Zen and the art of film narrative: Towards a transcendental realism in film

Nations and peoples are largely the stories they feed themselves. If they tell themselves stories that are lies, they will suffer the consequences of those lies. If they tell themselves stories that face their own truths, they will free their histories for future flowerings. (Okri 1995: 21) What defines the classic narrative is also at the root of its limitations; an epistemology that ties it to a material and psychological paradigm governed by largely explicable laws of cause and effect. Such notions as ‘character motivation’, ‘narrative aims’, ‘obstacles’, ‘climax’ and so on have evolved to become as overwhelmingly dominant in cinema as the dogma of reason which subsequently the industrial age solidified. It is from this that the moving-image medium emerged: empirical evidence of motivations, mechanistic notions of causes and effects and scientifically based – including the pseudosciences of psychology and sociology – that provide justifications for events and actions – all serve to reinforce the dominance of the classic narrative’s role in the storytelling of the developed world. In this article, I shall call for a different perspective on cinematic narrative form; not with a view to discussing what film generally is, but to make some general suggestions of what it could be, particularly from the perspective of a film-maker trying to transcend the limitations of the classic narrative. The motive is to try and understand how, in practice, one may evolve narrative forms in such a way as to deal with experiences not sufficiently touched by the classic form, as it is currently generally practised in cinema. I shall, in particular, look at the relationship between emotions and feelings and their relationship to narrative structure and bring into this examination some notions and ideas from Zen Buddhism to re-evaluate that relationship. The issues I hope to raise are about paradigms and I shall therefore deliberately base my discussion on general assertions and eclectic contextualization

Cinema of poverty: Independence and simplicity in an age of abundance and complexity

Over the past 25 years of writing, producing and directing, my aspirations as a creative artist in film have shifted from a paradigm in which the scale and scope of financial and human resources shaped not only the creative intentions of a project, but the very definition of what made something ‘cinematic’, to a new paradigm in which poverty - both in terms of resources and, more philosophically, in terms of artistic expression - has become one of the defining features of my artistic aspiration and my understanding of a new cinema. This development has interacted with parallel developments in technologies of production, distribution and exhibition, of a kind and scale I never envisaged when first embarking on a career in film, and has, for me, led to a kind of creative liberation which I am only now beginning to fully understand. Traditionally, human and financial resources have been considered essential for the production of quality, creative narrative films. In this article, I shall reflect on my own practice to explore how poverty can enhance the creative engagement with the medium and lead to the development of new and innovative approaches to, amongst other things, narrative imagery and, in so doing, explore how poverty can introduce new and original approaches to cinematic story-telling

Not So Fast: Cultivating miRs as Kinks in the Chain of the Cell Cycle.

In this issue of Cancer Cell, Hydbring and colleagues define a novel class of microRNAs (miRNAs), deemed cell-cycle-targeting miRNAs, that target several cyclins/CDKs, reduce tumor cell growth, and induce apoptosis. These miRNAs effectively suppressed chemoresistant patient-derived xenograft growth in vivo, and efficacy could be prospectively predicted with an expression-based algorithm

Direct indication of particle size in fluidized beds

Differential pressure measurements indicate particle size and particle size distribution in fluidized beds. The technique is based on the relationship between bed particle size and the intensity and frequency of fluctuations. By measuring the fluctuations, an estimate of average particle size of the fluid-bed material can be made

Extending the redshift distribution of submm galaxies: Identification of a z~4 submm galaxy

We present the identification of a bright submillimeter galaxy (SMG) in the field of Abell 2218. The galaxy has a spectroscopic redshift of ~4, and is currently the highest redshift SMG known. It is detected at all wavelengths from optical to submm, including the Spitzer IRAC bands. We discuss the properties of this galaxy, which is undergoing intense star formation at a rate~600 Msun/yr. We also compare the properties to those of radio-preselected submm-bright galaxies. The z~4 result extends the redshift distribution of SMGs.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, uses asp2004.sty. To appear in the proceedings of the conference "Infrared Diagnostics of Galaxy Evolution", Pasadena, CA, 14-16 November 2005, ed. R. Char

The cosine law at the atomic scale: Toward realistic simulations of Knudsen diffusion

We propose to revisit the diffusion of atoms in the Knudsen regime in terms of a complex dynamical reflection process. By means of molecular dynamics simulation we emphasize the asymptotic nature of the cosine law of reflection at the atomic scale, and carefully analyze the resulting strong correlations in the reflection events. A dynamical interpretation of the accomodation coefficient associated to the slip at the wall interface is also proposed. Finally, we show that the first two moments of the stochastic process of reflection non uniformly depend on the incident angle

Large eddy simulation of a lifted ethylene flame using a dynamic nonequilibrium model for subfilter scalar variance and dissipation rate

Accurate prediction of nonpremixed turbulent combustion using large eddy simulation(LES) requires detailed modeling of the mixing between fuel and oxidizer at scales finer than the LES filter resolution. In conserved scalar combustion models, the small scale mixing process is quantified by two parameters, the subfilter scalar variance and the subfilter scalar dissipation rate. The most commonly used models for these quantities assume a local equilibrium exists between production and dissipation of variance. Such an assumption has limited validity in realistic, technically relevant flow configurations. However, nonequilibrium models for variance and dissipation rate typically contain a model coefficient whose optimal value is unknown a priori for a given simulation. Furthermore, conventional dynamic procedures are not useful for estimating the value of this coefficient. In this work, an alternative dynamic procedure based on the transport equation for subfilter scalar variance is presented, along with a robust conditional averaging approach for evaluation of themodel coefficient. This dynamic nonequilibrium modeling approach is used for simulation of a turbulent lifted ethylene flame, previously studied using DNS by Yoo et al. (Proc. Comb. Inst., 2011). The predictions of the new model are compared to those of a static nonequilibrium modeling approach using an assumed model coefficient, as well as those of the equilibrium modeling approach. The equilibrium models are found to systematically underpredict both subfilter scalar variance and dissipation rate. Use of the dynamic procedure is shown to increase the accuracy of the nonequilibrium modeling approach. However, numerical errors that arise as a consequence of grid-based implicit filtering appear to degrade the accuracy of all three modeling options. Thus, while these results confirm the usefulness of the new dynamic model, they also show that the quality of subfilter model predictions depends on several factors extrinsic to the formulation of the subfilter model itself

Hormone whodunit: clues for solving the case of intratumor androgen production.

One of the key mechanisms by which prostate cancer cells evade hormone therapy is through intratumor testosterone production. New evidence points toward androstenedione as a potential precursor of intratumor androgen production and furthers nomination of AKR1C3 as a therapeutic target in advanced disease. Clin Cancer Res; 20(21); 5343-5. ©2014 AACR

Integrating case-based reasoning and hypermedia documentation: an application for the diagnosis of a welding robot at Odense steel shipyard

Reliable and effective maintenance support is a vital consideration for the management within today's manufacturing environment. This paper discusses the development of a maintenance system for the world's largest robot welding facility. The development system combines a case-based reasoning approach for diagnosis with context information, as electronic on-line manuals, linked using open hypermedia technology. The work discussed in this paper delivers not only a maintenance system for the robot stations under consideration, but also a design framework for developing maintenance systems for other similar applications