83,120 research outputs found
What is Othello’s Secret?
Explicitly written from the perspective of a second-generation British Cypriot, this article examines the relevance of Shakespeare’s Othello to the modern troubles of Cyprus. Drawing on the recurrent imperialist and nationalist struggles to control Cyprus, in Shakespeare’s day and our own, the article explains how the author’s upcoming book, Othello’s Secret: The Cyprus Problem, radically reinterprets the domestic and military tensions of Othello as precursors to the island’s more recent wars and divisions. Insight into the way an English writer in the early modern period understood Cyprus can contribute to the way scholars in the British academy understand the bard both in his context and in ours. Consequently, the article challenges the conventional Anglophone scholarly focus on Venice, highlighting a surprising academic blindspot given Britain’s historical and ongoing colonial presence on Cyprus. In so doing, it reframes Othello as a play about Cyprus, offering a more personal account of how research on Shakespeare can purposefully contribute to geopolitical debates
From organism to population: the role of life-history theory
The role of life-history theory in population and evolutionary analyses is outlined. In both cases general life histories can be analysed, but simpler life histories need fewer parameters for their description. The simplest case, of semelparous (breed-once-then-die) organisms, needs only three parameters: somatic growth rate, mortality rate and fecundity. This case is analysed in detail. If fecundity is fixed, population growth rate can be calculated direct from mortality rate and somatic growth rate, and isoclines on which population growth rate is constant can be drawn in a ”state space” with axes for mortality rate and somatic growth rate. In this space density-dependence is likely to result in a population trajectory from low density, when mortality rate is low and somatic growth rate is high and the population increases (positive population growth rate) to high density, after which the process reverses to return to low density. Possible effects of pollution on this system are discussed. The state-space approach allows direct population analysis of the twin effects of pollution and density on population growth rate. Evolutionary analysis uses related methods to identify likely evolutionary outcomes when an organism's genetic options are subject to trade-offs. The trade-off considered here is between somatic growth rate and mortality rate. Such a trade-off could arise because of an energy allocation trade-off if resources spent on personal defence (reducing mortality rate) are not available for somatic growth rate. The evolutionary implications of pollution acting on such a trade-off are outlined
Isotopic liftings of Clifford algebras and applications in elementary particle mass matrices
Isotopic liftings of algebraic structures are investigated in the context of
Clifford algebras, where it is defined a new product involving an arbitrary,
but fixed, element of the Clifford algebra. This element acts as the unit with
respect to the introduced product, and is called isounit. We construct
isotopies in both associative and non-associative arbitrary algebras, and
examples of these constructions are exhibited using Clifford algebras, which
although associative, can generate the octonionic, non-associative, algebra.
The whole formalism is developed in a Clifford algebraic arena, giving also the
necessary pre-requisites to introduce isotopies of the exterior algebra. The
flavor hadronic symmetry of the six u,d,s,c,b,t quarks is shown to be exact,
when the generators of the isotopic Lie algebra su(6) are constructed, and the
unit of the isotopic Clifford algebra is shown to be a function of the six
quark masses. The limits constraining the parameters, that are entries of the
representation of the isounit in the isotopic group SU(6), are based on the
most recent limits imposed on quark masses.Comment: 19 page
Manifestation of Chaos in Real Complex Systems: Case of Parkinson's Disease
In this chapter we present a new approach to the study of manifestations of
chaos in real complex system. Recently we have achieved the following result.
In real complex systems the informational measure of chaotic chatacter (IMC)
can serve as a reliable quantitative estimation of the state of a complex
system and help to estimate the deviation of this state from its normal
condition. As the IMC we suggest the statistical spectrum of the non-Markovity
parameter (NMP) and its frequency behavior. Our preliminary studies of real
complex systems in cardiology, neurophysiology and seismology have shown that
the NMP has diverse frequency dependence. It testifies to the competition
between Markovian and non-Markovian, random and regular processes and makes a
crossover from one relaxation scenario to the other possible. On this basis we
can formulate the new concept in the study of the manifestation of chaoticity.
We suggest the statistical theory of discrete non-Markov stochastic processes
to calculate the NMP and the quantitative evaluation of the IMC in real complex
systems. With the help of the IMC we have found out the evident manifestation
of chaosity in a normal (healthy) state of the studied system, its sharp
reduction in the period of crises, catastrophes and various human diseases. It
means that one can appreciably improve the state of a patient (of any system)
by increasing the IMC of the studied live system. The given observation creates
a reliable basis for predicting crises and catastrophes, as well as for
diagnosing and treating various human diseases, Parkinson's disease in
particular.Comment: 20 pages, 8 figures, 3 tables. To be published in "The Logistic Map
and the Route to Chaos: From the Beginnings to the Modern Applications", eds.
by M. Ausloos, M. Dirickx, pp. 175-196, Springer-Verlag, Berlin (2006
Guppy: Process-Oriented Programming on Embedded Devices
Guppy is a new and experimental process-oriented programming language, taking much inspiration (and some code-base) from the existing occam-pi language. This paper reports on a variety of aspects related to this, specifically language, compiler and run-time system development, enabling Guppy programs to run on desktop and embedded systems. A native code-generation approach is taken, using C as the intermediate language, and with stack-space requirements determined at compile-time
Cohort profile: the Siyakhula cohort, rural South Africa
No abstract available
Adult socioeconomic, educational, social, and psychological outcomes of childhood obesity: a national birth cohort study
Objectives: To assess adult socioeconomic, educational, social,
and psychological outcomes of childhood obesity by using
nationally representative data.
Design: 1970 British birth cohort.
Participants: 16 567 babies born in Great Britain 5-11 April
1970 and followed up at 5, 10, and 29-30 years.
Main outcome measures: Obesity at age 10 and 30 years. Self
reported socioeconomic, educational, psychological, and social
outcomes at 30 years. Odds ratios were calculated for the risk of
each adult outcome associated with obesity in childhood only,
obesity in adulthood only, and persistent child and adult
obesity, compared with those obese at neither period.
Results: Of the 8490 participants with data on body mass index
at 10 and 30 years, 4.3% were obese at 10 years and 16.3% at 30
years. Obesity in childhood only was not associated with adult
social class, income, years of schooling, educational attainment,
relationships, or psychological morbidity in either sex after
adjustment for confounding factors. Persistent obesity was not
associated with any adverse adult outcomes in men, though it
was associated among women with a higher risk of never
having been gainfully employed (odds ratio 1.9, 95% confidence
interval 1.1 to 3.3) and not having a current partner (2.0, 1.3 to
3.3).
Conclusions: Obesity limited to childhood has little impact on
adult outcomes. Persistent obesity in women is associated with
poorer employment and relationship outcomes. Efforts to
reduce the socioeconomic and psychosocial burden of obesity
in adult life should focus on prevention of the persistence of
obesity from childhood into adulthood
Robust control for independently rotating wheelsets on a railway vehicle using practical sensors
This paper presents the development of H-infinity control
strategy for the active steering of railway vehicles with independently rotating wheelsets. The primary objective of the active steering is to stabilize the wheelset and to provide a guidance control. Some fundamental problems for active steering are addressed in the study. The developed controller is able to maintain stability and good performance when parameter variations occur, in particular
at the wheel-rail interface. The control is also robust against structured uncertainties that are not included in the model such as actuator dynamics. Furthermore the control design is formulated to use only practical sensors of inertial and speed measurements, as some basic measurements required for active steering such as
wheel-rail lateral displacement cannot be easily and economically measured in practice
Momentum Regularity and Stability of the Relativistic Vlasov-Maxwell-Boltzmann System
In the study of solutions to the relativistic Boltzmann equation, their
regularity with respect to the momentum variables has been an outstanding
question, even local in time, due to the initially unexpected growth in the
post-collisional momentum variables which was discovered in 1991 by Glassey &
Strauss \cite{MR1105532}. We establish momentum regularity within energy spaces
via a new splitting technique and interplay between the Glassey-Strauss frame
and the center of mass frame of the relativistic collision operator. In a
periodic box, these new momentum regularity estimates lead to a proof of global
existence of classical solutions to the two-species relativistic
Vlasov-Boltzmann-Maxwell system for charged particles near Maxwellian with hard
ball interaction.Comment: 23 pages; made revisions which were suggested by the referee; to
appear in Comm. Math. Phy
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