Speculative Possibilities

An exciting movement in literature (as well as art, music, gaming, and other forms of media) that is presently exploding throughout our media streams in the twenty-first century is that of Indigenous futurism. This concept, which owes its namesake to scholar Grace L. Dillon and her work Walking the Clouds: An Anthology of Indigenous Science Fiction (2012), seeks to explore the possibilities of alternate pasts, presents, and futures, offering a fresh perspective on the beauty, power, and resilience of Indigeneity. One writer delving into this movement is Stephen Graham Jones, prolific author of many novels and short stories including his most recent works The Babysitter Lives (2022), The Backbone of the World (2022), “Attack of the 50 Foot Indian” (2021), “How to Break into a Hotel Room” (2021), My Heart is a Chainsaw (2021), “Wait for the Night” (2020), Night of the Mannequins (2020), and “The Guy with the Name” (2020), and The Only Good Indians (2020). Although Jones’s contributions to the literary world are extensive, there has been relatively little scholarship dedicated to his continuous experimenting in varying genres, forms, and subject matters. Likewise, scholarship on Indigenous futurism is also quite scarce, especially as it is developed through the literary genre of horror fiction. This work extends both scholarly conversations by analyzing Jones’s The Only Good Indians as a work of Indigenous futurism, specifically as it relates to rewriting the past, present, and future through various methods of Native slipstream. Fictional newspaper headlines and articles, a concentrated insistence on rationalization coupled with the inability to achieve such measures, and varying points of view combine to create a novel that is a hauntingly beautiful depiction of resiliency and possibility for an alternative future in which Indigenous worldviews replace the damaging cycles created and perpetuated by Western ideologies—positioning The Only Good Indians as an exceptional contribution to the field of Indigenous futurism, in addition to substantiating that both horror and futuristic fiction can serve as an effective medium of decolonization. Keywords: Indigenous futurism, decolonization, horror, Stephen Graham Jones, speculative fictio

Working in a loosely coupled system: exploring practices and implications of coupling work on construction sites

The conceptualization of construction as a loosely coupled system has been widely used to explain behaviour within the industry. In this article, we revisit the concept by exploring what it means to work at the micro-level within this system. Adopting a practice lens, this study focuses on the daily work of site managers, a category of workers who often have been described to have a hub-like role in construction projects. The findings highlight how their work consists of activities that can be seen as mundane, yet simultaneously fill an important coupling function in the projects, which we conceptualize as coupling work. Coupling work denotes a managerial work practice through which site managers use slack from the parent organization to tighten site-activities. However, they do so in a particular way that tightens the projects closer to their own authority which, in turn, sustains organizational loose coupling. The study contributes to debates on change and development in construction by showing how coupling work is produced and reproduced to preserve the autonomy and control of site managers

Antisense PNA accumulates in Escherichia coli and mediates a long post-antibiotic effect

Antisense agents that target growth-essential genes display surprisingly potent bactericidal properties. In particular, peptide nucleic acid (PNA) and phosphorodiamidate morpholino oligomers linked to cationic carrier peptides are effective in time kill assays and as inhibitors of bacterial peritonitis in mice. It is unclear how these relatively large antimicrobials overcome stringent bacterial barriers and mediate killing. Here we determined the transit kinetics of peptide-PNAs and observed an accumulation of cell-associated PNA in Escherichia coli and slow efflux. An inhibitor of drug efflux pumps did not alter peptide-PNA potency, indicating a lack of active efflux from cells. Consistent with cell retention, the post-antibiotic effect (PAE) of the anti-acyl carrier protein (acpP) peptide-PNA was greater than 11 hours. Bacterial cell accumulation and a long PAE are properties of significant interest for antimicrobial development.Peer reviewe

Ricci-flat supertwistor spaces

We show that supertwistor spaces constructed as a Kahler quotient of a hyperkahler cone (HKC) with equal numbers of bosonic and fermionic coordinates are Ricci-flat, and hence, Calabi-Yau. We study deformations of the supertwistor space induced from deformations of the HKC. We also discuss general infinitesimal deformations that preserve Ricci-flatness.Comment: 13 pages, references and comments adde

Hard diffraction from parton rescattering in QCD

We analyze the QCD dynamics of diffractive deep inelastic scattering. The presence of a rapidity gap between the target and diffractive system requires that the target remnant emerges in a color singlet state, which we show is made possible by the soft rescattering of the struck quark. This rescattering is described by the path-ordered exponential (Wilson line) in the expression for the parton distribution function of the target. The multiple scattering of the struck parton via instantaneous interactions in the target generates dominantly imaginary diffractive amplitudes, giving rise to an "effective pomeron" exchange. The pomeron is not an intrinsic part of the proton but a dynamical effect of the interaction. This picture also applies to diffraction in hadron-initiated processes. Due to the different color environment the rescattering is different in virtual photon- and hadron-induced processes, explaining the observed non-universality of diffractive parton distributions. This framework provides a theoretical basis for the phenomenologically successful Soft Color Interaction model which includes rescattering effects and thus generates a variety of final states with rapidity gaps. We discuss developments of the SCI model to account for the color coherence features of the underlying subprocesses.Comment: 12 pages, 9 figures, REVTeX4. Somewhat expanded and modified version, two new subsections added. To appear in PR

T-duality and Generalized Kahler Geometry

We use newly discovered N = (2, 2) vector multiplets to clarify T-dualities for generalized Kahler geometries. Following the usual procedure, we gauge isometries of nonlinear sigma-models and introduce Lagrange multipliers that constrain the field-strengths of the gauge fields to vanish. Integrating out the Lagrange multipliers leads to the original action, whereas integrating out the vector multiplets gives the dual action. The description is given both in N = (2, 2) and N = (1, 1) superspace.Comment: 14 pages; published version: some conventions improved, minor clarification

Testing the dynamics of high energy scattering using vector meson production

I review work on diffractive vector meson production in photon-proton collisions at high energy and large momentum transfer, accompanied by proton dissociation and a large rapidity gap. This process provides a test of the high energy scattering dynamics, but is also sensitive to the details of the treatment of the vector meson vertex. The emphasis is on the description of the process by a solution of the non-forward BFKL equation, i.e. the equation describing the evolution of scattering amplitudes in the high-energy limit of QCD. The formation of the vector meson and the non-perturbative modeling needed is also briefly discussed.Comment: 17 pages, 8 figures. Brief review to appear in Mod. Phys. Lett.

Vector Meson Photoproduction from the BFKL Equation II: Phenomenology

Diffractive vector meson photoproduction accompanied by proton dissociation is studied for large momentum transfer. The process is described by the non-forward BFKL equation which we use to compare to data collected at the HERA collider.Comment: 39 pages, 29 figure

Time dependent solitons of noncommutative Chern-Simons theory coupled to scalar fields

We study one- and two-soliton solutions of noncommutative Chern-Simons theory coupled to a nonrelativistic or a relativistic scalar field. In the nonrelativistic case, we find a tower of new stationary time-dependent solutions, all with the same charge density, but with increasing energies. The dynamics of these solitons cannot be studied using traditional moduli space techniques, but we do find a nontrivial symplectic form on the phase space indicating that the moduli space is not flat. In the relativistic case we find the metric on the two soliton moduli space.Comment: 22 pages, 2 figures, JHEP3 style. v2: This paper is a thoroughly revised version. We thank P.A. Horvathy, L. Martina and P.C. Stichel for illuminating comments that led us to reconsider some of our previously reported results; see note added at the end of the paper. v3: Acknowledgements adde