The Modernist Corpse: Posthumanism and the Posthumous by Erin E. Edwards

Review of Erin E. Edwards\u27 The Modernist Corpse: Posthumanism and the Posthumous

High fidelity one-qubit operations under random telegraph noise

We address the problem of implementing high fidelity one-qubit operations subject to time dependent noise in the qubit energy splitting. We show with explicit numerical results that high fidelity bit flips and one-qubit NOT gates may be generated by imposing bounded control fields. For noise correlation times shorter than the time for a pi-pulse, the time optimal pi-pulse yields the highest fidelity. For very long correlation times, fidelity loss is approximately due to systematic error, which is efficiently tackled by compensation for off-resonance with a pulse sequence (CORPSE). For intermediate ranges of the noise correlation time we find that short CORPSE, which is less accurate than CORPSE in correcting systematic errors, yields higher fidelities. Numerical optimization of the pulse sequences using gradient ascent pulse engineering results in noticeable improvement of the fidelities for the bit flip and marginal improvement for the NOT gate.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figure

Error analysis of bit-flip qubits under random telegraph noise for low and high temperature measurement application

Achieving small error for qubit gate operations under random telegraph noise (RTN) is of great interest for potential applications in quantum computing and quantum error correction. I calculate the error generated in the qubit driven by $\pi$, CORPSE, SCORPSE, symmetric and asymmetric pulses in presence of RTN. For a special case when pulse acts in x-direction and RTN in z-direction, I find that for small value of noise correlation time, $\pi$-pulse has small error among all the other pulses. For large value of noise correlation time, possibly white noise, symmetric pulse generates small error for small energy amplitudes of noise strength, whereas CORPSE pulse has small error for large energy amplitudes of noise strength. For the pulses acting in all the three directions, several pulse sequences were identified that generate small error in presence of small and large strength of energy amplitudes of RTN. More precisely, when $\pi$ pulse acts in x direction, CORPSE pulse acts in y direction and SCORPSE pulse acts in z-direction then such pulse sequences induces small error and may consider for better candidate in implementing of bit-flip quantum error correction. Error analysis of small energy amplitudes of RTN may be useful for low temperature measurements, whereas error analysis of large energy amplitudes of RTN may be useful for room temperature measurements of quantum error correction codes.Comment: 8 pages, 8 figure

The Value of the Dead: The Commodification of Corpses in Western Culture

Since the 19th century, the deceased human body and its parts have been increasingly dehumanized, objectified, and commodified in Western culture. Thus, in a relatively short period of time, the corpse became, and continues to be, a highly valuable source of both economic and cultural capital for scientific and medical researchers, numerous industries, and much of society

Two judicial postmortems that went awry 1870 & 1908

The first instance of an exhumation of a cadaver for a judicial post-mortem took place in 1870 in connection with a murder case. Knowledge, on the part of the pathologist, of the scene of the crime and of the events leading to the murder are important as they may suggest to the pathologist what to look for in the corpse, but only a thorough autopsy may reveal the cause of death. This is possible even after exhumation of a decomposed cadaver.peer-reviewe

Whose body? A study of attitudes towards the dead body in early modern Paris

This chapter examines attitudes towards the dead body, as exemplified by arrangements for funerals and burials, in Paris between around 1550 and 1670. It seeks to establish, not so much what people said should happen to the bodies of the dead, but what happened in practice - the care, or lack of it, which the living accorded to the corpses of their contemporaries and predecessors - and to use this to further our understanding of the mentality of early modern urban dwellers. It is part of a wider enquiry, to explore the attitudes of the living to the dead in Paris and London, and to consider the ways in which this can illuminate the nature of these two metropolitan societies, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Looking at the treatment of the corpse can also take discussion of the body, and the ways in which it is apprehended and understood, a stage further than the predominant focus on the living; dead bodies were as variably constructed, as liable to objectification (even commodification), as exposed to contest and competition over meaning as living ones. This particular study highlights the issues of control and ownership, among the complexity of reactions to the materiality of bodies, and offers an insight into power relations in a wider social and spatial environment

Body Language: Reading the Corpse in Forensic Crime Fiction .

Our purpose in this article is to explore the fascination, over the last decade, with crime narratives that centre on the figure of the forensic pathologist. Principally this involves a reading of Cornwell�s Scarpetta series, but we also discuss a growing number of other novels that confront readers with the �reality� of the dead body. In some cases (for example, Kathy Reichs and Priscilla Masters) writers use, as Cornwell does, the figure of the forensic pathologist; in other instances, such as Nicci French�s The Red Room (2001) and Jan Burke�s Bones (1999), the female protagonist�s reading of the crime is determined by alternative forms of first-hand access to the �underworld� of the grave or autopsy room, such as that of the crime journalist or criminal psychologist. In contrast to the kind of police procedural novel that gives centre-stage to the psyche of the serial killer, the forensic pathology novel aims instead to evoke the �appalling human messiness� of actual crime through a perspective nearer to that of the victim. By providing readers with not only a body of experts but an expert on the body the novelist allows them to listen to the voices of the dead

10. Putting the ‘Fun’ Back in ‘Funeral’

The Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius writes in his notebooks: “You are a little soul carrying a corpse,” quoting the Greek stoic philosopher Epictetus. As he was likely writing these notes to himself as a form of mental discipline in the throes of a military campaign, he obviously meant that observation to be comforting. To most it is far from that, of course—but the reason why this is so is worthy of some attention. [excerpt

Animalism and the Corpse Problem

The apparent fact that each of us coincides with a thinking animal looks like a strong argument for our being animals (animalism). Some critics, however, claim that this sort of reasoning actually undermines animalism. According to them, the apparent fact that each human animal coincides with a thinking body that is not an animal is an equally strong argument for our not being animals. I argue that the critics' case fails for reasons that do not affect the case for animalism