Oi! Oi! Oi! : class locality and British punk

This article looks at the controversial music genre Oi! in relation to youth cultural identity in late 1970s’ and early 1980s’ Britain. As a form of British punk associated with skinheads, Oi! has oft-been dismissed as racist and bound up in the politics of the far right. It is argued here, however, that such a reading is too simplistic and ignores the more complex politics contained both within Oi! and the various youth cultural currents that revolved around the term ‘punk’ at this time. Taking as its starting point the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies’ conception of youth culture as a site of potential ‘resistance’, the article explores the substance and motifs of Oi!’s protest to locate its actual and perceived meaning within a far wider political and socio-economic context. More broadly, it seeks to demonstrate the value of historians examining youth culture as a formative and contested socio-cultural space within which young people discover, comprehend, and express their desires, opinions, and disaffections.

Spectra of a class of non-self-adjoint matrices

We consider a new class of non-self-adjoint matrices that arise from an indefinite self- adjoint linear pencil of matrices, and obtain the spectral asymptotics of the spectra as the size of the matrices diverges to infinity. We prove that the spectrum is qualitatively different when a certain parameter c equals 0, and when it is non-zero, and that certain features of the spectrum depend on Diophantine properties of c.

PDFOS: PDF estimation based over-sampling for imbalanced two-class problems

This contribution proposes a novel probability density function (PDF) estimation based over-sampling (PDFOS) approach for two-class imbalanced classification problems. The classical Parzen-window kernel function is adopted to estimate the PDF of the positive class. Then according to the estimated PDF, synthetic instances are generated as the additional training data. The essential concept is to re-balance the class distribution of the original imbalanced data set under the principle that synthetic data sample follows the same statistical properties. Based on the over-sampled training data, the radial basis function (RBF) classifier is constructed by applying the orthogonal forward selection procedure, in which the classifier’s structure and the parameters of RBF kernels are determined using a particle swarm optimisation algorithm based on the criterion of minimising the leave-one-out misclassification rate. The effectiveness of the proposed PDFOS approach is demonstrated by the empirical study on several imbalanced data sets.

On the spectra and pseudospectra of a class of non-self-adjoint random matrices and operators

In this paper we develop and apply methods for the spectral analysis of non-selfadjoint tridiagonal infinite and finite random matrices, and for the spectral analysis of analogous deterministic matrices which are pseudo-ergodic in the sense of E. B. Davies (Commun. Math. Phys. 216 (2001), 687–704). As a major application to illustrate our methods we focus on the “hopping sign model” introduced by J. Feinberg and A. Zee (Phys. Rev. E 59 (1999), 6433–6443), in which the main objects of study are random tridiagonal matrices which have zeros on the main diagonal and random ±1’s as the other entries. We explore the relationship between spectral sets in the finite and infinite matrix cases, and between the semi-infinite and bi-infinite matrix cases, for example showing that the numerical range and p-norm ε - pseudospectra (ε > 0, p ∈ [1,∞] ) of the random finite matrices converge almost surely to their infinite matrix counterparts, and that the finite matrix spectra are contained in the infinite matrix spectrum Σ. We also propose a sequence of inclusion sets for Σ which we show is convergent to Σ, with the nth element of the sequence computable by calculating smallest singular values of (large numbers of) n×n matrices. We propose similar convergent approximations for the 2-norm ε -pseudospectra of the infinite random matrices, these approximations sandwiching the infinite matrix pseudospectra from above and below.

Distinction between semantic and episodic memory: The underlying mechanisms for autonoetic consciousness

In 1972, episodic and semantic memories were considered to reflect different types of knowledge (Tulving, 1972). However, these early definitions encountered many difficulties. Now, Episodic and semantic memories are discussed in terms of awareness associated with retrieval (Wheeler, Stuss, & Tulving, 1997): Autonoetic consciousness (i.e., feeling of remembering) is considered associated with retrieval from the episodic memory system, while noetic consciousness (i.e., feeling of knowing) is considered characterized by retrieval from the semantic memory system. The present article investigated determinants of autonoetic consciousness in order to clarify characteristics of perceptual knowledge that is being recalled, the more strongly the individual feels autonoetic consciousness during retrieval, and that autonoetic consciousness is based on rich sensory-perceptual knowledge. Furthermore, we suggested that the parietal and frontal lobes mediate the process of generating autonoetic consciousness. This suggested that sensory-perceptual knowledge, the parietal lobe and the frontal lobe are important factors for discriminating episodic memory afrom semantic memory.

A high frequency boundary element method for scattering by a class of nonconvex obstacles

In this paper we propose and analyse a hybrid numerical-asymptotic boundary element method for the solution of problems of high frequency acoustic scattering by a class of sound-soft nonconvex polygons. The approximation space is enriched with carefully chosen oscillatory basis functions; these are selected via a study of the high frequency asymptotic behaviour of the solution. We demonstrate via a rigorous error analysis, supported by numerical examples, that to achieve any desired accuracy it is sufficient for the number of degrees of freedom to grow only in proportion to the logarithm of the frequency as the frequency increases, in contrast to the at least linear growth required by conventional methods. This appears to be the first such numerical analysis result for any problem of scattering by a nonconvex obstacle. Our analysis is based on new frequency-explicit bounds on the normal derivative of the solution on the boundary and on its analytic continuation into the complex plane.

'Hey little rich boy, take a good look at me': punk, class and British oi!

This article looks at the controversial music genre Oi! in relation to youth cultural identity in late 1970s and early 1980s Britain. By examining the six compilation albums released to promote Oi! as a distinct strand of punk, it seeks to challenge prevailing dismissals of the genre as inherently racist or bound to the politics of the far right. Rather, Oi! – like punk more generally – was a contested cultural form. It was, moreover, centred primarily on questions of class and locality. To this end, Oi! sought to realize the working-class rebellion of punk’s early aesthetic; to give substance to its street-level pretentions and offer a genuine ‘song from the streets’.

British working-class household composition, labour supply, and commercial leisure participation during the 1930s

The early twentieth century constituted the heyday of the ‘breadwinner–homemaker’ household, characterized by a high degree of intra-household functional specialization between paid and domestic work according to age, gender, and marital status. This article examines the links between formal workforce participation and access to resources for individualized discretionary spending in British working-class households during the late 1930s, via an analysis of household leisure expenditures. Leisure spending is particularly salient to intra-household resource allocation, as it constitutes one of the most highly prioritized areas of individualized expenditure, especially for young, single people. Using a database compiled from surviving returns to the Ministry of Labour's national 1937/8 working-class expenditure survey, we examine leisure participation rates for over 600 households, using a detailed set of commercial leisure activities together with other relevant variables. We find that the employment status of family members other than the male breadwinner was a key factor influencing their access to commercial leisure. Our analysis thus supports the view that the breadwinner–homemaker household was characterized by strong power imbalances that concentrated resources—especially for individualized expenditures—in the hands of those family members who engaged in paid labour.

An operationally simple sonogashira reaction for an undergraduate organic chemistry laboratory class

An operationally simple, reliable, and cheap Sonogashira reaction suitable for an undergraduate laboratory class that can be completed within a day-long (8 h) laboratory session has been developed. Cross-coupling is carried out between 2-methyl-3-butyn-2-ol and various aryl iodides using catalytic amounts of bis-(triphenylphosphine)palladium(II) dichloride, with copper(I) iodide as a cocatalyst, in triethylamine at room temperature, so a range of products can be prepared within a single group and results compared. The coupling itself is usually complete within 1.5 h and is easily monitored by TLC, leaving up to 6 h for purification and characterization. Purification is by “mini flash column chromatography” through a plug of silica encased in the barrel of a plastic syringe, so the procedure is amenable to large class sizes.

Home in British working-class fiction

Offering new readings of working-class writing that focus on the home as a key emotional and material site in writing by working-class authors from the Edwardian period through to the mid-1990s. With close readings of The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, works by D. H. Lawrence, Ethel Carnie Holdsworth, Ellen Wilkinson, Lewis Grassic Gibbon, Walter Brierley, Alan Sillitoe, John Braine, Nell Dunn, Sam Selvon, Sid Chaplin, Buchi Emecheta, Pat Barker, Jeanette Winterson, James Kelman and many others. The book demonstrates the importance of ideas of home and its narrative representation to the making and expression of class feeling and identity.