On Irish poets writing in Scotland

Starting from the polyglot work of the Dublin-born and Skye-based Rody Gorman, who writes in Scottish and Irish Gaelic, English and his own invented translation of “intertonguing,” this essay explores recent poetic connections between the two countries through readings of Irish poets who live or have lived in Scotland: the Gaelic and Irish peregrinations of David Wheatley, and the “minoritized diasporic” position of poets in English such as Alan Gillis, Miriam Gamble, and Aoife Lyall. It discusses ways in which these poets engage with dislocation, linguistic multiplicity, the risks of being absorbed into a new environment, and the possibility of flitting – Sweeneylike – between places, literatures, and trees. It ends with a focus on the diasporic Gaelic writing of Niall O’Gallagher, and how he negotiates his Irish inheritance. There is an unexpected focus on bodybuilding, birds, and moths; on people being transformed into dolphins; and an unregretful Columba cheerily leaving Ireland behind.Peer reviewe

The failure of strategic initiatives : perceptions of leaders, managers & employees

Strategic initiatives fail for many reasons. We examine such failure in a major UK-based single site case. We discover the influence of differing perceptions of the strategic initiatives across hierarchical levels, from leaders on the executive board to operational managers and frontline staff, on an organization’s dynamic capability. Adopting an issue management perspective, we present data from a single case study in which differing views between leaders triggering the strategic initiatives and those close to operationalizing them, resulted in a lack of dynamic capability. This is explained by an absence of procedural rationality – a concept reflecting the extent to which a decision-making process and its results are perceived as sensible and relevant. We argue that procedural rationality, enabled by social interaction between hierarchical levels, is vital to building employee commitment to purposeful change and organizational dynamic capability

Creativity and dysfunction in strategic processes : the case of scenario planning

This paper attempts to open up a new line of enquiry into the dysfunctions of creativity within strategic processes. Generally, the impact and results of introducing creativity (and innovation) into organisational life are perceived to be wholesome and beneficial. But recent research in the area of organisational psychology has documented a ‘dark’ side to its introduction, e.g., low employee morale, stress, theft, sabotage, destructive conflict. Learning from this work and shifting the domain to strategic management, this paper focuses on scenario planning—a strategy process widely regarded by participants and facilitators as creative and innovative in structure, content and output. First, the creative credentials of the process are established with reference to the literature and definitions from the creative and cultural industries. Second, the process is deconstructed into activities and each is examined for the extent of its embedded creativity. Third, informed by case evidence, four dysfunctions of the scenario planning process are conjectured: creativity layered on fantasy; heightened expectations and confusion; pride and passion; and creativity leading to excess. The paper concludes by suggesting four options for handling these potential dysfunctional effects and, in the light of the dialogue presented, re-interprets the definition of scenario planning presented earlier in the text

The multisensory attentional consequences of tool use : a functional magnetic resonance imaging study

Background: Tool use in humans requires that multisensory information is integrated across different locations, from objects seen to be distant from the hand, but felt indirectly at the hand via the tool. We tested the hypothesis that using a simple tool to perceive vibrotactile stimuli results in the enhanced processing of visual stimuli presented at the distal, functional part of the tool. Such a finding would be consistent with a shift of spatial attention to the location where the tool is used. Methodology/Principal Findings: We tested this hypothesis by scanning healthy human participants’ brains using functional magnetic resonance imaging, while they used a simple tool to discriminate between target vibrations, accompanied by congruent or incongruent visual distractors, on the same or opposite side to the tool. The attentional hypothesis was supported: BOLD response in occipital cortex, particularly in the right hemisphere lingual gyrus, varied significantly as a function of tool position, increasing contralaterally, and decreasing ipsilaterally to the tool. Furthermore, these modulations occurred despite the fact that participants were repeatedly instructed to ignore the visual stimuli, to respond only to the vibrotactile stimuli, and to maintain visual fixation centrally. In addition, the magnitude of multisensory (visual-vibrotactile) interactions in participants’ behavioural responses significantly predicted the BOLD response in occipital cortical areas that were also modulated as a function of both visual stimulus position and tool position. Conclusions/Significance: These results show that using a simple tool to locate and to perceive vibrotactile stimuli is accompanied by a shift of spatial attention to the location where the functional part of the tool is used, resulting in enhanced processing of visual stimuli at that location, and decreased processing at other locations. This was most clearly observed in the right hemisphere lingual gyrus. Such modulations of visual processing may reflect the functional importance of visuospatial information during human tool use

Model Selection for Support Vector Machine Classification

We address the problem of model selection for Support Vector Machine (SVM) classification. For fixed functional form of the kernel, model selection amounts to tuning kernel parameters and the slack penalty coefficient $C$. We begin by reviewing a recently developed probabilistic framework for SVM classification. An extension to the case of SVMs with quadratic slack penalties is given and a simple approximation for the evidence is derived, which can be used as a criterion for model selection. We also derive the exact gradients of the evidence in terms of posterior averages and describe how they can be estimated numerically using Hybrid Monte Carlo techniques. Though computationally demanding, the resulting gradient ascent algorithm is a useful baseline tool for probabilistic SVM model selection, since it can locate maxima of the exact (unapproximated) evidence. We then perform extensive experiments on several benchmark data sets. The aim of these experiments is to compare the performance of probabilistic model selection criteria with alternatives based on estimates of the test error, namely the so-called ``span estimate'' and Wahba's Generalized Approximate Cross-Validation (GACV) error. We find that all the ``simple'' model criteria (Laplace evidence approximations, and the Span and GACV error estimates) exhibit multiple local optima with respect to the hyperparameters. While some of these give performance that is competitive with results from other approaches in the literature, a significant fraction lead to rather higher test errors. The results for the evidence gradient ascent method show that also the exact evidence exhibits local optima, but these give test errors which are much less variable and also consistently lower than for the simpler model selection criteria

A Renormalization Group for Hamiltonians: Numerical Results

We describe a renormalization group transformation that is related to the breakup of golden invariant tori in Hamiltonian systems with two degrees of freedom. This transformation applies to a large class of Hamiltonians, is conceptually simple, and allows for accurate numerical computations. In a numerical implementation, we find a nontrivial fixed point and determine the corresponding critical index and scaling. Our computed values for various universal constants are in good agreement with existing data for area-preserving maps. We also discuss the flow associated with the nontrivial fixed point.Comment: 11 Pages, 2 Figures. For future updates, check ftp://ftp.ma.utexas.edu/pub/papers/koch

‘From Optik to Haptik’ : Celticism, symbols and stones in the 1930s

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Freedom from judgement above? Predestination and cultural trauma in Scottish Gaelic poetry of World War I

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On Irish Poets Writing in Scotland

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