Upstream Downtown: Theatre Creation Through a Feminist and Multispecies Lens

In the historically masculine Western sciences, we are told we can fully know a being by dissecting, labelling, testing, observing, and documenting. This article explores how multispecies and feminist theatre creation and performance, specifically in the style of clown and bouffon, can work to resist such narratives and offer a more sentient understanding of interspecies relationships. Our investigations focus on our journey as two female creators of Upstream Downtown, a research-based, physical theatre play about salmon and humans finding home in the settler colonial city of Toronto

A Comparison of Two Methods of Quantifying Mating Success in Low Density Gypsy Moth (Lymantria dispar) Populations

The gypsy moth (Lymantria dispar) is a defoliating pest native to Europe and invasive to North America. The gypsy moth is subject to depressed mating success in low density populations, which may restrict spread of the forest pest. Research focusing on gypsy moth density as it relates to mating behavior has often used counts of males caught in pheromone-baited delta traps as a proxy to estimate the probability of female mating success. The purpose of this project was to determine whether pheromone trap counts provide accurate estimates of female mating success probability, by comparing data gathered from pheromone-baited delta traps to data gathered on mating success of tethered females. To determine the relationship between number of males caught in delta traps and the probability of successful mating, male catch counts in traps were compared to mating success of tethered females in a mass male release experiment. The relationship between delta trap catch of males and female mating success was quantified using a Bayesian framework, which explicitly incorporates uncertainties in the model. Vegetative cover in the study plots was reduced to a single measure through principal components analysis and included as an independent factor in the model. The data suggest that delta traps reduce the male’s ability to find a female by 67%; thus, results garnered from delta trap catch counts tend to underestimate the underlying ability of males to locate and mate with females. Thick understory vegetation further reduced the male’s ability to locate a female, and further reduced the effectiveness of delta traps. Future studies that seek to use counts of males in pheromone-baited traps as a proxy for mating success should consider using an adjustment factor to equate the two methods of quantifying reproductive behavior in the gypsy moth.https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/uresposters/1271/thumbnail.jp

A robust one-step catalytic machine for high fidelity anti-cloning and W-state generation in a multi-qubit system

We propose a physically realizable machine which can either generate multiparticle W-like states, or implement high fidelity $1 \to M$ ($M=1,2,... \infty$) anti-cloning of an arbitrary qubit state, in a single step. Moreover this universal machine acts as a catalyst in that it is unchanged after either procedure, effectively resetting itself for its next operation. It also possesses an inherent {\em immunity} to decoherence. Most importantly in terms of practical multi-party quantum communication, the machine's robustness in the presence of decoherence actually {\em increases} as the number of qubits $M$ increases.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figure

Ultrafast deterministic generation of entanglement in a time-dependent asymmetric two-qubit-cavity system

We present an efficient scheme for the controlled generation of pure two-qubit states possessing {\em any} desired degree of entanglement and a {\em prescribed} symmetry in two cavity QED based systems, namely, cold trapped ions and flying atoms. This is achieved via on-resonance ion/atom-cavity couplings which are time-dependent and asymmetric, leading to a trapping vacuum state condition which does not arise for identical couplings. A duality in the role of the coupling ratio yields states with a given concurrence but opposing symmetries. The experimental feasibility of the proposed scheme is also discussed.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Sex, Stress, and the Supreme Court: Verbal and Vocalic Analysis of Brett Kavanaugh’s Senate Confirmation Hearings to the Supreme Court

This study analyzed the relationship between verbal and nonverbal vocalic communication patterns exhibited by Brett Kavanaugh, now a sitting Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court, during his Senate confirmation hearings in 2018. Additionally, the relationship between verbal statement types: attempt to define reality, personal narrative, policy positions, attacks, acclaims, and defenses, and the nonverbal vocalics of sighs, sharp intakes of breath, and sniffs were evaluated together to see which statement types would elicit higher physiological stress responses during both the 16-minute speech given at the end of the Day One hearing and the 45-minute testimony during the sexual assault hearing. Scholarship suggests that verbal and nonverbal communication are both used to create judgements of credibility (Stiff et al., 1989) which was used by the Senate and the American citizens at large during this political scandal. Video content analysis software, ANVIL, was used to code both hearings for Kavanaugh’s flow of speech, referred to as utterances, his disruptions in speech flow, referred to as intra-utterance pauses, individual statement end-times, and nonverbal vocalic observations. Three coders read and applied one of the five statement types to each sentence of both hearings. Results from the study showed that time spent in both utterances and in recovery during the intra-utterance pause differed. Statement types provided evidence to support the claim that the narratives of each hearing would differ due to higher levels of stress during the sexual assault hearing. Additionally, the U.S. Senate sexual assault hearing found Kavanaugh evincing a substantially greater amount vocalic stress signals such as sighs, sharp intakes of breath, and sniffs when compared with his first day testimony. Finally, when analyzed together, personal narrative statements were most likely while attack and defense statements were least likely to elicit vocalic stress responses. This study provides a microanalysis perspective on how verbal and nonverbal vocalics elicit physiological responses during times of heightened stress

Renormalization scheme for a multi-qubit-network

We present a renormalization scheme which simplifies the dynamics of an important class of interacting multi-qubit systems. We show that a wide class of M+1 qubit systems can be reduced to an equivalent n+1 qubit system with n equal to, or greater than, 2, for any M. Our renormalization scheme faithfully reproduces the overall dynamics of the original system including the entanglement properties. In addition to its direct application to atom-cavity and nanostructure systems, the formalism offers insight into a variety of situations ranging from decoherence due to a spin-bath with its own internal entanglement, through to energy transfer processes in organic systems such as biological photosynthetic units.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure