The Struggle to Utopia : Social Reform, Accumulation, and Transformation in Howards End

E. M. Forster’s novel Howards End explores transitions within early twentieth century London society’s morals, values, and class divisions. I track the progression from excess and affluence to rural, pastoral simplification within the characters’ lives and lifestyles. The first chapter examines class relations and social expectations, including a focus on consumerism, accumulation, and inheritance. Character and critics discussions in reference to class, poverty, and accumulation are reviewed. The second chapter connects Howards End to utopian communes, the dystopian society in Forster s The Machine Stops,” and examines Howards End as a site for a potential utopia. Howards End as a utopian text acts as a model or example for the rest of society. At Howards End, peace, happiness, and cooperation can be achieved, transcending class distinction and the unequal distribution of wealth

Fantasy as a Peripheral Modernism: Uneven Development in Charles de Lint's Urban Fantasy

Modern fantasy must be analyzed as a modernist literature that posits a critical gesture of refusal of the conditions of modernity. As a form of irrealism, a category that includes Gothic and magic realism, fantasy claims to represent a deeper realism even if it uses non-realist techniques to do so. The combined and uneven capitalist world-system inscribes itself in the urban fantasy of Charles de Lint, which as a peripheral modernism combines residual forms and folkloric, non-modern content within the realist novel. This symbolic act allegorizes 'the synchronicity of the non-synchronous, ' a principal condition of modernity. In de Lint's novel Moonheart, the uneven relationship between colonizer and colonized becomes symbolically resolved through its utopian romance structure, despite the incapability of the Canadian state's policy of multiculturalism to redress First Nations inequality. Mulengro expands the Gothic horror of a Rom superstition into a diagnosis of the general conditions of alienation that haunt modern capitalist society. In Dreams Underfoot, de Lint's short story collection, fantasy represents the unevenness of cities, where the right to the urban life is at stake within the sublime urban totality

Development and application of a catchment scale pesticide fate and transport model for use in drinking water risk assessment

This paper describes the development and application of IMPT (Integrated Model for Pesticide Transport), a parameter-efficient tool for predicting diffuse-source pesticide concentrations in surface waters used for drinking water supply. The model was applied to a small UK headwater catchment with high frequency (8 h) pesticide monitoring data and to five larger catchments (479–1653 km2) with sampling approximately every 14 days. Model performance was good for predictions of both flow (Nash Sutcliffe Efficiency generally > 0.59 and PBIAS < 10%) and pesticide concentrations, although low sampling frequency in the larger catchments is likely to mask the true episodic nature of exposure. The computational efficiency of the model, along with the fact that most of its parameters can be derived from existing national soil property data mean that it can be used to rapidly predict pesticide exposure in multiple surface water resources to support operational and strategic risk assessments

"You kind of have to listen to me": researching discrimination through poetry

Arts-based research approaches, such as poetic inquiry and autoethnography, are attracting interest for their ability to engage wide-ranging audiences with creative, emotive, and thought-provoking outputs. In this article, we discuss a new method, which draws on these approaches, combining them with collaborative research principles and practices. The "collaborative poetics" method was developed in a pilot study, where one social scientist/poet and seven young spoken word artists worked together to explore their lived experiences of discrimination and privilege. We focus here on one aspect of this research; namely, the analysis of responses to two key questions: "Where do you see discrimination in your daily life?" and "How do you benefit from discrimination?" These questions were posed initially during semi-structured interviews with five of the co-researchers, and subsequently as mini questionnaires which evoked short, written statements from 39 participants. The interview data were analyzed using collaborative poetics and the wider dataset with a "pure" thematic analysis. These different approaches are compared here, and we argue that this comparison reveals the transformative potential of collaborative poetics for both co-researchers and the intended audiences of research.Kunstbasierte Forschungsansätze wie poetische Forschung und Autoethnografie erhalten besondere Aufmerksamkeit angesichts ihrer Potenz, ein breites Publikum durch kreative, emotionale und nachdenklich machende Ergebnis(darstellungen) zu interessieren. In diesem Beitrag befassen wir uns mit einem neuen Verfahren, das auf die vorgenannten Ansätze zurückgreift und zusätzlich kollaborative Prinzipien einbezieht: Die Methode der "kollaborativen Poetik" entstand im Rahmen einer Pilotstudie, in der eine erfahrene Sozialwissenschaftlerin mit sieben jungen Künstler/innen zusammenarbeitete, um ihre alltäglichen Erfahrungen mit Diskriminierung und Privilegierung zu erforschen. Im Folgenden konzentrieren wir uns auf einen spezifischen Aspekt, nämlich die Analyse der Ergebnisse zu den beiden Schlüsselfragen: "Wo in deinem Alltag erlebst du Diskriminierung?" bzw. "In welcher Weise profitierst du von Diskriminierung?" Diese Fragen wurden fünf der Ko-Forscher/innen zu Beginn von teil-strukturierten Interviews gestellt; danach wurden von 39 Studienteilnehmer/innen kurze schriftliche Statements zu diesen Fragen eingeholt. Zur Analyse der Interviewdaten nutzten wir die Methode der kollaborativen Poetik, für das größere Datenset eine thematische Analyse. Die Ergebnisse aus beiden Vorgehensweisen wurden verglichen, und aus unserer Perspektive verdeutlicht dieser Vergleich das transformative Potenzial kollaborativer Poetik sowohl für Forschende als auch für ein breiteres Publikum

Effect of temperature anisotropy on the dynamics of geodesic acoustic modes

In this work, we revisit the linear gyro-kinetic theory of geodesic acoustic modes (GAMs) and derive a general dispersion relation for an arbitrary equilibrium distribution function of ions. A bi-Maxwellian distribution of ions is then used to study the effects of ion temperature anisotropy on GAM frequency and growth rate. We find that ion temperature anisotropy yields sensible modifications to both the GAM frequency and growth rate as both tend to increase with anisotropy and these results are strongly affected by the electron to ion temperature ratio

A rose by any other name? Developing a method of collaborative poetics

This article describes a new method of participatory arts-based research in which poets and social scientists form a collaborative research collective. This collaborative poetics method harnesses participants’ skills and knowledge to produce innovative, creative pieces, which can deepen understandings of social scientific issues and communicate this knowledge in engaging, accessible ways. The method was developed in a pilot study in which seven young spoken word poets and one poet/social scientist explored their lived experiences of discrimination. These experiences were elucidated through poetic autoethnographies, which were disseminated in a chapbook and live spoken word performance. Audience feedback indicated that the autoethnographies were powerful and thought provoking. For the co-researchers, the project was a transformative experience, facilitating changes in their focus, exploration, and communication of issues around discrimination and encouraging them to respond differently to instances of discrimination, prejudice, or abuse. The pilot study thus provides strong, preliminary support for the value of the collaborative poetics method

Nonlinear interaction of Alfv\'enic instabilities and turbulence via the modification of the equilibrium profiles

Nonlinear simulations of Alfv\'en modes (AM) driven by energetic particles (EP) in the presence of turbulence are performed with the gyrokinetic particle-in-cell code ORB5. The AMs carry a heat flux, and consequently they nonlinearly modify the plasma temperature profiles. The isolated effect of this modification on the dynamics of turbulence is studied, by means of electrostatic simulations. We find that turbulence is reduced when the profiles relaxed by the AM are used, with respect to the simulation where the unperturbed profiles are used. This is an example of indirect interaction of EPs and turbulence. First, an analytic magnetic equilibrium with circular concentric flux surfaces is considered as a simplified example for this study. Then, an application to an experimentally relevant case of ASDEX Upgrade is discussed

GSK3β-SCFFBXW7α mediated phosphorylation and ubiquitination of IRF1 are required for its transcription-dependent turnover

IRF1 (Interferon Regulatory Factor-1) is the prototype of the IRF family of DNA binding transcription factors. IRF1 protein expression is regulated by transient up-regulation in response to external stimuli followed by rapid degradation via the ubiquitin-proteasome system. Here we report that DNA bound IRF1 turnover is promoted by GSK3β (Glycogen Synthase Kinase 3β) via phosphorylation of the T181 residue which generates a phosphodegron for the SCF (Skp-Cul-Fbox) ubiquitin E3-ligase receptor protein Fbxw7α (F-box/WD40 7). This regulated turnover is essential for IRF1 activity, as mutation of T181 results in an improperly stabilised protein that accumulates at target promoters but fails to induce RNA-Pol-II elongation and subsequent transcription of target genes. Consequently, the anti-proliferative activity of IRF1 is lost in cell lines expressing T181A mutant. Further, cell lines with dysfunctional Fbxw7 are less sensitive to IRF1 overexpression, suggesting an important co-activator function for this ligase complex. As T181 phosphorylation requires both DNA binding and RNA-Pol-II elongation, we propose that this event acts to clear " spent " molecules of IRF1 from transcriptionally engaged target promoters