The Pre-modern Iranian Other: A Critique of Multiculturalist Ideology

It does not take much to realize that, concerning the topic of Iran, the lack of response and general confusion from the Left within liberal, Western democracies is deeply symptomatic. That the perplexed responses of liberals seem to be characterized by a fetishization of the Iranian Other, reducing them to an empty screen onto which the liberal ideological subject may project their fantasy, prevents the Left from acknowledging that Iranian ideology functions as an over-identification with many of the excesses which liberal ideology is so used to criticizing. The present work seeks to traverse this fantasy space, explicating the way Iran is considered to the object-cause of liberal desire and the consequences this conception has for the Left’s capacity to coherently respond to the present situation as it unfolds. Iran seems incapable of entering into the sphere of modernity, as any multiculturalist will be sure to emphasize, and yet, as any conservative will claim, in light of Iran’s control over such a huge percent of the world’s oil supply, as well as their refusal to engage in secular politics and attempts to develop nuclear technology, Iran threatens to disintegrate modernity itself. Both of these alternatives should be rejected as falling prey to the same fantastic projection to be avoide

The role of small business in federal government R&D contracting - The MSC experience

NASA Manned Spacecraft Center experience with small business firms in contractin

Children’s musical perception and creativity as a compositional model

The intention of this study was to understand more fully the process of creating musical composition. As a means to to this I created a compositional model, "Maya's Words", a conscious experiment which utilised the techniques I discovered and codified from children's compositions. By utilising rhe model as a working tool and the information extracted from the children's works I was able to draw together my own theories and observations concerning the process of musical composition and how it works. Within this study I have also examined my own process of musical composition and drawn, in a limited way, upon my work on the methodology behind the compositional procedures of composer Elisabeth Lutyens. The way in which the children used their own musical ideas in a flexible and original manner illustrated a mental state that seemed to be able to grasp thoughts from anywhere, without reference, for example, to tradition or style. This dexterity brought to my attention the notion that the children were using fragments of ideas/music/sound and integrating them into their own compositions. In the compositional model for this study I chose to compose in a way that utilised information from this study in many manifestations but it also had to be an organic growth as a means to be real and for me to have a true input into it a sa composer. It also had to incorporate many of the study elements into it otherwise it would not be a conscious experiment. The two forces here, for me haave worked in tandem as the flexibility of approach used by the children has allowed me to work in a flexible way in this compositional model and yet the uncomplicated way in which the children evaluated their own progressions has had a profound influence on me too and provided me with a method of self-evaluation which does not create self-inflicted damage to my own feelings about my composition. I hope in the same way that this study will allow composers a freedon of perspective that will open for them a new understanding of musical composition

Random graphs with clustering

We offer a solution to a long-standing problem in the physics of networks, the creation of a plausible, solvable model of a network that displays clustering or transitivity -- the propensity for two neighbors of a network node also to be neighbors of one another. We show how standard random graph models can be generalized to incorporate clustering and give exact solutions for various properties of the resulting networks, including sizes of network components, size of the giant component if there is one, position of the phase transition at which the giant component forms, and position of the phase transition for percolation on the network.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figure

Fair votes in practice

Criteria for a good voting system have been given particularly careful scrutiny in recent years, with general agreement that the core values are fair results, voter power and choice, and local representation. This paper reexamines the basic ideas of three widely used voting systems, the Single Transferable Vote, List-PR, and Mixed Member Proportional (MMP); and evaluates their performance in terms of both principles and practice. It looks particularly closely at proportionality, examining three aspects:n linearity, the threshold for representation and the threshold for gaining a majority. As regards local representation, an important question is how to design multi-member constituencies. It will be argued that using constituencies based on natural demographic boundaries (such as local government areas) can combine better local representation with stability over time and better proportionality. STV is unsurprisingly best for voter empowerment and choice, as those are parts of its basic idea. Broad conclusions are summarised within the Summary on page 1 of the paper. The paper makes use of recent public availability of large preferential voting data sets for STV elections, making possible new analyses of how STV functions in practice, and of voter behaviour, particularly examining how voters' second preferences relate to their first preferences.Comment: 31 pages, 12 figures, submitted to J Roy Statist Soc A as a potential Discussion Pape

Competing epidemics on complex networks

Human diseases spread over networks of contacts between individuals and a substantial body of recent research has focused on the dynamics of the spreading process. Here we examine a model of two competing diseases spreading over the same network at the same time, where infection with either disease gives an individual subsequent immunity to both. Using a combination of analytic and numerical methods, we derive the phase diagram of the system and estimates of the expected final numbers of individuals infected with each disease. The system shows an unusual dynamical transition between dominance of one disease and dominance of the other as a function of their relative rates of growth. Close to this transition the final outcomes show strong dependence on stochastic fluctuations in the early stages of growth, dependence that decreases with increasing network size, but does so sufficiently slowly as still to be easily visible in systems with millions or billions of individuals. In most regions of the phase diagram we find that one disease eventually dominates while the other reaches only a vanishing fraction of the network, but the system also displays a significant coexistence regime in which both diseases reach epidemic proportions and infect an extensive fraction of the network.Comment: 14 pages, 5 figure

Equine Welfare: A Study of Dermatophilosis and the Management of Data Relevant to the Health and Wellbeing of Horses

This thesis considers aspects of equine welfare which have received little attention in the U.K. Skin disease, particularly bacterial skin disease, was highlighted as an area giving rise to concern with respect to equine welfare. Dermatophilosis was examined in detail as one of the commoner bacterial skin conditions responsible for animal suffering, and one for which management is often difficult. Essential fatty acids (EFAs) were evaluated as a dietary supplement in an alternative approach to the management of equine dermatophilosis. The pharmacokinetics of EFAs in the horse were investigated, with EFAs supplemented as evening primrose oil (EPO), containing linoleic acid (LA) and gamma-linolenic acid (GLA). A very slow conversion of LA to its active metabolites was found in the horse compared to other species. A daily dose regime of 20g of 80% EPO and 20% fish oil and vitamin E was adopted for the consequent treatment and prophylactic studies. In a placebo-controlled, double blind treatment study no significant effect was seen on severity or extent of distribution of lesions of dermatophilosis when horses received EFAs orally. When EFAs were supplemented over the traditional autumn high dermatophilosis risk period in a controlled prophylactic study, they did not prevent development of lesions or reduce incidence of infection. No significant improvement was afforded by EFAs on the condition of the coat, mane, tail or hooves, nor on general body condition. EFAs were not harmful and exerted no effect, adverse or beneficial, on haematological or biochemical parameters. The characteristics of D. congolensis were examined in relation to the site and severity of lesions of dermatophilosis, but no correlation was found. All isolates were different when examined by differential bacteriological growth characteristics and sodium dodecyl sulphate polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE). Proteolytic enzyme production by D. congolensis was investigated with regard to the virulence of the organism, and several isolates demonstrated extracellular protease activity. The clinical and haematological consequences of bleeding horses at regular intervals were monitored in a group of animals maintained for commercial blood production. No adverse effect was recorded on clinical, protein or haematological profiles when 8 litres of blood were removed every three weeks. Thoroughbred animals supported regular bleeding better than non-Thoroughbred animals. A relational database system was created as a management tool for the manager of the horse herd. The information contained within the system, regarding horse details, bloodroom records and farm laboratory records, could be constantly updated. Rapid detection of poor performers or anaemic animals could permit prompt instigation of corrective action, avoiding undue animal distress. It is hoped that some of the work within this thesis has made a worthwhile contribution to the extension of knowledge concerning the welfare of horses in the U.K

Directed percolation with incubation times

We introduce a model for directed percolation with a long-range temporal diffusion, while the spatial diffusion is kept short ranged. In an interpretation of directed percolation as an epidemic process, this non-Markovian modification can be understood as incubation times, which are distributed accordingly to a Levy distribution. We argue that the best approach to find the effective action for this problem is through a generalization of the Cardy-Sugar method, adding the non-Markovian features into the geometrical properties of the lattice. We formulate a field theory for this problem and renormalize it up to one loop in a perturbative expansion. We solve the various technical difficulties that the integrations possess by means of an asymptotic analysis of the divergences. We show the absence of field renormalization at one-loop order, and we argue that this would be the case to all orders in perturbation theory. Consequently, in addition to the characteristic scaling relations of directed percolation, we find a scaling relation valid for the critical exponents of this theory. In this universality class, the critical exponents vary continuously with the Levy parameter.Comment: 17 pages, 7 figures. v.2: minor correction

Threshold effects for two pathogens spreading on a network

Diseases spread through host populations over the networks of contacts between individuals, and a number of results about this process have been derived in recent years by exploiting connections between epidemic processes and bond percolation on networks. Here we investigate the case of two pathogens in a single population, which has been the subject of recent interest among epidemiologists. We demonstrate that two pathogens competing for the same hosts can both spread through a population only for intermediate values of the bond occupation probability that lie above the classic epidemic threshold and below a second higher value, which we call the coexistence threshold, corresponding to a distinct topological phase transition in networked systems.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figure