35 research outputs found
The Future of Racial Memory: Forgiveness, Reconciliation, and Redress in Joy Kogawa's Obasan and Itsuka
The majority of criticism surrounding Kogawa's Obasan and Itsuka assumes that reconciliation and resistance to racial injustice are incompatible, thereby overlooking Kogawa's complex exploration of the transformative potential forgiveness and reconciliation can provide Japanese Canadians in resisting and defusing the power of the oppressor. Forgiveness can only follow an apology that acknowledges wrongdoing; it does not merely reinscribe ideologically racist messages of power operating in Canadian society, nor invoke the "model minority myth" to avoid compensatory action. Such recognition of the past, however, is necessarily dependant on memory, which both texts represent as unstable and unreliable yet essential to the healing process. Kogawa contends with the tension between these postmodern and humanist concepts of memory through the issei word "Itsuka," meaning "someday," which captures the Japanese sense of the anteriority of the future. Forgiveness essentially constitutes a form of renarration that recollects the past while simultaneously opening up possibilities for a future
The Araucaria Project. Bright Variable Stars in NGC 6822 from a Wide-Field Imaging Survey
We have performed a search for variable stars in the dwarf irregular galaxy
NGC 6822 using wide-field multi-epoch VI photometry down to a limiting
magnitude 22. Apart from the Cepheid variables in this galaxy
already reported in an earlier paper by Pietrzynski et al. (2004), we have
found 1019 "non-periodic" variable stars, 50 periodically variable stars with
periods ranging from 0.12 to 66 days and 146 probably periodic variables.
Twelve of these stars are eclipsing binaries and fifteen are likely new,
low-amplitude Cepheids. Interestingly, seven of these Cepheid candidates have
periods longer than 100 days, have very low amplitudes (less than 0.2 mag in
), and are very red. They could be young, massive Cepheids still embedded in
dusty envelopes. The other objects span a huge range in colours and represent a
mixture of different types of luminous variables. Many of the variables
classified as non-periodic in the present study may turn out to be {\it
periodic} variables once a much longer time baseline will be available to study
them.
We provide the catalogue of photometric parameters and show the atlas of
light curves for the new variable stars. Our present catalogue is complementary
to the one of Baldacci et al. (2005) which has focussed on very short-period
and fainter variables in a subfield in NGC 6822.Comment: Accepted for publication in A&
Predictors of Driving in Individuals with RelapsingâRemitting Multiple Sclerosis
Evaluations on fitness-to-drive of individuals with multiple sclerosis (MS) usually involve the administration of several physical, visual, and cognitive tests. In some instances, a practical road test is also administered. The use of several tests, many of which are only remotely driving-related, increases the time, cost, and human resources involved in the evaluation process, and sometimes lead to erroneous decisions. In this study, we investigated the usefulness of using a short battery of a few highly predictive tests to predict fitness-to-drive of individuals with MS. Fortyfour individuals with relapsingâremitting MS (age = 46 ± 11 years, 37 females) and Expanded Disability Status Scale values between 1 and 7 were administered selected physical, visual and cognitive tests including the Stroke Driver Screening Assessment (SDSA) battery. Performance on 12 cognitive and three visual tests were significantly associated with participantsâ performance on a practical road test. The Stroop Color test, Direction, Compass, and Road Sign Recognition tests from the SDSA, and the Speed of Processing test from Useful Field of View test battery together explained 59% of the variance and predicted the pass or fail outcome on the road test with 91% accuracy, 70% sensitivity, and 97% specificity. The five psychometric/off-road tests, which together can be administered in less than 45 minutes, cost approximately $150, and is 91% accurate, can be used as a screening battery. Those who pass should be further tested on-road to finally decide their fitness-to-drive while those of fail should be further evaluated, trained, or advised on alternative transportation means. Future studies are needed to confirm and validate the findings in this study
Period-Luminosity Relations for Small Magellanic Cloud Cepheid Based on AKARI Archival Data
In this work we matched the AKARI archival data to the Optical Gravitational
Lensing Experiment-III (OGLE-III) catalog to derive the mid-infrared period
luminosity (PL) relations for Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) Cepheids. Mismatched
AKARI sources were eliminated using random-phase colors obtained from the full
I-band light curves from OGLE-III. It was possible to derive PL relations in
the N3 and N4 bands only, although the S7, S11, L15, and L24 band data were
also tested. Random-phase correction was included when deriving the PL relation
in the N3 and N4 bands using the available time of observations from AKARI
data. The final adopted PL relations were: N3 = -3.370 logP + 16.527 and N4 =
-3.402 logP + 16.556. However, these PL relations may be biased due to the
small number of Cepheids in the sample.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figures and 1 table. MNRAS accepte
Near-IR period-luminosity relations for pulsating stars in Centauri (NGC 5139)
Centauri (NGC 5139) hosts hundreds of pulsating variable stars of
different types, thus representing a treasure trove for studies of their
corresponding period-luminosity (PL) relations. Our goal in this study is to
obtain the PL relations for RR Lyrae, and SX Phoenicis stars in the field of
the cluster, based on high-quality, well-sampled light curves in the
near-infrared (IR). Centauri was observed using VIRCAM mounted on
VISTA. A total of 42 epochs in and 100 epochs in were obtained,
spanning 352 days. Point-spread function photometry was performed using DoPhot
and DAOPHOT in the outer and inner regions of the cluster, respectively. Based
on the comprehensive catalogue of near-IR light curves thus secured, PL
relations were obtained for the different types of pulsators in the cluster,
both in the and bands. This includes the first PL relations in
the near-IR for fundamental-mode SX Phoenicis stars. The near-IR magnitudes and
periods of Type II Cepheids and RR Lyrae stars were used to derive an updated
true distance modulus to the cluster, with a resulting value of mag, where the error bars correspond to the adopted
statistical and systematic errors, respectively. Adding the errors in
quadrature, this is equivalent to a heliocentric distance of
kpc.Comment: 10 pages, 8 figures, accepted for publication in A&
Introduction : exploring forgiveness in nineteenth-century poetry
This essay serves as an introduction to the essays collected in the âNineteenth-century Poetry and Forgivenessâ cluster. It takes as its foundation the recent turn to questions of hospitality, forgiveness and gift in the intra-disciplinary field of religion, philosophy and literature and highlights the centrality of these issues for reading nineteenth-century poetry. The essay argues that nineteenth-century poetry attempts to figure forgiveness as poetic sound and rhythm as a way of thinking reciprocal forgiving relationships between people. Part I contextualizes this argument and argues for an understanding of forgiveness through emotion. Part II offers an overview of the field of forgiveness scholarship and explores its relevance for nineteenth-century debate on the topic. Part III offers a way into thinking forgiveness as sound and rhythm in Wordsworth's poem âAirey-Force Valleyâ through Martin Heidegger's reading of poetics and being
Calibrating the Cepheid Period-Luminosity relation from the infrared surface brightness technique I. The p-factor, the Milky Way relations, and a universal K-band relation
We determine Period-Luminosity relations for Milky Way Cepheids in the
optical and near-IR bands. These relations can be used directly as reference
for extra-galactic distance determination to Cepheid populations with solar
metallicity, and they form the basis for a direct comparison with relations
obtained in exactly the same manner for stars in the Magellanic Clouds,
presented in an accompanying paper. In that paper we show that the metallicity
effect is very small and consistent with a null effect, particularly in the
near-IR bands, and we combine here all 111 Cepheids from the Milky Way, the LMC
and SMC to form a best relation. We employ the near-IR surface brightness
(IRSB) method to determine direct distances to the individual Cepheids after we
have recalibrated the projection factor using the recent parallax measurements
to ten Galactic Cepheids and the constraint that Cepheid distances to the LMC
should be independent of pulsation period. We confirm our earlier finding that
the projection factor for converting radial velocity to pulsational velocity
depends quite steeply on pulsation period, p=1.550-0.186*log(P) in disagrement
with recent theoretical predictions. We delineate the Cepheid PL relation using
111 Cepheids with direct distances from the IRSB analysis. The relations are by
construction in agreement with the recent HST parallax distances to Cepheids
and slopes are in excellent agreement with the slopes of apparent magnitudes
versus period observed in the LMC.Comment: Accepted for publication by Astronomy and Astrophysics. 15 pages, 11
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