The Clone as Gothic Trope in Contemporary Speculative Fiction

In February 1997, the concept of the clone, previously confined to the pages of fiction, became reality when Dolly the sheep was introduced to the world. The response to this was unprecedented, initiating a discourse on cloning that permeated a range of cultural forms, including literature, film and television. My thesis examines and evaluates this discourse through analysis of contemporary fiction, including Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go (2005), Stefan Brijs's The Angel Maker (2008), Duncan Jones's Moon (2009), and BBC America's current television series Orphan Black, which first aired in 2013. Such texts are placed in their cultural and historical setting, drawing comparisons between pre- and post-Dolly texts. The thesis traces the progression of the clone from an inhuman science fiction monster, to more of a tragic "human" creature. The clone has, however, retained its fictional portrayal as "other," be that double, copy or manufactured being, and the thesis argues that the clone is a Gothic trope for our times. The roots of the cloning discourse often lie in Gothic narratives, particularly Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818), which is analysed as a canonical cloning text. Each chapter focuses on a source of fascination and fear within the cloning discourse: the influence of Gothic paternity on the figure of scientist; the notion of the clone as manufactured product, victim and monster; and the ethical and social implications of cloning. There is a dearth of critical analysis on the contemporary literary clone, with the most comprehensive study to date neither acknowledging the alignment of cloning and the Gothic nor demonstrating the impact of Dolly on fictional portrayals. My thesis addresses this, interweaving fiction, science and culture to present a monster which simultaneously embodies difference and sameness: a new monster for the twenty-first century

Comments on diffraction processes and total cross sections

Some controversial aspects of diffraction dissociation are discussed in the light of some recent results. Evidence is presented that the $A_1$ , $A_3$ , $Q$ and $L$ mass enhancements are not single resonant states and that an N* (l400) is not required. It is suggested that the cross section for diffraction dissociation is almost equal to that for diffraction elastic scattering and both are slowly rising as does the total inelastic cross section, i.e., as $s^+$ 0.04 or (log s)$^+$ 0.4. The Reggeon exchange part of pp elastic scattering then falls as $s^l$

A Peer-to-Peer Agent Auction

In this work we examine a peer-to-peer agent continuous double auction. We compare agents trading using peer-to-peer communications with agents using the same trading strategy in an auction that makes use of a centralized auctioneer to disseminate information. We present simulation data for these two auctions running with 2,500 to 160,000 agents. We find that the peer-to-peer auction is able to display price convergence behavior similar to that of the centralized auction. Further, the data shows that the peer-to-peer system has a constant cost in the number of message rounds needed to find the market equilibrium price as the number of traders is increased, in contrast to the linear cost incurred by the central auctioneer. Considering the above message costs, the peer-to-peer system outperformed the simple central auction by at least 100 times in our simulations. We further calculate that for a distributed hierarchical set of auctioneers, for which the message rounds cost of finding equilibrium are reduced to logarithmic in the number of traders, the peer-to-peer system will still produce better performance for systems with more than 5,000 traders

Inter-professional Learning: Innovation in Teaching and Learning for Pre-registration Student Nurses and Midwives

A requirement for all health care professionals is to work collaboratively in the provision of safe and effective care. However despite this students are not routinely involved in inter-professional learning, and are often taught in isolation within professional groupings. There is added value in inter-professional teaching and learning- evident from a resource that was developed by lecturers in nursing and midwifery. This was piloted live on an audience of pre registration nursing and midwifery students, as an mock fitness for practice hearing. Inter-professional group activities provided reflection, debate and discussion with students voting on sanctions and taking part in the panel summary and close. Feedback from both lecturers/participants (n=8) and students (n=31) indicated this was a highly valued experience. It is an innovative inter-professional learning resource, in pre-registration education for students in nursing and midwifery and will extend to post registration health care education

A Method for Decentralized Clustering in Large Multi-Agent Systems

This paper examines a method of clustering within a fully decentralized multi-agent system. Our goal is to group agents with similar objectives or data without first collecting their details in a central database. Instead we connect agents in a random network and have them search in a peer-to-peer fashion for other similar agents. In this way we aim to tackle the basic clustering problem on an Internet scale, and create a method by which agents themselves can be grouped, forming coalitions. This paper presents a number of simulation experiments in which each agent represents a two-dimensional point, and makes a comparison between our method's clustering ability and that of the k-means clustering algorithm. The generated data sets examined contain 2,500 to 160,000 points (agents) grouped in 25 to 1,600 clusters. Our agent method produces a better clustering than the k-means algorithm, quickly placing 95% to 99% of points correctly. The time increases with system size depends on the quality of solution required; a fairly good solution is quickly converged on, and a slower tail behavior improves the solution. Our experiments indicate that the time to find a particular quality of solution is less than linear

Educational staff's responses to challenging behaviour of children with learning disabilities: the impact of diagnosis and clinical research portfolio

Background Current behavioural models of challenging behaviour suggest that the way in which difficult behaviour is managed by staff can serve to either reduce or maintain the behaviour in the long term (Hastings & Remington, 1994; Hastings & Brown, 2000; Hastings et al, 2003). Therefore, it is important to consider factors that may influence special education staff’s behavioural responses to pupils’ challenging behaviour and the associated causal attributions and emotional reactions. One area that has received little attention is the potential impact of a pupil’s diagnosis in addition to their learning disability on staff members’ responses. Materials and Methods This present study involved 102 special education staff who were asked to provide cognitive, emotional and behavioural responses to written vignettes of one of three conditions: (1) a pupil with a learning disability without an additional diagnosis displaying aggressive behaviour, (2) a pupil with a learning disability and an Autism Spectrum Disorder displaying aggressive behaviour, and (3) a pupil with a learning disability and Epilepsy displaying aggressive behaviour. Staff background characteristics were also measured. Results Planned analysis showed that participants did not significantly differ in their responses to challenging behaviour of a pupil with and without additional diagnoses. Secondary analysis indicated that only a minority of participants considered the additional diagnosis to be the main cause of the pupil’s challenging behaviour. In addition, a number of significant associations between staff background characteristics and self-efficacy were found. Conclusions The results are discussed in relation to recent literature. Methodological issues and implications for clinical practice are also considered