Tango: the intimate dance of conflict transformation

The tango. Two dancers stand apart at first, looking at each other. The connection begins before the leader invites the follower to enter into the embrace. There is delicious enjoyment in the moment when both dancers find comfort and stability as the music begins to beat a rhythm in their blood and in their feet. The dancers are drawn together into the intimate space they will share for the next three minutes, repeated for as long as they wish, and knowing that no two dances with the same partner will ever be the same

Shortcuts in arithmetic

Thesis (Ed.M.)--Boston Universit

The Roughness Properties of Small Ice-Bearing Craters at the South Pole of the Moon: Implications for Accessing Fresh Water Ice in Future Surface Operations

The lunar poles provide a fascinating thermal environment capable of cold-trapping water ice on geologic timescales [1]. While there have been many observations indicating the presence of water ice at the lunar surface [e.g., 24], it is still not clear when this ice was delivered to the Moon. The timing of volatile dep-osition provides important constraints on the origin of lunar ice because different delivery mechanisms have been active at different times throughout lunar history. We previously found that some small (<10 km) cra-ters at the south pole of the Moon have morphologies suggestive of relatively young ages, on the basis of crisp crater rims [5]. These craters are too small to date with robust cratering statistics [5], but the possibility of ice in young craters is intriguing because it suggests that there is some recent and perhaps ongoing mechanism that is delivering or redistributing water to polar cold traps. Therefore, understanding if these small, ice-bear-ing craters are indeed young is essential in understand-ing the age and source of volatiles on the Moon. Here we take a new approach to understand the ages of these small polar cold traps: analyzing the roughness properties of small ice-bearing craters. It is well under-stood that impact crater properties (e.g., morphology, rock abundance, and roughness) evolve with time due to a variety of geologic and space-weathering processes [611]. Topographic roughness is a measurement of the local deviation from the mean topography, providing a measurement of surface texture, and is a powerful tool for evaluating surface evolution over geologic time [e.g., 1114]. In this study we analyze the roughness of southern lunar craters (40S90S) from all geologic eras, and determine how the roughness of small (<10 km) ice-bearing craters compare. We discuss the implications of the ages of ice-bearing south polar craters, and potential strategies for accessing fresh ice on the Moon

Acting Beckett : towards a poetics of performance

Samuel Beckett’s writing stalks the progress of twentieth century art and culture. Seen as both symptomatic of the practices of high Modernism, as well as influential within the fragmented tropes of postmodernity, his drama is often referred to as exploring the limits of an incrementally reductive approach to performance in which fine margins – through time and space; sound and image – are used in the determination of an authentic rendering of his work. This study argues that it is the figure of the actor, in all its rich signifying complexity, which provides us with a lens through which we can evaluate Beckett’s work for theatre and other media.In considering the Beckettian actor, the study grounds a poetics of performance in a principally phenomenological discourse in which theatre history and popular culture throughout the twentieth century is seen as a key factor both in Beckett’s writing and theatre directing, as well as in the often contested development of the actor’s craft. Throughout, it is the theme of music and musicality that provides the actor with a starting point, or modus vivendi, in which the individual self or personality of the actor is valorized alongside other practices based on acquired technique and its application.This study does not propose instruction or a range of techniques for the actor to pursue in furthering their understanding of Beckett’s canon. Instead, this work establishes an understanding of the Beckettian actor in which strategies of implication, born out of sometimes paradoxical representations of silence, absence and abstraction, subordinate acting pedagogies based on programmed curricula. This examination of an implied actor illustrates the various ways in which notable, as well as relatively unknown, actors have sought to reconcile some of these issues. In doing so, the study also interrogates my own creative practice as a director and performer of Beckett’s drama over a fifteen-year period

Stripes ordering in self-stratification experiments of binary and ternary granular mixtures

The self-stratification of binary and ternary granular mixtures has been experimentally investigated. Ternary mixtures lead to a particular ordering of the strates which was not accounted for in former explanations. Bouncing grains are found to have an important effect on strate formation. A complementary mechanism for self-stratification of binary and ternary granular mixtures is proposed.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures. submitted for pubication, guess wher

Extremal driving as a mechanism for generating long-term memory

It is argued that systems whose elements are renewed according to an extremal criterion can generally be expected to exhibit long-term memory. This is verified for the minimal extremally driven model, which is first defined and then solved for all system sizes N\geq2 and times t\geq0, yielding exact expressions for the persistence R(t)=[1+t/(N-1)]^{-1} and the two-time correlation function C(t_{\rm w}+t,t_{\rm w})=(1-1/N)(N+t_{\rm w})/(N+t_{\rm w}+t-1). The existence of long-term memory is inferred from the scaling of C(t_{\rm w}+t,t_{\rm w})\sim f(t/t_{\rm w}), denoting {\em aging}. Finally, we suggest ways of investigating the robustness of this mechanism when competing processes are present.Comment: 5 pages, no figures; requires IOP style files. To appear as a J. Phys. A. lette

Factorization in Formal Languages

We consider several novel aspects of unique factorization in formal languages. We reprove the familiar fact that the set uf(L) of words having unique factorization into elements of L is regular if L is regular, and from this deduce an quadratic upper and lower bound on the length of the shortest word not in uf(L). We observe that uf(L) need not be context-free if L is context-free. Next, we consider variations on unique factorization. We define a notion of "semi-unique" factorization, where every factorization has the same number of terms, and show that, if L is regular or even finite, the set of words having such a factorization need not be context-free. Finally, we consider additional variations, such as unique factorization "up to permutation" and "up to subset"

SCOS2: ESA's new generation of mission control systems

The paper describes the next generation Spacecraft Control System infrastructure (SCOSII) which is being developed at the Operations Centre (ESOC) of the European Space Agency (ESA). The objectives of the new system and selected areas of the proposed hardware and software approach are described