Golem

Steiner-Prag, was partial to tales of the fantastic, illustrated the Gustav Meyrink novel, The Golem, published in a luxury edition in Leipzig by Kurt Wolff, 1916. In most of the illustrations of the old Jeiwsh quarter of Prague is the protagonist as much as the Golem. In this later drawing, however the bulky figure of the Golem looms on the page in isolation accompanied only by what appear to be a double shadow.

Michaelson family papers, undated, 1892-1920, 1943-1944, 1965, 1992, 1994, 1999-2000.

The Michaelson family papers include early family correspondence, documents, and ephemera; genealogical research conducted by Ms. Appleby, Anna’s granddaughter; copies of New York City marriage certificates kept by Louis B. Michaelson, Rabbi, between 1906-1907; and Anna Michaelson’s copies of original birth records that she kept as midwife in the Lower East Side in New York City between 1892-1916.

Dancing into the second phase of creative industries

As we enter the second phase of creative industries there is a shift away from the early 1990s ideology of the arts as a creative content provider for the wealth generating ‘knowledge’ economy to an expanded rhetoric encompassing ‘cultural capital’ and its symbolic value. A renewed focus on culture is examined through a regional scan of creative industries in which social engineering of the arts occurs through policy imperatives driven by ‘profit oriented conceptualisations of culture’ (Hornidge 2011, p. 263) In the push for artists to become ‘culturpreneurs’ a trend has emerged where demand for ‘embedded creatives’ (Cunningham 2013) sees an exodus from arts-based employment through use of transferable skills into areas outside the arts. For those that stay, within the performing arts in particular, employment remains project-based, sporadic, underpaid, self-initiated and often self-financed, requiring adaptive career paths. Artist entrepreneurs must balance creation and performance of their art with increasing amounts of time spent on branding, compliance, fundraising and the logistical and commercial requirements of operating in a CI paradigm. The artists’ key challenge thus becomes one of aligning core creative and aesthetic values with market and business considerations. There is also the perceived threat posed by the ‘prosumer’ phenomenon (Bruns 2008), in which digital on-line products are created and produced by those formerly seen as consumers of art or audiences for art. Despite negative aspects to this scenario, a recent study (Steiner & Schneider 2013) reveals that artists are happier and more satisfied than other workers within and outside the creative industries. A lively hybridisation of creative practice is occurring through mobile and interactive technologies with dynamic connections to social media. Continued growth in arts festivals attracts participation in international and transdisciplinary collaborations, whilst cross-sectoral partnerships provide artists with opportunities beyond a socio-cultural setting into business, health, science and education. This is occurring alongside a renewed engagement with place through the rise of cultural precincts in ‘creative cities’ (Florida 2008, Landry 2000), providing revitalised spaces for artists to gather and work. Finally, a reconsideration of the specialist attributes and transferable skills that artists bring to the creative industries suggests ways to dance through both the challenges and opportunities occasioned by the current complexities of arts’ practices.

Data integration from two microarray platforms identifies bi-allelic genetic inactivation of RIC8A in a breast cancer cell line

Background: Using array comparative genomic hybridization (aCGH), a large number of deleted genomic regions have been identified in human cancers. However, subsequent efforts to identify target genes selected for inactivation in these regions have often been challenging. Methods: We integrated here genome-wide copy number data with gene expression data and non-sense mediated mRNA decay rates in breast cancer cell lines to prioritize gene candidates that are likely to be tumour suppressor genes inactivated by bi-allelic genetic events. The candidates were sequenced to identify potential mutations. Results: This integrated genomic approach led to the identification of RIC8A at 11p15 as a putative candidate target gene for the genomic deletion in the ZR-75-1 breast cancer cell line. We identified a truncating mutation in this cell line, leading to loss of expression and rapid decay of the transcript. We screened 127 breast cancers for RIC8A mutations, but did not find any pathogenic mutations. No promoter hypermethylation in these tumours was detected either. However, analysis of gene expression data from breast tumours identified a small group of aggressive tumours that displayed low levels of RIC8A transcripts. qRT-PCR analysis of 38 breast tumours showed a strong association between low RIC8A expression and the presence of TP53 mutations (P = 0.006). Conclusion: We demonstrate a data integration strategy leading to the identification of RIC8A as a gene undergoing a classical double-hit genetic inactivation in a breast cancer cell line, as well as in vivo evidence of loss of RIC8A expression in a subgroup of aggressive TP53 mutant breast cancers.

Guest-Assisted Self-assembly of Organostannoxane Nanotubules on a Mica Surface

The reaction of n-BuSn(O)OH](n), and 9-hydroxy-9-fluorenecarboxylic acid in the presence of p-X-C6H4-OH (X = F, Br) afforded hydroxyl-rich hexameric organostannoxane prismanes. The crystal structures of these prismanes reveal guest-assisted supramolecular structures. Self-assembly of these compounds on a mica surface affords organooxotin nanotubules.

Crystallization of SrCO3 on a self-assembled monolayer substrate: an in-situ synchrotron X-ray study

Self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) of alkanethiols on gold surfaces show great promise in controlling the nucleation and growth of inorganic minerals from solution. In doing so, they mimic the role of some biogenic macromolecules in natural biomineralisation processes. Crystallization on SAM surfaces is usually monitored ex-situ; by allowing the process to commence and to evolve for some time, removing the substrate from the mother solution, and then examining it using microscopy, diffraction etc. We present here for the first time, the use of high energy monochromatic synchrotron X-radiation in conjunction with a two dimensional detector to monitor in situ, in a time resolved fashion, the growth of SrCO3 (strontianite) crystals on a SAM substrate.

Fast edge splitting and Edmonds' arborescence construction for unweighted graphs

Given an unweighted undirected or directed graph with n vertices, m edges and edge connectivity c, we present a new deterministic algorithm for edge splitting. Our algorithm splits-off any specified subset S of vertices satisfying standard conditions (even degree for the undirected case and in-degree ≥ out-degree for the directed case) while maintaining connectivity c for vertices outside S in Õ(m+nc2) time for an undirected graph and Õ(mc) time for a directed graph. This improves the current best deterministic time bounds due to Gabow [8], who splits-off a single vertex in Õ(nc2+m) time for an undirected graph and Õ(mc) time for a directed graph. Further, for appropriate ranges of n, c, |S| it improves the current best randomized bounds due to Benczúr and Karger [2], who split-off a single vertex in an undirected graph in Õ(n2) Monte Carlo time. We give two applications of our edge splitting algorithms. Our first application is a sub-quadratic (in n) algorithm to construct Edmonds' arborescences. A classical result of Edmonds [5] shows that an unweighted directed graph with c edge-disjoint paths from any particular vertex r to every other vertex has exactly c edge-disjoint arborescences rooted at r. For a c edge connected unweighted undirected graph, the same theorem holds on the digraph obtained by replacing each undirected edge by two directed edges, one in each direction. The current fastest construction of these arborescences by Gabow [7] takes Õ(n2c2) time. Our algorithm takes Õ(nc3+m) time for the undirected case and Õ(nc4+mc) time for the directed case. The second application of our splitting algorithm is a new Steiner edge connectivity algorithm for undirected graphs which matches the best known bound of Õ(nc2 + m) time due to Bhalgat et al [3]. Finally, our algorithm can also be viewed as an alternative proof for existential edge splitting theorems due to Lovász [9] and Mader [11].

An O(mn) Gomory-Hu Tree Construction Algorithm for Unweighted Graphs

We present a fast algorithm for computing a Gomory-Hu tree or cut tree for an unweighted undirected graph G = (V,E). The expected running time of our algorithm is Õ(mc) where |E| = m and c is the maximum u-vedge connectivity, where u,v ∈ V. When the input graph is also simple (i.e., it has no parallel edges), then the u-v edge connectivity for each pair of vertices u and v is at most n-1; so the expected running time of our algorithm for simple unweighted graphs is Õ(mn).All the algorithms currently known for constructing a Gomory-Hu tree [8,9] use n-1 minimum s-t cut (i.e., max flow) subroutines. This in conjunction with the current fastest Õ(n20/9) max flow algorithm due to Karger and Levine [11] yields the current best running time of Õ(n20/9n) for Gomory-Hu tree construction on simpleunweighted graphs with m edges and n vertices. Thus we present the first Õ(mn) algorithm for constructing a Gomory-Hu tree for simple unweighted graphs.We do not use a max flow subroutine here; we present an efficient tree packing algorithm for computing Steiner edge connectivity and use this algorithm as our main subroutine. The advantage in using a tree packing algorithm for constructing a Gomory-Hu tree is that the work done in computing a minimum Steiner cut for a Steiner set S ⊆ V can be reused for computing a minimum Steiner cut for certain Steiner sets S' ⊆ S.

A provably tight delay-driven concurrently congestion mitigating global routing algorithm

Routing is a very important step in VLSI physical design. A set of nets are routed under delay and resource constraints in multi-net global routing. In this paper a delay-driven congestion-aware global routing algorithm is developed, which is a heuristic based method to solve a multi-objective NP-hard optimization problem. The proposed delay-driven Steiner tree construction method is of O(n(2) log n) complexity, where n is the number of terminal points and it provides n-approximation solution of the critical time minimization problem for a certain class of grid graphs. The existing timing-driven method (Hu and Sapatnekar, 2002) has a complexity O(n(4)) and is implemented on nets with small number of sinks. Next we propose a FPTAS Gradient algorithm for minimizing the total overflow. This is a concurrent approach considering all the nets simultaneously contrary to the existing approaches of sequential rip-up and reroute. The algorithms are implemented on ISPD98 derived benchmarks and the drastic reduction of overflow is observed. (C) 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Rapid electrohydrodynamic lithography using low-viscosity polymers.

This study explores a number of low-viscosity glass-forming polymers for their suitability as high-speed materials in electrohydrodynamic (EHD) lithography. The use of low-viscosity polymer films significantly reduces the patterning time (to below 10 s) compared to earlier approaches, without compromising the high fidelity of the replicated structures. The rapid pace of this process requires a method to monitor the completion of EHD pattern formation. To this end, the leakage current across the device is monitored and the sigmoidal shape of the current curve is correlated with the various stages of EHD pattern formation.

Carbon nanotube alignment via electrohydrodynamic patterning of nanocomposites

Electrohydrodynamic (EHD) pattern formation in carbon nanotube-polymer composite films yields well-defined patterns on the micrometer scale along with the alignment of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) within these patterns. Conductive pathways in nanotube networks formed during EHD patterning of nanocomposite films results in a substantial increase in the composites' conductivity at loadings exceeding the percolation threshold. The degree of nanotube alignment can be tuned by adjusting the EHD parameters and the degree of alignment is mirrored by the conductivity across the film. Using etching techniques or by embedding relatively long nanotubes, patterned surfaces decorated by CNT brushes were generated. Copyright © 2011 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.