Change in American Indian World Views Illustrated by Oral Narratives and Contemporary Poetry

Unlike other ethnic groups, American Indians had little to celebrate during the bicentennial year in 1976. Other ethnic groups, with the exception of blacks and Mexican Americans, came to America to find a better way of life.[1] In contrast, few American Indians have left this country in search of a better life elsewhere. Hence, being an oppressed minority in a society governed by Western thought and values, Indians can only lament the loss of their rights to live and govern their lives according to particular religious, cultural, and social values, for they have been forced to change world views and way of life under both the overt and covert pressures of Euroamerican society

[Review of] Charles F. Lummis. Pueblo Indian Folk-Stories

Pueblo Indian Folk-Stories is composed of forty-two stories (tales) that range from the teachings (and/or) exploits of Coyote to the adventures of the Wise Bear. These folk tales were collected and translated from Spanish to English, as well as interpreted by the late Charles F. Lummis. The original title of this book was Tile Mall Who Married the Moon, published in 1894 by Century Company New York. This Bison edition is a reprint of another version published in 1910 by Century Company New York; being expanded and retitled. It also has an informative, new introduction by Robert F. Gish. In it we get a historical view of the old pueblo cultures of the Southwest, especially Isleta. The older introduction mainly deals with Indian storytellers and their folklore, focusing on Isleta oral tradition

[Review of] Mariano Azuela. The Underdogs

The Underdogs (Los De Abajo) is a classic novel of the Mexican Revolution. The foreword briefly covers Mexican history, from Spanish Conquest to Independence to Revolution. Its purpose is to focus upon the main sociopolitical and economic problems of the Mexican Revolution

Effect of tillage and crop on arbuscular mycorrhiza

Large-scale inoculation with arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) is generally impractical in most regions and we have little understanding of the factors that determine inoculation success. Nevertheless, the ability to take full advantage of indigenous AMF for sustainable production needs to be developed within cropping systems. We used part of a long-term field experiment to understand the influence of tillage and the preceding crop on AMF colonization over the growing season. Arbuscular mycorrhiza colonization rate was more affected by treatment (tillage or the combination of crop and preceding crop) than by the total number of AMF spores in the soil. Conventional tillage (CT) had a statistically significant negative effect (P £ 0.05) on spore numbers isolated from the soil, but only in the first year of study. However, the AMF colonization rate was significantly reduced by CT, and the roots of wheat, Triticum aestivum, L, cv. Coa after sunflower, Helianthus annuus L., were less well colonized than were those of triticale, X Triticosecale Wittmack, cv. Alter after wheat, but the affect of tillage was more pronounced than was the effect of crop combination. Under no-till there was a significant increase in AMF colonization rate throughout the sampling period in both wheat and triticale,indicating that the extraradical mycelium previously produced acted as a source of inoculum. In general, triticale showed greater AMF colonization than wheat, despite the preceding crop being less mycotrophic. Under these experimental conditions, typical of Mediterranean agricultural systems, AMF colonization responded more strongly to tillage practices than to the combination of crop and preceding crop

Towards a Landau-Ginzburg-type Theory for Granular Fluids

In this paper we show how, under certain restrictions, the hydrodynamic equations for the freely evolving granular fluid fit within the framework of the time dependent Landau-Ginzburg (LG) models for critical and unstable fluids (e.g. spinodal decomposition). The granular fluid, which is usually modeled as a fluid of inelastic hard spheres (IHS), exhibits two instabilities: the spontaneous formation of vortices and of high density clusters. We suppress the clustering instability by imposing constraints on the system sizes, in order to illustrate how LG-equations can be derived for the order parameter, being the rate of deformation or shear rate tensor, which controls the formation of vortex patterns. From the shape of the energy functional we obtain the stationary patterns in the flow field. Quantitative predictions of this theory for the stationary states agree well with molecular dynamics simulations of a fluid of inelastic hard disks.Comment: 19 pages, LaTeX, 8 figure

Self-Diffusion in Simple Models: Systems with Long-Range Jumps

We review some exact results for the motion of a tagged particle in simple models. Then, we study the density dependence of the self diffusion coefficient, $D_N(\rho)$, in lattice systems with simple symmetric exclusion in which the particles can jump, with equal rates, to a set of $N$ neighboring sites. We obtain positive upper and lower bounds on $F_N(\rho)=N((1-\r)-[D_N(\rho)/D_N(0)])/(\rho(1-\rho))$ for $\rho\in [0,1]$. Computer simulations for the square, triangular and one dimensional lattice suggest that $F_N$ becomes effectively independent of $N$ for $N\ge 20$.Comment: 24 pages, in TeX, 1 figure, e-mail addresses: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]

Freed-Witten anomaly in general flux compactification

Turning on a NS-NS three-form flux in a compact space drives some D-branes to be either Freed-Witten anomalous or unstable to decay into fluxes by the appearance of instantonic branes. By applying T-duality on a toroidal compactification, the NS-flux is transformed into metric fluxes. We propose a T-dual version of the Atiyah-Hirzebruch Spectral Sequence upon which we describe the Freed-Witten anomaly and the brane-flux transition driven by NS and metric fluxes in a twisted torus. The required conditions to cancel the anomaly and the appearance of new instantonic branes are also described. In addition, we give an example in which all D6-branes wrapping Freed-Witten anomaly-free three-cycles in the twisted torus T^6/Z(2)XZ(2) are nevertheless unstable to be transformed into fluxes. Evenmore we find a topological transformation between RR, NS-NS and metric fluxes driven by a chain of instantonic branes.Comment: v3: Shortened version. Examples added. Main results unchange

Percolation and cooperation with mobile agents: Geometric and strategy clusters

We study the conditions for persistent cooperation in an off-lattice model of mobile agents playing the Prisoner's Dilemma game with pure, unconditional strategies. Each agent has an exclusion radius rP, which accounts for the population viscosity, and an interaction radius rint, which defines the instantaneous contact network for the game dynamics. We show that, differently from the rP=0 case, the model with finite-sized agents presents a coexistence phase with both cooperators and defectors, besides the two absorbing phases, in which either cooperators or defectors dominate. We provide, in addition, a geometric interpretation of the transitions between phases. In analogy with lattice models, the geometric percolation of the contact network (i.e., irrespective of the strategy) enhances cooperation. More importantly, we show that the percolation of defectors is an essential condition for their survival. Differently from compact clusters of cooperators, isolated groups of defectors will eventually become extinct if not percolating, independently of their size

The prediction and measurement of sound radiated by structures

Theories regarding the radiation of sound are reviewed and the implementation in strategies for explaining or measuring the sound produced by practical strucutres are discussed. Particular attention is given to those aspects that relate to the determination of the relative amounts of sound generated by various parts of a machine or structure, which can be very useful information for noise reduction efforts