The fitness of persons in the landscape: isolation, belonging and emergent subjects in rural Ireland

The concept of isolation has dogged anthropological studies of rural Ireland. This paper re‐conceptualises isolation through ethnographic work undertaken on the minibuses run by Rural Transport projects in five counties of Ireland. Instead of seeing isolation as an embedded characteristic of Irish landscapes, histories or of the ageing body, the paper describes dynamic, shifting expectations of belonging and community. On the Rural Transport buses, characteristic moments of witnessing ‘figures in the landscape’ during predictable and routinised journeys produce strikingly new negotiations of alterity and sameness among the passengers. The paper argues for the significance of these moments in developing a socialised, inscribed landscape and new senses of generative agency

A note on the stability of slip channel flows

We consider the influence of slip boundary conditions on the modal and non-modal stability of pressure-driven channel flows. In accordance with previous results by Gersting (1974) (Phys. Fluids, 17) but in contradiction with the recent investigation of Chu (2004) (C.R. Mecanique, 332), we show that slip increases significantly the value of the critical Reynolds number for linear instability. The non-modal stability analysis however reveals that the slip has a very weak influence on the maximum transient energy growth of perturbations at subcritical Reynolds numbers. Slip boundary conditions are therefore not likely to have a significant effect on the transition to turbulence in channel flows

Stuff

The cultural consideration of the material world increasingly involves not only recognition of material things in their diversity, many different things, but also ideas and concepts which frame the material world as a whole through particular paradigms. Stuff provides us with one of these sweeping paradigmatic interpretations of material culture, both a popular discourse and a set of academic frameworks. Stuff is about proliferating consumer goods, about domesticity, about the substances things are made from, about the overwhelming artificiality and human-made quality of the material world, and about sustainability. When using the term stuff, we are talking about those moments when the material world is important for its quantity, not only its qualities, and when we perceive the normative state of the material world as artifactual, and human-made rather than normatively natural

Eigenvalue enclosures and exclosures for non-self-adjoint problems in hydrodynamics

In this paper we present computer-assisted proofs of a number of results in theoretical fluid dynamics and in quantum mechanics. An algorithm based on interval arithmetic yields provably correct eigenvalue enclosures and exclosures for non-self-adjoint boundary eigenvalue problems, the eigenvalues of which are highly sensitive to perturbations. We apply the algorithm to: the Orr-Sommerfeld equation with Poiseuille profile to prove the existence of an eigenvalue in the classically unstable region for Reynolds number R=5772.221818; the Orr-Sommerfeld equation with Couette profile to prove upper bounds for the imaginary parts of all eigenvalues for fixed R and wave number α; the problem of natural oscillations of an incompressible inviscid fluid in the neighbourhood of an elliptical flow to obtain information about the unstable part of the spectrum off the imaginary axis; Squire's problem from hydrodynamics; and resonances of one-dimensional Schrödinger operators

Second Circuit Halts Appeal Against World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc.

On Friday, September 23, 2016, the Second Circuit denied an appeal by former World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc. (WWE) wrestler, William Albert Haynes III (professionally known as Billy Jack) alleging that the corporation intentionally hid the risks of traumatic brain injuries associated with their entertainment offering. The WWE fought the claims, asserting that Haynes’ suit did not meet the proper jurisdiction requirements to move to the appeals court because the district court in Connecticut had not yet certified its ruling as final. The Court reasoned that the claim could not move forward while Mr. Haynes and other wrestlers were still in the process of settling disputes with the WWE in district court. Still, the denial of Haynes’ appeal is not a total loss for the wrestler. It simply means that the panel, which was composed of three circuit court judges, decided that the processes of trial proceedings must be followed to avoid improper steps during civil procedure. This post was originally published on the Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal website on October 13, 2016. The original post can be accessed via the Archived Link button above

Invisibility in non-Hermitian tight-binding lattices

Reflectionless defects in Hermitian tight-binding lattices, synthesized by the intertwining operator technique of supersymmetric quantum mechanics, are generally not invisible and time-of-flight measurements could reveal the existence of the defects. Here it is shown that, in a certain class of non-Hermitian tight-binding lattices with complex hopping amplitudes, defects in the lattice can appear fully invisible to an outside observer. The synthesized non-Hermitian lattices with invisible defects possess a real-valued energy spectrum, however they lack of parity-time (PT) symmetry, which does not play any role in the present work.Comment: to appear in Phys. Rev.

Work Environment, Leadership, and Teacher Retention in Early Childhood Education

The need for quality child care and early childhood education has greatly increased over the last decade. The literature has provided multiple definitions of what constitutes quality care; one key factor was teacher consistency. This study examined the perspectives of leaders and teachers working in early childhood centers about their work environment and the relationship of the environment, including leadership characteristics, to teacher retention. Participants completed the Early Childhood Work Environment Survey about their perceptions of multiple organizational practices. Analysis of the data revealed that there was a significant relationship between a teacher’s perception of supervisor support and their commitment to stay at their current place of employment. Additional results indicated that the early childhood leader has a central role in the overall functioning of the childcare center with supervisor support having a significant relationship to all other dimensions of the work environment. Because of the multifaceted leadership role in early childhood it is suggested that leadership does influence a teacher’s retention decision

Circuit QED and sudden phase switching in a superconducting qubit array

Superconducting qubits connected in an array can form quantum many-body systems such as the quantum Ising model. By coupling the qubits to a superconducting resonator, the combined system forms a circuit QED system. Here, we study the nonlinear behavior in the many-body state of the qubit array using a semiclassical approach. We show that sudden switchings as well as a bistable regime between the ferromagnetic phase and the paramagnetic phase can be observed in the qubit array. A superconducting circuit to implement this system is presented with realistic parameters .Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, submitted for publication

Variational Method for Studying Solitons in the KdV equation

We use a class of trial wave functions which are generalizations of gaussians to study single soliton approximate analytic solutions to the KdV equations. The variational parameters obey a Hamiltonian dynamics obtained from the Principle of Least Action. We get extremely accurate approximate single soliton solutions including their time dependence using this method.Comment: 8 page

Marginally unstable Holmboe modes

Marginally unstable Holmboe modes for smooth density and velocity profiles are studied. For a large family of flows and stratification that exhibit Holmboe instability, we show that the modes with phase velocity equal to the maximum or the minimum velocity of the shear are marginally unstable. This allows us to determine the critical value of the control parameter R (expressing the ratio of the velocity variation length scale to the density variation length scale) that Holmboe instability appears R=2. We then examine systems for which the parameter R is very close to this critical value. For this case we derive an analytical expression for the dispersion relation of the complex phase speed c(k) in the unstable region. The growth rate and the width of the region of unstable wave numbers has a very strong (exponential) dependence on the deviation of R from the critical value. Two specific examples are examined and the implications of the results are discussed.Comment: Submitted to Physics of Fluid