Deconstructing Assumptions in A Jury of Her Peers

A Jury of Her Peers is truly a small masterpiece. Set in limited rural community, it reaches far back to eons of lost history. From the vivid dramatic scenes and from the heart of a feminine reticence embedded in them, it seems that a desperate cry against injustice toward women echoes. The Minnie Foster who we never meet has an imposing spiritual presence from start to end. Her pitiful silence seems to lament the dark shadow of cruelty and suffering which has overwhelmed of the life of despondent women throughout history. Following her final, desperate attempt to defend herself from being wholly crushed she is subdued by a burden heavier than that from which she had tried to escape. From the rough unsympathetic hands of a husband she is put under the glaring stare of cold uncaring law. What becomes of her remains unknown, just as the lament of her pitiful cry for justice remains unfulfilled

A Reading of Joseph Conrad's The Tale

The Tale is a short story by Joseph Conrad. Typical of a Conrad story it is set at sea. The sea is symbolic of the unconscious and this story may be read as a story of the unconscious. On the outside, it seems simple; a man tells a woman a tale of the commanding officer of a patrol ship who gives false directions to another ship and sends it to its doom. In between the lines of the seemingly simple plot, however, can be read another tale; one which speaks of a human sea deeper than the sea of water; deeper, darker, and infinitely more mysterious. Man has navigated the sea of water but the unfathomed sea of his own being remains, for the most part, undiscovered. This is a sea different from the sea of this world and Conrad sets sail on it by telling a tale from another world. Sailing with Conrad, the reader can look out on the infinite vastness and try to form a picture of the infinite depth of a sea which is not visible to the human eye

A Reading of Flannery O’Connors “Everything that Rises Must Converge”

Everything that rises must converge is a short story which, without the aid of suspense that is often provoked in fiction by actions hanging on a bare thread in a whirling plot of intertwining – and perhaps incredible – events, catches the reader‟s attention until the very last word. The plot of the story could not be any simpler; a young bachelor takes his overweight mother by bus to a „reducing class‟ but before they reach the place the mother changes her mind, heads back home, has a stroke and is left by her helpless son dying or maybe dead as he goes to seek help. But parallel to the plot of events is a “plot" of revelation; as the insignificantly banal happenings take place, an unfolding of character slowly emerges before the reader‟s eyes

Images of the Female Countenance in Renaissance Literature

In her article "The politics of gender" Elaine Hobby gives a clear image of the confusion evoked in modern mentality by the juxtaposition of Renaissance literature and history. The romantic scenes portrayed in the wonderland of Renaissance poetry seem uncompromisable with the bare facts of historical record. As we contemplate the shadows obscuring the male permeated poetic language of the age however, we do discern spots of light illuminating the overall picture. The age has its own logic and its own language and although neither may be wholly appealing to the modern palate, both are, within their own historical framework, unequivocal and self-consciously assertive

Modélisation GARCH multivariée pour les variables climatiques et hydrologiques.

Hydrologic time series modeling usually includes linear approaches which model the time varying mean or the conditional mean of the hydrologic variables. However, most of the hydrologic variables show nonlinear variations through time. The nonlinear modeling of hydrologic variables has received considerable attentions in recent decades. Although a number of nonlinear models have been presented in the literature, the nonlinear time series models have not been sufficiently applied in hydrology and climatology. As the hydroclimatic variables change and influence each other within a temporal and spatial scale, it is essential to apply the appropriate multivariate models which take into account the nonlinear relationships between hydrologic variables through space and time. The main goal of this study is to propose and develop a class of multivariate time series models called 'Multivariate Generalized Autoregressive Conditional Heteroscedasticity' (MGARCH) model, usually applied in financial time series modeling, for different hydrologic and climatic variables. The MGARCH modeling approach is used to model the conditional variance-covariance or volatility-covolatility of hydroclimatic variables. This study presents different types of univariate asymmetric GARCH models such as EGARCH, PGARCH and TGARCH models and multivariate GARCH models such as VECH, BEKK, CCC and DCC models to consider this time varying conditional variance- Covariance relationship between different hydrologic variables. Moreover, different stationarity and nonlinearity tests are also applied in this study to test and compare different hydrologic and climatic variables and their variance-covariance structure. The asymmetric GARCH models for streamflow heteroscedastict modeling indicate a better performance for exponential GARCH (EGARCH) model than the ARIMA models while other asymmetric models (PGARCH, TGARCH) did not show a better performance. However, it is also observed that the adding a GARCH model to the SARIMA model for rainfall time series modeling does not improve the accuracy of estimation, especially when the Box-Cox transformation is applied on rainfall time series. The univariate GARCH model for testing the volatility change of SOI shows a remarkable change in the short run persistency of the conditional variance of SOI and shows more extreme conditional variances in recent decades. The diagonal VECH and CCC models adapted and developed to investigate the effect of the variance of rainfall on the streamflow show that rainfall has a strong conditional variance while runoff shows a short run conditional variance. The covariance between rainfall and runoff shows a long run characteristic and a high degree of nonlinearity. This characteristic may be due to the effect of physical catchment features on rainfall-runoff process. It seems that the CCC model which assumes a constant rainfall-runoff correlation is not valid for rainfall-runoff process. It is also observed that the MGARCH(l,l) model is sufficient for conditional variance-covariance modeling comparing to higher order models, i.e MGARCH(2,2) model. The advantage of developing the MGARCH approach for drought analysis is also investigated in this research. Drought is a climate phenomenon usually related to large atmospheric circulations. The diagonal VECH and BEKK approaches showed that the covariance structure between drought and atmospheric oscillations (NAO and SOI) is not strong and mostly related to the cross products of shocks rather than the covariances at the previous time steps. The time varying conditional correlation between drought and atmospheric indices do not show a significant change and trend during 1954-2010. The MGARCH approach is also adapted for modeling the variance-covariance structure between temperature and output of GCM models which are applied for downscaling. The diagonal VECH and DCC model indicate short run persistence between GCM predictors and temperature time series. Except some GCMs such as specific humidity and 2m temperature, which have a strong covariance association with maximum and minimum temperature, other GCMs do not influence the variance of temperature data. The conditional correlation between GCMs and temperature time series do not show a significant upward or downward trend during 1980 to 2000. In the field of social and public health and medical treatment, hip fracture is assumed to be largely related to different climate conditions. Adapting the CCC MGARCH method in the present study show a high impact of severe weather condition on hip fracture rate in Montreal region. It is observed that the snow depth, minimum temperature and day length are the most effective weather factors on hip fracture. It can be observed that the association between hip fracture incidence and climate variables is very weak or linear for small numbers of hip fracture incidences while this association (climate effect on hip fracture rate) increases exponentially and in a nonlinear fashion for the higher hip fracture rate values and harsh weather conditions.This research also shows that the hydrologic and climatologic variables exhibit nonlinear temporal variation which the MGARCR model seems to be an interesting approach to be developed, investigated and applied in order to capture this nonlinear characteristic of hydrologic and climatic variables. We can see that daily time series show a higher degree of nonlinearity and the rainfall-runoff process indicates the highest nonlinearity among all hydroclimatic process in this study. In addition, the conditional variance-covariance structures show stationarity for all process. However, some trend nonstationarity is observed for sometime series such as temperature and their association to other variables. Finally, the proposed methods in this study give us the opportunity to have a closer look at the time varying second order moment of different hydrologic and climatic variables and to develop our understanding of their relationship. However, the univariate GARCR models show both advantage and disadvantage over univariate linear models such as ARIMA and SARIMA models. A high number of parameters also remains the main disadvantage of multivariate GARCR models

Low-Storage Quantile Estimation

The abstract is included in the text

Water Quality Zonation of Beshar River in Yasuj City

AbstractThis study was conducted to monitor the current water quality of Beshar River by the Iranian Surface Water Quality Index (IRWQIsc). Monitoring of the river water quality was done based on sampling 12 stations along the river in October of 2021 as the period of water shortage and January of 2022 as the period of high water flow simultaneously with sampling two other stations (fish farm effluent and Yasuj wastewater treatment plant effluent) as the point source pollution entries. The results of zoning Beshar River based on IRWQIsc in the period of water scarcity showed a decrease in river water quality from the upstream to the downstream part. 41.66% of the upstream part of the river (Tang-e Tizab to Dehno) was in a relatively good condition, 8.34% of the river (entrance of Yasuj City) was in a good condition, 8.33% (middle part of the river in Shah Mokhtar Area) was in a relatively bad condition and 41.66% (downstream of the river) was in a moderate condition. Despite the increase in discharge and rainfall, no significant increase in water quality was observed in the high water flow period. In this period, 25% of the river (Tang-e Tizab, Tang-e Sorkh, and downstream of Qalat) was in a moderate condition and 75% of the river was in a relatively good condition based on IRWQIsc. Comparison of the flow rates and IRWQIsc indices showed that only during the high water flow period in the lower reaches of the river, the increased river discharge enhanced the river water quality , but no relationship between the river flow and the IRWQIsc was found at the upstream part of the river and in the period of water scarcity.Keywords: Beshar River, IRWQIsc index, biological oxygen demand  IntroductionWater quantity and quality are of the most vital parts of each ecosystem that affect other parts. Therefore, evaluation of the quantity and quality of river water can indicate the status of water resources management in a watershed. Beshar River is one of the most important and water-rich rivers in Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad Province. It provides most of the water needed for drinking, industry, and agriculture, while being exposed to various pollutions. This study was conducted to monitor the current water quality of Beshar River by the Iranian Surface Water Quality Index (IRWQIsc).  MethodologyMonitoring of river water quality was done based on sampling 12 stations along the river from the upstream (Tang-e Tizab) to the downstream (Pataveh) parts in October of 2021 as the period of water shortage and January of 2022 as the period of high water flow simultaneously with sampling two other stations (fish farm effluent and Yasuj wastewater treatment plant effluent) as the point source pollution entries.  DiscussionThe results of zoning Beshar River based on IRWQIsc in the period of water scarcity showed a decrease in the river water quality from the upstream to the downstream part. 41.66% of the river (upstream part of the river, Tang-e Tizab to Dehno) was in a relatively good condition, 8.34% of the river (entrance of Yasuj City) was in a good condition, 8.33% (middle part of the river in Shah Mokhtar Area) was in a relatively bad condition, and 41.66% (downstream of the river, Tange-Seriz to Pataveh) was in a moderate condition. Despite the increase in discharge and rainfall, no significant increase in water quality was observed in the high water flow period. In this period, 25% of the river (Tang-e Tizab, Tang-e Sorkh, and downstream part of Qalat) was in a moderate condition and 75% of it (Qalat, Dehno, entrance of Yasuj City, Shah Mokhtar to Pataveh) was in a relatively good condition based on IRWQIsc. ConclusionComparison of the flow rates and IRWQIsc indices showed that the increased river discharge in the lower reaches of the river increased the river water quality only during the high water flow period, but at the upstream part of the river and in the period of water scarcity, no relationship was seen between the river flow and IRWQIsc. Proper exploitation of Tang-e Sorkh Dam upstream of Bashar River in the near future and determining and supplying the environmental flows of the river with regard to water quality, especially at its upstream part should be taken into consideration to keep the self-purification ability of the river. References- Abdullah, N. and Jain, S. (2020). Multi-index summer flow regime characterization to inform environmental flow contexts, A New England case study. Ecological Indicators (111):15-1.- Kareem, S., Jaber, W., Al-Maliki, L., Al-Husseiny, R., Al-Mamoori, S. and Alansari, N. (2021). Water quality assessment and phosphorus effect using water quality indices: Euphrates River- Iraq as a case study. Groundwater for Sustainable Development (14): 1-10.- Marselina, M.; Wibowo, F. and Mushfiroh, A. 2022. Water quality index assessment methods for surface water: A case study of the Citarum River in Indonesia. Heliyon (8): 1-10.- Matta, G.; Nayak, A.; and Kumar, A. (2020). Water quality assessment using NSFWQI, OIP and multivariate techniques of Ganga River system, Uttarakhand, India. Applied Water Science 10: 1-12.- Murali, K.; Meenakshi, M. and Uma, R. N. (2020). Surface water (wetlands) quality assessment in Coimbatore (India) based on national sanitation foundation water quality index (NSF WQI). 1st International Conference on Science, Engineering and Technology: 1-7.- Nemati Varnosfaderany, M., Mirghaffary, N., Ebrahimi, E., and Sofyanian, A.R. (2009). Water quality assessment in an arid region using a water quality index. Journal of Water Science & Technology (60.9): 2319-2327. Figures and Tables- Fig. 1: Study area of Beshar River with locations of the point sources of pollution- Fig. 2: Study area and locations of the sample stations along Beshar River- Table 2: IRWQIsc indices and their weights (Water Resources Quality Index, 2013)- Table 4: Classification of surface water qualities of Iran based on IRWQIsc (Water Resources Quality)- Table 5: The measured variables of water quality for the sample stations along Beshar River during the low water flow period- Table 6: The measured variables of water quality in the sample stations along Beshar River during the high water flow period- Fig. 3: IRWQIsc index of the sample stations along Beshar River and effluents of the major sources of pollutants- Fig. 4: Changes of IRWQIsc indices along Beshar River during the high and low water flow periods- Fig. 5: The relationship between discharge and IRWQIsc index in the studied stations (numbers of the stations from the upstream to the downstream part of Beshar River from 1 to 12, respectively)- Supplementary Table 1: Locations of the sample stations along Beshar River and their water qualities- Supplementary Table 2: Water quality variables and their measuring methods (Rezvanipour and Razavi Dinani, 2014

Modeling the relationship between climate oscillations and drought by a multivariate GARCH model.

Typical multivariate time series models may exhibit comovement in mean but not in variance of hydrologic and climatic variables. This paper introduces multivariate generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity (GARCH) models to capture the comovement of the variance or the conditional covariance between two hydroclimatic time series. The diagonal vectorized and Baba-Engle-Kroft-Kroner models are developed to evaluate the covariance between drought and two atmospheric circulations, Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) and North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) time series during 1954-2000. The univariate generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity model indicates a strong persistency level in conditional variance for NAO and a moderate persistency level for SOI. The conditional variance of short-term drought index indicates low level of persistency, while the long-term index drought indicates high level of persistency in conditional variance. The estimated conditional covariance between drought and atmospheric indices is shown to be weak and negative. It is also observed that the covariance between drought and atmospheric indices is largely dependent on short-run variance of atmospheric indices rather than their long-run variance. The nonlinearity and stationarity tests show that the conditional covariances are nonlinear but stationary. However, the degree of nonlinearity is higher for the covariance between long-term drought and atmospheric indices. It is also observed that the nonlinearity of NAO is higher than that for SOI, in contrast to the stationarity which is stronger for SOI time series. Key Points Multivariate heteroscedastic models are developed for drought analysis Conditional covariance between drought, SOI, and NAO is not strong Time-varying correlations between drought and atmospheric indices are estimated