Approaches to the use of iconography in historical reconstruction, and the curious case of Renaissance Welsh harp technique

It is an oft-repeated cliché that ‘smart is sexy,’ and while cynics may find plenty of reason to scoff at the thought, some solace can be taken in the economic success and increase in the social cachet of the ‘historically informed performance’ (or HIP) movement. Countless millions of people over the last thirty years have been drawn to the world of medieval and renaissance music, many as a result of the exciting new sounds created through the thoughtful synthesis of artistic and intellectual sensibility demonstrated in historical reconstructions of early instruments and their playing techniques. In light of this economic and cultural success, it therefore seems fitting to take a step back and think about how individuals today arrive at a view of historical reality in the world of instrumental performance, especially when faced with images and artifacts which may be interpreted in many different ways. This research, as ‘an authentic expression of our contemporary cultural condition bringing new experiences and insights into our world,’ 1 is immensely valuable. However, are we justified in going further and asserting that our modern reconstructive work sheds light on ‘the way things actually were,’ or in other words, that it reveals objective historical truth? In the following pages I will take a closer look at the research methodology of historically informed performance and propose a refinement based on a probabilistic analysis of the data produced. While the areas of research which might benefit from such an inquiry are virtually unlimited, my specific focus for the purposes of this exercise is the harp technique in late medieval and early renaissance Wales. This is one branch of the musicological tree which remains relatively infrequently visited in early music circles, yet one which, as we will see, is richly rewarding when explored through the multifaceted methodology and interdisciplinary orientation of modern HIP research

Investigation of three classes of composite materials for space vehicle application

Three classes of composite materials for space vehicle applicatio

Should We Presume State Protection?

Professors Hathaway and Macklin debate the legality of the “presumption of state protection” that the Supreme Court of Canada established as a matter of Canadian refugee law in the Ward decision. Professor Hathaway argues that this presumption should be rejected because it lacks a sound empirical basis and because it conflicts with the relatively low evidentiary threshold set by the Refugee Convention’s “well-founded fear” standard. Professor Macklin contends that the Ward presumption does not in and of itself impose an unduly onerous burden on claimants, and that much of the damage wrought by the presumption comes instead from misinterpretation and misapplication of the Supreme Court’s dictum by lower courts

Should We Presume State Protection?

Professors Hathaway and Macklin debate the legality of the “presumption of state protection” that the Supreme Court of Canada established as a matter of Canadian refugee law in the Ward decision. Professor Hathaway argues that this presumption should be rejected because it lacks a sound empirical basis and because it conflicts with the relatively low evidentiary threshold set by the Refugee Convention’s “well-founded fear” standard. Professor Macklin contends that the Ward presumption does not in and of itself impose an unduly onerous burden on claimants, and that much of the damage wrought by the presumption comes instead from misinterpretation and misapplication of the Supreme Court’s dictum by lower courts.Les professeurs Hathaway et Macklin reconsidèrent la légalité de la «présomption de la protection de l’État» que La Cour suprême du Canada avait promulgé comme principe de droit canadien en matière de réfugiés dans le jugement Ward. Le professeur Hathaway soutient que cette présomption devrait être rejetée en raison de son manque de fondement empirique rigoureux ainsi que de son incompatibilité avec le niveau de preuve relative-ment faible impliqué par la norme de «crainte justifiée» établie par la Convention relative au statut des réfugiés. La professeure Macklin estime que la présomption Ward n’impose guère en soi un fardeau excessivement lourd sur les demandeurs, et que la plupart des problèmes engendrés par la présomption découlent des erreurs d’interprétation ou d’application de la décision de la Cour suprême de la part des tribunaux inférieurs

Phylogenetic signal in phonotactics

Phylogenetic methods have broad potential in linguistics beyond tree inference. Here, we show how a phylogenetic approach opens the possibility of gaining historical insights from entirely new kinds of linguistic data – in this instance, statistical phonotactics. We extract phonotactic data from 112 Pama-Nyungan vocabularies and apply tests for phylogenetic signal, quantifying the degree to which the data reflect phylogenetic history. We test three datasets: (1) binary variables recording the presence or absence of biphones (two-segment sequences) in a lexicon (2) frequencies of transitions between segments, and (3) frequencies of transitions between natural sound classes. Australian languages have been characterized as having a high degree of phonotactic homogeneity. Nevertheless, we detect phylogenetic signal in all datasets. Phylogenetic signal is greater in finer-grained frequency data than in binary data, and greatest in natural-class-based data. These results demonstrate the viability of employing a new source of readily extractable data in historical and comparative linguistics.1. Introduction 1.1 Motivations 1.2 Phonotactics as a source of historical signal 2. Phylogenetic signal 3. Materials 3.1 Language sample 3.2 Wordlists 3.3 Reference phylogeny 4. Phylogenetic signal in binary phonotactic data 4.1 Results for binary phonotactic data 4.2 Robustness checks 5. Phylogenetic signal in continuous phonotactic data 5.1 Robustness checks 5.2 Forward transitions versus backward transitions 5.3 Normalization of character values 6. Phylogenetic signal in natural-class-based characters 6.1 Natural-class-based characters versus biphones 7. Discussion 7.1 Overall robustness 7.2 Limitations 8. Conclusio

Heralded state preparation in a superconducting qubit

We demonstrate high-fidelity, quantum nondemolition, single-shot readout of a superconducting flux qubit in which the pointer state distributions can be resolved to below one part in 1000. In the weak excitation regime, continuous measurement permits the use of heralding to ensure initialization to a fiducial state, such as the ground state. This procedure boosts readout fidelity to 93.9% by suppressing errors due to spurious thermal population. Furthermore, heralding potentially enables a simple, fast qubit reset protocol without changing the system parameters to induce Purcell relaxation.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figure