Breaking boundaries: The autobiographical revolution in Jade Snow Wong\u27s Fifth Chinese Daughter, Maxine Hong Kingston\u27s The Woman Warrior, Amy Tan\u27s The Joy Luck Club and Edna Wu\u27s Clouds & Rain

Jade Snow Wong\u27s Fifth Chinese Daughter, Maxine Hong Kingston\u27s The Woman Warrior, Amy Tan\u27s The Joy Luck Club, and Edna Wu\u27s Clouds & Rain break the boundaries between autobiography and fiction forging a new vision in literary tradition. They create works that reflect the complexity of their search for self: how in every generation each individual must reinvent and reinterpret her cultural heritage (Fischer 195). Their works are a montage of patterns, inherited from tradition and interwoven with their unique conventions to create an autobiography inclusive of their identity, their culture, and their new vision. In an attempt to express their unique realities, these Chinese American women writers experiment in form (Kim 214). They defy the definitions of autobiography and fiction, and create blended genre forms which include fiction, nonfiction, autobiography, biography, poetry, letters, diaries, and even history. The search for identity as a Chinese American woman is at the forefront of each of these works. They must untangle what it means to be Chinese and what it means to be American, and resolve a double consciousness, existing as simultaneously an insider and an outsider (Wong 265). They must tell their stories, their mothers\u27 stories, and their culture\u27s stories to understand who they are and where they belong. Their works partake of the mood of metadiscourse and encourage reader participation in the production of meaning (Fischer 232). They want their readers to learn and develop their own means just as they must do. Their stories end without closure-the work is in progress just like the self. Moving from silence to voice, victim to victor, their stories support their status as Chinese American women, and thus invent new and empowering traditions for their (literary) daughters (Lionnet 53). Jade Snow Wong, Maxine Hong Kingston, Amy Tan, and Edna Wu are part of a revolution toward multiplistic autobiography-a tradition that allows for cultural and gender differences, and differences in tradition. The multiplicity of form speaks for a new vision, a tradition that is evolving to enable a change in perception about Chinese Americans, women, and the very genre in which they inscribe the self

Reading between the lines: attitudinal expressions in text

This is a brief overview of the starting points a project currently proposed and under evaluation by funding agencies. We discuss some of the linguistic methodology we plan to employ to idenitify and analyze attitudinal expressions in text, and touch briefly on how to evaluate our future results

Application of MPI standard in computer modelling of the ion source plasma

In the paper the adaptation of the TRQR code to run on the massive parallel computer using MPI standard is described. We present the modification of the procedure used for the calculations of the potential spatial inside the plasma chamber of the ion source based on PIC (Particle In Cell) model and the Poisson equation. Parallelisation of the procedure enables us to reduce the CPU time by the factor 6-7 in the case of 8 processor job queue

A Bayesian model for identifying hierarchically organised states in neural population activity

Neural population activity in cortical circuits is not solely driven by external inputs, but is also modulated by endogenous states. These cortical states vary on multiple time-scales and also across areas and layers of the neocortex. To understand information processing in cortical circuits, we need to understand the statistical structure of internal states and their interaction with sensory inputs. Here, we present a statistical model for extracting hierarchically organized neural population states from multi-channel recordings of neural spiking activity. We model population states using a hidden Markov decision tree with state-dependent tuning parameters and a generalized linear observation model. Using variational Bayesian inference, we estimate the posterior distribution over parameters from population recordings of neural spike trains. On simulated data, we show that we can identify the underlying sequence of population states over time and reconstruct the ground truth parameters. Using extracellular population recordings from visual cortex, we find that a model with two levels of population states outperforms a generalized linear model which does not include state-dependence, as well as models which only including a binary state. Finally, modelling of state-dependence via our model also improves the accuracy with which sensory stimuli can be decoded from the population response

Airglow Derived Measurements of Q-Branch Transition Probabilities for Several Hydroxyl Meinel Bands

Spectroscopic measurements of the hydroxyl (OH) airglow emissions are often used to infer neutral temperatures near the mesopause. Correct Einstein coefficients for the various transitions in the OH airglow are needed to calculate accurate temperatures. However, studies showed experimentally and theoretically that the most commonly used Einstein spontaneous emission transition probabilities for the Q-branch of the OH Meinel (6,2) transition are overestimated. Extending their work to several Delta v = 2 and 3 transitions from v' = 3 to 9, we have determined Einstein coefficients for the first four Q-branch rotational lines. These have been derived from high resolution, high signal to noise spectroscopic observations of the OH airglow in the night sky from the Nordic Optical Telescope. The Q-branch Einstein coefficients calculated from these spectra show that values currently tabulated in the HITRAN database overestimate many of the Q-branch transition probabilities. The implications for atmospheric temperatures derived from OH Q-branch measurements are discussed