Tales of the Brick Age: Corruption and Bankruptcy in the late works of Rafael Chirbes

The subprime collapse, the Global Recession, and the Eurozone crisis have given rise to an entire subgenre of crisis narratives in literary and visual arts, attempting to make sense of the human aspect, causes and outcomes of the largest non-war economic commotion in the West since the Great Depression. In Spain, the last two novels of Rafael Chirbes (1949-2015), Crematorio (2007) and En la orilla (2013)1 have distinguished themselves for an insightful view and poignant reflections on the real estate boom and bust, which defined the economic and cultural parameters of Spain after the democratic transition. Here I will call this period the Brick Age.2 As a metonymy, the Brick refers here to a series of interrelated factors, economic developments, social changes, evolving cultural attitudes, and substantial alterations in visual landscape and the environment, which took place in Spain from the mid-1980s to approximately 2010. It takes after the so-called fiebre del ladrillo or Brick Fever, i.e. the construction boom starting approximately in the late 90s, defining an economy largely based on real estate development and related sectors, including tourism, along with the rapid, unsustainable economic growth it fostered, supported by the gradual imposition of neoliberal ideology and policy by the right and its implicit acceptance by the traditional left. In the following pages I will produce a brief account of the Brick Age as a historical process in two phases, underscoring the ties of the boom and bust economy with a culture of corruption. Having established this context, I will proceed to introduce Chirbes\u27 novels, justify the need for a joint analysis, [End Page 405] and discuss the concepts and imagery that seek to account for the political, cultural, and moral context intertwined with the economics of boom and bust during the Brick Age

Gamma-ray absorption in the massive TeV Binary LS 5039

Treballs Finals de Grau de Física, Facultat de Física, Universitat de Barcelona, Any: 2015, Tutor: Marc RibóThe recent detections of binary systems emitting very high-energy (VHE) gamma-rays has introduced a new class of binaries: gamma-ray binaries. These binaries, composed of a compact object and a massive star, are distinguished by a non-thermal emission with a peak above 1 MeV in the spectral energy distribution (SED). For massive companions with effective temperature of 20 000{40 000 K, the stellar photon energies are in the range for pair-production with TeV photons. Therefore, the VHE emission can be e ciently absorbed. The absorption is modulated due to its dependence on the orbital geometry because of the angular dependence of the pair production cross-section and the energy threshold. We show that the total cross-section is energy dependent, and for T* = 39 000 K the gamma ray photons with hundreds of GeV are highly absorbed. We have written a Fortran code to perform numerical calculations of the opacity of the gamma ray absorption due to pair production for the gamma ray binary LS 5039, considering the point-like approximation for the companion. The results obtained for a system inclination i = 60º show the minimum absorption when the compact object is far from the star and close to the observer, and the maximum near the periastron. Our results are compared with Dubus (2006), where a complete treatment considering the massive star size is shown, finding minor differences. We also compare the available VHE lightcurve with a transmission lightcurve at 3 TeV and conclude that the absorption due to pair production is insufficient to explain the observations, implying that cascading or emission away from the compact object have to be invoked

Frost formation: optimizing solutions under a finite volume approach

Published under licence in Journal of Physics: Conference Series by IOP Publishing Ltd. Content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 licence. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI.A three-dimensional transient formulation of the frost formation process is developed by means of a finite volume approach. Emphasis is put on the frost surface boundary condition as well as the wide range of empirical correlations related to the thermophysical and transport properties of frost. A study of the numerical solution is made, establishing the parameters that ensure grid independence. Attention is given to the algorithm, the discretised equations and the code optimization through dynamic relaxation techniques. A critical analysis of four cases is carried out by comparing solutions of several empirical models against tested experiments. As a result, a discussion on the performance of such parameters is started and a proposal of the most suitable models is presented.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Transatlantic Fuentes: Between ‘The Two Shores’ of Pluriculturality and Glossocentrism

The cultural program that Jerónimo de Aguilar pronounces at the end of Carlos Fuentes\u27s short story “The Two Shores” appears to be inconsistent with the fundamentals of democratic liberalism and multiculturalism upon which they are ostensibly based. Furthermore, cultural visions like those in “The Two Shores” lend signifying imagery and empower cultural institutions, the media, and political authorities to exert symbolic violence upon minorities, thereby negating the multiculturalism that such visions claim to be promoting. El programa cultural que Jerónimo de Aguilar pronuncia al final del cuento “Las dos orillas” de Carlos Fuentes parece inconsistente con los fundamentos del liberalismo democrático y multiculturalismo en los que aparentemente se basa. Es más, visiones culturales como las de “Las dos orillas” rinden imágenes y poder de significación a instituciones culturales, medios de comunicación y figuras políticas, capacitándolos para ejercer violencia simbólica sobre las minorías, negando así el multiculturalismo que tales visiones afirman promover

Carlos Fuente\u27s The Two Shores : Between Counterfactualism and Cultural Allegory

A literary criticism of the short story The Two Shores, which appeared in the 1992 book The Orange Tree, by Carlos Fuentes. The plot and characters of the story are described, particularly the narrator, Jerónimo de Aguilar, a dead man who was held captive by the Mayans. The story is a contribution to the reconsideration of the Spanish conquest of the Americas, particularly Mexico. The idea that the story may present a counterfactual historiography, an idea created by critic Niall Ferguson, is considered

Kowalevski's analysis of the swinging Atwood's machine

We study the Kowalevski expansions near singularities of the swinging Atwood's machine. We show that there is a infinite number of mass ratios $M/m$ where such expansions exist with the maximal number of arbitrary constants. These expansions are of the so--called weak Painlev\'e type. However, in view of these expansions, it is not possible to distinguish between integrable and non integrable cases.Comment: 30 page

Aportacions a la flora exòtica catalana, III

New records of 6 synanthropic species in Catalonia (N. E. Spain) are reported. Their geographical origin, ecology, distribution in Catalonia and the ways of their introduction are also given for some of the species