Einstein on the beach: A study in temporality

This is an Author's Accepted Manuscript of an article published in Performance Research, 17(5), 34 - 40, 2012, copyright @ Taylor & Francis, available online at: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/13528165.2012.728438.In this paper I seek to examine and analyse the sense of duration induced by performances of Einstein on the Beach, and the entailed sense of time which its internal structure creates. I initially sketch out the stylistic context and artistic intentions of this work's creators, Glass and Wilson, and I briefly describe the process of its creation. Certain features of this process indicate how the work may be interpreted. Having cited the creators' thoughts on structure and temporality, I address directly aspects of Einstein's temporal effects, comparing it to works of similar lengths. I give the briefest synopsis of its staging and motifs. I then outline three kinds of devices which seem to inform our temporal sense of this work as spectators. In the final section I invoke two ideas which serve as analogies to help characterise this work's overall effect on us: Heidegger's notion of the ‘hermeneutic circle’ and, more speculatively, Nietzsche's ‘theory’ of Eternal Recurrence

Children learning to read: not quite so simple!

Copyright © 2001 Early Childhood Australia. Published version of the paper reproduced here with permission from the publisher

Merleau-Ponty and neuroaesthetics: Two approaches to performance and technology

This is an Author's Accepted Manuscript of an article published in Digital Creativity, 23(3-4), 225 - 238, 2012. Copyright @ 2012 Taylor & Francis, available online at: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/14626268.2012.709941.Assisted by the rapid growth of digital technology, which has enhanced its ambitions, performance is an increasingly popular area of artistic practice. This article seeks to contextualise this within two methodologically divergent yet complimentary intellectual tendencies. The first is the work of the philosopher Merleau-Ponty, who recognised that our experience of the world has an inescapably ‘embodied’ quality, not reducible to mental accounts, which can be vicariously extended through specific instrumentation. The second is the developing field of neuroaesthetics; that is, neurological research directed towards the analysis, in brain-functional terms, of our experiences of objects and events which are culturally deemed to be of artistic significance. I will argue that both these contexts offer promising approaches to interpreting developments in contemporary performance, which has achieved critical recognition without much antecedent theoretical support

Stable Isotope Imprints during Pyrite Leaching: Implications for Acid Rock Drainage Characterization

The characterization of acid rock drainage (ARD) is traditionally based on mineralogical and geochemical techniques (e.g., Acid Base Accounting tests). The complexity of ARD processes warrants contribution of methods from various disciplines. In the past decade, the increasing role of environmental isotopes in pollution monitoring has enabled the successful application of isotope methods in ARD investigations. While isotopic compositions of different pollutants can refer to their parent mineral, the degree of isotope fractionations are indicative of the mechanisms taking place during the release and transportation of ARD-related contaminants. In natural environments, however, the measured isotope fractionations are predominantly the result of several coexisting or sequential processes. Therefore, the identification and quantification of the distinct contributions of these processes to isotope variations is difficult and requires well-defined laboratory conditions, where the influence of ARD generation on different isotope systems can be assessed with greater certainty. This review provides readers with a single source of information regarding isotopic variations generated by laboratory pyrite leaching

Metabolomics enables precision medicine: “A White Paper, Community Perspective”

Introduction: Background to metabolomics: Metabolomics is the comprehensive study of the metabolome, the repertoire of biochemicals (or small molecules) present in cells, tissues, and body fluids. The study of metabolism at the global or “-omics” level is a rapidly growing field that has the potential to have a profound impact upon medical practice. At the center of metabolomics, is the concept that a person’s metabolic state provides a close representation of that individual’s overall health status. This metabolic state reflects what has been encoded by the genome, and modified by diet, environmental factors, and the gut microbiome. The metabolic profile provides a quantifiable readout of biochemical state from normal physiology to diverse pathophysiologies in a manner that is often not obvious from gene expression analyses. Today, clinicians capture only a very small part of the information contained in the metabolome, as they routinely measure only a narrow set of blood chemistry analytes to assess health and disease states. Examples include measuring glucose to monitor diabetes, measuring cholesterol and high density lipoprotein/low density lipoprotein ratio to assess cardiovascular health, BUN and creatinine for renal disorders, and measuring a panel of metabolites to diagnose potential inborn errors of metabolism in neonates. Objectives of White Paper—expected treatment outcomes and metabolomics enabling tool for precision medicine: We anticipate that the narrow range of chemical analyses in current use by the medical community today will be replaced in the future by analyses that reveal a far more comprehensive metabolic signature. This signature is expected to describe global biochemical aberrations that reflect patterns of variance in states of wellness, more accurately describe specific diseases and their progression, and greatly aid in differential diagnosis. Such future metabolic signatures will: (1) provide predictive, prognostic, diagnostic, and surrogate markers of diverse disease states; (2) inform on underlying molecular mechanisms of diseases; (3) allow for sub-classification of diseases, and stratification of patients based on metabolic pathways impacted; (4) reveal biomarkers for drug response phenotypes, providing an effective means to predict variation in a subject’s response to treatment (pharmacometabolomics); (5) define a metabotype for each specific genotype, offering a functional read-out for genetic variants: (6) provide a means to monitor response and recurrence of diseases, such as cancers: (7) describe the molecular landscape in human performance applications and extreme environments. Importantly, sophisticated metabolomic analytical platforms and informatics tools have recently been developed that make it possible to measure thousands of metabolites in blood, other body fluids, and tissues. Such tools also enable more robust analysis of response to treatment. New insights have been gained about mechanisms of diseases, including neuropsychiatric disorders, cardiovascular disease, cancers, diabetes and a range of pathologies. A series of ground breaking studies supported by National Institute of Health (NIH) through the Pharmacometabolomics Research Network and its partnership with the Pharmacogenomics Research Network illustrate how a patient’s metabotype at baseline, prior to treatment, during treatment, and post-treatment, can inform about treatment outcomes and variations in responsiveness to drugs (e.g., statins, antidepressants, antihypertensives and antiplatelet therapies). These studies along with several others also exemplify how metabolomics data can complement and inform genetic data in defining ethnic, sex, and gender basis for variation in responses to treatment, which illustrates how pharmacometabolomics and pharmacogenomics are complementary and powerful tools for precision medicine. Conclusions: Key scientific concepts and recommendations for precision medicine: Our metabolomics community believes that inclusion of metabolomics data in precision medicine initiatives is timely and will provide an extremely valuable layer of data that compliments and informs other data obtained by these important initiatives. Our Metabolomics Society, through its “Precision Medicine and Pharmacometabolomics Task Group”, with input from our metabolomics community at large, has developed this White Paper where we discuss the value and approaches for including metabolomics data in large precision medicine initiatives. This White Paper offers recommendations for the selection of state of-the-art metabolomics platforms and approaches that offer the widest biochemical coverage, considers critical sample collection and preservation, as well as standardization of measurements, among other important topics. We anticipate that our metabolomics community will have representation in large precision medicine initiatives to provide input with regard to sample acquisition/preservation, selection of optimal omics technologies, and key issues regarding data collection, interpretation, and dissemination. We strongly recommend the collection and biobanking of samples for precision medicine initiatives that will take into consideration needs for large-scale metabolic phenotyping studie

Acts of communion: encountering taste in Reckless Sleepers’ The Last Supper

An article about the aesthetics, politics and dramaturgy of taste implicit in Reckless Sleepers’ The Last Supper (2003). The authors explore notions of gustatory taste and the multi-sensory potential of serving food in performance and the ethics of (mis)representation of real life events; the assassination of the Romanovs and Che Guavara proving to be the most unreliable narratives. The piece sits between fact and fiction, the found and the fabricated, and is punctuated with the arrival of the real last suppers of convicted felons. The work speaks from a primarily western religious perspective, inspired by Da Vinci’s Last Supper (1498) and the act of communion that takes place in church services. In this way, it leans towards an occidental, spiritual notion of taste, where transubstantiation allows the rice paper script to become both the body of Christ and the symbol of his own last supper. Nietzsche’s notion of intoxication comes into play as performers and audience share wine, or blood, and drink to absent friends. The article proposes that the piece enacts a dramaturgy much like a meal, where conversation ebbs and flows, and a sense of togetherness, or act of communion, is engendered. The authors posit that the tacit contract with the audience is redrawn by food as both an aesthetic and dramaturgical encounter. As such, it becomes an invocation (or intoxication) of taste, mortality and last-ness that continues to resonate thirteen years after its devising. Both Pinchbeck and Westerside wrote about this performance when they first saw it at the same venue in 2006, both conducted interviews with members of the Reckless Sleepers, Mole Wetherell and Tim Ingram, for their ongoing research into dramaturgy, aesthetics and taste in contemporary performance. Now this research is woven together into a tapestry of reflections on the piece, a pentimento of memories

Paper Session II-B - The Advanced Camera for the Hubble Space Telescope

The Hubble Space Telescope (HST) Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) will have a high throughput, wide field, optical and I-band camera (WFC), a critically sampled high resolution camera (HRC), and a high throughput, moderate field of view far ultraviolet, solar-blind camera (SBC). The key characteristics of the ACS are listed in Table 1. The throughputs include the geometrical, scattering, and reflectivity losses from the HST optical telescope assembly (Burrows, HST OTA Handbook). Two figures are listed for the ACS efficiencies. The first is the efficiency using the quantum efficiency (QE) of the Scientific Imaging Technologies (SITe) 2K x 4K WFC CCDs and the SITe HRC 1K ´ 1K CCDs selected for the first build of the flight cameras. The second and higher efficiencies are those achieved with SITe CCDs processed and anti-reflection coated at Steward Observatory by Dr. Michael Lesser. We plan to use these better CCDs for the second build of the flight cameras

JWST reveals a possible z∼11z \sim 11 galaxy merger in triply-lensed MACS0647−-JD

MACS0647$-$JD is a triply-lensed $z\sim11$ galaxy originally discovered with the Hubble Space Telescope. Here we report new JWST imaging, which clearly resolves MACS0647$-$JD as having two components that are either merging galaxies or stellar complexes within a single galaxy. Both are very small, with stellar masses $\sim10^8\,M_\odot$ and radii $r<100\,\rm pc$. The brighter larger component "A" is intrinsically very blue ($\beta\sim-2.6$), likely due to very recent star formation and no dust, and is spatially extended with an effective radius $\sim70\,\rm pc$. The smaller component "B" appears redder ($\beta\sim-2$), likely because it is older ($100-200\,\rm Myr$) with mild dust extinction ($A_V\sim0.1\,\rm mag$), and a smaller radius $\sim20\,\rm pc$. We identify galaxies with similar colors in a high-redshift simulation, finding their star formation histories to be out of phase. With an estimated stellar mass ratio of roughly 2:1 and physical projected separation $\sim400\,\rm pc$, we may be witnessing a galaxy merger 400 million years after the Big Bang. We also identify a candidate companion galaxy C $\sim3\,{\rm kpc}$ away, likely destined to merge with galaxies A and B. The combined light from galaxies A+B is magnified by factors of $\sim$8, 5, and 2 in three lensed images JD1, 2, and 3 with F356W fluxes $\sim322$, $203$, $86\,\rm nJy$ (AB mag 25.1, 25.6, 26.6). MACS0647$-$JD is significantly brighter than other galaxies recently discovered at similar redshifts with JWST. Without magnification, it would have AB mag 27.3 ($M_{UV}=-20.4$). With a high confidence level, we obtain a photometric redshift of $z=10.6\pm0.3$ based on photometry measured in 6 NIRCam filters spanning $1-5\rm\mu m$, out to $4300\,\r{A}$ rest-frame. JWST NIRSpec observations planned for January 2023 will deliver a spectroscopic redshift and a more detailed study of the physical properties of MACS0647$-$JD.Comment: 27 pages, 14 figures, submitted to Natur