Slave Capitalism in Faulkner

What might recent historical scholarship on the centrality of slavery to capitalism contribute to our understanding of Faulkner’s imaginative confrontation with the nation’s foundational crime? How does new attention particularly to the financial mechanisms and speculative mentalities that structured transatlantic slave capitalism give us richer contexts for appreciating the way cotton capitalism on the Mississippi frontier shaped careers like Thomas Sutpen’s? Faulkner’s writing on slavery mulls the commodification of human beings, but it also indicates the devices of credit, insurance, and speculation that multiplied their value as instruments of profit. Faulkner’s aesthetic bears witness to the toxic legacy of slavery in the forms of American capitalism. His fiction’s indulgence of time-sprung prose, of lapsed and yet elapsing event, of ludic narrative that defers conclusion rewrites the demands of financialized time and person that were embedded in a modern world made by slave capitalism

The prevalences of Salmonella Genomic Island 1 variants in human and animal Salmonella Typhimurium DT104 are distinguishable using a Bayesian approach

Throughout the 1990s, there was an epidemic of multidrug resistant Salmonella Typhimurium DT104 in both animals and humans in Scotland. The use of antimicrobials in agriculture is often cited as a major source of antimicrobial resistance in pathogenic bacteria of humans, suggesting that DT104 in animals and humans should demonstrate similar prevalences of resistance determinants. Until very recently, only the application of molecular methods would allow such a comparison and our understanding has been hindered by the fact that surveillance data are primarily phenotypic in nature. Here, using large scale surveillance datasets and a novel Bayesian approach, we infer and compare the prevalence of Salmonella Genomic Island 1 (SGI1), SGI1 variants, and resistance determinants independent of SGI1 in animal and human DT104 isolates from such phenotypic data. We demonstrate differences in the prevalences of SGI1, SGI1-B, SGI1-C, absence of SGI1, and tetracycline resistance determinants independent of SGI1 between these human and animal populations, a finding that challenges established tenets that DT104 in domestic animals and humans are from the same well-mixed microbial population

A search for L dwarf binary systems

We present analysis of HST Planetary Camera images of twenty L dwarfs identified in the course of the Two Micron All-Sky Survey. Four of the targets have faint, red companions at separations between 0.07 and 0.29 arcseconds (1.6 to 7.6 AU). In three cases, the bolometric magnitudes of the components differ by less than 0.3 magnitudes. Since the cooling rate for brown dwarfs is a strong function of mass, similarity in luminosities implies comparable masses. The faint component in the 2M0850 system, however, is over 1.3 magnitudes fainter than the primary in the I-band, and ~0.8 magnitudes fainter in M(bol). Indeed, 2M0850B is ~0.8 magnitudes fainter in I than the lowest luminosity L dwarf currently known, while the absolute magnitude we deduce at J is almost identical with M_J for Gl 229B. Theoretical models indicate a mass ratio of \~0.75. The mean separation of the L dwarf binaries in the current sample is smaller by a factor of two than amongst M dwarfs. We discuss the implications of these results for the temperature scale in the L/T transition region and for the binary frequency amongst L dwarfs.Comment: 38 pages, 11 figures; accepted for A

Are spherulitic lacustrine carbonates an expression of large-scale mineral carbonation? : A case study from the East Kirkton Limestone, Scotland

BP Exploration Co. is thanked for funding, and particularly the Carbonate Team for supporting this research and for fruitful discussions. West Lothian Council and Scottish Natural Heritage are thanked for allowing access and permission for sampling the site. The Core Store Team at BGS Keyworth is particularly acknowledged for their assistance. Mark Anderson, Tony Sinclair (University of Hull), and Bouk Lacet (VU University Amsterdam) are thanked for technical support. Anne Kelly (SUERC) for carrying out the Strontium Isotope analyses. Mark Tyrer is thanked for his advice on PHREEQC modelling.Peer reviewedPostprin

Petrological evidence in support of the death mask model for Ediacaran soft-bodied preservation in South Australia

Microbially mediated early diagenetic pyrite formation in the immediate vicinity of organic material has been the favoured mechanism by which to explain widespread preservation of soft-bodied organisms in late Ediacaran sedimentary successions, but an alternative rapid silicification model has been proposed for macrofossil preservation in sandstones of the Ediacara Member in South Australia. We here provide petrological evidence from Nilpena National Heritage Site and Ediacara Conservation Park to demonstrate the presence of grain-coating iron oxides, framboidal hematite, and clay minerals along Ediacara Member sandstone bedding planes, including fossil-bearing bed soles. SEM and petrographic data reveal that framboids and grain coatings, which we interpret as oxidized pyrite, formed before the precipitation of silica cements. In conjunction with geochemical and taphonomic considerations, our data suggest that anactualistically high concentrations of silica need not be invoked to explain Ediacara Member fossil preservation: we conclude that the pyritic ‘death mask’ model remains compelling.AGL is funded by the Natural Environment Research Council [grant number NE/L011409/2]. SM acknowledges support from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement 747877 ... JJM recognises support from Mitacs ..

Positive-Buoyancy Rover for Under Ice Mobility

A buoyant rover has been developed to traverse the underside of ice-covered lakes and seas. The rover operates at the ice/water interface and permits direct observation and measurement of processes affecting freeze- over and thaw events in lake and marine environments. Operating along the 2- D ice-water interface simplifies many aspects of underwater exploration, especially when compared to submersibles, which have difficulty in station-keeping and precision mobility. The buoyant rover consists of an all aluminum body with two aluminum sawtooth wheels. The two independent body segments are sandwiched between four actuators that permit isolation of wheel movement from movement of the central tether spool. For normal operations, the wheels move while the tether spool feeds out line and the cameras on each segment maintain a user-controlled fixed position. Typically one camera targets the ice/water interface and one camera looks down to the lake floor to identify seep sources. Each wheel can be operated independently for precision turning and adjustments. The rover is controlled by a touch- tablet interface and wireless goggles enable real-time viewing of video streamed from the rover cameras. The buoyant rover was successfully deployed and tested during an October 2012 field campaign to investigate methane trapped in ice in lakes along the North Slope of Alaska

Graphics mini manual

The computer graphics capabilities available at the Center are introduced and their use is explained. More specifically, the manual identifies and describes the various graphics software and hardware components, details the interfaces between these components, and provides information concerning the use of these components at LaRC