The first cohomology of the mapping class group with coefficients in algebraic functions on the SL(2, C) moduli space

Consider a compact surface of genus at least two. We prove that the first cohomology group of the mapping class group with coefficients in the space of algebraic functions on the SL(2, C) moduli space vanishes

How do southern Spaniards create the conditions necessary to initiate negotiations with strangers?

Based on focus group discussions and interviews with Spanish-speaking business people experienced in negotiations with Spaniards this paper focuses on what they say about their first time business meetings with southern Spaniards. The informants include both non-Spaniards and Spaniards, the last group comprising both Spaniards from the northern and the southern parts of Spain. Thus foreigners and northern Spaniards talk about their experience related to first time business meetings with southern Spaniards, whereas the southern Spaniards reflect on how they see themselves in first time meetings with business people from other parts of Spain and from abroad. Special attention is given to how the informants describe the start-up phase of their business relations. The paper introduces different theoretical approaches to such first time intercultural meetings – including a sociological approach, the approach offered by intercultural communication, and Face theory - and based on the key concepts of these approaches the paper discusses to what extent the businessmen involved draw on concepts related to the theories in their sense-making effort

On the physical origin of the second solar spectrum of the Sc II line at 4247 A

The peculiar three-peak structure of the linear polarization profile shown in the second solar spectrum by the Ba II line at 4554 A has been interpreted as the result of the different contributions coming from the barium isotopes with and without hyperfine structure (HFS). In the same spectrum, a triple peak polarization signal is also observed in the Sc II line at 4247 A. Scandium has a single stable isotope (^{45}Sc), which shows HFS due to a nuclear spin I=7/2. We investigate the possibility of interpreting the linear polarization profile shown in the second solar spectrum by this Sc II line in terms of HFS. A two-level model atom with HFS is assumed. Adopting an optically thin slab model, the role of atomic polarization and of HFS is investigated, avoiding the complications caused by radiative transfer effects. The slab is assumed to be illuminated from below by the photospheric continuum, and the polarization of the radiation scattered at 90 degrees is investigated. The three-peak structure of the scattering polarization profile observed in this Sc II line cannot be fully explained in terms of HFS. Given the similarities between the Sc II line at 4247 A and the Ba II line at 4554 A, it is not clear why, within the same modeling assumptions, only the three-peak Q/I profile of the barium line can be fully interpreted in terms of HFS. The failure to interpret this Sc II polarization signal raises important questions, whose resolution might lead to significant improvements in our understanding of the second solar spectrum. In particular, if the three-peak structure of the Sc II signal is actually produced by a physical mechanism neglected within the approach considered here, it will be extremely interesting not only to identify this mechanism, but also to understand why it seems to be less important in the case of the barium line.Comment: 8 pages, 8 figures, and 1 table. Accepted for publication in Astronomy and Astrophysic

Continuity of Nonseparable Quincunx Wavelets

AbstractWe characterize the continuous compactly supported solutions to the bidimensional refinement equation where the dilation matrix corresponds to a multiplication by √2 followed by a rotation of π/4. The exact Hölder exponent is found in terms of the spectral radius of an operator acting on a subspace of ℓ1(Z2). The corresponding wavelet basis is generated by a single function ψ, and the existence of such an orthonormal basis for L2(R2), where ψ is continuous and compactly supported, follows from estimates of the above spectral radius

Work and chronic illness in contemporary feminist illness writing 2015-2022

This thesis looks at engagement with the concept of work in UK and US life-writing about chronic illness between 2015 and 2022. In texts by writers including Anne Boyer, Johanna Hedva, Carolyn Lazard, Sonya Huber, Alice Hattrick, Dodie Bellamy, and Porochista Khakpour, the experience of living with chronic illness is shaped by and against neoliberal capitalism and contemporary work culture. I call this grouping contemporary feminist illness writing. These writers do not show illness as the antithesis to work but instead render visible the ways in which illness and work compound each other. With a rise in ‘patient work’ and an increasingly active sick role, illness entails administrative, reproductive, and investigative labour. I demonstrate how contemporary writers draw on intersectional feminist and leftist political thought in their textual experiments to represent how incapacity and pain intersect with effort and skill in the experience of chronic illness. I argue that work is not just a central theme in this grouping but that it actively informs its textual strategies. Writers play with intensifying and withdrawing labour and with appropriating and subverting medical and work genres like the list, the case history, the e-mail, and various forms of accessibility documents. I argue that engagement with the concept of work marks a departure from earlier generations of illness writing and the teleological narratives of self-development described by critics including Anne Hunsaker Hawkins and Arthur Frank. Building on recent critical accounts of the neoliberal aspects of teleological narratives, I contend that contemporary feminist illness writers use alternative, non-teleological narrative forms. Their poetics of impairment emphasizes imperfection, collective thinking, and subjects in a variety of differently-capacitated states. Drawing lines back to the history of illness writing, I argue that writing on the ill bodymind continues to be a resource for imagining alternatives to the ‘good’ worker-citizen