A Phenomenological Aesthetic of Cinematic \u27Worlds\u27

Contemporary film aesthetics is beset by difficulties arising from the medium itself and the bewildering itinerary of film theory. Inspired by Martin Heidegger\u27s hermeneutical vision in On the Origin of the Work of Art (1935), my essay seeks to overcome this paralysis by grounding the aesthetic value of cinematic art in its ability to disclose the world through a convergence of artist and viewer intentionalities. Stanley Cavell has gone far by exploring a corresponding natural relation between philosophy and cinema, but his work assumes an ontological discourse without an appropriate phenomenological method. I contend that Mikel Dufrenne\u27s phenomenology of aesthetic experience provides the formal structure necessary for speaking of film\u27s ontological possibilities. Terrence Malick\u27s cinematic and narrative uses of point-of-view illustrate one such experience of world-disclosure

Indigenous Credit Associations in Botswana: An Application of Elinor Ostrom\u27s Common-Pool Resource Analysis

In this paper I attempt to analyze and explain the important of certain indigenous credit agreements in Botswana. Rotating Savings and Credit Associations are agreements made by a group of people who create a communal fund which rotates around the group until each member had had access to the pooled resource. These agreements are informal and most commonly found in the poorer traditional sectors of Botswana’s economy. Furthermore, I attempt to explain why these agreements can be best understood using Elinor Ostrom’s common-pool resource analysis. This framework explains why these agreements are so successful in creating a source of capital, which is sustainable and long-enduring, for many entrepreneurs who belong to the poor sectors of the economy. Also, using this analysis, certain policy decisions can be critiqued as to how best to categorize and foster these indigenous institutions so that more people can have access to informal credit

Mechanisms of chloride modulated activity in the C-domain of angiotensin-converting enzyme

The somatic isoform of angiotensin-converting enzyme (sACE), a key regulator of blood pressure and electrolyte fluid homeostasis, primarily cleaves the hypertension-associated angiotensin-I (AngI) and bradykinin peptides, as well as a number of other physiologically relevant peptides in vitro. sACE consists of two homologous and catalytically active N- and C- domains which display marked differences in substrate specificities and chloride activation. To investigate these potential mechanisms, a series of single amino acid substitution mutants (based on analysis of aligned C- and N-domain 3D structures) were generated in a soluble, minimally glycosylated C-domain construct. Evaluation of these constructs was done using AngI and the short synthetic substrates hippuryl-L-histidyl-Lleucine (HHL) and Z-phenylalanyl-L-histidyl-L-leucine (Z-FHL) under differing chloride concentrations. An isothermal titration calorimetry-based assay was developed to determine the effect of chloride concentration on enzyme thermodynamic and kinetic parameters. Chloride binding in the chloride 1 pocket of tACE was found to affect positioning of K511 and potentially alter the conformation of the active site. This would alter C-terminal substrate interactions, which were suggested to affect chloride 2 pocket ion affinity by coordinating Y520 and affect peptide bond rotation and hence substrate interactions. The analysis of the chloride 2 pocket R522Q and R522K mutations revealed a key R522-Y523 Pi-cation interaction that is stabilized via chloride coordination of R522. Substrate interactions in the S2 sub-site were shown to affect positioning of this complex as well as chloride affinity in the chloride 2 pocket. The E403-K118 salt bridge in tACE was shown to stabilize the hinge-bending region and reduce chloride affinity by constraining the chloride 2 pocket, an interaction which is destabilized via substrate interactions within the S2 pocket which results in tighter chloride binding. This work showed that substrate composition to the C-terminal side of the scissile bond, as well as interactions of larger substrates in the S2 sub-site, moderate chloride affinity in the chloride 2 pocket of the ACE C-domain, providing a rationale for the substrate selective nature of chloride dependence in ACE and how this varies between the N- and C- domains

A platform for discovering and sharing confidential ballistic crime data.

Criminal investigations generate large volumes of complex data that detectives have to analyse and understand. This data tends to be "siloed" within individual jurisdictions and re-using it in other investigations can be difficult. Investigations into trans-national crimes are hampered by the problem of discovering relevant data held by agencies in other countries and of sharing those data. Gun-crimes are one major type of incident that showcases this: guns are easily moved across borders and used in multiple crimes but finding that a weapon was used elsewhere in Europe is difficult. In this paper we report on the Odyssey Project, an EU-funded initiative to mine, manipulate and share data about weapons and crimes. The project demonstrates the automatic combining of data from disparate repositories for cross-correlation and automated analysis. The data arrive from different cultural/domains with multiple reference models using real-time data feeds and historical databases

Strike Three: Umpires' Demand for Discrimination

We explore umpires' racial/ethnic preferences in the evaluation of Major League Baseball pitchers. Controlling for umpire, pitcher, batter and catcher fixed effects and many other factors, strikes are more likely to be called if the umpire and pitcher match race/ethnicity. This effect only exists where there is little scrutiny of umpires' behavior -- in ballparks without computerized systems monitoring umpires' calls, at poorly attended games, and when the called pitch cannot determine the outcome of the at-bat. If a pitcher shares the home-plate umpire's race/ethnicity, he gives up fewer runs per game and improves his team's chance of winning. The results suggest that standard measures of salary discrimination that adjust for measured productivity may generally be flawed. We derive the magnitude of the bias generally and apply it to several examples.

Strike Three: Umpires' Demand for Discrimination

We explore how umpires' racial/ethnic preferences are expressed in their evaluation of Major League Baseball pitchers. Controlling for umpire, pitcher, batter and catcher fixed effects and many other factors, strikes are more likely to be called if the umpire and pitcher match race/ethnicity. This effect only exists where there is little scrutiny of umpires' behavior – in ballparks without computerized systems monitoring umpires' calls, at poorly attended games, and when the called pitch cannot determine the outcome of the at-bat. If a pitcher shares the home-plate umpire's race/ethnicity, he gives up fewer hits, strikes out more batters, and improves his team's chance of winning. The general implication is that standard measures of salary discrimination that adjust for measured productivity may be flawed. We derive the magnitude of the bias generally and apply it to several examples.strategic interactions, worker evaluation, wage equations, economics of sports

First--principles band alignments at the Si:anatase TiO2 interface

TiO2 has been identified as a promising electron transport layer in Si solar cells. Experiments have revealed that the Si:TiO2 interface undergoes structural changes depending on how it was fabricated. However, less is understood about the sensitivity of electronic properties, such as band alignments, to these changes. Here, we present first-principles calculations of band alignments between Si and anatase TiO2, investigating different surface orientations and terminations. By calculating vacuum-level alignments, we observe a large band offset reduction of 2.5 eV for the O-terminated Si slab compared to other terminations. Furthermore, a 0.5 eV increase is found for the anatase (101) surface compared to (001). We compare the band offsets obtained through vacuum alignment with four different heterostructure models. Even though the heterostructure models contain an excess of oxygen, their offsets agree well with vacuum-level alignments using stoichiometric or H-terminated slabs, and the reduction in band offsets seen for the O-terminated Si slab is not observed. Additionally, we have investigated different exchange-correlation treatments including PBE + U, postprocessing GW corrections, and the meta-GGA rSCAN functional. We find that rSCAN provides more accurate band offsets than PBE, but further corrections are still required to achieve <0.5 eV accuracy. Overall, our study quantifies the importance of surface termination and orientation for this interface

Open Research Online - a self-archiving success story

Broadly speaking, institutional research repositories can be split into three categories based on the way in which they secure content. 1. Passive Repositories, which essentially rely on content drifting in as and when faculty members become aware of the repository for themselves. 2. Incentivised Repositories, which typically have one or more dedicated staff member involved in managing, advocating and developing the repository, as well as supporting faculty members in their engagement with the repository. 3. Mandated Repositories, which encompass all the elements of incentivised repositories, but are also underpinned by an institutional mandate, requiring faculty members to deposit their research. Much debate exists in the literature, on listservs, and in the blogosphere as to whether a successful and sustainable repository can be achieved solely through advocacy, management, and development, or whether this is only likely to happen if an institutional mandate is introduced. A much quoted figure is that a non-mandated repository is only likely to capture around 15% of its institution's research output, and at the very most (for an Incentivised Repository) 30% (Harnad, 2009). In this poster, we use the example of Open Research Online - the research repository of the Open University - to show that dedicated management and active development and advocacy of an institutional repository can lead to very successful results under the self-archiving model, in this case capturing regularly an estimated 60% of peer-reviewed journal output. Also demonstrated is the significant rise in full text (i.e. fully open access) items in the repository since the implementation of this approach. Harnad, S. (2009) DEBATE: Institutional repository success is dependent upon mandates. Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 5 (4)