Staging Memories at the Narayanhiti Palace Museum, Kathmandu

This article focuses on a particular time (present-day Nepal, post-monarchy) and site (the Narayanhiti Palace Museum) that offers a compelling space for understanding the negotiation of the country’s recent past, revealing much about the transition from royal to republican Nepal. Acknowledging that the social and historical location of the museum causes it to bear the imprint of social relations beyond its walls, this article asks: How is Nepal’s royal past now understood, and who authorizes the understanding? There is no king governing Narayanhiti Palace, and the state does not use the palace to conduct its affairs; the politics of the space therefore risk being concealed by its open gates. This article explores the re-creation of a stable imagined past, in contrast with both the urban chaos of contemporary Kathmandu and with the political instability of Republican Nepal’s capital. Based on ethnographic research ‘behind the scenes’ at the museum, I take Annis’ analogy of the museum as ‘staging ground’ (1986) and explore the museum as both a space where decisions are made about what stories are told (sanctifying some forms of remembering and endorsing forgetting), as well as a space experienced by both ex-palace staff and visitors. These people bring the past to mind, combining their imaginations and memories with the environment of the museum. I suggest that official representations try to secure an image of a unified national identity that simultaneously remembers and forgets the king (Lakier 2009; Hutt 2006). As the city and the nation continue to reinvent themselves, the carefully constructed ‘non-place’ of the unchanging Palace Museum is being revealed. No king rules from Narayanhiti Palace and the state does not use the palace to conduct its affairs; the politics of the space therefore risk being concealed by its open gates. I explore the re-creation of a stable imagined past, in contrast both with the urban chaos of the contemporary city of Kathmandu and the political instability of the capital in Republican Nepal Based on ethnographic research ‘behind the scenes’ at the museum, I take Annis’ analogy of the museum as ‘staging ground’ (1986) and explore the museum as both a space where decisions are made about what stories are told, (sanctifying some forms of remembering and endorsing forgetting) and a space experienced by both ex-palace staff and visitors, who bring the past to mind, combining their imaginations and memories with the environment of the museum. I suggest that official representations try to secure an image of a unified national identity that simultaneously remembers and forgets the king (Lakier 2009, Hutt 2006). As the city and the nation continues to reinvent itself, the unchanging carefully constructed non-place of the Palace Museum is being revealed

Seismic constraints on the three-dimensional geometry of low-angle intracrustal reflectors in the Southern Iberia Abyssal Plain

Several lines of evidence suggest that simple shear rifting of the continental crust, in the formof low-angle detachment faulting, occurred during the final stages of continental breakupbetween West Iberia and the Grand Banks. The primary evidence for such faulting is theoccurrence of low-angle, high amplitude reflectors within the basement adjacent to the ocean–continent transition zone. Here we present a series of intersecting, depth migrated seismicreflection profiles that image one such reflector, the H-reflector, located on the southern edgeof Galicia Bank. ‘H’ lies beneath several boreholes drilled during ODP Legs 149 and 173,in a region where the oceanward extent of extended continental crust steps at least 150 kmwestward from its location in the southern Iberia Abyssal Plain to its location off the relativelyshallow Galicia Bank. In our profiles ‘H’ appears to define a surface that extends over a regionof at least 200 km2 and that dips down ?19? to the north, towards Galicia Bank. The profilesshow that a close affinity exists between ‘H’ and the most seaward continental crust. Based ongeophysical data and ODP drilling results, we infer that the basement above ‘H’ is composedof continental crust deformed by extensional faults into a series of wedge-shaped blocks andthin slivers. These basement wedges have a complex 3-D geometry. ‘H’ rises to the basementsurface on a number of the seismic profiles and appears to define locally the oceanward extentof continental fault blocks

An I for an I: Reading Fictional Autobiography

The distinction between author and narrator is central to narratology, and to modern literary criticism in general. Why is it that ancient critics seem so often to ignore it, and to confuse the narrator's words with authorial autobiography? This chapter argues that antiquity had a different way of understanding first person narration, which was conceived of more in terms of illusionistic role playing: the author is imagined as playing the part of a character in a fiction. As with other varieties of illusionism in ancient thought, fictional autobiography has a double aspect: the author both is and, at once, is not the character in question. The chapter concludes by claiming that the fictional 'I' is metaleptic, in Gerard Genette's sense: it creates a space in which the author shuttles between an internal and an external perspective on narrative action

Analogue and digital linear modulation techniques for mobile satellite

The choice of modulation format for a mobile satellite service is complex. The subjective performance is summarized of candidate schemes and voice coder technologies. It is shown that good performance can be achieved with both analogue and digital voice systems, although the analogue system gives superior performance in fading. The results highlight the need for flexibility in the choice of signaling format. Linear transceiver technology capable of using many forms of narrowband modulation is described

Method for calculating allowable creep stress in linearly increasing stress environment

Constant creep data accumulation for design stress analysis on cladding material thickness around cylindrical reactor fuel elemen

Insect pests of the household

Includes index.Caption title.Mode of access: Internet

A central role for p38 MAPK in the early transcriptional response to stress

Abstract The mitogen-activated protein kinase p38 (p38 MAPK) is activated by a number of stresses. A recent study in BMC Genomics has uncovered the early transcriptional responses to three types of stress and has demonstrated a central role for p38 MAPK in mediating these responses. See research article http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2164/11/144</p