Studies related to the synthesis of tetracycline

Imperial Users onl

Invisible mirrors

Talk and screening of the film 'Invisible Mirrors'. Talk about Bataille, Ethnographic Surrealism and Vodou in the light of the Militarization of Aid in Haiti followed by screening of 'Invisible Mirrors', a film made in Port-au-Prince during the Ghetto Biennale in 2009

The Skullcracker Suite: A Long-term Interdisciplinary Artistic Research Project Investigating Processes of Cultural Decolonisation in British Columbia (Portfolio)

The Skullcracker Suite is a long-term artistic research project investigating processes of cultural decolonization in British Columbia from ethnographic, science-fictional and First Nations perspectives. Drawing on the mythology, dances and art of the Kwakwaka’wakw peoples of British Columbia, The Skullcacker Suite takes its name from Hox’hok, one of three giant cannibal birds of Kwakiutl legend. Hox’hok’s skull-cracking and brain-eating powers are imagined as a dramatic allegory for the interwoven process of colonial violence, indigenous resistance and the metaphysics of predation that bind human and non-human beings in a system of mutual, ecological and entangled co-dependency. The first phase of the project – ‘BC Time-Slip (The Empire Never Ended)’ – began with a one-month residency at Dynamo Arts Association in Vancouver in August 2016 where the gallery was made into a research installation investigating the story of the science fiction writer Philip K. Dick’s stay at a First Nations rehab clinic called X-Kalay. The residency included public talks, seminars, group discussions, lecture presentations, a film program and the creation of a series of photospheres (360° videos) depicting Dick’s time in the city, myself playing the author

The Skullcracker Suit Pt.1:BC Time-slip (The Empire Never Ended)

The Skullcracker Suite (June 2016 - October 2020) is an arts research project engaging the process of decolonization in British Columbia from ethnographic and science fictional perspectives. Named after Hox’hok, the giant man-eating crane of Kwakwaka’wakw legend, the project was conceived as a theatrical allegory for the “permanent decolonization of thought” proposed by the Brazilian anthropologist Eduardo Viveiros de Castro. The project engages five related intellectual contexts from an arts research perspective: cultural anthropology, decolonization studies, inter-cultural psychology, Kwakiutl ethnography and science fiction studies. It addresses these questions: • How might a contemporary art research project contribute to the permanent decolonization of thought? • How might science-fiction be used as a way to frame and reflect upon this process? • How has Kwakwaka’wakw potlatch culture informed it? The first phase of research began as an arts residency in Vancouver investigating the science fiction writer Philip K. Dick’s visit there in 1972 and his stay at an experimental First Nations rehab community called X-Kalay. Historical and scholarly research was conducted performatively within a research installation staged inside a contemporary art space on unceded First Nations territory. This culminated in a multi-component portfolio of works. Through a close reading of Dick’s writing in relationship to Kwakiutl ethnography and De Castro’s Cannibal Metaphysics, I drew a thematic correlation between Dick’s pre-occupation with his deceased twin sister and the motif of the Salmon Twins in Kwakwaka’wakw mythology. This connection was consolidated through the analogy of Dick’s Fomelhaut Albemuth diagram and a print design by the Kwakwaka’wakw artist and Indigenous activist Beau Dick. This would lead to my writing a catalogue essay for Beau’s posthumous exhibition Devoured by Consumerism. Through Beau I was invited to attend the potlatch of Chief Alan Hunt in September 2016. The entire ceremony was documented and edited sections disseminated via YouTube in 2018

Will giant polar amphipods be first to fare badly in an oxygen-poor ocean? Testing hypotheses linking oxygen to body size

Respirometry A.Comparing closed and semi-open respirometer techniques. B.VO2 and body mas

An evaluation of four crop : weed competition models using a common data set

To date, several crop : weed competition models have been developed. Developers of the various models were invited to compare model performance using a common data set. The data set consisted of wheat and Lolium rigidum grown in monoculture and mixtures under dryland and irrigated conditions. Results from four crop : weed competition models are presented: ALMANAC, APSIM, CROPSIM and INTERCOM. For all models, deviations between observed and predicted values for monoculture wheat were only slightly lower than for wheat grown in competition with L. rigidum, even though the workshop participants had access to monoculture data while parameterizing models. Much of the error in simulating competition outcome was associated with difficulties in accurately simulating growth of individual species. Relatively simple competition algorithms were capable of accounting for the majority of the competition response. Increasing model complexity did not appear to dramatically improve model accuracy. Comparison of specific competition processes, such as radiation interception, was very difficult since the effects of these processes within each model could not be isolated. Algorithms for competition processes need to be modularized in such a way that exchange, evaluation and comparison across models is facilitated

An evaluation of four crop : weed competition models using a common data set

To date, several crop : weed competition models have been developed. Developers of the various models were invited to compare model performance using a common data set. The data set consisted of wheat and Lolium rigidum grown in monoculture and mixtures under dryland and irrigated conditions. Results from four crop : weed competition models are presented: ALMANAC, APSIM, CROPSIM and INTERCOM. For all models, deviations between observed and predicted values for monoculture wheat were only slightly lower than for wheat grown in competition with L. rigidum, even though the workshop participants had access to monoculture data while parameterizing models. Much of the error in simulating competition outcome was associated with difficulties in accurately simulating growth of individual species. Relatively simple competition algorithms were capable of accounting for the majority of the competition response. Increasing model complexity did not appear to dramatically improve model accuracy. Comparison of specific competition processes, such as radiation interception, was very difficult since the effects of these processes within each model could not be isolated. Algorithms for competition processes need to be modularized in such a way that exchange, evaluation and comparison across models is facilitated

Performance of CMS muon reconstruction in pp collision events at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV

The performance of muon reconstruction, identification, and triggering in CMS has been studied using 40 inverse picobarns of data collected in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV at the LHC in 2010. A few benchmark sets of selection criteria covering a wide range of physics analysis needs have been examined. For all considered selections, the efficiency to reconstruct and identify a muon with a transverse momentum pT larger than a few GeV is above 95% over the whole region of pseudorapidity covered by the CMS muon system, abs(eta) < 2.4, while the probability to misidentify a hadron as a muon is well below 1%. The efficiency to trigger on single muons with pT above a few GeV is higher than 90% over the full eta range, and typically substantially better. The overall momentum scale is measured to a precision of 0.2% with muons from Z decays. The transverse momentum resolution varies from 1% to 6% depending on pseudorapidity for muons with pT below 100 GeV and, using cosmic rays, it is shown to be better than 10% in the central region up to pT = 1 TeV. Observed distributions of all quantities are well reproduced by the Monte Carlo simulation.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DO

Performance of CMS muon reconstruction in pp collision events at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV

The performance of muon reconstruction, identification, and triggering in CMS has been studied using 40 inverse picobarns of data collected in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV at the LHC in 2010. A few benchmark sets of selection criteria covering a wide range of physics analysis needs have been examined. For all considered selections, the efficiency to reconstruct and identify a muon with a transverse momentum pT larger than a few GeV is above 95% over the whole region of pseudorapidity covered by the CMS muon system, abs(eta) < 2.4, while the probability to misidentify a hadron as a muon is well below 1%. The efficiency to trigger on single muons with pT above a few GeV is higher than 90% over the full eta range, and typically substantially better. The overall momentum scale is measured to a precision of 0.2% with muons from Z decays. The transverse momentum resolution varies from 1% to 6% depending on pseudorapidity for muons with pT below 100 GeV and, using cosmic rays, it is shown to be better than 10% in the central region up to pT = 1 TeV. Observed distributions of all quantities are well reproduced by the Monte Carlo simulation.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DO

X-ray emission from the Sombrero galaxy: discrete sources

We present a study of discrete X-ray sources in and around the bulge-dominated, massive Sa galaxy, Sombrero (M104), based on new and archival Chandra observations with a total exposure of ~200 ks. With a detection limit of L_X = 1E37 erg/s and a field of view covering a galactocentric radius of ~30 kpc (11.5 arcminute), 383 sources are detected. Cross-correlation with Spitler et al.'s catalogue of Sombrero globular clusters (GCs) identified from HST/ACS observations reveals 41 X-rays sources in GCs, presumably low-mass X-ray binaries (LMXBs). We quantify the differential luminosity functions (LFs) for both the detected GC and field LMXBs, whose power-low indices (~1.1 for the GC-LF and ~1.6 for field-LF) are consistent with previous studies for elliptical galaxies. With precise sky positions of the GCs without a detected X-ray source, we further quantify, through a fluctuation analysis, the GC LF at fainter luminosities down to 1E35 erg/s. The derived index rules out a faint-end slope flatter than 1.1 at a 2 sigma significance, contrary to recent findings in several elliptical galaxies and the bulge of M31. On the other hand, the 2-6 keV unresolved emission places a tight constraint on the field LF, implying a flattened index of ~1.0 below 1E37 erg/s. We also detect 101 sources in the halo of Sombrero. The presence of these sources cannot be interpreted as galactic LMXBs whose spatial distribution empirically follows the starlight. Their number is also higher than the expected number of cosmic AGNs (52+/-11 [1 sigma]) whose surface density is constrained by deep X-ray surveys. We suggest that either the cosmic X-ray background is unusually high in the direction of Sombrero, or a distinct population of X-ray sources is present in the halo of Sombrero.Comment: 11 figures, 5 tables, ApJ in pres