Strings on orbifold lines

The orbifold lines IIA/Script I8 and IIB/Script I8(-1)FL possess BPS discrete torsion variants which carry fundamental string (NSNS) charge. We show that these variants are actually classified by an integral electric field F from the twisted RR sector, and compute their tension and NSNS charge as a function of F. The analysis employs equivariant K-theory and the string creation phenomenon. The K-theory results demonstrate the corrections to cohomology in the case of torsion; it is found that 8 units of F are invisible at transverse infinity for IIA, and correspondingly 16 units for IIB

Constraints on fault and lithosphere rheology from the coseismic slip and postseismic afterslip of the 2006 M_w 7.0 Mozambique earthquake

The 2006 M_w 7.0 Mozambique (Machaze) normal-faulting earthquake ruptured an unusually steeply dipping fault plane (~75°). The amount of slip in the earthquake decreased from depths of ~10 km toward the surface, and this shallow slip deficit was at least partly recovered by postseismic afterslip on the shallow part of the fault plane. An adjacent normal fault segment slipped postseismically (and possibly also co-seismically) at shallow depths with a large strike-slip component, in response to the stresses generated by slip on the main earthquake fault plane. Our observations suggest that the fault zone behaves in a stick-slip manner in the crystalline basement, and that where it cuts the sedimentary layer the coseismic rupture was partially arrested and there was significant postseismic creep. We discuss the effects of such behavior on the large-scale tectonics of continental regions, and on the assessment of seismic hazard on similar fault systems. The steep dip of the fault suggests the re-activation of a preexisting structure with a coefficient of friction at least ~25–45% lower than that on optimally oriented planes, and analysis of the deformation following an aftershock indicates that the value of the parameter ‘a’ that describes the rate-dependence of fault friction lies in the range 1 × 10^(−3)–2 × 10^(−2). The lack of long-wavelength postseismic relaxation suggests viscosities in the ductile lithosphere of greater than ~2 × 10^(19) Pa s, and an examination of the tectonic geomorphology in the region identifies ways in which similar fault systems can be identified before they rupture in future earthquakes

Transform fault earthquakes in the North Atlantic: Source mechanisms and depth of faulting

The centroid depths and source mechanisms of 12 large earthquakes on transform faults of the northern Mid-Atlantic Ridge were determined from an inversion of long-period body waveforms. The earthquakes occurred on the Gibbs, Oceanographer, Hayes, Kane, 15 deg 20 min, and Vema transforms. The depth extent of faulting during each earthquake was estimated from the centroid depth and the fault width. The source mechanisms for all events in this study display the strike slip motion expected for transform fault earthquakes; slip vector azimuths agree to 2 to 3 deg of the local strike of the zone of active faulting. The only anomalies in mechanism were for two earthquakes near the western end of the Vema transform which occurred on significantly nonvertical fault planes. Secondary faulting, occurring either precursory to or near the end of the main episode of strike-slip rupture, was observed for 5 of the 12 earthquakes. For three events the secondary faulting was characterized by reverse motion on fault planes striking oblique to the trend of the transform. In all three cases, the site of secondary reverse faulting is near a compression jog in the current trace of the active transform fault zone. No evidence was found to support the conclusions of Engeln, Wiens, and Stein that oceanic transform faults in general are either hotter than expected from current thermal models or weaker than normal oceanic lithosphere

Brane Transfer Operations and T-Duality of Non-BPS States

Using the relation between D-brane charges and K-theory, we study non-BPS D-branes and their behavior under T-duality. We point out that in general compactifications, D-brane charges are classified by relative K-theory groups. T-duality is found to act as a symmetry between the relative K-theory groups in Type II and Type I/IA theories. We also study Type \tilde\IA theory (which contains an O8^- plane and an O8^+ plane), using K-theory and T-duality to identify its stable D-branes. Comparison with string theory constructions reveals two interesting effects. One of them involves the transfer of branes between O-planes, while in the other, a D-brane charge which seems conserved near one O-plane in fact decays due to the presence of another type of O-plane.Comment: 28 pages harvmac, 4 figures; Expanded argument for relative K-theory in subsection 2.2, and added explicit K-theory groups of a point in eq.(A.3) of the appendi

Višestrukost Chicano/a identiteta i međusnost u romanu City of Night Johna Rechyja

John Rechy’s novel City of Night, published in 1963, predated the Chicano Movement and the scholarly concentration on Mexican American issues that came in the movement’s wake. However, many of the subjects that have preoccupied scholars since the beginning of the interdisciplinary field of Chicano Studies, such as the multiplicity of identities in the Chicano/a community, were anticipated in Rechy’s novel. Through an analysis of narrative techniques, such as the first person point of view and observational tone, the episodic structure and picaresque genre, this article outlines how multiplicity and in-betweenness, especially in terms of ethnicity and sexuality, are constructed in the novel and can be considered as an example of the conceptual space of nepantla.U ovome se radu, na temelju književne analize romana City of Night Johna Rechyja, nudi opis aspekata u kojima je taj roman bio prethodnik mnogih ključnih trendova u interdisciplinarnom području Chicano studija. Riječ je, primjerice, o prikazu marginaliziranih aspekata iskustva Chicano/a na neesencijalistički način te shvaćanje Chicano/a identiteta izvan okvira tradicionalnih kategorija, posebice što se tiče etničnosti i seksualnosti. Rechyjev pripovjedač nikada ne dolazi do rješenja, premda je roman naizgled uokviren kao bildungsroman. Štoviše, likovi iz američkog polusvijeta koje pripovjedač upoznaje kao muška prostitutka uvode se epizodno, što roman čini sličnim pikarskom romanu. Rechy stalno potkopava pretpostavke o homoseksualnoj želji, čime destabilizira kategorizaciju pripovjedača kao homoseksualca, biseksualca ili heteroseksualca, stvarajući tako konceptualni prostor međusnosti u kojem pripovjedač zasigurno ne pripada nijednoj jasno određenoj seksualnoj kategoriji. Rechyjev pripovjedač, nasuprot trendovima Chicano/a fikcije u to doba, svoje meksičko-američko porijeklo komentira neizravno, umanjujući važnost etničnosti (koja je igrala presudnu ulogu u kasnijem pokretu Chicano), što čini kako bi svojem pripovijedanju dao značajke višestrukosti i međusnosti. Navedeni se procesi u radu smještaju u konceptualni okvir nepantle teoretičarke Chicano studija, Glorie Anzaldúa. Rad će stoga biti zanimljiv znanstvenicima koji se bave tekstualnim izvorima da bi analizirali prikaze višestrukosti i međusnosti, odnosno shvaćanjem tekstova kao narativa koji proširuju kategorije identiteta prihvaćene u našim društvima. Roman City of Night pokazuje da narativi mogu predvidjeti važna kretanja u shvaćanju višestrukih identiteta i međusnosti među znanstvenicima i u društvu uopće

Evaluation of winter range habitat treatments on overwinter survival, density, and body condition of mule deer

2013 Summer.Includes bibliographical references.To view the abstract, please see the full text of the document

An Artificial Neural Network for Wavelet Steganalysis

Hiding messages in image data, called steganography, is used for both legal and illicit purposes. The detection of hidden messages in image data stored on websites and computers, called steganalysis, is of prime importance to cyber forensics personnel. Automating the detection of hidden messages is a requirement, since the shear amount of image data stored on computers or websites makes it impossible for a person to investigate each image separately. This paper describes research on a prototype software system that automatically classifies an image as having hidden information or not, using a sophisticated artificial neural network (ANN) system. An ANN software package, the ISU ACL NetWorks Toolkit, is trained on a selection of image features that distinguish between stego and nonstego images. The novelty of this ANN is that it is a blind classifier that gives more accurate results than previous systems. It can detect messages hidden using a variety of different types of embedding algorithms. A Graphical User Interface (GUI) combines the ANN, feature selection, and embedding algorithms into a prototype software package that is not currently available to the cyber forensics community

The Power of Conversation (Translated by Eric L. Friedland)

To fulfill a long-held dream of a return to Zion, Shmuel Hugo Bergman (1883-1975) moved from his native Prague in 1920 to make his home in Eretz Yisrael. A loyal yet trailblazing intellectual and spiritual heir to Nicholas of Cusa, Bernhard Bolzano, Hermann Cohen, Martin Buber and Sri Aurobindo — and devout Jew — Bergman not only all but singlehandedly created the famed library of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, but served as docent, professor, and rector at the Jerusalem university, translated (with the help of his disciple-collaborator and philosopher in his own right, Nathan Rotenstreich) the works of Kant from German into Hebrew, and was a founding member of B\u27rit Shalom [ covenant of peace from Numbers 25:121, to foster Arab-Jewish understanding. Bergman\u27s preoccupation with clearing the barriers between Jews and Arabs was of a piece with his conviction that the impassable divisions between religion and science, philosophy and religion, Judaism and Christianity, and western and eastern religions, particularism and universalism need not be

Leveraging Technology to Engage Parents at Scale: Evidence from a Randomized Controlled Trial

While leveraging parents has the potential to increase student performance, programs that do so are often costly to implement or they target younger children. We partner text-messaging technology with school information systems to automate the gathering and provision of information to parents at scale. In a field experiment across 22 middle and high schools, we used this technology to send automated text-message alerts to parents about their child’s missed assignments, grades and class absences. We pre-specified five primary outcomes. The intervention reduces course failures by 38% and increases class attendance by 17%. Students are more likely to be retained in the district. The positive effects are particularly large for students with below-average GPA and students in high school. There are no effects on standardized test scores however. We randomly chose either the mother or the father to receive the alerts, but there were no differential effects across these subgroups. As in previous research, the intervention appears to change parents’ beliefs about their child’s performance and increases parent monitoring. Our results show that this type of automated technology can improve student effort relatively cheaply and at scale

“I Belong but Do Not Belong” : The Concept of Nepantla and Narratives of In-betweenness in Chicana/o and Finnish Romani Bildungsromane

The aim of this dissertation is to better understand how in-betweenness is created and represented in narratives. I argue that the concept of nepantla, which roughly translates as ‘torn between ways’ from Nahuatl, the Aztec language, allows scholars to analyze non-hierarchical, neutral in-betweenness in texts and, as a result, also in the ‘real’ world. I consider four works—three novels by Mexican American authors and one trilogy of novels by a Finnish Romani author—to approach characters who remain uncommitted, or do not fit, into our shared frames of reference. The dissertation aims to allow scholars familiar with the work of Gloria Anzaldúa to see nepantla, through the prism of comparative literature, in a new light. Further, Romani studies, and cultural studies and literatures in Europe more broadly, will benefit from the possibility of building on many decades of thought concerning ethnicity, race, culture, and more from the field of Chicana/o studies in the United States. Currently, the most common concept for discussions on in-betweenness is probably hybridity. Hybridity, however, and other concepts like it (the Third Space, mestizaje, métissage, etc.), imply two or more self-contained categories that are then amalgamated, usually with an implied hierarchy. Nepantla, in contrast, allows scholars to ask: what aspects of normative categories are accepted, which are rejected, and why? If a character chooses from various influences in a piecemeal fashion that is continually evolving, the categories that make up the ‘hybrid’ are no longer very meaningful and cannot be hierarchically positioned. Though nepantla is an abstract, contradictory, and difficult concept to wield, its application to a reading of literature allows nepantla-like processes of in-betweenness to be analyzed through the specificity of individual characters, communities, and historical contexts. This makes the concept more accessible. The novels I’ve collected are all ‘ethnic’ Bildungsromane in which the protagonists grapple with being between their minority communities and the status quo. They all end with the protagonists in an ambiguous state of in-betweenness and ongoing becoming that coincides with the concept of nepantla. They are Oscar ‘Zeta’ Acosta’s (1972) The Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo, Sandra Cisneros’s (1984) The House on Mango Street, Kiba Lumberg’s (2011) Finnish Romani Memesa trilogy, and John Rechy’s (1963) City of Night. The texts have been chosen because they represent different forms of in-betweenness and thereby illustrate nepantla’s many variations. Based on the insight that nepantla represents both a positive in-between space where transformation can occur and the Coatlicue state, which is a time-place of chaos, suffering, and a loss of control, I argue that nepantla is best understood as a continuum of possible positionalities that change in the passage of time. Acosta’s novel represents an explicitly empowering form of nepantla, which is one end of the heuristically plotted continuum. Rechy’s novel is at the opposite end because it represents nepantla as chaotic, debilitating, and harmful. I compare Cisneros’s novel to Lumberg’s trilogy, which represent similar life trajectories for their heroines yet with very different results. While Cisneros’s protagonist dares to dream of a house of her own, Lumberg’s protagonist is regularly, in the course of her racialized existence, shut out from the category of ‘human,’ which results in different positions on the nepantla continuum for each protagonist. An important contribution of the dissertation is the application of nepantla to Finnish Romani literature. While in the field of Chicana/o studies nepantla has mostly been used to better understand subjective processes of change based on agency, the analysis of the sociocultural and historical realities faced by Roma in Finland shifts our understanding away from agency and towards society. Besides a few minor exceptions, Finnish Romani literature has not yet been studied. In the dissertation, the Finnish-language excerpts have been translated, allowing for a more global and transdisciplinary dialogue. Narrative theory provides a number of tools that help us to discern how in-betweenness and nepantla-like processes are represented and created in texts, the most central of which is the narrative gap. Because semantic signifiers are categories and nepantla is in-between categories, and hence often language itself, texts will often rely on representing a nepantla-like phenomenon by placing it where a conspicuous absence exists. Furthermore, readers can access that which is beyond language through negativity, irony, association, interpretation, imagination, and metaphorical language, which are all ways of communicating beyond verbalized meaning. Nepantla guides this process by making us on the lookout for representations of experiences, emotions, time-places, and meaning that don’t fit into normative frames of reference. The main implication of this research is that the concept of nepantla allows scholars to better acknowledge, analyze, and understand in-betweenness in both texts and the ‘real’ world, thereby beginning to do justice to the experiences and subjectivities of some characters and individuals.Voiko päättää olla suomalainen? Mitä on olla suomalainen? Kuka päättää näistä asioista? Voiko olla osittain suomalainen ja osittain jotain muuta? Entä kuinka paljon yksilö voi päättää kielenkäytöstään, sukupuolestaan, seksuaalisuudestaan, sosiaaliryhmästään ja monista muista kategorioista, joihin meidät yhteiskunnassa usein sijoitetaan? Tutkin tässä väitöskirjassa, jonka englanninkielinen nimi on “I Belong but Do Not Belong”: The Concept of Nepantla and Narratives of In-betweenness in Chicana/o and Finnish Romani Bildungsromane, miten välitiloja luodaan ja kuvataan kirjallisuudessa. Keskeinen väite on, että usein kirjallisuuden hahmot (ja ihmiset ylipäätään) eivät sovi puhtaasti kategorioihin, joihin heidät yleisesti määritellään. Esimerkiksi Kiba Lumbergin (2011) Memesa -trilogiassa nuori Memesa lähtee kotoa ja päättää jättää romaniyhteisön, johon hän on syntynyt, koska sen sisällä hänen tulevaisuutensa naisena näyttää epämiellyttävältä. Hän päättää liittyä suomalaiseen yhteiskuntaan. Häntä ei kuitenkaan hyväksytä suomalaisena, koska hän on romani, ja hän on itse päättänyt, että hän ei kuulu romaniyhteisöön. Kuka hän sitten on? Hän on henkilö, joka on välitilassa. Välitilat voivat olla voimaannuttavia tai sitten yksinäisiä ja tuhoisia. Yleensä välitilat ovat molempia ja paljon muutakin. Tutkimalla kirjallisuutta, jossa kuvataan välitiloja, voimme paremmin ymmärtää niiden muodostumisen prosesseja. Kuvauksissa hahmot neuvottelevat tilanteissa, joissa he tavallaan kuuluvat (belong) ja toisaalta eivät kuulu joihinkin kategorioihin. Lumbergin Memesa -trilogian lisäksi vertailen kolmea meksikolaisamerikkalaista (Chicana/o) romaania, jotka ovat Oscar ‘Zeta’ Acostan (1972) The Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo, Sandra Cisnerosin (1984) The House on Mango Street ja John Rechyn (1963) City of Night. Keskeinen konsepti on Gloria Anzaldúan (2015) kehittämä nepantla, jonka kautta uudet näkökulmat välitiloihin avautuvat. Atsteekkien kielessä nahuatlissa nepantla tarkoittaa eri tavoin revittyä, ja se perustuu ajatukseen, että kaikki on aina liikkeessä ja muuttumassa. Ei ole olemassa selviä kategorioita, joihin voisi kuulua, vaan ihminen kohtaa monia erilaisia vaikutteita, jotka muuttuvat koko ajan ja muuttavat häntä. Väitöskirjan tärkeä panos on nepantlan soveltaminen suomalaiseen romanikirjallisuuteen. Chicana/o-tutkimuksen alalla nepantlalla on enimmäkseen pyritty ymmärtämään paremmin subjektiivisia tahdonvoimaan perustuvia muutosprosesseja, kun taas Suomen romanien kohtaamien sosiokulttuuristen ja historiallisten realiteettien analyysi siirtää ymmärrystämme yhteiskunnan suuntaan. Muutamia pieniä poikkeuksia lukuun ottamatta suomalaista romanikirjallisuutta ei ole vielä tutkittu. Väitöskirjassa suomenkieliset otteet on käännetty, mikä mahdollistaa globaalimman ja poikkitieteellisen vuoropuhelun