"The Country of the Plague": Anticulture and Autoethnography in Dickens's 1850s

This short paper proposes to consider the transition from Bleak House (1852–53) to Little Dorrit (1856–57) as a phase of particular significance in Dickens's debate with himself over the claims, benefits, and pitfalls of national and wider forms of belonging. I elide Hard Times (1854) because it seems to me that with the composition of Bleak House Dickens had definitively arrived at the conviction that the twenty-number monthly novel was that one of his novelistic forms best suited to sustained exploration and testing of capacious social networks making claims upon individuals' identification and loyalty. In Bleak House – as I have argued in Disorienting Fiction: The Autoethnographic Work of Nineteenth-Century British Novels (2005) – Dickens responds to the false universalism of the Great Exhibition of 1851 by producing his most restrictively “national” of novels, programmatically and demonstratively shutting out a wider world in order to produce an image of Britain that negatively foreshadows the kind of autarkic, autotelic fantasies of single cultures associated with the classic functionalist ethnography of the early twentieth century, as practiced by such luminaries as Bronislaw Malinowski and Franz Boas. “Negatively” is key here, since anticipations of ethnography in nineteenth-century British (autoethnographic) fiction typically involve representation of the nation as “a form of anticulture whose features define by opposition the ideals [later] attributed to genuine cultures” (Buzard, Disorienting 21). Whereas the fast-disappearing genuine culture of ethnographic literature was credited with the integrated totality of “a sturdy plant growth, each remotest leaf and twig of which is organically fed by the sap at the core” (Sapir 90–93), Britain's culture vouchsafed in Bleak House and exemplified in the tentacular Court of Chancery presents “a state of disastrous and inescapable interconnection,” “a culture-like vision of social totality that is simply marked with a minus sign” (Buzard, Disorienting 21)

Wood Composite Warping: Modeling and Simulation

Warping, which is defined as the out-of-plane deformation of an initially flat panel, is a longstanding problem associated with secondary manufacturing processes in the wood panel industries. The mechanism of warping is still not fully understood. Unlike previous modeling, this study has developed a new twodimensionaal warping model based on mechanics of layered composites. Wood composite panel is regarded as a multilayered composite material in which each layer has different properties, especially when they experience moisture gradient through their thickness. Detailed model development and computer simulation results are presented. Panel parameters such as thickness. MOE, LE, Poisson's ratio, shear modulus, density, and orientation of layer were simulated; and quantitative relationships between these parameters and warp were presented. The results should provide a better understanding of wood composite warp

Processing punctuation and word changes in different editions of prose fiction

The digital era has brought with it a shift in the field of literary editing in terms of the amount and kind of textual variation that can reasonably be annotated by editors. However, questions remain about how far readers engage with textual variants, especially minor ones such as small-scale changes to punctuation. In this study we present an eye-tracking experiment investigating reader sensitivity to variations in surface textual features of prose fiction. We monitored eye movements while participants read textual variants from Dickens and James, hypothesising that readers may pay more attention to lexical rather than punctuation changes. We found longer reading times for both types, but only lexical changes also increased reading times for the rest of the sentence. In addition, eye movement behaviour and conscious ability to report changes were highly correlated. We discuss the implications for how such methods might be applied to questions of “literary” significance and textual processing

Preliminary evaluation of a nondestructive ultrasonic technique for assessing stability of external skeletal fixation pins

Due to the character of the original source materials and the nature of batch digitization, quality control issues may be present in this document. Please report any quality issues you encounter to [email protected], referencing the URI of the item.Includes bibliographical references.Not availabl

A Critical-Angle Ultrasonic Technique for the Inspection of Wood Parallel-to-Grain

The objective of this paper is to present a critically refracted longitudinal wave (LCR) technique that allows localized ultrasonic inspection of wood parallel-to-grain by accessing only a single side of the material. The LCR technique has been widely applied to other materials, but not to wood. The chief advantage of the LCR technique is that ultrasonic waves can be transmitted through wood at frequencies much higher than previously possible (up to 1.5 MHz), leading to potential gains in sensitivity over lower frequency methods.The LCR technique was verified using southern pine lumber. Transducer beam characteristics were examined and the influence of growth ring angle was observed. Ultrasonic wave energy was found to travel near to the inspection surface. Further, localized growth ring angle was significantly correlated to signal amplitude and frequency

The Eigenlearning Framework: A Conservation Law Perspective on Kernel Regression and Wide Neural Networks

We derive a simple unified framework giving closed-form estimates for the test risk and other generalization metrics of kernel ridge regression (KRR). Relative to prior work, our derivations are greatly simplified and our final expressions are more readily interpreted. These improvements are enabled by our identification of a sharp conservation law which limits the ability of KRR to learn any orthonormal basis of functions. Test risk and other objects of interest are expressed transparently in terms of our conserved quantity evaluated in the kernel eigenbasis. We use our improved framework to: i) provide a theoretical explanation for the "deep bootstrap" of Nakkiran et al (2020), ii) generalize a previous result regarding the hardness of the classic parity problem, iii) fashion a theoretical tool for the study of adversarial robustness, and iv) draw a tight analogy between KRR and a well-studied system in statistical physics

MRI: Acquisition of a High Performance Cluster for the University of Maine Scientific Grid Portal

This project, acquiring a cluster to establish a scientific grid portal in Maine, aims to enable projects requiring large datasets. The work makes available to the wider community results such as widely-used whole-ice sheet models, tools for climate change research, prototype versions of object-based caching system (bundled with MPI-IO implementation developed at Argonne National Lab), the data management system, real-time animations, videos, etc. Additionally, the portal provides the larger community the compute power, storage capacity, and rendering engine to execute very high-resolution models, and receive animations and other visualized information in real time.Broader Impact: The infrastructure enhances understanding of global issues and contributes in the development of educational tools for K-12 students. The scientific grid portal contributes in the dissemination of important scientific discoveries. The portal also provides a show-case for research being performed in the state

Development and Application of Bovine and Porcine Oligonucleotide Arrays with Protein-Based Annotation

The design of oligonucleotide sequences for the detection of gene expression in species with disparate volumes of genome and EST sequence information has been broadly studied. However, a congruous strategy has yet to emerge to allow the design of sensitive and specific gene expression detection probes. This study explores the use of a phylogenomic approach to align transcribed sequences to vertebrate protein sequences for the detection of gene families to design genomewide 70-mer oligonucleotide probe sequences for bovine and porcine. The bovine array contains 23,580 probes that target the transcripts of 16,341 genes, about 72% of the total number of bovine genes. The porcine array contains 19,980 probes targeting 15,204 genes, about 76% of the genes in the Ensembl annotation of the pig genome. An initial experiment using the bovine array demonstrates the specificity and sensitivity of the array

A single-chain variable fragment intrabody prevents intracellular polymerization of Z α1-antitrypsin while allowing its antiproteinase activity.

Mutant Z α1-antitrypsin (E342K) accumulates as polymers within the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) of hepatocytes predisposing to liver disease, whereas low levels of circulating Z α1-antitrypsin lead to emphysema by loss of inhibition of neutrophil elastase. The ideal therapy should prevent polymer formation while preserving inhibitory activity. Here we used mAb technology to identify interactors with Z α1-antitrypsin that comply with both requirements. We report the generation of an mAb (4B12) that blocked α1-antitrypsin polymerization in vitro at a 1:1 molar ratio, causing a small increase of the stoichiometry of inhibition for neutrophil elastase. A single-chain variable fragment (scFv) intrabody was generated based on the sequence of mAb4B12. The expression of scFv4B12 within the ER (scFv4B12KDEL) and along the secretory pathway (scFv4B12) reduced the intracellular polymerization of Z α1-antitrypsin by 60%. The scFv4B12 intrabody also increased the secretion of Z α1-antitrypsin that retained inhibitory activity against neutrophil elastase. MAb4B12 recognized a discontinuous epitope probably located in the region of helices A/C/G/H/I and seems to act by altering protein dynamics rather than binding preferentially to the native state. This novel approach could reveal new target sites for small-molecule intervention that may block the transition to aberrant polymers without compromising the inhibitory activity of Z α1-antitrypsin