‘On different levels ourselves went forward’ : pageantry, class politics and narrative form in Virginia Woolf’s late writing

This essay focuses on questions of class, politics and narrative form in Virginia Woolf’s late writing, in particular her posthumously published novel, Between the Acts. The novel is frequently discussed by critics in relation to the Second World War; this essay pushes an overlapping but critically overlooked context into view. It reads the text in the light of late 1930s leftist cultural production, particularly those discourses about national history and cultural traditions that loomed large during the popular front period. The essay argues that Woolf’s last novel is the conflicted location of a search for a more inclusive narrative form

Classifying the saline seeps of a region into best-management groupings

Non-Peer Reviewedover 60 salinity investigations have been completed within a 9 township area near Avonlea, Saskatchewan. This level of study has provided detailed information on a large number of seeps. These have been grouped according to their common features and general landscape position, creating 3 seep classes: Uplands/Side-hill; Plains Transitional; and Bedrock Controlled. Recommendations from detailed farmer reports and local hydrogeologic test sites have been used to derive "best management" strategies for each seep class. This approach will provide direction toward the treatment of future salinity requests, while promoting the realistic management of existing seeps

The impact of sea-level rise on tidal characteristics around Australia

An established tidal model, validated for present-day conditions, is used to investigate the effect of large levels of sea-level rise (SLR) on tidal characteristics around Australasia. SLR is implemented through a uniform depth increase across the model domain, with a comparison between the implementation of coastal defences or allowing low-lying land to flood. The complex spatial response of the semi-diurnal M2 constituent does not appear to be linear with the imposed SLR. The most predominant features of this response are the generation of new amphidromic systems within the Gulf of Carpentaria and large-amplitude changes in the Arafura Sea, to the north of Australia, and within embayments along Australia's north-west coast. Dissipation from M2 notably decreases along north-west Australia but is enhanced around New Zealand and the island chains to the north. The diurnal constituent, K1, is found to decrease in amplitude in the Gulf of Carpentaria when flooding is allowed. Coastal flooding has a profound impact on the response of tidal amplitudes to SLR by creating local regions of increased tidal dissipation and altering the coastal topography. Our results also highlight the necessity for regional models to use correct open boundary conditions reflecting the global tidal changes in response to SLR.</p

Continuation method for nonlinear complementarity problems via normal maps

Cataloged from PDF version of article.In a recent paper by Chen and Mangasarian (C. Chen, O.L. Mangasarian, A class of smoothing functions for nonlinear and mixed complementarity problems, Computational Optimization and Applications 2 (1996), 97±138) a class of parametric smoothing functions has been proposed to approximate the plus function present in many optimization and complementarity related problems. This paper uses these smoothing functions to approximate the normal map formulation of nonlinear complementarity problems (NCP). Properties of the smoothing function are investigated based on the density functions that de®nes the smooth approximations. A continuation method is then proposed to solve the NCPs arising from the approximations. Su cient conditions are provided to guarantee the boundedness of the solution trajectory. Furthermore, the structure of the subproblems arising in the proposed continuation method is analyzed for di erent choices of smoothing functions. Computational results of the continuation method are reported. Ó 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved

Changes in ESCRT-III filament geometry drive membrane remodelling and fission in silico

BACKGROUND: ESCRT-III is a membrane remodelling filament with the unique ability to cut membranes from the inside of the membrane neck. It is essential for the final stage of cell division, the formation of vesicles, the release of viruses, and membrane repair. Distinct from other cytoskeletal filaments, ESCRT-III filaments do not consume energy themselves, but work in conjunction with another ATP-consuming complex. Despite rapid progress in describing the cell biology of ESCRT-III, we lack an understanding of the physical mechanisms behind its force production and membrane remodelling. // RESULTS: Here we present a minimal coarse-grained model that captures all the experimentally reported cases of ESCRT-III driven membrane sculpting, including the formation of downward and upward cones and tubules. This model suggests that a change in the geometry of membrane bound ESCRT-III filaments-from a flat spiral to a 3D helix-drives membrane deformation. We then show that such repetitive filament geometry transitions can induce the fission of cargo-containing vesicles. // CONCLUSIONS: Our model provides a general physical mechanism that explains the full range of ESCRT-III-dependent membrane remodelling and scission events observed in cells. This mechanism for filament force production is distinct from the mechanisms described for other cytoskeletal elements discovered so far. The mechanistic principles revealed here suggest new ways of manipulating ESCRT-III-driven processes in cells and could be used to guide the engineering of synthetic membrane-sculpting systems

Further evidence for linearly-dispersive Cooper pairs

A recent Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) model of several cuprate superconductors is based on bosonic Cooper pairs (CPs) moving in 3D with a quadratic energy-momentum (dispersion) relation. The 3D BEC condensate-fraction vs. temperature (T/Tc, where Tc is the BEC transition temperature) formula poorly fits penetration-depth data for two cuprates in the range (1/2, 1]. We show how these fits are dramatically improved assuming cuprates to be quasi-2D, and how equally good fits obtain for conventional 3D and quasi-1D nanotube superconducting data, provided the correct CP dispersion is assumed in BEC at their assumed corresponding dimensionalities. This is offered as additional concrete empirical evidence for linearly-dispersive pairs in another recent BEC scenario of superconductors within which a BCS condensate turns out to be a very special case.Comment: 9 pages, 1 figur

Application of Beamforming Methods to Full-Scale Military Jet Noise

Over the past decade, beamforming in aeroacoustics applications have undergone significant advances. Cross beamforming methods improve upon traditional beamforming in that they relax the assumption of multiple-source incoherence. This paper compares the abilities of three cross beamforming methods to reproduce source and field characteristics for an extended, partially correlated source that mimics supersonic jet noise radiation. Standard cross beamforming and two related methods that involve regularization—the hybrid method and improved generalized inverse beamforming—are applied to a numerically generated dataset along a near-field line. Estimated levels and coherence lengths are compared with benchmarks at the source as well as near and far-field locations. All three methods are successful in reproducing the field and source properties in high-amplitude regions. Although regularization generally helps to improve both source and field reconstructions, results are sensitive to regularization parameters, particularly for the generalized inverse method. The successful application of the three methods demonstrate the utility of cross-beamforming in formulating equivalent source models for accurate field prediction of complex sources, including jet noise

Cosmic Dawn and Epoch of Reionization Foreground Removal with the SKA

The exceptional sensitivity of the SKA will allow observations of the Cosmic Dawn and Epoch of Reionization (CD/EoR) in unprecedented detail, both spectrally and spatially. This wealth of information is buried under Galactic and extragalactic foregrounds, which must be removed accurately and precisely in order to reveal the cosmological signal. This problem has been addressed already for the previous generation of radio telescopes, but the application to SKA is different in many aspects. In this chapter we summarise the contributions to the field of foreground removal in the context of high redshift and high sensitivity 21-cm measurements. We use a state-of-the-art simulation of the SKA Phase 1 observations complete with cosmological signal, foregrounds and frequency-dependent instrumental effects to test both parametric and non-parametric foreground removal methods. We compare the recovered cosmological signal using several different statistics and explore one of the most exciting possibilities with the SKA --- imaging of the ionized bubbles. We find that with current methods it is possible to remove the foregrounds with great accuracy and to get impressive power spectra and images of the cosmological signal. The frequency-dependent PSF of the instrument complicates this recovery, so we resort to splitting the observation bandwidth into smaller segments, each of a common resolution. If the foregrounds are allowed a random variation from the smooth power law along the line of sight, methods exploiting the smoothness of foregrounds or a parametrization of their behaviour are challenged much more than non-parametric ones. However, we show that correction techniques can be implemented to restore the performances of parametric approaches, as long as the first-order approximation of a power law stands.Comment: Accepted for publication in the SKA Science Book 'Advancing Astrophysics with the Square Kilometre Array', to appear in 201

Transitions between lifetime alcohol use, regular use and remission: Results from the 2004 South African Stress and Health Survey

Background. Hazardous alcohol consumption presents a serious threat to the health and wellbeing of all people and is linked to chronic and acute health problems.Objectives. To: (i) estimate the prevalence of alcohol use disorders and remission from alcohol abuse and dependence in the South African (SA) population; and (ii) determine whether age of onset, education, sex and level of cohort alcohol use are associated with commencement of use, regularity of use, and transitions to and remission from more harmful levels of use.Methods. The study was a nationally representative sample of 4 315  individuals aged ≥18 years. In a multistage, area probability sample of adults, data were collected from 4 311 alcohol users using the World Mental Health Survey Initiative version of the Composite International Diagnostic Interview version 3.0. All analyses were carried out using SAS version 9.4.Results. Of the respondents, 40.6% indicated lifetime use of alcohol,  35.3% reported regular use, and 8.8% met diagnostic criteria for alcohol abuse and 2.7% for alcohol dependence. The prevalence of remission from lifetime abuse without dependence was 55.9%. The median age of onset of alcohol use was 20 years, with transition from use to regular use occurring within ~1 - 3 years. The results suggest that males, students (compared with those who had completed a high level of education) and greater  alcohol use in the respondent’s birth cohort were all associated with increased odds of commencing alcohol use. For transitions from use to regular use, increased odds were associated with males, greater birth cohort alcohol use, low education and later (&gt;21 years) onset of first alcohol use.Conclusions. Our findings suggest that cohort alcohol use is associated with transition to commencement of use and from use to regular use in the general SA population. The study further highlighted the need for  interventions among males and university students, given that hazardous alcohol consumption seems to be the most prevalent public health issue encountered by university students and males