New speakers of Irish: shifting boundaries across time and space

While traditional Irish-speaking communities continue to decline, the number of second-language speakers outside of the Gaeltacht has increased. Of the more than one and half million speakers of Irish just over 66,000 now live in one of the officially designated Gaeltacht areas. While “new speakers” can be seen to play an important role in the future of the language, this role is sometimes undermined by discourses which idealise the notion of the traditional Gaeltacht speaker. Such discourses can be used to deny them “authenticity” as “real” or “legitimate” speakers, sometimes leading to struggles over language ownership. Concerns about linguistic purity are often voiced in both academic and public discourse, with the more hybridized forms of Irish developed amongst “new speakers” often criticised. This article looks at the extent to which such discourses are being internalised by new speakers of Irish and whether or not they are constructing an identity as a distinct social and linguistic group based on what it means to be an Irish speaker in the twenty first century

New speakers of Irish: shifting boundaries across time and space

While traditional Irish-speaking communities continue to decline, the number of second-language speakers outside of the Gaeltacht has increased. Of the more than one and half million speakers of Irish just over 66,000 now live in one of the officially designated Gaeltacht areas. While “new speakers” can be seen to play an important role in the future of the language, this role is sometimes undermined by discourses which idealise the notion of the traditional Gaeltacht speaker. Such discourses can be used to deny them “authenticity” as “real” or “legitimate” speakers, sometimes leading to struggles over language ownership. Concerns about linguistic purity are often voiced in both academic and public discourse, with the more hybridized forms of Irish developed amongst “new speakers” often criticised. This article looks at the extent to which such discourses are being internalised by new speakers of Irish and whether or not they are constructing an identity as a distinct social and linguistic group based on what it means to be an Irish speaker in the twenty first century

Ascertainment bias for non-twin relatives in twin proband studies

Journal ArticleWhen families are ascertained through affected twins, as for example when twin probands are selected from a registry and their non-twin relatives studied, a correction for ascertainment bias is needed. It is shown that probandwise counting (where relatives of doubly ascertained twin pairs are counted twice) is the appropriate method. The bias resulting from pairwise counting is given and depends on the genetic model and on the probability of selecting an affected twin as a proband. For the multifactorial and generalized single major locus models the bias is small, and the problems associated with nonindependent ascertainment are negligible in practice

Campus & alumni news

Boston University Medicine was published by the Boston University Medical Campus, and presented stories on events and topics of interest to members of the BU Medical Campus community. It followed the discontinued publication Centerscope as Boston University Medicine from 1991-2005, then continued as Campus & Alumni News from 2006-2013 before returning to the title Boston University Medicine from 2014-present

Continuous Blooming of Convex Polyhedra

We construct the first two continuous bloomings of all convex polyhedra. First, the source unfolding can be continuously bloomed. Second, any unfolding of a convex polyhedron can be refined (further cut, by a linear number of cuts) to have a continuous blooming.Comment: 13 pages, 6 figure

Carnevale di Venezia: Performance and Spectatorship at the Venice Carnival

The modern day Venice carnival was officially revived in 1980, and is famed internationally for its beautifully costumed and masked maschere and its iconic location in the lagoon city of Venice. The carnival’s twentieth-century revival responded to the organic resurfacing of the event, after a period of desuetude which began at the fall of the independent Republic of Venice in 1797. Considered herein as microcosm of the city itself, the carnival contributes to perceptions of Venice, conjuring the city’s aesthetics of beauty, theatricality, stillness, opulence, mystery, decadence, and death. To analyse the revived carnival, this thesis employs a qualitative, ethnographic methodology, as photographs, interviews, and experiences are utilised as part of the analysis, integrated with critical perspectives from contemporary theatre and performance studies, as well as from a range of other disciplines, including literature, art, photography, history, architecture, film, and tourism. While the modern day carnival is the focus herein, past iterations of the event will contribute critical frames, together with historical accounts, paintings, and engravings of the city and carnival. Instances of contemporary art, theatre, and performance practice, in and beyond Venice, add further insight. The interactions between masked and unmasked participants at the Venice carnival, framed by the city, point to a troubling of the conventional binary of performance and spectatorship, positing the spectator as an active participant in the enactment of carnival. Further, the replicative nature of the event, as it picks up the traces of bygone carnivals, illustrates the way in which performances remain in myriad ways, making the carnival multidirectional and crosstemporal. Although the revived carnival is often perceived as commercialised and touristic, its emphasis on individual creativity, transgression, communality, and the renewal of social bonds ultimately affirms its subversive nature, allowing carnival participants to challenge socially divisive neoliberalist capitalism

Luminous Intensity for Traffic Signals: A Scientific Basis for Performance Specifications

Humnan factors experiments on visual responses to simulated traffic signals using incandescent lamps and light-emitting diodes are described