Memory, oblivion and nostalgia in Trezza Azzopardi's The Hiding Place

Shortlisted for the prestigious Booker Prize 2000, Trezza Azzopardi 's debut novel The Hiding Place is the devastatingly harsh but also deeply moving story of Frankie Gauci, his wife Mary, and their six daughters as seen through the eyes of Dolores, the youngest sister who slowly unravels the tragic secrets that haunt her past. Set in a Maltese immigrant community in Tiger Bay, Wales, and peopled with deeply flawed characters, The Hiding Place traces Dolores's journey through the seductive yet often terrifying labyrinth of memory, a labyrinth governed by its own primitive sense of familial law and order. Lyrical in one breath and stingingly realistic in the next, Azzopardi calls on her impressive mastery of language to weave an intensely self-reflexive story of guilt and innocence, absence and presence, fragmentation and plenitude and, above all, oblivion and memory. This paper focuses precisely on Azzopardi's treatment of memory as an instrument of reclamation and retrieval in the search for selfhood. Though memory is elusive and untrustworthy because of its polymorphic nature, at the same time it is endowed with a redemptive power capable of transforming the outside into the inside, denial into acceptance, and obscurity into revelation.peer-reviewe

Efficient techniques for Solving Electromagnetic Scattering by Electrically Large Arbitrarily Shaped Three-Dimensional Objects

The Method of Moments (MoM) is deeply described and used for the analysis of electromagnetic (EM) radiation and scattering problems involving arbitrarily shaped 3D targets. The proposed MoM formulation allows us to investigate perfect and imperfect conductor, and dielectric object. Next, a novel method for efficient MoM analysis of electrically large objects using Characteristic Basis Functions (CBFs) is proposed to reduce the matrix solution time. The CBFs are special types of high-level basis functions, defined over the domains that encompass a relatively large number of conventional sub-domain bases, e.g., triangular patches or rooftops. This technique differs from other similar approaches developed previously, in several aspects. First, it includes mutual coupling effects directly by using primary and secondary CBFs, which are then used to represent the unknown induced currents on the blocks, and solved via the Galerkin method rather than using iterative refinements. Second, the Characteristic Basis Function Method (CBFM) is more general, and can be applied to a wide class of electromagnetic problems

Semi-linear wave equations with effective damping

We study the Cauchy problem for the semi-linear damped wave equation in any space dimension. We assume that the time-dependent damping term is effective. We prove the global existence of small energy data solutions in the supercritical case.Comment: 28 page

From p0(n)p_0(n) to p0(n+2)p_0(n+2)

In this note we study the global existence of small data solutions to the Cauchy problem for the semi-linear wave equation with a not effective scale-invariant damping term, namely $$v_{tt}-\triangle v + \frac2{1+t}\,v_t = |v|^p, \qquad v(0,x)=v_0(x),\quad v_t(0,x)=v_1(x),$$ where $p>1$, $n\ge 2$. We prove blow-up in finite time in the subcritical range $p\in(1,p_2(n)]$ and an existence result for $p>p_2(n)$, $n=2,3$. In this way we find the critical exponent for small data solutions to this problem. All these considerations lead to the conjecture $p_2(n)=p_0(n+2)$ for $n\ge2$, where $p_0(n)$ is the Strauss exponent for the classical wave equation

Solar γ\gamma-rays as a Complementary Probe of Dark Matter

We show that observations of solar $\gamma$-rays offer a novel probe of dark matter in scenarios where interactions with the visible sector proceed via a long-lived mediator. As a proof of principle, we demonstrate that there exists a class of models which yield solar $\gamma$-ray fluxes observable with the next generation of $\gamma$-ray telescopes, while being allowed by a variety of current experimental constraints. The parameter space allowed by big bang nucleosynthesis and beam dump experiments naturally leads to mediator lifetimes sufficient to produce observable solar $\gamma$-ray signals. The model allows for solar $\gamma$-ray fluxes up to orders of magnitude larger compared to dwarf spheroidal galaxies, without reaching equilibrium between dark matter annihilation and capture rate. Our results suggest that solar $\gamma$-ray observations are complementary, and in some cases superior, to existing and future dark matter detection efforts.Comment: 15 pages + references, 7 figures, v3: Fermi-LAT and HERD sensitivity corrected, minor presentational improvements, matches journal versio