The religious quest of Patrick White

In this study I explore the emergence in Patrick White of a myth which embodies the primal concerns of human beings, as opposed to the artificial, merely habitual or conventional, I argue that in this process he returns us to religious imperatives. I show how Australia is the setting for this myth and is charged with a special imaginative importance. White's quest is seen as an attempt to make new or revivify perceptions in an environment uncongenial to over-domestication and which relativizes artificial attempts at order and system. This leads me to examine White's treatment of art and iconoclasm; and I look at the theme of sacrifice in his work, as that which strips away in order to reconstitute afresh. I devote a chapter to the 'crucifixion' scene in White’s novel Riders in the Chariot, trying to point to a redemptive stability underlying White's work and suggested by this novel. In conclusion, I briefly place White's work within the context of a post-modern world

Towards a postmodern ethics: representation, memory,responsibility with particular reference to literature of the Holocaust, Communist Czechoslovakia and apartheid of South Africa

Abstract: available beginning of thesi

MIMO Over-The-Air Research, Development, and Testing

Multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) over-the-air (OTA) measurements and simulations for network and terminal performance evaluation and prediction have become very important research topics in recent years. Research into MIMO OTA for standardisation purposes has been ongoing in The Wireless Association (CTIA), the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), and the European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST) for three years. This is motivated by the urgent need to develop accurate, realistic, and cost-effective test standards for UMTS and LTE systems. Although many MIMO-capable networks are already deployed, there is pressure to finish the test standards by the end of 2012. While the first MIMO devices appeared some years ago and were commercially deployed two years ago, there are not yet any standards for testing MIMO performance OTA. The development of MIMO OTA test standards has proven to be particularly complex compared to single-input single-output (SISO) OTA, and developing a test standard is taking considerable time. Unlike SISO OTA, which was relatively straightforward and purely a function of the device, MIMO OTA is highly dependent on the interaction between the propagation characteristics of the radio channel and the receive antennas of the UE

Diffuse traumatic brain injury affects chronic corticosterone function in the rat

As many as 20–55% of patients with a history of traumatic brain injury (TBI) experience chronic endocrine dysfunction, leading to impaired quality of life, impaired rehabilitation efforts and lowered life expectancy. Endocrine dysfunction after TBI is thought to result from acceleration–deceleration forces to the brain within the skull, creating enduring hypothalamic and pituitary neuropathology, and subsequent hypothalamic–pituitary endocrine (HPE) dysfunction. These experiments were designed to test the hypothesis that a single diffuse TBI results in chronic dysfunction of corticosterone (CORT), a glucocorticoid released in response to stress and testosterone. We used a rodent model of diffuse TBI induced by midline fluid percussion injury (mFPI). At 2months postinjury compared with uninjured control animals, circulating levels of CORT were evaluated at rest, under restraint stress and in response to dexamethasone, a synthetic glucocorticoid commonly used to test HPE axis regulation. Testosterone was evaluated at rest. Further, we assessed changes in injury-induced neuron morphology (Golgi stain), neuropathology (silver stain) and activated astrocytes (GFAP) in the paraventricular nucleus (PVN) of the hypothalamus. Resting plasma CORT levels were decreased at 2months postinjury and there was a blunted CORT increase in response to restraint induced stress. No changes in testosterone were measured. These changes in CORT were observed concomitantly with altered complexity of neuron processes in the PVN over time, devoid of neuropathology or astrocytosis. Results provide evidence that a single moderate diffuse TBI leads to changes in CORT function, which can contribute to the persistence of symptoms related to endocrine dysfunction. Future experiments aim to evaluate additional HP-related hormones and endocrine circuit pathology following diffuse TBI