“Up in the War Zone Ozone Zany Grey”: Caryl Churchill’s Theatrical Landscapes of Terror, Pain and Ecological Destruction

Caryl Churchill’s plays are like a highly sensitive barometer of knotty problems that beset a modern man, be it most recently human cloning in A Number (2004) or the history of Israel in Seven Jewish Children (2009). Her political commitment makes her give voice to the ones whose voices have been deliberately silenced: the vulnerable, the victimized and the powerless. Yet the playwright’s creative imagination conjures up the worlds that thrive on theatrical experimentation and are permeated with a sense of ambiguity. As such, the construction of the dramatic worlds complicates the formulation of definitive judgments and dismisses the possibility of easy solutions. However, despite her aversion to simple polemics, the dramatic worlds Churchill creates wield enormous power over her audiences and leave them in a state of heightened awareness.  Therefore, the aim of this article is to analyze the construction of the dramatic worlds in Caryl Churchill’s The Skriker (1994) and Far Away (2000); it focuses on the ways in which Caryl Churchill interconnects the structure of the time and space continuums that she designs with the exploration of the moral and environmental implications of human action. Although the plays share the dystopian vision of ecological destruction and global conflict, Churchill, in her ingenious inventiveness, conjures up distinctly different worlds to make her prophesies. In both plays the realities Churchill creates are so compelling and evocative that a dire warning they sound must not be ignored

Technical infrastructure monitoring at CERN

The Technical Infrastructure Monitoring system (TIM) is used to monitor and control CERN's technical services from the CERN Control Centre (CCC). The system's primary function is to provide CCC operators with reliable real-time information about the state of the laboratory's extensive and widely distributed technical infrastructure. TIM is also used to monitor all general services required for the operation of CERN's accelerator complex and the experiments. A flexible data acquisition mechanism allows TIM to interface with a wide range of technically diverse installations, using industry standard protocols wherever possible and custom designed solutions where needed. The complexity of the data processing logic, including persistence, logging, alarm handling, command execution and the evaluation of datadriven business rules is encapsulated in the system's business layer. Users benefit from a suite of advanced graphical applications adapted to operations (synoptic views, alarm consoles, data analysis tools etc.), system maintenance and support. Complementary tools for configuration data management and historical data analysis will be available before the start-up of the LHC in 2007

BRONCO: Automated modelling of the bronchovascular bundle using the Computed Tomography Images

Segmentation of the bronchovascular bundle within the lung parenchyma is a key step for the proper analysis and planning of many pulmonary diseases. It might also be considered the preprocessing step when the goal is to segment the nodules from the lung parenchyma. We propose a segmentation pipeline for the bronchovascular bundle based on the Computed Tomography images, returning either binary or labelled masks of vessels and bronchi situated in the lung parenchyma. The method consists of two modules, modeling of the bronchial tree and vessels. The core revolves around a similar pipeline, the determination of the initial perimeter by the GMM method, skeletonization, and hierarchical analysis of the created graph. We tested our method on both low-dose CT and standard-dose CT, with various pathologies, reconstructed with various slice thicknesses, and acquired from various machines. We conclude that the method is invariant with respect to the origin and parameters of the CT series. Our pipeline is best suited for studies with healthy patients, patients with lung nodules, and patients with emphysema

Variations in Suppressor Molecule CTLA-4 Gene Are Related to Susceptibility to Multiple Myeloma in a Polish Population

Various phenotype and functional T-cell abnormalities are observed in multiple myeloma (MM) patients. The aim of this study was to investigate the association between polymorphisms in the gene encoding cytotoxic T-lymphocyte antigen-4 (CTLA-4), a negative regulator of the T-lymphocyte immune response and susceptibility to multiple myeloma in a Polish population. Two hundred MM patients and 380 healthy subjects were genotyped for the following polymorphisms: CTLA-4c.49A>G, CTLA-4g.319C>T, CTLA-4g.*642AT(8_33), CT60 (CTLA-4g.*6230G>A), Jo31 (CTLA-4g.*10223G>T). Our study is the largest and most comprehensive evaluation to date of the association between genetic polymorphisms in the CTLA-4 molecule and multiple myeloma. It was found that CTLA-4c.49A>G[G], CT60[G], and Jo31[G] alleles were more frequently observed in MM patients than in controls (0.50 vs. 0.44, p = 0.03, 0.65 vs. 0.58, p = 0.04, and 0.63 vs. 0.57, p = 0.03, respectively). Moreover, the haplotype CTLA-4c.49A>G[G], CTLA-4g.319C>T[C], CTLA-4g.*642AT(8_33) [8], CT60[G], Jo31[G] including all susceptibility alleles increases the risk of MM about fourfold (OR: 3.79, 95%CI: 2.08–6.89, p = 0.00001). These findings indicate that genetic variations in the CTLA-4 gene play role in susceptibility to multiple myeloma and warrant further investigation through replication studies

George Bernard Shaw na polskich scenach – krótki przegląd

Głównym celem tego artykułu jest przedstawienie głównych aspektów recepcji twórczości George’a Bernarda Shaw w Polsce. Uważany za dramatopisarza, który wytyczył kierunek rozwoju współczesnego dramatu brytyjskiego, Shaw był witany entuzjastycznie przez polską widownię od początku dwudziestego wieku. Warszawa nosiła z tego powodu przydomek miasta shawiańskiego, a jego popularność osiągnęła apogeum w okresie międzywojennym. Po wojnie sztuki Shawa były często wystawiane, a lewicowe poglądy autora utożsamiano z obowiązującą linią polityczną partii. Rok 1989 i transformacja ustrojowa spowodowała zmniejszenie zainteresowania jego twórczością. Jego sztuki powracają ostatnio na polskie sceny poddane postmodernistycznemu recyclingowi.The main aim of this paper is to delineate the most crucial aspects of the reception of George Bernard Shaw’s plays in Poland. Shaw, believed to have set the direction of modern British drama, has been welcomed enthusiastically by Polish audiences since the beginning of the twentieth century. Warsaw was called a “Shavian city” and his popularity reached its peak in the years between the two World Wars. After WWII, Shaw’s plays were frequently staged and his political views were presented as being in line with the ruling party’s policies. The fall of Communism brought about a decline in his presence on Polish stages, but he reappeared recently in productions that dismantle his plays in postmodern way

Przestrzeń idei, edukacji I dialogu społecznego czyli teatr anglosaski wobec kryzysu ekologicznego

Celem tego artykułu jest zarysowanie głównych nurtów działalności teatru anglojęzycznego w ciągu ostatnich trzech dekad na rzecz ochrony przyrody. Chociaż eko-krytyka zdobywała rzesze kolejnych wyznawców a świadomość zagrożeń ekologicznych obejmowała stopniowo wszystkie sfery działalności człowieka, teatr przez wiele lat nie podejmował tematów ekologicznych, mimo swojego zaangażowania politycznego w innych sprawach. Kiedy w końcu teatr zabarwił się na zielono, jego głos w tej sprawie jest zdecydowany i inspirujący. Wykorzystał on wspólnotowy charakterteatru do tworzenia przestrzeni, która jest jednym z głównych bohaterów przedstawienie a dystopijne wizje katastrof ekologicznych niosących głód i zagładęmają ogromną siłę rażenia. W ten sposób działalność artystyczna aktywnie kreuje świadomość ekologiczną swoich odbiorców a teatr nabiera społecznej i politycznej sprawczości.The chief aim of this article is to present the main developments in ecological thought and practice that have influenced British and American theatre in the past three decades. Although eco-criticism had attracted many keen followers and public environmental awareness had grown rapidly in recent years, theatre remained silent on green issues for a long time despite its political engagement in other areas. When at last theatre turned green, its voice is powerful and inspiring. Theatre uses its collective character to foster a feeling of shared responsibility and to create space that transformsinto one of the major characters of the performance. Moreover, dystopian visions of the ecological catastrophe that brings famine and destruction presented on stage are thought-provoking and highly persuasive. Theatre interconnects artists and audiences and uses its capacity to raise environmental awareness and to bring about behaviour change. In this way, theatre is able to affect social and political change

Non-intrusive Quality Analysis of Monitoring Data

Any large-scale operational system running over a variety of devices requires a monitoring mechanism to assess the health of the overall system. The Technical Infrastructure Monitoring System (TIM) at CERN is one such system, and monitors a wide variety of devices and their properties, such as electricity supplies, device temperatures, liquid flows etc. Without adequate quality assurance, the data collected from such devices leads to false-positives and false-negatives, reducing the effectiveness of the monitoring system. The quality must, however, be measured in a non-intrusive way, so that the critical path of the data flow is not affected by the quality computation. The quality computation should also scale to large volumes of incoming data. To address these challenges, we develop a new statistical module, which monitors the data collected by TIM and reports its quality to the operators. The statistical module uses Oracle RDBMS as the underlying store, and builds hierarchical summaries on the basic events to scale to the volume of data. It has built-in fault-tolerance capability to recover from multiple computation failures. In this paper, we describe the design of the statistical module, and its usefulness for all parties involved with TIM: the system administrators, the operators using the system to monitor the devices, and the engineers responsible for attaching them to the system. We present concrete examples of how the software module helped with the monitoring, configuration and design of TIM since its introduction last year

Tools and Procedures for High Quality Technical Infrastructure Monitoring Reference Data at CERN

The monitoring of the technical infrastructure at CERN relies on the quality of the definition of numerous and heterogeneous data sources. In 2006, we introduced the MoDESTI* procedure for the Technical Infrastructure Monitoring** (TIM) system to promote data quality. The first step in the data integration process is the standardisation of the declaration of the various data points whether these are alarms, equipment statuses or analogue measurement values. Users declare their data points and can follow their requests, monitoring personnel ensure the infrastructure is adapted to the new data, and control room operators check that the data points are defined in a consistent and intelligible way. Furthermore, rigorous validations are carried out on input data to ensure correctness as well as optimal integration with other computer systems at CERN (maintenance management, geographical viewing tools etc.). We are now redesigning the MoDESTI procedure in order to provide an intuitive and streamlined Web based tool for managing data definition, as well as reducing the time between data point integration requests and implementation. Additionally, we are introducing a Class-Device-Property data definition model, a standard in the CERN accelerator sector, for a more flexible use of the TIM data points

CERN SPS Sprinkler System: A Customized Industrial Solution for a Non-Conventional Site

Until 2018, the limited firefighting means in the SPS complex largely exposed it to the consequences of self-ignition or accidental fire. In 2015 the SPS Fire Safety project was launched with the objective of improving life safety and property protection by deploying a whole set of automatic actions to protect SPS in case of fire outbreak. If nothing was done, an unmanaged fire could be a threat to lives of those working underground and could mean losing a vast majority of the SPS machine and its equipment. In 2020, CERN has completed the consolidation of its SPS fire safety systems. Among these, a water based sprinkler system, following principles of standard industrial design but customized and tailor-made for SPS and its irradiated areas, is ready to operate. The system must take into account limitations related to the presence of fragile accelerator equipment, radioactive zones, integration constraints and comply with European norms, in particular EN12845. This paper presents the risk assessment, our experience from the planning and installation phase while discussing the custom-chosen and radiation tested equipment to end up with the lessons learned and outlook for the future