Commentaries and post-beginners' language teaching

This paper suggests an approach to, and some of the potential benefits of, introducing work with commentaries into a post-beginners' language course and considers the ways in which working with commentaries can usefully enrich students' study across a classical studies curriculum

Transposing Aristophanes: the theory and practice of translating Aristophanic lyric

The reception of Aristophanes has gained extraordinary momentum as a topic of academic interest in the last few years. Contributions range from Gonda Van Steen's ground-breaking Venom in Verse. Aristophanes in Modern Greece to Hall and Wrigley's Aristophanes in Performance 421 BC–AD 2007, which contains contributions from a wide range of scholars and writers, a number of whom have had experience of staging Aristophanes' plays as live theatre. In Found in Translation, J. Michael Walton has also made strides towards marrying the theory of translation to the practice of translating Aristophanes (something I have myself also sought to do in print). And with the history of Aristophanic translation, adaptation, and staging being rapidly pieced together (in the English-speaking world at least, where Hall, Steggle, Halliwell, Sowerby, Walsh, and Walton, for example, have all made their own contributions), much of the groundwork has been laid for a study such as is attempted in this article. Here I aim to take a broad look across a range of translations in order to see how one particular text type within Aristophanic drama has been approached by translators, namely Aristophanes' lyric passages. The aim of this study will be to give both an insight into the numerous considerations that translators take into account when translating Aristophanic lyric and an impression of the range of end products that have emerged over the last two hundred years

Brushes with Some “Dirty Truths”: Handwritten Manuscripts and Religion in China

East Asian Languages and Civilization

Resilience of Hierarchical Critical Infrastructure Networks

Concern over the resilience of critical infrastructure networks has increased dramatically over the last decade due to a number of well documented failures and the significant disruption associated with these. This has led to a large body of research that has adopted graph-theoretic based analysis in order to try and improve our understanding of infrastructure network resilience. Many studies have asserted that infrastructure networks possess a scale-free topology which is robust to random failures but sensitive to targeted attacks at highly connected hubs. However, many studies have ignored that many networks in addition to their topological connectivity may be organised either logically or spatially in a hierarchical system which may significantly change their response to perturbations. In this paper we explore if hierarchical network models exhibit significantly different higher-order topological characteristics compared to other network structures and how this impacts on their resilience to a number of different failure types. This is achieved by investigating a suite of synthetic networks as well as a suite of ‘real world’ spatial infrastructure networks

Assessment of the microbial communities associated with white syndrome and brown jelly syndrome in aquarium corals

Bacterial and ciliate assemblages associated with aquarium corals displaying white syndrome (WS) and brown jelly syndrome (BJS) were investigated. Healthy (n = 10) and diseased corals (WS n = 18; BJS n = 3) were analysed for 16S rRNA gene bacterial diversity, total bacterial abundance and vibrio-specific 16S rRNA gene abundance. This was conducted alongside analysis of 18S rRNA gene sequenc-ing targeting ciliates, a group of organisms largely overlooked for their potential as causal agents of coral disease. Despite significant differences between healthy and diseased corals in their 16S rRNA gene bacterial diversity, total bacterial abundance and vibrio-specific rRNA gene abundance, no domi-nant bacterial ribotypes were found consistently within the diseased samples. In contrast, one ciliate morphotype, named Morph 3 in this study (GenBank Accession Numbers JF831358 for the ciliate isolated from WS and JF831359 for the ciliate isolated from BJS) was observed to burrow into and underneath the coral tissues at the disease lesion in both disease types and contained algal endosym-bionts indicative of coral tissue ingestion. This ciliate was observed in larger numbers in BJS compared to WS, giving rise to the characteristic jelly like substance in BJS. Morph 3 varied by only 1 bp over 549 bp from the recently described Morph 1 ciliate (GenBank Accession No. JN626268), which has been shown to be present in field samples of WS and Brown Band Disease (BrB) in the Indo-Pacific. This result indicates a close relationship between these aquarium diseases and those observed in the wild

Systematic vertical error in UAV-derived topographic models:origins and solutions

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) equipped with consumer cameras are increasingly being used to produce high resolution digital elevation models (DEMs). However, although such DEMs may achieve centimetric detail, they can also display broad-scale systematic deformation (usually a vertical ‘doming’) that restricts their wider use. This effect can be particularly apparent in DEMs derived by structure-from-motion (SfM) processing, especially when control point data have not been incorporated in the bundle adjustment process. We illustrate that doming error results from a combination of inaccurate description of radial lens distortion and the use of imagery captured in near-parallel viewing directions. With such imagery, enabling camera self-calibration within the processing inherently leads to erroneous radial distortion values and associated DEM error. Using a simulation approach, we illustrate how existing understanding of systematic DEM error in stereo-pairs (from unaccounted radial distortion) up-scales in typical multiple-image blocks of UAV surveys. For image sets with dominantly parallel viewing directions, self-calibrating bundle adjustment (as normally used with images taken using consumer cameras) will not be able to derive radial lens distortion accurately, and will give associated systematic ‘doming’ DEM deformation. In the presence of image measurement noise (at levels characteristic of SfM software), and in the absence of control measurements, our simulations display domed deformation with amplitude of 2 m over horizontal distances of 100 m. We illustrate the sensitivity of this effect to variations in camera angle and flight height. Deformation will be reduced if suitable control points can be included within the bundle adjustment, but residual systematic vertical error may remain, accommodated by the estimated precision of the control measurements. Doming bias can be minimised by the inclusion of inclined images within the image set, for example, images collected during gently banked turns of a fixed-wing UAV or, if camera inclination can be altered, by just a few more oblique images with a rotor-based UAV. We provide practical flight plan solutions that, in the absence of control points, demonstrate a reduction in systematic DEM error by more than two orders of magnitude. DEM generation is subject to this effect whether a traditional photogrammetry or newer structure-from-motion (SfM) processing approach is used, but errors will be typically more pronounced in SfM-based DEMs, for which use of control measurements is often more limited. Although focussed on UAV surveying, our results are also relevant to ground-based image capture for SfM-based modelling

Multi-waveband observations of colliding galaxies

Colliding galaxies represent a major challenge to both theorists and observers because of the large variety of phenomena which are expected to come into play during the interaction. Strong gravitational fluctuations may drive non-linear waves and instabilities throughout the stars and gas leading to enhanced star formation, nuclear activity and ultimately a mixing of the morphological components of the original galaxies. One relatively uncomplicated class of colliding galaxy where stellar waves play an important role in star formation are ring galaxies. Ring galaxies are probably formed when a companion galaxy passes through the center of a disk system driving circular waves through the disk (Lynds and Toomre 1976, Toomre 1978, Struck-Marcell 1990). Off-center collisions can generate non-circular waves and can be loosely described as banana-shaped although they may exhibit more complex forms as the waves expand into the disk. The propagation of such stellar and gaseous waves through the disk leads to enhanced star formation (e.g., Appleton and Struck-Marcell 1987a; Jeske 1986) and provides a unique probe of the response of the interstellar medium (ISM) to a propagating wave (see Appleton and Struck-Marcell 1987b). Here, the authors report results for 3 systems; the irregular ring Arp 143 (=VV 117); Wakamatsu's Seyfert ring (A0959-755; see Wakamatsu and Nishida 1987) and the brighter member of the pair of ring galaxies comprising of AM 1358-221. The most complete multi-wavelength data is for Arp 143. Optical charge coupled device (CCD) observations made with the 60 inch Palomar telescope at BV and r band, near-IR images at J (1.25 microns), H (1.65 microns) and k (2.2 microns) bands from the infrared camera (IRCAM) InSb array camera on the 3.8m United Kingdon Infrared Telescope (UKIRT) telescope and very large array (VLA) observations at 20cm in both the neutral hydrogen line and radio continuum are described. The observations of Wakamatsu's ring and AM 1358 were made only in the near-IR, and a comparison is made with available optical plate material

Signs of Power: Talismanic Writing in Chinese Buddhism

East Asian Languages and Civilization

Determining the rheology of active lava flows from photogrammetric image sequence processing

We describe a photogrammetric approach used to determine the rheological properties of active lava flows based on stereo image sequences. Bulk rheological properties can be estimated from measurements of flow slope, velocity and dimensions and so, at flow-fronts, they can be calculated from sequential digital elevation models (DEMs) acquired as the flow advances over new ground. For useful flow parameters to be extracted, DEMs may need to be obtained at approximately minute intervals, over durations of up to multiple hours. To deliver such data, we use oblique stereo pair sequences captured by digital SLR cameras and a semi-automated DEM-generation pipeline. Although similar data could be acquired with a terrestrial laser scanner, with deployments in remote and hazardous regions the photogrammetric approach offers significant logistical advantages in terms of reduced equipment cost, bulk, weight and power requirements. We describe the application of the technique to an active lava flow on Mount Etna, Sicily, in 2006. Image sequences were acquired from two tripod-mounted cameras over a period of ~3 hours, as the flow-front advanced ~15 m. Photogrammetric control was provided by 11 targets placed in the scene, with their coordinates determined by dGPS. The cameras were synchronised by a shutter release cable and triggered by an external timer (intervalometer). Image pairs were obtained every minute with DEMs extraction carried out on every fourth epoch; 57 DEMs, with a 0.25-m resolution, were generated. We describe the challenges associated with data collection in this remote environment and the techniques required to automate the photogrammetric analysis and sequence-DEM generation