Angela carter’s heroes and villains: a dystopian romance

The present paper modestly attempts to study Angela Carter’s Heroes and Villains (1969) as a dystopian romance in apocalyptic mode .It is an attempt to present how Angela Carter critically examines Rousseau’s Utopia of Noble Savage in Heroes and Villains. Carter juxtaposed Rousseau’s concept of ‘Noble Savage’ with the Barbarian Jewel, who does not represent natural ‘goodness of man’ and ‘perfectibility’ which are the merits attributed by Rousseau to his noble savage. Carter debunks the romantic idea of a ‘Noble Savage’ as well as an idyllic picture of the countryside, outside the walls of civilization. Carter scrutinizes Rousseau’s utopian idea of Noble Savage and also shows how the western Enlightenment concept of Binarism to establish identity of the privileged group is misleading as well as responsible for mistrust and harmful conflict between communities. Angela Carter combines dystopia with subversion of the genre of romance in Heroes and Villains. It encodes ‘female values’ of love and relatedness as well as ‘male aggressiveness’ and competition. The paper concludes that Angela Carter examines Rousseau’s utopian notion of Noble Savage as well as his notion of the ideal womanhood in Heroes and Villains. She has created a kind of laboratory world in which there are only three communities, the Professors, the Barbarians and the Savages. It is in this post-apocalyptic futurist world that she examines the utopian ideas of Rousseau. She subverts the romantic notion of love, courtship and manners that categorize popular romances

Lacunary Fourier series and a qualitative uncertainty principle for compact Lie groups

We define lacunary Fourier series on a compact connected semisimple Lie group $G$. If $f \in L^1(G)$ has lacunary Fourier series, and vanishes on a non empty open set, then we prove that $f$ vanishes identically. This may be viewed as a qualitative uncertainty principle

End wall flow characteristics and overall performance of an axial flow compressor stage

This review indicates the possible future directions for research on endwall flows in axial flow compressors. Theoretical investigations on the rotor blade endwall flows in axial flow compressors reported here include the secondary flow calculation and the development of the momentum integral equations for the prediction of the annulus wall boundary layer. The equations for secondary vorticity at the rotor exit are solved analytically. The solution includes the effects of rotation and the viscosity. The momentum integral equations derived include the effect of the blade boundary layers. The axial flow compressor facility of the Department of Aerospace Engineering at The Pennsylvania State University, which is used for the experimental investigations of the endwall flows, is described in some detail. The overall performance and other preliminary experimental results are presented. Extensive radial flow surveys are carried out at the design and various off design conditions. These are presented and interpreted in this report. The following experimental investigations of the blade endwall flows are carried out. (1) Rotor blade endwall flows: The following measurements are carried out at four flow coefficients. (a) The rotor blade static pressures at various axial and radial stations (with special emphasis near the blade tips). (b) The hub wall static pressures inside the rotor blade passage at various axial and tangential stations. (2) IGV endwall flows: The following measurements are carried out at the design flow coefficient. (a) The boundary layer profiles at various axial and tangential stations inside the blade passage and at the blade exit. (b) Casing static pressures and limiting streamline angles inside the blade passage

Blade end wall flows in compressors

A brief summary of previous work carried out on end wall flow phenomena is presented with major emphasis on annulus wall boundary layer

What Trends in Chinese Social Media

There has been a tremendous rise in the growth of online social networks all over the world in recent times. While some networks like Twitter and Facebook have been well documented, the popular Chinese microblogging social network Sina Weibo has not been studied. In this work, we examine the key topics that trend on Sina Weibo and contrast them with our observations on Twitter. We find that there is a vast difference in the content shared in China, when compared to a global social network such as Twitter. In China, the trends are created almost entirely due to retweets of media content such as jokes, images and videos, whereas on Twitter, the trends tend to have more to do with current global events and news stories

The Pulse of News in Social Media: Forecasting Popularity

News articles are extremely time sensitive by nature. There is also intense competition among news items to propagate as widely as possible. Hence, the task of predicting the popularity of news items on the social web is both interesting and challenging. Prior research has dealt with predicting eventual online popularity based on early popularity. It is most desirable, however, to predict the popularity of items prior to their release, fostering the possibility of appropriate decision making to modify an article and the manner of its publication. In this paper, we construct a multi-dimensional feature space derived from properties of an article and evaluate the efficacy of these features to serve as predictors of online popularity. We examine both regression and classification algorithms and demonstrate that despite randomness in human behavior, it is possible to predict ranges of popularity on twitter with an overall 84% accuracy. Our study also serves to illustrate the differences between traditionally prominent sources and those immensely popular on the social web

Charge-density-wave ordering in three-dimensional metallic compounds

The Charge-density-wave (CDW) is a static modulation of the density of conduction electrons which is accompanied by a periodic distortion of the lattice. Although CDW mechanisms have been established in one-dimensional (1D) and two-dimensional (2D) systems, the driving force behind the CDW remains an enigma for three-dimensional (3D) systems. This thesis reports on two 3D systems, CuV2S4 and Er2Ir3Si5, with the purpose of explaining the mechanism for the formation of the CDW. Detailed investigations are presented of phase transitions of the compounds CuV2S4 and Er2Ir3Si5, using physical property measurements of single-crystals and single-crystal X-ray diffraction (SXRD). Another compound, Ni{0.89}V{2.11}Se4 with Ni/V disorder is also presented in the thesis. Earlier studies report that CuV2S4 undergoes an incommensurate CDW phase transition at 90 K and a second phase transition at 50 K. Upon the analysis of the SXRD data below 90 K, we observe incommensurate superlattice reflections at positions q = (σ, σ, 0), with σ = 3/4+δ. Moreover, there is a distortion of the lattice, where the symmetry lowers from cubic Fd-3m to orthorhombic Imm2, which is in agreement with the previous work. Below 50 K, the symmetry remained orthorhombic Imm2, however, we found the nature of the 50 K phase transition to be a lock-in transition towards a threefold superstructure. The lock-in transition occurs only on annealed crystals. As-grown (without annealing) crystals, on other hand, suffer from lattice defects, and as a result, they do not undergo the 50 K phase transition. Instead, the σ component of the modulation wave vector q decreases and passes the rational value of 3/4, but never reaches 2/3. From the analysis of the SXRD data, we have established a superspace model for the crystal structure of the CDW phase suggesting that the formation of extended 3D clusters of Vanadium atoms is at the origin of the CDW. At room temperature, R2Ir3Si5 (R = Lu, Er, Ho) is orthorhombic Ibam. A previous study by Electron diffraction (ED) of Lu2Ir3Si5 revealed the presence of incommensurate superlattice reflections at q = (-σ, 2σ, σ), with σ = 0.23~0.25, associated with a CDW phase transition below 140 K. From studies of the physical properties (2 to 300 K) of a single-crystal of Er2Ir3Si5 we have concluded the CDW in the material is a first-order phase transition. The analysis of the SXRD data below 150 K, shows the presence of incommensurate superlattice reflections at positions q = (1/4-δ, 1/2-δ, 1/4-δ) accompanied by a strong monoclinic distortion of the lattice. However, we find that triclinic symmetry I-1 provides a better fit to the model compared to monoclinic symmetry. Our analysis of the crystal structure shows that the CDW resides on the zigzag chains of Iridium atoms. What makes this CDW unusual is that, firstly, it is an incommensurate first-order transition accompanied by a monoclinic lattice distortion, and secondly, from the magnetic susceptibility measurements, we observe that there is a strong coupling between the CDW and magnetism, as the Er^{3+} moments are influenced by the CDW. We also show that in the high-quality single-crystal, the magnetic ordering of the compound is suppressed to at least 0.1 K. However, previous studies report that in a polycrystal of Er2Ir3Si5 the antiferromagnetic ordering is observed around 2.1 K. This seems to suggest that disorder in the polycrystal brings back the antiferromagnetism at the expense of the CDW transition. According to the literature, polycrystalline NiV2Se4 is reported to be a CDW system at 165 K. We sought to investigate the CDW in the material, however, the attempts to synthesize single crystals of NiV2Se4 led to Ni deficient material with Ni/V site disorder, resulting in Ni{0.89}V{2.11}Se4. By studying temperature-dependent structural and bulk properties of Ni{0.89}V{2.11}Se4, we report a possible Non-Fermi-liquid (NFL) to a Fermi-liquid (FL) transition at ambient pressure. The electrical resistivity shows metallic behavior with a broad anomaly around 150-200 K. ρ(T) is found to exhibit an anomalous T^{3/2} dependence which is a strong indication of NFL, and below 15 K it exhibits a T^2 dependence down to 1.5 K, meaning that the FL behaviour is recovered below 15 K. From the analysis of the SXRD data at 100 K, we observed no superlattice reflections and no change to the structure as it remained monoclinic I2/m, indicating the absence of a CDW phase transition. The presence of magnetic fluctuations and quenched disorder on the Ni/V sites could be the cause of NFL to FL transition, given that stoichiometric NiV2Se4 is claimed to be a non-magnetic CDW system. Synthesis of a stoichiometric NiV2Se4 without the disorder is necessary to investigate the possibility of a CDW phase transition, and it is being undertaken