Gothic Trouble: Cormac McCarthy’s The Road and the Globalized Order

The article explores the way American author Cormac McCarthy uses the Gothic genre in his novel The Road as a means to address what has been called “our globalized order,” in particular the way it has turned human beings into consuming or consumed entities. Some dimensions of this globalized order indeed involve the reintroduction of slavery through human trafficking, unprecedented greed and labor capitalism, surveillance and personal data gathering. Hannah Arendt notes in The Origin of Totalitarianism that the disasters of the twentieth century had proved that a globalized order might “produce barbarians from its own midst by forcing millions of people into conditions which, despite all appearances, are the conditions of savages.” The artist’s task is to find the right language and images to address the breaking of the world. French philosopher J. P. Dupuy, for example, has argued that the financial world is a way to contain (contenir) the violence of competition, placing it into acceptable (symbolic) forms away from primal physical competition. McCarthy’s graphic use of Gothic tropes—including cannibalism, the wild forest, the haunted house, the chase, the conflict between light and darkness, the blurring of boundaries between different categories—creates a shock. The article also addresses the larger question of the impact of globalization on Gothic literature, and the impact of Gothic literature on real world matters as it contributes to and reflects upon and challenges global regimes of economic, social and economic power. In other words, what is the cultural work that the Gothic does in the present

Experimental analysis of dense multipath components in an industrial environment

This work presents an analysis of dense multipath components (DMC) in an industrial workshop. Radio channel sounding was performed with a vector network analyzer and virtual antenna arrays. The specular and dense multipath components were estimated with the RiMAX algorithm. The DMC covariance structure of the RiMAX data model was validated. Two DMC parameters were studied: the distribution of radio channel power between specular and dense multipath, and the DMC reverberation time. The DMC power accounted for 23% to 70% of the total channel power. A significant difference between DMC powers in line-of-sight and nonline-of-sight was observed, which can be largely attributed to the power of the line-of-sight multipath component. In agreement with room electromagnetics theory, the DMC reverberation time was found to be nearly constant. Overall, DMC in the industrial workshop is more important than in office environments: it occupies a fraction of the total channel power that is 4% to 13% larger. The industrial environment absorbs on average 29% of the electromagnetic energy compared to 45%-51% for office environments in literature: this results in a larger reverberation time in the former environment. These findings are explained by the highly cluttered and metallic nature of the workshop

Precision measurements in nuclear {\beta}-decay with LPCTrap

The experimental achievements and the current program with the LPCTrap device installed at the LIRAT beam line of the SPIRAL1-GANIL facility are presented. The device is dedicated to the study of the weak interaction at low energy by means of precise measurements of the {\beta}-{\nu} angular correlation parameter. Technical aspects as well as the main results are reviewed. The future program with new available beams is briefly discussed.Comment: Annalen der Physik (2013

Cavity cooling of an optically trapped nanoparticle

We study the cooling of a dielectric nanoscale particle trapped in an optical cavity. We derive the frictional force for motion in the cavity field, and show that the cooling rate is proportional to the square of oscillation amplitude and frequency. Both the radial and axial centre-of-mass motion of the trapped particle, which are coupled by the cavity field, are cooled. This motion is analogous to two coupled but damped pendulums. Our simulations show that the nanosphere can be cooled to 1/e of its initial momentum over time scales of hundredths of milliseconds.Comment: 11 page

Marcel Arbeit and M. Thomas Inge, eds., The (Un)Popular South

The eleven articles included in the volume are the proceedings of the Southern Studies Biennial Conference held at Palacký University in September 2007. They offer many thought-provoking insights into the way the South has been either idealized or demonized. They cover a wide range of Southern issues (slavery, miscegenation, identity) and time periods (such as the Civil War and the civil rights movement) through the exploration of both literary and filmic media. This brilliant collection deal..

Vocal effort in situation

International audienceOral communication is an interactive and situated activity. Vocal effort is strongly related to both interlocutors' situation. In "natural" situations, when no microphone or loudspeaker is used, the interlocutors are immersed in the same environment. They are aware of their mutual distance and location as well as of the ambient noise and reverberation. They can react either orally or visually toinform the other person about the success of the oral transmission. They may be able to move closer to each other. Some implicit rules apply: the talker routinely raises his or her voice when the interlocutor stands at a distance exceeding a few meters, or when the noise level is significant, or when the interlocutor is known to have hearing problems. Conversely, the talker lowers his/her voice when the interlocutor is close by, or in a silent environment, or in a reverberant room. In order to reach a distant listener, the talker has to articulate more distinctly or to speak louder, or both. Speaking more clearly means a cognitive effort, speaking louder provokes signal distortion, fatigue, loss of privacy. The talker's actual vocal effort is a tradeoff, specific to each situation, between the vocal effort to produce and the communication efficiency. In a given social group this tradeoff is known by everybody, as demonstrated by the fact that, when confronted with a new situation, one instantly adopts the appropriate level of voice to address the targeted listener. One may hypothesize the existence of an half conscious norm for the vocal effort, which defines, in most typical communication situations, the notion of a "normal" voice in terms of muscular commands, auditory voice control, and acoustic features to be received by the interlocutor. The purpose of oral communication may not be limited to the transmission of linguistic information. As with attitude, gesture or clothing, slight deviations from the norm may be used to transmit non-linguistic information, for instance to assert a dominant position, to convey acceptance or refusal, or to express anger or satisfaction. While the dynamic range of the human voice extends up to some 60 dB, its timbre changes widely from the whispered voice barely audible at a 10 cm distance, to the shout, which can be heard over a distance of several hundred meters. Even after level equalization, the timbre variations retain enough information to distinguish at least 3 voice categories: whispered, conversational, and shouted. Within each of those categories, it is not clear whether level perception is categorical or continuous, although the second category may easily be divided into soft, medium and loud. The acoustic cues associated to the vocal effort have been widely investigated. They include the sound level, the frequencies of F0 and F1, the average level of the middle and high parts of the spectrum, the level discrepancies between voiced and noisy parts of speech, the vowel lengthening, the fragmentation of the discourse into shorter utterances, and the tendency of hyperarticulation, all of which contribute to ensuring the correct reception of the oral information by the interlocutor. However, the way in which these cues are combined to yield the perception of a given degree of vocal effort has not been established yet. In the last century, systems allowing recording, amplifying, modifying and preserving the sound have invaded our lives. In some cases they allow to breaking the contextual link and interaction capability between speaker and listener. The implicit norm of voice strength evoked above hasevolved. New communication situations have appeared, which do not destroy the traditional ones but add up to them. Current speech synthesis and recognition systems, conceived as purely passive devices, do not take into account the contextual and interactive aspects of oral communication. This results in severe limitations for the user. This approach may change in the future, under the pressure of users requiring more efficient speech/voice human-machine communication tools