Olive Schreiner at 150: some thoughts on re-editing Cronwright's The Reinterment on Buffelskop

[From the introduction]: The original edition of Cronwright’s The Reinterment on Buffelskop (1983) was produced by Guy Butler and Nick Visser to commemorate the centenary of the 1883 publication of The Story of an African Farm. The Butler-Visser text was a photographic reproduction of a typed carbon copy of the first part of Cronwright’s extant diaries plus a special diary he had kept covering in detail the events of the actual reinterment. (The originals are now at the National English Literary Museum [NELM].) Butler included a comprehensive and illuminating introduction to these texts, as well as – under separate soft cover – a set of “Provisional Notes” which draw deeply on his own and his family’s accumulated knowledge of Cradock, its environs and inhabitants. In addition, Butler and Visser included two passages excised by Cronwright from the typescript of his Life of Olive Schreiner: a word picture of Charles Heathcote, and the longer account of “The Nienaber Incident” – pages which deal with the execution of three innocent men at De Aar on 19 March 1901, and Cronwright’s subsequent attempts at legal reparation for them and their families. The substantive text of the Butler-Visser edition is often difficult to read because of the method of reproduction; moreover, because it also reproduces Cronwright’s emendations (in ink) of the typescript, it is frankly uninviting. Thus, when the NELM Council proposed a publication commemorating the 150th anniversary of Olive Schreiner’s birth on 24 March 1855, it seemed appropriate that a second attempt be made to give students of Olive Schreiner’s works easier access to Cronwright’s detailed account of this “bizarre, romantic” episode. Furthermore, from the perspective of text history, the typescript of the Reinterment antedates both Cronwright’s Life and The Letters of Olive Schreiner. Parts of it are clearly Cronwright’s preliminary ‘notes towards’ his Life, and, as Butler hypothesizes, the whole of the Reinterment might have been intended as a separate (and earlier) publication. Finally, the sarcophagus on Buffelskop is one of South Africa’s more noteworthy literary shrines: while the idea of re-editing an account of Olive Schreiner’s reinterment might be thought to be a futile exercise in intellectual recycling, our intention is that both husband and wife should live again through a rediscovery of the thoughts and feelings that led them to this dramatic final resting-place

Olive Schreiner in Rhodesia: an episode in a biography

Readers of biographies of Olive Schreiner - except for the pioneering work of Vera Buchanan-Gould (see 1948, 198-99) - could be forgiven for doubting whether Olive Schreiner ever was in Rhodesia. Although her husband's edition of her Letters includes three which cover this journey (Cronwright-Schreiner 1924a), he makes no mention of it in his Life (1924), and it is not touched on either in First and Scott (1980) or in Stanley's impressive biographical chapter (2002). Arguably, it does nothing to alter the by now well-established outlines of Olive Schreiner's life; yet, as we shall see, the visit itself might have meant the premature end of that life. Moreover, it documents Schreiner's visit to two sites of immense importance to her : the 'Hanging Tree' in Bulawayo which features in the (deliberately shocking) photographic frontispiece to the first edition of Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland (1897), and, secondly, Cecil Rhodes's grave in the Matopos. In just over a decade (13 Aug. 1921), she too would lie in her chosen mountaintop tomb

The hepatitis C virus 3′-untranslated region or a poly(A) tract promote efficient translation subsequent to the initiation phase

Enhancement of eukaryotic messenger RNA (mRNA) translation initiation by the 3′ poly(A) tail is mediated through interaction of poly(A)-binding protein with eukaryotic initiation factor (eIF) 4G, bridging the 5′ terminal cap structure. In contrast to cellular mRNA, translation of the uncapped, non-polyadenylated hepatitis C virus (HCV) genome occurs independently of eIF4G and a role for 3′-untranslated sequences in modifying HCV gene expression is controversial. Utilizing cell-based and in vitro translation assays, we show that the HCV 3′-untranslated region (UTR) or a 3′ poly(A) tract of sufficient length interchangeably stimulate translation dependent upon the HCV internal ribosomal entry site (IRES). However, in contrast to cap-dependent translation, the rate of initiation at the HCV IRES was unaffected by 3′-untranslated sequences. Analysis of post-initiation events revealed that the 3′ poly(A) tract and HCV 3′-UTR improve translation efficiency by enabling termination and possibly ribosome recycling for successive rounds of translation

Wavenet based low rate speech coding

Traditional parametric coding of speech facilitates low rate but provides poor reconstruction quality because of the inadequacy of the model used. We describe how a WaveNet generative speech model can be used to generate high quality speech from the bit stream of a standard parametric coder operating at 2.4 kb/s. We compare this parametric coder with a waveform coder based on the same generative model and show that approximating the signal waveform incurs a large rate penalty. Our experiments confirm the high performance of the WaveNet based coder and show that the speech produced by the system is able to additionally perform implicit bandwidth extension and does not significantly impair recognition of the original speaker for the human listener, even when that speaker has not been used during the training of the generative model.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figure

IMMUNOLOGIC REACTIONS TO HAPTENS ON AUTOLOGOUS CARRIERS : I. PARTICIPATION OF BOTH THYMUS-DERIVED AND BONE MARROW-DERIVED CELLS IN THE SECONDARY IN VITRO RESPONSE

Both thymus-derived (T) and bone marrow-derived (B) lymphocytes participate in the response to a hapten 4-hydroxy-3-iodo-5-nitrophenylacetic acid (NIP), coupled to a nonimmunogenic isologous carrier, mouse gamma globulin (MGG). Spleen cells from mice immunized with NIP-MGG show increased DNA synthesis in vitro when cultured with NIP-MGG. The participation of and requirement for T cells in the response was demonstrated by treating the spleen cells with anti-θ serum. This treatment resulted in a 77% inhibition of the antigen response. Furthermore, adoptively transferred normal thymus cells could be specifically "activated" by NIP-MGG in vivo and they responded secondarily to the antigen in vitro. The active participation of B cells in the secondary response was demonstrated by passing the immune spleen cells through a column coated with polyvalent anti-MGG serum. Column filtration reduced the number of NIP-specific plaque-forming cells and NIP-specific rosette-forming cells (both functions of B cells) and produced a 47% inhibition of the NIP-MGG response. The ability of the cells to respond to phytohemagglutinin (PHA) was not affected by column filtration showing that T cells were not being selectively removed. The participation of B cells in the in vitro NIP-MGG response was also shown by treatment of the spleen cells with antiserum specific for MGG and MGG determinants. B cells were removed by treatment with anti-IgM or polyvalent anti-MGG serum plus complement, resulting in a respective 46 and 49% inhibition of the response to NIP-MGG. (Treatment with anti-IgM serum had no effect on T cells.) The contribution of the hapten NIP to stimulation of T cells was investigated using NIP-MGG-activated thymus cells. These activated T cells responded in vitro very well to the NIP-MGG complex but not to the MGG carrier alone demonstrating the requirement of the hapten for T cell stimulation. The response was also partially inhibited (41%) by incubating the activated cells with NIP coupled to a single amino acid (epsilon-aminocaproic acid) before addition of NIP-MGG. These results demonstrated that T cells recognize the hapten NIP when it is coupled to the isologous carrier MGG

The impact of El Nino and La Nina weather patterns on Canterbury water resources

Water is an extremely important and increasingly contentious resource in the Canterbury region. An accurate assessment of the size and behaviour of the resource is fundamental to effective water management. This study attempts to calculate rainfall, runoff and evapotranspiration (ET) for Canterbury in order to ascertain a regional water balance as a means of quantifying a net excess or deficit of water in the hydrological budget. The effect of the El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) on this water balance is investigated. Water balances are calculated for two ‘mega-catchments’; western or ‘Alpine’ Canterbury, from the Southern Alps to the foothills, and eastern or ‘Plains’ Canterbury. Long term averages (LTA) are compared with the two strongest years of positive and negative ENSO in the last thirty years, as measured by the Southern Oscillation Index (SOI). The water balance of the Alpine catchment proved problematic, with a significant deficit result. This is thought to be due to major underestimation of rainfall in the alpine region resulting from poor distribution of rainfall gauges. The rainfall figures were recalculated by addition of runoff and ET. The resulting rainfall figures show an increase in rain from LTA for El Nino years and an even greater increase for La Nina, although the high variability in rain means these differences are not statistically significant. This research indicates that there is an impact of strong ENSO events on the water budget components of Canterbury, New Zealand. La Nina conditions tend to produce increased rainfall and decreased evapotranspiration compared to El Nino conditions. The Plains catchment is where the pressure on the water resources is greatest. The LTA’s produce an annual excess of 94mm, while El Nino years with lower rainfall and higher ET, produced a deficit of 65mm. La Nina years have rainfall between the LTA and El Nino years, but a lower ET than either, and produces a deficit of 10mm. Due to data and modeling inaccuracies the La Nina deficit is not large enough to be considered certain. Availability of accurate measured data across the catchments proved to be a major issue for this study. As a result a mixture of measured and modeled data is used and results should be treated with caution. It is recommended that significant investment be made in increasing the capacity of the region to accurately quantify its water resources

The Structure on Invariant Measures of C1C^1 generic diffeomorphisms

Let $\Lambda$ be an isolated non-trival transitive set of a $C^1$ generic diffeomorphism f\in\Diff(M). We show that the space of invariant measures supported on $\Lambda$ coincides with the space of accumulation measures of time averages on one orbit. Moreover, the set of points having this property is residual in $\Lambda$ (which implies the set of irregular$^+$ points is also residual in $\Lambda$). As an application, we show that the non-uniform hyperbolicity of irregular$^+$ points in $\Lambda$ with totally 0 measure (resp., the non-uniform hyperbolicity of a generic subset in $\Lambda$) determines the uniform hyperbolicity of $\Lambda$

Interaction of intense vuv radiation with large xenon clusters

The interaction of atomic clusters with short, intense pulses of laser light to form extremely hot, dense plasmas has attracted extensive experimental and theoretical interest. The high density of atoms within the cluster greatly enhances the atom--laser interaction, while the finite size of the cluster prevents energy from escaping the interaction region. Recent technological advances have allowed experiments to probe the laser--cluster interaction at very high photon energies, with interactions much stronger than suggested by theories for lower photon energies. We present a model of the laser--cluster interaction which uses non-perturbative R-matrix techniques to calculate inverse bremsstrahlung and photoionization cross sections for Herman-Skillman atomic potentials. We describe the evolution of the cluster under the influence of the processes of inverse bremsstrahlung heating, photoionization, collisional ionization and recombination, and expansion of the cluster. We compare charge state distribution, charge state ejection energies, and total energy absorbed with the Hamburg experiment of Wabnitz {\em et al.} [Nature {\bf 420}, 482 (2002)] and ejected electron spectra with Laarmann {\em et al.} [Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 95}, 063402 (2005)]