Plein soleil and The Talented Mr Ripley: sun, stars and Highsmith's queer periphery

This article explores two cinematic adaptations of Patricia Highsmith's 1955 novel, The Talented Mr Ripley, about a young anti-hero who murders, and then steals the identity of, another American living in Italy: Ren? Cl?ment's Plein soleil (France/Italy 1960) and Anthony Minghella's The Talented Mr Ripley (US/UK 1999). Drawing on both textual analysis and critical reception, the article explores how the traces of what might be termed Highsmith's 'queer periphery' are manifested and eroticized on the screen. Through such sun-drenched (homo)erotics, there is a very present sense of mythology, queer or otherwise, in the seductive Mediterranean landscape of these texts. The discussion thus explores issues of narrative, the stars Alain Delon, Jude Law and Matt Damon, and sexuality and landscape

Tidally discontinuous ocean forcing in bar-built estuaries: The interaction of tides, infragravity motions, and frictional control

Shallow, bar-built estuaries on wave-dominated coasts in Mediterranean climates experience an intermittent connection to the ocean. In the presence of low streamflow, their inlets may completely close as a result of nearshore sand transport, but even in the open condition, these inlets remain constricted. Extensive field measurements in the highly salt-stratified Pescadero estuary in northern California show that the shallow mouth causes these estuaries to experience discontinuous tidal forcing. While the ocean and estuary are fully connected with near-equal water levels, tidal velocities are slow but infragravity motions in the nearshore induce large velocity oscillations within the estuary. As the ocean tide falls, infragravity forcing is cut off, because the estuarine mouth is perched above the low tide ocean water level, and ebbing velocities are set by bed friction. Observations reveal this oscillation between ocean-forced and frictionally controlled conditions characterizes and sets estuarine hydrodynamics. Additional wave setup of the lagoon emphasizes the dependence of these estuaries on nearshore ocean conditions, but the diurnal or semidiurnal retreat of the ocean below the mouth cuts off this nearshore influence so it too is tidally varying. Here we present detailed observations and a framework for understanding hydrodynamics in small, shallow bar-built estuaries

Noticing for Equity to Sustain Multilingual Literacies

This department explores how teachers can sustain students’ multilingual literacies and reimagine literacy learning across multiple contexts in conversation with researchers, practitioners, and communities

Mean field analysis of Williams-Bjerknes type growth

We investigate a class of stochastic growth models involving competition between two phases in which one of the phases has a competitive advantage. The equilibrium populations of the competing phases are calculated using a mean field analysis. Regression probabilities for the extinction of the advantaged phase are calculated in a leading order approximation. The results of the calculations are in good agreement with simulations carried out on a square lattice with periodic boundaries. The class of models are variants of the Williams- Bjerknes model for the growth of tumours in the basal layer of an epithelium. In the limit in which only one of the phases is unstable the class of models reduces to the well known variants of the Eden model.Comment: 21 pages, Latex2e, Elsevier style, 5 figure

The Alexander-Orbach conjecture holds in high dimensions

We examine the incipient infinite cluster (IIC) of critical percolation in regimes where mean-field behavior has been established, namely when the dimension d is large enough or when d>6 and the lattice is sufficiently spread out. We find that random walk on the IIC exhibits anomalous diffusion with the spectral dimension d_s=4/3, that is, p_t(x,x)= t^{-2/3+o(1)}. This establishes a conjecture of Alexander and Orbach. En route we calculate the one-arm exponent with respect to the intrinsic distance.Comment: 25 pages, 2 figures. To appear in Inventiones Mathematica

Electromagnetic Dissociation of Nuclei in Heavy-Ion Collisions

Large discrepancies have been observed between measured Electromagnetic Dissociation(ED) cross sections and the predictions of the semiclassical Weiz\"acker-Williams-Fermi(WWF) method. In this paper, the validity of the semiclassical approximation is examined. The total cross section for electromagnetic excitation of a nuclear target by a spinless projectile is calculated in first Born approximation, neglecting recoil. The final result is expressed in terms of correlation functions and convoluted densities in configuration space. The result agrees with the WWF approximation to leading order(unretarded electric dipole approximation), but the method allows an analytic evaluation of the cutoff, which is determined by the details of the electric dipole transition charge density. Using the Goldhaber-Teller model of that density, and uniform charge densities for both projectile and target, the cutoff is determined for the total cross section in the nonrelativistic limit, and found to be smaller than values currently used for ED calculations. In addition, cross sections are calculated using a phenomenological momentum space cutoff designed to model final state interactions. For moderate projectile energies, the calculated ED cross section is found to be smaller than the semiclassical result, in qualitative agreement with experiment.Comment: 28 page

Privacy Enhanced Access Control for Outsourced Data Sharing

Traditional access control models often assume that the entity enforcing access control policies is also the owner of data and resources. This assumption no longer holds when data is outsourced to a third-party storage provider, such as the cloud. Existing access control solutions mainly focus on preserving confidentiality of stored data from unauthorized access and the storage provider. However, in this setting, access control policies as well as users' access patterns also become privacy sensitive information that should be protected from the cloud. We propose a two-level access control scheme that combines coarse-grained access control enforced at the cloud, which allows to get acceptable communication overhead and at the same time limits the information that the cloud learns from his partial view of the access rules and the access patterns, and fine-grained cryptographic access control enforced at the user's side, which provides the desired expressiveness of the access control policies. Our solution handles both read and write access control

Are the liabilities of newness and smallness the same for male and female informal entrepreneurs? Evidence from Brazil

Though challenges to female entrepreneurship are widely acknowledged in the settings of developed countries or the context of formal firms, the challenges faced by female informal entrepreneurs in developing markets are less explored. Based on the liabilities of newness and smallness framework in organizational ecology, we draw on a sample of 2562 Brazilian informal firms, to examine the unique differences in the experience of newness and smallness between male and female informal entrepreneurs. With increasing firm age, female informal entrepreneurs realized lower firm revenues (inverted-U), however, the firm age and firm revenue association are linear for males. Informal firm performance did not vary by size between male and female informal entrepreneurs. The distinctive differences in firm revenues for male and female entrepreneurs have implications for informal entrepreneurship

A Quantum-Mechanical Equivalent-Photon Spectrum for Heavy-Ion Physics

In a previous paper, we calculated the fully quantum-mechanical cross section for electromagnetic excitation during peripheral heavy-ion collisions. Here, we examine the sensitivity of that cross section to the detailed structure of the projectile and target nuclei. At the transition energies relevant to nuclear physics, we find the cross section to be weakly dependent on the projectile charge radius, and to be sensitive to only the leading momentum-transfer dependence of the target transition form factors. We exploit these facts to derive a quantum-mechanical ``equivalent-photon spectrum'' valid in the long-wavelength limit. This improved spectrum includes the effects of projectile size, the finite longitudinal momentum transfer required by kinematics, and the response of the target nucleus to the off-shell photon.Comment: 19 pages, 5 figure

The Effects of a Culturally Sensitive, Empowerment-Focused, Community-Based Health Promotion Program on Health Outcomes of Adults with Type 2 Diabetes

Th e purpose of the present study was to test the effects of a culturally sensitive, health empowerment- focused, community- based health promotion program tailored to adult patients with type 2 diabetes on these patients’ body mass index (BMI), blood pressure, and self- reported blood glucose levels, treatment adherence, and stress levels. Study participants (N = 130) consisted mostly of African Americans (70%) and Hispanic/ Latinos (22.3%) who were divided almost evenly between an intervention group and wait- list control group. Th e tested health promotion program is informed by Health Self- Empowerment Theory. At post- test, program participants in the intervention group as compared to those in the control group demonstrated significantly lower levels of BMI, diastolic blood pressure, and physical stress. Implications of these study findings for future similar programs and research are discussed