Can Lightcone Fluctuations be Probed with Cosmological Backgrounds?

Finding signatures of quantum gravity in cosmological observations is now actively pursued both from the theoretical and the experimental side. Recent work has concentrated on finding signatures of light-cone fluctuations in the CMB. Because in inflationary scenarios a Gravitational Wave Background (GWB) is always emitted much before the CMB, we can ask, in the hypothesis where this GWB could be observed, what is the imprint of light cone fluctuations on this GWB. We show that due to the flat nature of the GWB spectrum, the effect of lightcone fluctuations are negligible.Comment: 10 pages, references adde

The Morphology of 9 Radio-selected Faint Galaxies from deep HST Imaging

Using the HST WFPC2 we perform deep I-band imaging of 9 radio-selected (limit 14 microJanskys at 8.5 GHz) faint galaxies from Roche, Lowenthal and Koo (2002). Two are also observed in V. Six of the galaxies have known redshifs of 0.4<z<1.0. Radial intensity profiles indicate that 7 are disk galaxies and 2 are bulge-dominated. Four of the six with redshifts have a high optical surface brightness compared to typical disk galaxies. Two of the 9 galaxies are in close interacting pairs, another two are very asymmetric and three have large, luminous rings resembling the collisional starburst rings in the Cartwheel galaxy. In most of these galaxies the high radio luminosities are probably the result of interaction-triggered starbursts. The mixture of observed morphologies suggests that enhanced radio luminosities often persist for >0.2 Gyr, to a late stage of the interaction. One of these 9 galaxies may be an exception in that it is a large red elliptical and its strong radio emission is more likely to be from an obscured AGN.Comment: 12 pages, latex, 8 figures, accepted for publication in MNRA

Getting a Helping Hand: Parental Transfers and First-Time Homebuyers

A model that allows for inter vivos intergenerational transfers in a booming housing market is developed. The model is used to explain how transfers effect the first-time homebuyer’s consumption and housing decisions by alleviating borrowing constraints. The general implications of the model are tested using data from the leading Irish mortgage provider. We find that private transfers are targeted towards homebuyers that are liquidity constrained.Transfers, Housing, Borrowing Constraint

Exploiting Exploitation Cinema: An Introduction

International audienc

The Re-make as (Dis)avowal: The Ambivalent Stances of the Hollywood Blockbuster Horror Remakes of the 2000s

International audienceThe 2000s have seen a number of remakes in the horror genre. If critics have generally argued that Hollywood aims at erasing the original movie when it is foreign, the marketing strategy of domestic remakes relies on the audience’s awareness of the existence of the original film. As the prefix “re-” suggests, producing a remake generally rests on the belief that a profit can be made by improving on the original in terms of technique and technology. This article attempts to foreground some of the contradictions immanent to the remake by arguing that what Thomas Leitch calls its “stance” is, in effect, a disavowal of the very terms contained in the prefix. The remakes of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (Tobe Hooper, 1974)—The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Marcus Nispel, 2003) and Texas Chainsaw 3D (Luessenhop, 2013)—are examined as paradigmatic examples of this disavowal through a study of both pragmatic and formal levels

Revoir les Final Girls : Massacre à la tronçonneuse (Marcus Nispel, 2003) et Halloween (Rob Zombie, 2007)

International audienceDavid Roche applies the importance of theory in expanding adaptations to a very different genre: that of slasher films, particularly the recent remakes of Halloween and Texas Chainsaw Massacre. In redefining the trope of the final girl (as examined by feminist critics like Carol Clover) for a contemporary audience, filmmakers Rob Zombie and Marcus Nispel show an awareness of their genre, its precedents, and its tropes, that allow them to remake the slasher film in their own image. This reconstruction, of course, is not without its own imperfections and misreadings of feminist texts, as Roche shows

Choreographing Genre in Kill Bill Vol. 1 & 2 (Quentin Tarantino, 2003 & 2004)

International audienceThe following analysis of the live action fight scenes in Kill Bill attempts to show that they play an integral part in terms of narrative, dramatic and metafictional intent, and ultimately to assess to what extent the treatment of profilmic and filmographic movement, and the lack thereof, reflect the generic and cultural hybridity of two films that mix “American” and “East Asian” genres

Nama, Adilifu. Race on the QT: Blackness and the Films of Quentin Tarantino

In Race on the QT: Blackness and the Films of Quentin Tarantino, the prolific Adilifu Nama, Associate Professor of African American Studies at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, pursues his study of the interplay between identity politics (race, as well as gender and class) and genre in popular culture initiated in his previous books Black Space: Imagining Race in Science Fiction Film and Super Black: American Pop Culture and Black Superheroes. The first full-length study devoted to ..

Biodiversity: Its Measurement and Metaphysics

Biodiversity is a concept that plays a key role in both scientific theories such as the species-area law and conservation politics. Currently, however, little agreement exists on how biodiversity should be defined, let alone measured. This has led to suggestions that biodiversity is not a metaphysically robust concept, with major implications for its usefulness in formulating scientific theories and making conservation decisions. A general discussion of biodiversity is presented, highlighting its application both in scientific and conservation contexts, its relationship with environmental ethics, and existing approaches to its measurement. To overcome the limitations of existing biodiversity concepts, a new concept of biocomplexity is proposed. This concept equates the biodiversity of any biological system with its effective complexity. Biocomplexity is shown to be the only feasible measure of biodiversity that captures the essential features desired of a general biodiversity concept. In particular, it is a well-defined, measurable and strongly intrinsic property of any biological system. Finally, the practical application of biocomplexity is discussed