On Hardy’s View on Marriage Through the Marriage of Jude and Arabella

Thomas Hardy is regarded as the last important novelist of the Victorian age and also in many ways the father of modern English literature. As a novelist, he wrote 14 novels and four collections of short stories. The theme of love and marriage dominates Jude the Obscure, the last and also the most controversial novel by the renowned British writer Thomas Hardy. In the book, Hardy mainly portrays three relationships: The marriage between Jude and Arabella, Sue’s marriage to Phillotson and the union of Jude and Sue. Jude the Obscure tells the story of the relationship among three couples of lovers and also emphatically describes Jude and Arabella’s marriage besides the description of Jude and Sue’s bonds of romance. The thesis will further demonstrate Hardy’s deep pessimism and fatalism to the institution of marriage at that time.

IMPROVING THE PERFORMANCE AND ENERGY EFFICIENCY OF EMERGING MEMORY SYSTEMS

Modern main memory is primarily built using dynamic random access memory (DRAM) chips. As DRAM chip scales to higher density, there are mainly three problems that impede DRAM scalability and performance improvement. First, DRAM refresh overhead grows from negligible to severe, which limits DRAM scalability and causes performance degradation. Second, although memory capacity has increased dramatically in past decade, memory bandwidth has not kept pace with CPU performance scaling, which has led to the memory wall problem. Third, DRAM dissipates considerable power and has been reported to account for as much as 40% of the total system energy and this problem exacerbates as DRAM scales up. To address these problems, 1) we propose Rank-level Piggyback Caching (RPC) to alleviate DRAM refresh overhead by servicing memory requests and refresh operations in parallel; 2) we propose a high performance and bandwidth efficient approach, called SELF, to breaking the memory bandwidth wall by exploiting die-stacked DRAM as a part of memory; 3) we propose a cost-effective and energy-efficient architecture for hybrid memory systems composed of high bandwidth memory (HBM) and phase change memory (PCM), called Dual Role HBM (DR-HBM). In DR-HBM, hot pages are tracked at a cost-effective way and migrated to the HBM to improve performance, while cold pages are stored at the PCM to save energy

« Nous étions comme un feu ardent » : la collectivisation des esprits dans les récits des femmes du village de Jicun (nord du Shaanxi)

Dans cet article sont consignés les résultats partiels d’une longue enquête d’histoire orale menée en milieu rural depuis près de dix ans par des anthropologues de l’Université Qinghua et de l’Académie des Sciences sociales de Chine. L’enquête porte sur la mémoire des temps difficiles de la collectivisation et du Grand Bond en Avant (1958-1960) dans le nord de la province du Shaanxi. L’auteur met en évidence l’ambiguïté qui caractérise les récits de ces femmes. Leurs propos témoignent à la fois d’une grande souffrance et d’une nostalgie pour une période d’intense mobilisation et d’exaltation révolutionnaire. «Nous étions comme un feu ardent» disent ces femmes, qui souvent pour la première fois avaient l’occasion et l’obligation de sortir du cercle étroit de la famille patrilinéaire.This paper reports on the partial results of a long inquiry into oral history conducted in rural settings for about ten years by anthropologists from the Qinghua University and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. The study focuses on memories of the difficult times of the collectivisation and of the Great Leap Forward (1958-1960) in the North of Shaanxi Province. The author highlights the ambiguity which characterises the narratives of women from that area. Their accounts attest simultaneously great suffering and nostalgia for a period of intense mobilisation and revolutionary exaltation. «We were as ardent as fire» say these women for whom it was often their first opportunity as well as their obligation to get out of the narrow circle of the patrilineal family

The Role of the Basal Ganglia in Memory and Motor Inhibition

This PhD thesis investigated the role of the basal ganglia in memory and motor inhibition. Recent neuroimaging evidence suggests a supramodal network of inhibition involving the lateral prefrontal cortex. Here we examined whether this supramodal network also includes subcortical structures, such as the basal ganglia. Despite their well-established role in motor control, the basal ganglia are repeatedly activated but never interpreted during memory inhibition. We first used a series of meta-analyses to confirm the consistent involvement of the basal ganglia across studies using memory and motor inhibition tasks (including the Go/No-Go, Think/No-Think, and Stop-signal tasks), and discovered that there may be different subprocesses of inhibition. For instance, while the Go/No-Go task may require preventing a response from taking place, the Think/No-Think and Stop-signal tasks may require cancelling an emerging or ongoing response. We then conducted an fMRI study to examine how the basal ganglia interact with other putative supramodal regions (e.g., DLPFC) to achieve memory and motor inhibition during prevention and cancellation. Through dynamic causal modelling (DCM), we found that both DLPFC and basal ganglia play effective roles to achieve inhibition in the task-specific regions (hippocampus for memory inhibition; primary motor cortex (M1) for motor inhibition). Specifically, memory inhibition requires a DLPFC-basal ganglia-hippocampus pathway, whereas motor inhibition requires a basal ganglia-DLPFC-M1 pathway. We correlated DCM coupling parameters with behavioural indices to examine the relationship between network dynamics during prevention and cancellation and the successfulness of inhibition. However, due to constraints with DCM parameter estimates, caution is necessary when interpreting these results. Finally, we used diffusion weighted imaging to explore the anatomical connections supporting functions and behaviour. Unfortunately, we were unable to detect any white matter variability in relation to effective connectivity or behaviour during the prevention or cancellation processes of memory and motor inhibition at this stage. This PhD thesis provides essential INITIAL evidence that not only are the basal ganglia consistently involved in memory and motor inhibition, but these structures are effectively engaged in these tasks, achieving inhibition through task-specific pathways. We will discuss our findings, interpretations, and future directions in the relevant chapters

Tetra­kis{μ3-2-[(2-hy­droxy­eth­yl)amino]­ethano­lato}tetra­kis­[chloridonickel(II)] methanol solvate

The complex mol­ecule of the title compound, [Ni4(C4H10NO2)4Cl4]·CH3OH, consists of a cubane-like {Ni4O4} core in which each nickel(II) atom is six-coordinated in a distorted octa­hedral geometry by one N and four O atoms of three mono-deprotonated diethano­lamine ligands and by a chloride anion. The mol­ecular conformation is stabilized by intra­molecular O—H⋯Cl bonds. In the crystal structure, complex mol­ecules and methanol solvent mol­ecules are linked into a three-dimensional network by N—H⋯Cl, N—H⋯O and O—H⋯Cl hydrogen-bonding inter­actions

Efficient Simulation of Airborne SAR Raw Data in Case of Motion Errors

In the simulation of SAR raw data, it is well-known that the frequency-domain algorithm is more efficient than a time-domain algorithm, making it is more suitable for extended scene simulation. However, the frequency-domain algorithm is perhaps better suited for ideal linear motion and requires some degrees of approximations to take the nonlinear motion effects. This chapter presents an efficient simulation approach based on hybrid time and frequency-domain algorithms under certain assumptions. The algorithm has high efficiency and is suitable for the simulation of extended scenes, which demands highly computational resources. The computational complexity of the proposed algorithm is analyzed, followed by numerical results to demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed approach

Near-infrared quantum cutting in Ho3+, Yb3+-codoped BaGdF5 nanoparticles via first- and second-order energy transfers

Infrared quantum cutting involving Yb(3+) 950–1,000 nm ((2) F(5/2) → (2) F(7/2)) and Ho(3+) 1,007 nm ((5)S(2),(5)F(4) → (5)I(6)) as well as 1,180 nm ((5)I(6) → (5)I(8)) emissions is achieved in BaGdF(5): Ho(3+), Yb(3+) nanoparticles which are synthesized by a facile hydrothermal route. The mechanisms through first- and second-order energy transfers were analyzed by the dependence of Yb(3+) doping concentration on the visible and infrared emissions, decay lifetime curves of the (5) F(5) → (5)I(8), (5)S(2)/(5)F(4) → (5)I(8), and (5) F(3) → (5)I(8) of Ho(3+), in which a back energy transfer from Yb(3+) to Ho(3+) is first proposed to interpret the spectral characteristics. A modified calculation equation for quantum efficiency of Yb(3+)-Ho(3+) couple by exciting at 450 nm was presented according to the quantum cutting mechanism. Overall, the excellent luminescence properties of BaGdF(5): Ho(3+), Yb(3+) near-infrared quantum cutting nanoparticles could explore an interesting approach to maximize the performance of solar cells

Bis(ferrocene­carboxyl­ato-κO)bis­(2-pyridyl­methanol-κ2 N,O)cobalt(II)

The title complex mol­ecule, [Fe2Co(C5H5)2(C6H4O2)2(C6H7NO)2], has a crystallographic imposed centre of symmetry. The CoII atom displays a distorted octa­hedral coordination geometry, provided by the O atoms of two monodentate ferrocene­carboxyl­ate anions and by the N and O atoms of two 2-pyridyl­methanol mol­ecule. The mol­ecular conformation is stabilized by intra­molecular C—H⋯O hydrogen bonds