Primary Concerns in the Poetry of Robert Frost

The purpose of this study is to classify the poems\u27 themes and to reveal frequency patterns, thereby disclosing Frost\u27s heaviest interests. The study is limited to an analysis of the poems contained in the Complete Poems, which includes most of his poetry. The Masque of Reason and The Masque of Mercy, appearing at the end of the Complete Poems, are not included in the study because they are allegorical poem-plays of the Job and Jonah stories respectively. While the study is confined primarily to an interpretation of the poems themselves, important critical studies relating to the themes are included

Who's behind that mask and cape? The Asian leopard cat's Agouti (ASIP) allele likely affects coat colour phenotype in the Bengal cat breed.

Coat colours and patterns are highly variable in cats and are determined mainly by several genes with Mendelian inheritance. A 2-bp deletion in agouti signalling protein (ASIP) is associated with melanism in domestic cats. Bengal cats are hybrids between domestic cats and Asian leopard cats (Prionailurus bengalensis), and the charcoal coat colouration/pattern in Bengals presents as a possible incomplete melanism. The complete coding region of ASIP was directly sequenced in Asian leopard, domestic and Bengal cats. Twenty-seven variants were identified between domestic and leopard cats and were investigated in Bengals and Savannahs, a hybrid with servals (Leptailurus serval). The leopard cat ASIP haplotype was distinguished from domestic cat by four synonymous and four non-synonymous exonic SNPs, as well as 19 intronic variants, including a 42-bp deletion in intron 4. Fifty-six of 64 reported charcoal cats were compound heterozygotes at ASIP, with leopard cat agouti (A(P) (be) ) and domestic cat non-agouti (a) haplotypes. Twenty-four Bengals had an additional unique haplotype (A2) for exon 2 that was not identified in leopard cats, servals or jungle cats (Felis chaus). The compound heterozygote state suggests the leopard cat allele, in combination with the recessive non-agouti allele, influences Bengal markings, producing a darker, yet not completely melanistic coat. This is the first validation of a leopard cat allele segregating in the Bengal breed and likely affecting their overall pelage phenotype. Genetic testing services need to be aware of the possible segregation of wild felid alleles in all assays performed on hybrid cats

Timing by Stellar Pulsations as an Exoplanet Discovery Method

The stable oscillations of pulsating stars can serve as accurate timepieces, which may be monitored for the influence of exoplanets. An external companion gravitationally tugs the host star, causing periodic changes in pulsation arrival times. This method is most sensitive to detecting substellar companions around the hottest pulsating stars, especially compact remnants like white dwarfs and hot subdwarfs, as well as delta Scuti variables (A stars). However, it is applicable to any pulsating star with sufficiently stable oscillations. Care must be taken to ensure that the changes in pulsation arrival times are not caused by intrinsic stellar variability; an external, light-travel-time effect from an exoplanet identically affects all pulsation modes. With more long-baseline photometric campaigns coming online, this method is yielding new detections of substellar companions.Comment: 9 pages, 2 figures: Invited review to appear in 'Handbook of Exoplanets,' Springer Reference Works, edited by Hans J. Deeg and Juan Antonio Belmont

Philosophical and Cultural Theories of Music

Music is a ubiquitous and hard to grasp cultural form. It is semiotically and aesthetically open-ended; yet even a 'non-musical' person is able to follow the basics of rhythmic structure and flow. Its presence in social and cultural life is further complicated by its multiple forms of existence - as both 'live' and 'technologically mediated', as self-referential language and as accompaniment to text, dance and other cultural expressions. This collection brings together philosophers, sociologists, musicologists and students of culture who theorize the multiple roles of music through cultural practices as diverse as opera and classical music, jazz and pop, avant-garde and DIY musical cultures, music festivals and isolated listening through the iPod, rock in urban heritage and the piano in contemporary Asian societies

Aestheticism: the new spirit of capitalism

This paper argues that a 'structure of feeling' is emerging in contemporary capitalism as significant as that which Max Weber had diagnosed in his Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Replacing the 'asceticism' of the bourgeois, and the discipline required of the industrial worker, is a mode of individualism that is best described as 'aestheticism': the 'new spirit of capitalism'. Capitalism's new aesthetic mode of production is not about art in the narrow sense – although, it does coincide with art becoming an industry like all others. Rather the aesthetic ethic has emerged in relation to things as disparate as work and economy, lifestyle and design, as well as personality structures. We touch on the 'personas' typical of the new capitalism, both those celebrated in art and popular culture, and those salient in everyday situations. We briefly survey the theorists who have correctly identified some of these changes – thinkers such as Bell, Lash and Urry, and Florida – but propose that each has stopped short in recognizing the full implications of capitalism going aesthetic. We examine some of these implications, and the world that has emerged, as ascetic attitudes have morphed into, what we term, the 'ascetic-aesthetic' behaviors of contemporary capitalism

Aestheticism: the new spirit of capitalism

This paper argues that a 'structure of feeling' is emerging in contemporary capitalism as significant as that which Max Weber had diagnosed in his Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Replacing the 'asceticism' of the bourgeois, and the discipline required of the industrial worker, is a mode of individualism that is best described as 'aestheticism': the 'new spirit of capitalism'. Capitalism's new aesthetic mode of production is not about art in the narrow sense – although, it does coincide with art becoming an industry like all others. Rather the aesthetic ethic has emerged in relation to things as disparate as work and economy, lifestyle and design, as well as personality structures. We touch on the 'personas' typical of the new capitalism, both those celebrated in art and popular culture, and those salient in everyday situations. We briefly survey the theorists who have correctly identified some of these changes – thinkers such as Bell, Lash and Urry, and Florida – but propose that each has stopped short in recognizing the full implications of capitalism going aesthetic. We examine some of these implications, and the world that has emerged, as ascetic attitudes have morphed into, what we term, the 'ascetic-aesthetic' behaviors of contemporary capitalism

"Brutalist building going cheap": on the architectural and organizational futures of the Australian "gumtree" university

[Extract] The Australian higher education system – like comparable systems (e.g., the United Kingdom) – is stratified according to architectural and landscape materialities. The elite universities are termed 'sandstone' and rely on a combination of original Gothic architecture and manicured lawns and sporting fields; while the second - tier postwar suburban campuses originated in a wave of modernist architecture and landscaping employing native vegetation. It is the latter's landscaping, as well as their location on the urban fringes of Australian cities, that gave rise to the moniker the 'gumtree' university

Geometry of Reidemeister classes and twisted Burnside theorem

This is a (mostly expository) paper on Reidemeister classes, twisted Burnside-Frobenius theory, congruences, R-infinity property and all that. It was written in 2005 and published in 2008. We post it as it was, only the bibliography data is updated. For some of the recent progress see e.g. arXiv:0903.4533, arXiv:0903.3455, arXiv:0802.2937, arXiv:0712.2601, arXiv:0704.3411, arXiv:math/0703744, arXiv:math/0606725, arXiv:math/0606764, arXiv:0805.1371 and references there