Space within the surface : the patterned surfaces of Florence Broadhurst and Jim Thompson

The Woods Bagot 2007 refurbishment of the Qantas and British Airways Bangkok Business lounge in the Survarnabhumi Airport features wall finishes designed by wallpaper designer, Florence Broadhurst (1899-1977) and Thai Silk trader, Jim Thompson (1906-1967). This distinctive selection, which is proclaimed on the airport’s website, of patterned wall surfaces side by side draws attention to their striking similarities and their defining differences . Thompson and Broadhurst would appear to be worlds apart, but here in the airport their work brings them together. Thompson, the son of a wealthy cotton family in America, worked as an architect before joining the army. He moved to Bangkok to start The Thai Silk Company in 1948. Broadhurst was born on a farm in Mt. Perry, Queensland. She began her career as a performance artist, as part of an Australian troupe in Shanghai, moving onto pursue a career in fashion design, catering to the middle and upper classes in London. Upon her return to Australia, Broadhurst started a print design company in 1959. Both Broadhurst and Thompson pursued multiple careers, lived many lives, and died under mysterious circumstances. Broadhurst was murdered in 1977 at her Sydney print warehouse, which remains an unsolved crime. Thompson disappeared in Malaysia in 1967 and his body has never been found. This chapter investigates the parallels between Thompson and Broadhurst and what lead them to design such popular patterns for wall surfaces towards the end of their careers. While neither designer was a household name, their work is familiar to most, seen in the costume and set design of films, on the walls of restaurants and cafes and even in family homes. The reason for the popularity of their patterns has not previously been analysed. However, this chapter suggests that the patterns are intriguing because they contain something of their designers’ identities. It suggests that the coloured surface provides a way of camouflaging and hiding its subjects’ histories, such that Broadhurst and Thompson, consciously or unconsciously, used the patterned surface as a plane in which their past lives could be buried. The revealing nature of the stark white wall, compared with the forgiveness provided by the pattern in which to hide, is elaborated by painter and advocate for polychromatic architecture, Fernand Léger in his essay, “The Wall, The Architect, The Painter (1965).” Léger writes that, “the modern architect has gone too far in his magnificent attempts to cleanse through emptiness,” and that the resultant white walls of modernity create ‘an impalpability of air, of slick, brilliant new surfaces where nothing can be hidden any longer …even shadows don’t dare to enter’. To counter the exposure produced by the white wall, Thompson and Broadhurst designed patterned surfaces that could harbour their personal histories. Broadhurst and Thompson’s works share a number of commonalities in their design production, even though their work in print design commenced a decade apart. Both designers opted to work more with traditional methods of pattern making. Broadhurst used hand-operated screens, and Thompson outsourced work to local weavers and refrained from operating out of a factory. Despite humble beginnings, Broadhurst and Thompson enjoyed international success with their wall patterns being featured in a number of renowned international hotels in Bahrain, Singapore, Sydney, and London in the 1970s and 1980s. Their patterns were also transferred to fabric for soft furnishings and clothing. Thompson’s patterns were used for costumes in films including the King and I and Ben Hur. Broadhurst’s patterns were also widely used by fashion designers and artists, such as Akira Isogowa‘s costume design for Salome, a 1998 production by the Sydney Dance Company. Most recently her print designs have been used by skin illustrator Emma Hack, in a series of works painting female bodies into Broadhurst’s patterns. Hack’s works camouflage the models’ bodies into the patterned surface, assimilating subject and surface, hinting at there being something living within the patterned wall. More than four decades after Broadhurst’s murder and five decades since Thompson’s disappearance, their print designs persist as more than just a legacy. They are applied as surface finishes with the same fervour as when the designs were first released. This chapter argues that the reason for the ongoing celebration of their work is that there is the impalpable presence of the creator in the patterns. It suggests that the patterns blur the boundary between subject and surface.

Computational strategies for surface fitting using thin plate spline finite element methods

Thin plate spline finite element methods are used to fit a surface to an irregularly scattered dataset [S. Roberts, M. Hegland, and I. Altas. Approximation of a Thin Plate Spline Smoother using Continuous Piecewise Polynomial Functions. SIAM, 1:208--234, 2003]. The computational bottleneck for this algorithm is the solution of large, ill-conditioned systems of linear equations at each step of a generalised cross validation algorithm. Preconditioning techniques are investigated to accelerate the convergence of the solution of these systems using Krylov subspace methods. The preconditioners under consideration are block diagonal, block triangular and constraint preconditioners [M. Benzi, G. H. Golub, and J. Liesen. Numerical solution of saddle point problems. Acta Numer., 14:1--137, 2005]. The effectiveness of each of these preconditioners is examined on a sample dataset taken from a known surface. From our numerical investigation, constraint preconditioners appear to provide improved convergence for this surface fitting problem compared to block preconditioners.

Muscle gene electrotransfer is increased by the antioxidant tempol in mice

Electropermeabilization (EP) is an effective method of gene transfer into different tissues. During EP, reactive oxygen species (ROS) are formed, which could affect transfection efficiency. The role of generated ROS and the role of antioxidants in electrotransfer in myoblasts in vitro and in Musculus tibialis cranialis in mice were, therefore, investigated. We demonstrate in the study that during EP of C2C12 myoblasts, ROS are generated on the surface of the cells, which do not induce long-term genomic DNA damage. Plasmid DNA for transfection (pEGFP-N1), which is present outside the cells during EP, neutralizes the generated ROS. The ROS generation is proportional to the amplitude of the electric pulses and can be scavenged by antioxidants, such as vitamin C or tempol. When antioxidants were used during gene electrotransfer, the transfection efficiency of C2C12 myoblasts was statistically significantly increased 1.6-fold with tempol. Also in vivo, the transfection efficiency of M. tibialis cranialis in mice was statistically significantly increased 1.4-fold by tempol. The study indicates that ROS are generated on cells during EP and can be scavenged by antioxidants. Specifically, tempol can be used to improve gene electrotransfer into the muscle and possibly also to other tissues.

Biodiesel production from non-edible beauty leaf (Calophyllum Inophyllum) oil : process optimization using response surface methodology (RSM)

In recent years, the beauty leaf plant (Calophyllum Inophyllum) is being considered as a potential 2nd generation biodiesel source due to high seed oil content, high fruit production rate, simple cultivation and ability to grow in a wide range of climate conditions. However, however, due to the high free fatty acid (FFA) content in this oil, the potential of this biodiesel feedstock is still unrealized, and little research has been undertaken on it. In this study, transesterification of beauty leaf oil to produce biodiesel has been investigated. A two-step biodiesel conversion method consisting of acid catalysed pre-esterification and alkali catalysed transesterification has been utilized. The three main factors that drive the biodiesel (fatty acid methyl ester (FAME)) conversion from vegetable oil (triglycerides) were studied using response surface methodology (RSM) based on a Box-Behnken experimental design. The factors considered in this study were catalyst concentration, methanol to oil molar ratio and reaction temperature. Linear and full quadratic regression models were developed to predict FFA and FAME concentration and to optimize the reaction conditions. The significance of these factors and their interaction in both stages was determined using analysis of variance (ANOVA). The reaction conditions for the largest reduction in FFA concentration for acid catalysed pre-esterification was 30:1 methanol to oil molar ratio, 10% (w/w) sulfuric acid catalyst loading and 75 °C reaction temperature. In the alkali catalysed transesterification process 7.5:1 methanol to oil molar ratio, 1% (w/w) sodium methoxide catalyst loading and 55 °C reaction temperature were found to result in the highest FAME conversion. The good agreement between model outputs and experimental results demonstrated that this methodology may be useful for industrial process optimization for biodiesel production from beauty leaf oil and possibly other industrial processes as well.

Surface reconstruction of wheat leaf morphology from three-dimensional scanned data

Realistic virtual models of leaf surfaces are important for a number of applications in the plant sciences, such as modelling agrichemical spray droplet movement and spreading on the surface. In this context, the virtual surfaces are required to be sufficiently smooth to facilitate the use of the mathematical equations that govern the motion of the droplet. While an effective approach is to apply discrete smoothing D2-spline algorithms to reconstruct the leaf surfaces from three-dimensional scanned data, difficulties arise when dealing with wheat leaves that tend to twist and bend. To overcome this topological difficulty, we develop a parameterisation technique that rotates and translates the original data, allowing the surface to be fitted using the discrete smoothing D2-spline methods in the new parameter space. Our algorithm uses finite element methods to represent the surface as a linear combination of compactly supported shape functions. Numerical results confirm that the parameterisation, along with the use of discrete smoothing D2-spline techniques, produces realistic virtual representations of wheat leaves.

Controlling the surface roughness of epitaxial SiC on silicon

The surface of cubic silicon carbide (3C-SiC) hetero-epitaxial films grown on the (111) surface of silicon is a promising template for the subsequent epitaxial growth of III-V semiconductor layers and graphene. We investigate growth and post-growth approaches for controlling the surface roughness of epitaxial SiC to produce an optimal template. We first explore 3C-SiC growth on various degrees of offcut Si(111) substrates, although we observe that the SiC roughness tends to worsen as the degree of offcut increases. Hence we focus on post-growth approaches available on full wafers, comparing chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) and a novel plasma smoothening process. The CMP leads to a dramatic improvement, bringing the SiC surface roughness down to sub-nanometer level, though removing about 200 nm of the SiC layer. On the other hand, our proposed HCl plasma process appears very effective in smoothening selectively the sharpest surface topography, leading up to 30% improvement in SiC roughness with only about 50 nm thickness loss. We propose a simple physical model explaining the action of the plasma smoothening.

Entomopathogens for control of Hypsipyla spp

Published information on the incidence of pathogens in the field and laboratory infections of Hypsipyla spp. with entomopathogens is reviewed. In addition, some preliminary results of field collections from Ghana and Costa Rica are presented. Fungal pathogens from the Deuteromycetes have been isolated from both H. robusta Moore and H. grandella Zeller. Mermithid nematodes, Hexamermis spp., have been frequently isolated from larvae in the field and incidence of infection with these pathogens can reach significant levels. Microsporidia have been found in cadavers of larvae collected in the field but none have been identified so far. A number of pathogens of other Lepidoptera have been shown to be infectious to H. grandella , including Bacillus thuringiensis , Deuteromycete fungi and a nucleopolyhedrovirus (NPV) from Autographa californica . Hypsipyla spp. are difficult targets for microbial control, since the larvae are cryptic, occur at low density and occur sporadically. In addition, there is a low damage threshold, the plant is susceptible for a number of years and the susceptible part of the plant will rapidly outgrow any surface application. Key features of the biology of entomopathogens with relevance to the control of low density and cryptic pests are discussed. In the light of this experience, we discuss strategies to improve the possibilities of microbial control of this pest and suggest areas for research.

Determination of urinary thymidine glycol using affinity chromatography, HPLC and post-column reaction detection : a biomarker of oxidative DNA damage upon kidney transplantation

Reactive oxygen species are generated during ischaemia-reperfusion of tissue. Oxidation of thymidine by hydroxyl radicals (HO) leads to the formation of 5,6-dihydroxy-5,6-dihydrothymidine (thymidine glycol). Thymidine glycol is excreted in urine and can be used as biomarker of oxidative DNA damage. Time dependent changes in urinary excretion rates of thymidine glycol were determined in six patients after kidney transplantation and in six healthy controls. A new analytical method was developed involving affinity chromatography and subsequent reverse-phase high-performance liquid chromatography (RP-HPLC) with a post-column chemical reaction detector and endpoint fluorescence detection. The detection limit of this fluorimetric assay was 1.6 ng thymidine glycol per ml urine, which corresponds to about half of the physiological excretion level in healthy control persons. After kidney transplantation the urinary excretion rate of thymidine glycol increased gradually reaching a maximum around 48 h. The excretion rate remained elevated until the end of the observation period of 10 days. Severe proteinuria with an excretion rate of up to 7.2 g of total protein per mmol creatinine was also observed immediately after transplantation and declined within the first 24 h of allograft function (0.35 + 0.26 g/mmol creatinine). The protein excretion pattern, based on separation of urinary proteins on sodium dodecyl sulphate-polyacrylamide gel electrophorosis (SDS-PAGE), as well as excretion of individual biomarker proteins, indicated nonselective glomerular and tubular damage. The increased excretion of thymidine glycol after kidney transplantation may be explained by ischaemia-reperfusion induced oxidative DNA damage of the transplanted kidney.