Spectral modification of type IA fibre Bragg gratings by high-power near-infrared lasers

We report the first experimental measurements on the spectral modification of type IA fibre Bragg gratings, incorporated in an optical network, which result from the use of high-power, near-infrared lasers. The fibre grating properties are modified in a controlled manner by exploiting the characteristics of the inherent 1400 nm absorption band of the optical fibre, which grows in strength during the type IA grating inscription. If the fibre network is illuminated with a high-power laser, having an emission wavelength coincident with the absorption band, the type IA centre wavelength and chirp can be modified. Furthermore, partial grating erasure is demonstrated. This has serious implications when using type IA gratings in an optical network, as their spectrum can be modified using purely optical methods (no external heating source acts on the fibre), and to their long-term stability as the grating is shown to decay. Conversely, suitably stabilized gratings can be spectrally tailored, for tuning fibre lasers or edge filter modification in sensing applications, by purely optical means. © 2006 IOP Publishing Ltd.

Abnormal spectral evolution of fiber Bragg gratings in hydrogenated fibers

The properties of fiber Bragg gratings in hydrogenated fibers under conditions of ultraviolet overexposure were investigated. Abnormal spectral evolution of the regenerated grating following erasure of the initial type I grating was observed in the hydrogenated fibers. The regenerated grating also exhibited less temperature sensitivity and an 18 nm shift in the Bragg wavelength.

Women in Europe between the wars:politics, culture and society

The central aim of this interdisciplinary book is to make visible the intentionality behind the 'forgetting' of European women's contributions during the period between the two world wars in the context of politics, culture and society. It also seeks to record and analyse women's agency in the construction and reconstruction of Europe and its nation states after the First World War, and thus to articulate ways in which the writing of women's history necessarily entails the rewriting of everyone's history. By showing that the erasure of women's texts from literary and cultural history was not accidental but was ideologically motivated, the essays explicitly and implicitly contribute to debates surrounding canon formation. Other important topics are women's political activism during the period, antifascism, the contributions made by female journalists, the politics of literary production, genre, women's relationship with and contributions to the avant-garde, women's professional lives, and women's involvement in voluntary associations. In bringing together the work of scholars whose fields of expertise are diverse but whose interests converge on the inter-war period, the volume invites readers to make connections and comparisons across the whole spectrum of women's political, social, and cultural activities throughout Europe.

Fiber bragg gratings:advances in fabrication process and tools

Successful commercialization of a technology such as Fiber Bragg Gratings requires the ability to manufacture devices repeatably, quickly and at low cost. Although the first report of photorefractive gratings was in 1978 it was not until 1993, when phase mask fabrication was demonstrated, that this became feasible. More recently, draw tower fabrication on a production level and grating writing through the polymer jacket have been realized; both important developments since they preserve the intrinsic strength of the fiber. Potentially the most significant recent development has been femtosecond laser inscription of gratings. Although not yet a commercial technology, it provides the means of writing multiple gratings in the optical core providing directional sensing capability in a single fiber. Femtosecond processing can also be used to machine the fiber to produce micronscale slots and holes enhancing the interaction between the light in the core and the surrounding medium. © 2011 Bentham Science Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.

Excimer laser surface ablation - a review

Corneal surface laser ablation procedures for the correction of refractive error have enjoyed a resurgence of interest, especially in patients with a possible increased risk of complications after lamellar surgery. Improvements in the understanding of corneal biomechanical changes, the modulation of wound healing, laser technology including ablation profiles and different methods for epithelial removal have widened the scope for surface ablation. This article discusses photorefractive keratectomy, trans-epithelial photorefractive keratectomy, laser-assisted sub-epithelial keratomileusis and epithelial-laser-assisted in situ keratomileusis. © 2010 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2010 Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Ophthalmologists.

Robust H.264/AVC video transmission using data partitioning and unequal loss protection

In this work, we present an adaptive unequal loss protection (ULP) scheme for H264/AVC video transmission over lossy networks. This scheme combines erasure coding, H.264/AVC error resilience techniques and importance measures in video coding. The unequal importance of the video packets is identified in the group of pictures (GOP) and the H.264/AVC data partitioning levels. The presented method can adaptively assign unequal amount of forward error correction (FEC) parity across the video packets according to the network conditions, such as the available network bandwidth, packet loss rate and average packet burst loss length. A near optimal algorithm is developed to deal with the FEC assignment for optimization. The simulation results show that our scheme can effectively utilize network resources such as bandwidth, while improving the quality of the video transmission. In addition, the proposed ULP strategy ensures graceful degradation of the received video quality as the packet loss rate increases. © 2010 IEEE.

‘EXISTENCE AS RESISTANCE’: UNDERSTANDINGS OF IDENTITY, PLACE & BELONGING FOR YOUNG PALESTINIANS

In this thesis, I offer an exploration of what it means to be Palestinian, and constructions of identity, belonging and community, through drawing on the experiences of younger generations of Palestinians who have not lived in Palestine. This project seeks to investigate how understanding of our own individual, familial and community’s history plays in shaping our own understandings of identity, place, belonging and indigeneity, as a younger generation of Palestinians now living and studying in the diaspora. In particular, this project examined how the process of remembering and sharing memories in community act as a form of resistance to 68 years of settler colonial violence and erasure of Palestinian land and peoples, asking what our responsibilities this therefore entails from each and every one of us.

Constructing strongly-MDS convolutional codes with maximum distance profile

This paper revisits strongly-MDS convolutional codes with maximum distance profile (MDP). These are (non-binary) convolutional codes that have an optimum sequence of column distances and attains the generalized Singleton bound at the earliest possible time frame. These properties make these convolutional codes applicable over the erasure channel, since they are able to correct a large number of erasures per time interval. The existence of these codes have been shown only for some specific cases. This paper shows by construction the existence of convolutional codes that are both strongly-MDS and MDP for all choices of parameters.

Reproducing violence: Rihanna, Chris Brown and the aestheticisation of the Ciudad Juarez Femicides.

When Kate and Laura Mulleavy of Rodarte worked with MAC to create their Autumn/Winter 2010 makeup collection and based their ideas on the murdered women of Ciudad Juarez, there was a public and industry outcry which led to the withdrawal of cosmetics with names such as ‘Factory’ ‘Juarez’ and ‘Ghost Town’. Rodarte tapped into the borderland mythologies of Juarez and crated an illusory fantasy world which sought to simultaneously obliterate and venerate the dead women. One eyeshadow, ‘Bordertown’, appears to look like chunks of rotting flesh streaked with blood. The models for their catwalk show had hollow blackened eyes, green-white pallor and lips that had been bloodlessly ‘lip-erased’ with a product specifically designed for the purpose. In Spanish, maquillar is to make up, to assemble. The women in the factories are asked to repeat simple mechanical operations thousands of times a day to make up the products which will be sold by global corporations. At the same time their images are being assembled, made up and aestheticized to create a cosmetic erasure of the crimes which they are subject to. When two American women and a global company make profit from this dangerous cosmetic erasure in order to sell products, the borders between bodies, countries, art and crime become leaky through the act and the illusion of symbiosis between the women of Ciudad Juarez and the products they inspired is threatened by the haunting of exploitation. Since then, the situation has become more complex. Chris Brown got a neck tattoo, based, he says, on the promotional material produced by MAC for the Rodarte sisters campaign. The image, which is of a skull, bears a striking resemblance to the police photographs of his ex, and now current, girlfriend, superstar Rihanna. The controversy over gendered violence, race and exploitation, begun by Rodarte and MAC, came back, haunting, once again. This paper seeks to address these connections, and ask what happens when domestic violence collides with globalism, fashion and murder.

Breaking through the Margins: Pushing Sociopolitical Boundaries Through Historic Preservation

“Breaking through the Margins: Pushing Sociopolitical Boundaries Through Historic Preservation” explores the ways in which contemporary grassroots organizations are adapting historic preservation methods to protect African American heritage in communities that are on the brink of erasure. This project emerges from an eighteen-month longitudinal study of three African American preservation organizations—one in College Park, Maryland and two in Houston, Texas—where gentrification or suburban sprawl has all but decimated the physical landscape of their communities. Grassroots preservationists in Lakeland (College Park, Maryland), St. John Baptist Church (Missouri City, Texas), and Freedmen’s Town (Houston, Texas) are involved in pushing back against preservation practices that do not, or tend not, to take into consideration the narratives of African American communities. I argue, these organizations practice a form of preservation that provides immediate and lasting effects for communities hovering at the margins. This dissertation seeks to outline some of the major methodological approaches taken by Lakeland, St. John, and Freedmen’s Town. The preservation efforts put forth by the grassroots organizations in these communities faithfully work to remind us that history without preservation is lost. In taking on the critical work of pursuing social justice, these grassroots organizations are breaking through the margins of society using historic preservation as their medium.

Poetry and the limits of language

This essay argues that poetic language offers the possibility of meaning and value, and simultaneously points beyond itself, to the limits of language, to a space differently configured as erasure, silence, the unsignifiable. What does it suggest, epistemologically and ontologically, if we acknowledge this double action of poetic language? What might this space beyond language be, and what difference does it make if we acknowledge this space? The essay examines four poems and the different ways in which they acknowledge such a space, drawing on the historically distinct approaches of Meister Eckhart and Jacques Derrida in order to ask what the space beyond language might be. The argument of the essay is that in acknowledging such a space something opens up for writers and readers of poetry: a different approach to knowing, and a potentially humbled ontological position.

Rematerialising heritage

The Rocks is one of Sydney’s premier tourist locations; its identity largely founded on the perception of it as a historically significant site. This perception is steeped in complex notions of the ‘authentic tourist experience offered at The Rocks, which arguably originates from the retention of some of the early streets and architectures of the area. However, implicit in the act of retention is also the act of deletion. Throughout the area of The Rocks, gaps exist. These are the spaces where buildings, houses, outhouses, lanes and indeed whole streets have been eradicated to make way for urban progress or to redefine areas of the city according to political or economic aims. Heritage here is constructed, not only from that which is retained and preserved but also from that which is deleted and destroyed. This paper seeks to examine the fate of one particular street in the Rocks – Princes Street – that was eradicated in 1927 to make way for the Sydney Harbour Bridge. The physical demolition of the street and subsequent erasure of any material sign of it has effectively allowed the street to disappear. The predominant historical narrative that results reveals the extent to which current notions of the past are fundamentally understood through the existence of the material artefact. Yet this paper argues that definitions of the past can be drawn, not only from the material or architectural object that operates as historical proof but also from the social, performative and touristic acts that might be undertaken around the object, the architecture or even its representation.

Malséance : la mort et l'image dans le (méta)théâtre de Samuel Beckett et de Jean Genet

Both ludic and macabre, the theatrical works of Samuel Beckett and Jean Genet are a paradox to behold. Indeed, as this thesis seeks to illustrate, despite their vastly differing aesthetics, at the core of each playwright’s stage productions is a tension between the characters’ yearning for silence and invisibility, and the continual creation of an often humorous, chaotic, exaggerated or theatrical image that depicts this very longing. Seeking an impossible intersection between their image and their death, they are trapped in a double bind that guarantees aesthetic failure. In order to grasp the close, yet delicate, relationship between the image of death and the death of the image, as presented in the plays of Beckett and Genet, we will explore how the characters’ creative processes deflate the very images — both visual and auditory — that they create. More specifically, we will examine how mimesis both liberates and confines the characters; while the symbolic realm provides the only means of self-representation, it is also a source of profound alienation and powerlessness, for it never adequately conveys meaning. Thus, body, gesture, language and voice are each the site of simultaneous and ceaseless reappearance and disappearance, for which death remains the only (aporetic) cure. Struggling against theatrical form, which demands the actors’ and the audience’s physical presence, both playwrights make shrewd use of metatheatre to slowly empty the stage and thereby suggest the impending, yet impossible, erasure of their characters.

Some of these girls can be real drama queens : issues of gender, sexual harassment and schooling

Since the 1970s many feminists working for gender justice in education have highlighted the predominance and seriousness of sexual harassment in schools and condemned the enduring trivialization of such behaviours. This paper develops this body of work by focusing on how issues of sexual harassment are located within prevailing contemporary western educational contexts that position boys as 'victims' of feminism and 'girl-friendly' schooling. It is argued here that such contexts draw attention away from the powerful spaces that many boys continue to inhabit in schools. Counter to the popular notion that girls no longer face problems in relation to their schooling, the paper foregrounds the voices of four (14-year-old) Grade Eight girls from Tasmania, Australia who detail their disturbing experiences of sexual harassment. Pointing to the grave inadequacies of common remedies used to address these behaviours, such as prescriptive discipline systems that ignore issues of gender and power and boy-friendly remedies that collude in the perpetuation of inequitable gender relations, the paper highlights the imperative of disrupting the erasure of these issues from current dominant equity debates and the urgency of better addressing this problem in schools. Along these lines, the paper calls for teacher practice that acts against the grain of broader anti-feminist and performative school cultures to transform the masculinities of entitlement that contribute to these unacceptable behaviours.

‘Some of those girls can be real drama queens’: issues of gender, sexual harassment and schooling

Since the 1970s many feminists working for gender justice in education have highlighted the predominance and seriousness of sexual harassment in schools and condemned the enduring trivialization of such behaviours. This paper develops this body of work by focusing on how issues of sexual harassment are located within prevailing contemporary western educational contexts that position boys as ‘victims’ of feminism and ‘girl‐friendly’ schooling. It is argued here that such contexts draw attention away from the powerful spaces that many boys continue to inhabit in schools. Counter to the popular notion that girls no longer face problems in relation to their schooling, the paper foregrounds the voices of four (14‐year‐old) Grade Eight girls from Tasmania, Australia who detail their disturbing experiences of sexual harassment. Pointing to the grave inadequacies of common remedies used to address these behaviours, such as prescriptive discipline systems that ignore issues of gender and power and boy‐friendly remedies that collude in the perpetuation of inequitable gender relations, the paper highlights the imperative of disrupting the erasure of these issues from current dominant equity debates and the urgency of better addressing this problem in schools. Along these lines, the paper calls for teacher practice that acts against the grain of broader anti‐feminist and performative school cultures to transform the masculinities of entitlement that contribute to these unacceptable behaviours.