosophical thought conceptually develops from memory

PARTITIONING OF FORAGING HABITAT BY THREE KINGFISHER SPECIES (ALCEDINIDAE: CERYLINAE) ALONG THE SOUTH LLANO RIVER, TEXAS

A current northward expansion of Ringed (Megaceryle torquata) and Green Kingfishers (Chloroceryle americana) places them in aquatic systems with the temperate Belted Kingfisher (Megaceryle alcyon). I surveyed a 23.5km stretch of the South Llano River near Junction, TX to determine seasonal abundance and compare foraging perch characteristics among the species. Data was collected on 7 foraging perch characteristics for 250 kingfisher observations across 26 surveys. Mean encounter rate for Green, Belted, and Ringed Kingfishers per river kilometer was 0.48, 0.22, and 0.09, respectively. Seasonal presence varied among the species: Green Kingfishers were present year-round, while the Belted and Ringed Kingfishers were absent from mid-spring to mid-summer. Foraging perch characteristics were analyzed via permutational multivariate analysis of variance using distance matrices; characteristics of Green Kingfisher foraging perches were significantly different from those of Belted and Ringed Kingfishers, while there was no difference in foraging perch characteristics between Belted and Ringed Kingfishers

The Molecular Biophysics of Evolutionary and Physiological Adaptation

Central to any definition of Life is the ability to sense changes in one’s environment and respond in kind. Adaptive phenomena can be found across the biological scales ranging from the nanosecond-scale conformational changes of proteins, to temporary rewiring of metabolic networks, to the 3.5 billion years of evolution that produced the enormous biodiversity we see today. This thesis presents a body of work which attempts to examine the overlap between these three scales of adaptation through the quantitative lens of statistical physics. Namely, we examine how molecular, physiological, and evolutionary adaptation governs a feature common to all life – the regulation of gene expression. We begin by examining the phenomenon of molecular adaptation in the context of allostery, specifically in the context of allosteric transcriptional repressors. Using simple tools of quasi-equilibrium thermodynamics, we derive and experimentally dissect a quantitative model of how such a repressor adapts to different concentrations of an extracellular inducer molecule, modulating the repressors activity and thereby gene expression. While the model is relatively simple, it is remarkably powerful in its ability to draw concrete, quantitative predictions about not only the level of gene expression at a given concentration of inducer, but details of how the repressor responds to changes in the inducer concentration. With a few lines of simple mathematics, we are able to use this model to derive a state variable of the simple repression motif which we term the free energy of the regulatory architecture. This permits us to collapse nearly 500 distinct measurements of the level of gene expression onto a master curve defined by this free energy. We leverage this feature of the model and use data collapse as a method to identify the effects of mutation, a strong evolutionary force responsible for much of the genetic diversity in bacteria. In Chapter 3, we examine how mutations within the allosteric repressor itself can be mapped to changes in the free energy. The precise value of these free energy shifts and their dependence on the inducer concentration reveal different classes of mutations with one class affecting only the DNA-repressor interaction and another class governing the allosteric nature of the repressor. We test these pen-and-paper predictions experimentally and illustrate that given sufficient knowledge of how single mutants behave, the complete phenotypic response of pairwise double mutants can be predicted with quantitative accuracy. With this framework in hand, we turn to exploring how changes in the physiological state of the cell influence the molecular biophysics of the regulatory architecture. We hypothesize that changes in the source of carbon in the growth medium or changes in the growth temperature can be accounted for by the existing model without any additional parameters. We experimentally show that the parameter values determined in one physiological state are inherited when the available carbon source is verified, but changes in the growth temperature require some additional considerations. Chapter 4 as a whole reveals that, while there remains work to be done both theoretically and experimentally when it comes to temperature variation, thermodynamic models can remain powerful tools to draw predictions of gene expression in different physiological contexts. Finally, in Chapter 5, we explore physiological adaptation and cellular decision making where it counts – in the survival of cells to environmental insults. We turn our focus beyond transcriptional regulation and consider the relationship between osmotic shocks, the abundance of mechanosensitive channels, and cellular survival with single cell resolution. Using a combination of quantitative microscopy and tricks of statistical inference, we infer how the probability of a cell surviving an osmotic shock scales as a function of the cell’s number of mechanosensitive channels.</p

The Extension of a Non-Hydrostatic Dynamical Core into the Thermosphere

The non-hydrostatic dynamical core ENDGame (Even Newer Dynamics for the General Atmospheric Modelling of the Environment) is extended into the thermosphere to test its feasability as a whole-atmosphere dynamical core that can simulate the large scale fluid dynamics of the whole atmosphere from the surface to the top of the thermosphere at 600km. This research may have applications in the development of a Sun-to-Earth modelling system involving the Met Office Unified Model, which will be useful for space weather forecasting and chemical climate modelling. Initial attempts to raise the top boundary of ENDGame above ∼100km give rise to instabilities. To explore the potential causes of these instabilities, a one dimensional column version of ENDGame: ENDGame1D, is developed to study the effects of vertically propagating acoustic waves in the dynamical core. A 2D ray-tracing scheme is also developed, which accounts for the numerical effects on wave propagation. It is found that ENDGame’s numerics have a tendency towards the excessive focussing of wave energy towards vertical propagation, and have poor handling of large amplitude waves, also being unable to handle shocks. A key finding is that the physical processes of vertical molecular viscosity and diffusion prevent the excessive growth of wave amplitudes in the thermosphere in ENDGame, which may be crucial to improving ENDGame’s stability as it is extended upwards. Therefore, a fully implicit-in-time implementation of vertical molecular viscosity and diffusion is developed in both ENDGame1D and the full three-dimensional version of ENDGame: ENDGame3D. A new scheme is developed to deal with the viscous and diffusive terms with the dynamics terms in a fully coupled way to avoid time-splitting errors that may arise. The combination of a small amount of off-centring of ENDGame’s semi-implicit formulation and the inclusion of vertical molecular viscosity and diffusion act to make ENDGame significantly more stable, as long as the simulation is able to remain stable up to the molecularly diffused region above an altitude of ∼130km.EPSRCNER

The VFR Hosting Activity of Immigrant and Canadian-Born Residents

The VFR Hosting Activity of Immigrant and Canadian-Born Residents Abstract This study compares the activity of immigrant and non-immigrant residents who host visiting friends and relatives (VFR). A survey of 2201 residents of the Greater Toronto Region asked about recent and general hosting behavior. Findings show that immigrant hosts are more likely to have hosted in previous three years. Further, immigrants who arrived most recently tended to have hosted higher proportions of non-Canadian and first time visitors. In addition, this same group were most likely to take vacation days in the last twelve months in order to host, and also took the most time to spend with their guests. This corresponded with a relatively high activity rate visiting local attractions with their guests. Implications for practitioners revolve around engaging (recent) immigrants as influencers and consumers of tourism in their communities

How unusual is the 2012–2014 California drought?

Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2014. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Geophysical Research Letters 41 (2014): 9017–9023, doi:10.1002/2014GL062433.For the past three years (2012–2014), California has experienced the most severe drought conditions in its last century. But how unusual is this event? Here we use two paleoclimate reconstructions of drought and precipitation for Central and Southern California to place this current event in the context of the last millennium. We demonstrate that while 3 year periods of persistent below-average soil moisture are not uncommon, the current event is the most severe drought in the last 1200 years, with single year (2014) and accumulated moisture deficits worse than any previous continuous span of dry years. Tree ring chronologies extended through the 2014 growing season reveal that precipitation during the drought has been anomalously low but not outside the range of natural variability. The current California drought is exceptionally severe in the context of at least the last millennium and is driven by reduced though not unprecedented precipitation and record high temperatures.D. G. was supported by a NOAA Climate and Global Change Postdoctoral Fellowship. Both authors also acknowledge the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Academic Program Office for support of this research.2015-06-3

Simulations of the Unsteady Flow through the Fastrac Supersonic Turbine

Analysis of the unsteady aerodynamic environment in the Fastrac supersonic turbine is presented. Modal analysis of the turbine blades indicated possible resonance in crucial operating ranges of the turbopump. Unsteady computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis was conducted to support the aerodynamic and structural dynamic assessments of the turbine. Before beginning the analysis, two major problems with current unsteady analytical capabilities had to be addressed: modeling a straight centerline nozzle with the turbine blades and exit guide vanes (EGVs), and reducing run times significantly while maintaining physical accuracy. Modifications were made to the CFD code used in this study to allow the coupled nozzle/blade/EGV analysis and to incorporate Message Passing Interface (MPI) software. Because unsteadiness is a key issue for the Fastrac turbine [and future rocket engine turbines such as for the Reusable Launch Vehicle (RI.V)], calculations were performed for two nozzle-to-blade axial gaps. Calculations were also performed for the nozzle alone, and the results were imposed as an inlet boundary condition for a blade/EGV calculation for the large gap case. These results are compared to the nozzle/blade/EGV results

Human B1 Cell Frequency: Isolation and Analysis of Human B1 Cells

Controversy over the frequency of human B1 cells in normal individuals has arisen as different labs have begun to employ non-uniform techniques to study this population. The phenotypic profile and relative paucity of circulating human B1 cells place constraints on methodology to identify and isolate this population. Multiple steps must be optimized to insure accurate enumeration and optimal purification. In the course of working with human B1 cells we have developed a successful strategy that provides consistent analysis of B1 cells for frequency determination and efficient isolation of B1 cells for functional studies. Here we discuss issues attendant to identifying human B1 cells and outline a carefully optimized approach that leads to uniform and reproducible data