Cosmic Clowns : Convention, Invention, and Inversion in the Yaqui Easter Ritual

Cosmic Clowns: Convention, Invention, and Inversion in the Yaqui Easter Ritual is an ethnographic study of masked clown figures called Chapayekas. They represent Judas and the Roman soldiers in the Passion play that forms the narrative core of the Easter ritual of the Yaquis, an indigenous group in Sonora, Mexico. The study looks at how the Chapayeka is created as a ritual figure, how their performance is constructed, and what the part of the clown is in the dynamics of the ritual. The material was gathered over three periods of anthropological fieldwork in Cócorit, Sonora during Easter in 2004, 2006 and 2007. The Chapayeka masks portray foreigners, animals, mythological figures, and even figures from television and movies. They combine two kinds of performance: they perform set, conventional actions, and improvise and invent new ones. This creates dialectics of invention and convention that allow the figure to mediate between the ritual and its context and different kinds of beings within the Yaqui cosmology. The conventional side of their performance is a cycle of death and rebirth that is an inversion of the cycle of Jesus. Through invention, they separate themselves from the other performers and make themselves powerful. Alternation between the two modes enhances that power and brings it into the conventions of the ritual; ultimately the Chapayekas revitalize the entire ritual. The study finds that the clowns are extremely important to the continuity of both ritual and culture, as the combination of continuity and change, convention and invention, is what makes it possible to recreate the conventions of Yaqui culture as powerful and compelling in various contexts. Another factor is the prevalence of dialectical mediation, which relates concepts by defining them against each other as opposites, and makes it possible to cross a boundary while keeping it intact. Clowns embody and create dialectics to mediate boundaries while guarding against relativization, the disappearance of distinctions. The Chapayekas create and constitute boundaries between the self and other, microcosm and macrocosm, sacred and profane. The study argues that all clown and trickster figures are characterized by constantly alternating between invention and convention; this is what connects them to the collective and moral aspect of culture and, at the same time, makes them unpredictable and powerful. It is possible to do justice to the opposed aspects of these ambiguous and paradoxical figures by taking into account the different foundations and contextual effects of the different modes of symbolization.

Nanostructuring of p- and n-type skutterudites reaching figures of merit of approximately 1.3 and 1.6, respectively

Thermoelectric (TE) conversion of waste heat into useful electricity demands optimized thermal and electrical transport in the leg material over a wide temperature range. In order to gain a reasonably high figure of merit (ZT) as well as high thermal electric conversion efficiency, various conditions of the starting material were studied: industrially produced skutterudite powders of p-type DDy(Fe1-xCox)(4)Sb-12 (DD: didymium) and n-type (Mm, Sm)(y)Co4Sb12 (Mm: mischmetal) were used. After a rather fast reaction-melting technique, the bulk was crushed and sieved with various strainers in order to obtain particles below the respective mesh sizes, followed by ball-milling under three different conditions. The dependence of the TE properties (after hot pressing) on the micro/nanosized particles, grains and crystallites was investigated. Optimized conditions resulted in an increase of ZT for bulk material to current record-high values: from ZT similar to 1.1 to ZT similar to 1.3 at 775 K for p-type and from ZT similar to 1.0 to ZT similar to 1.6 at 800 K for n-type, resulting in respective efficiencies (300-850 K) of eta > 13% and eta similar to 16%. (C) 2014 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Physical Insights on the Ambiguous Metal-Graphene Interface and Proposal for Improved Contact Resistance

The ambiguous behavior of metal-graphene interface has been addressed in this paper using density functional theory and nonequilibrium Green's function formalism. For the first time, the fundamental chemistry of metal-graphene interface, in particular role of sp-hybridized and sp(2)-hybridized carbon atoms, has been emphasized and discussed in detail in this paper. It was discovered that the sp-hybridized sites at the edge of a graphene monolayer contribute to 40% of current conduction when compared with sp(2)-hybridized atom sites in the graphene-metal overlap region. Moreover, we highlighted the insignificance of an additional metal layer, i.e., sandwiched contact, due to lacking sp-hybridized carbon sites. A fundamental way of defining the contact resistance, while keeping chemical bonding in mind, has been proposed. The bonding insight has been further used to propose the novel ways of interfacing metal with graphene, which results in a 40% reduction in contact resistance.

The quest for temperature records in California free of urban heat island effects [abstract, figures, and tables]

EXTRACT (SEE PDF FOR FULL ABSTRACT): The data of this paper differ from the Jones and Bradley papers [of 1982-1986] in that it represents an attempt to select thermal pollution free records rather than to include all available records. The specific long-term trends that this paper is trying to avoid are those illustrated by the heat islands of fast growing urban locations. One other major difference in this paper is that all of the records reported of this study are complete for the entire study period.

On the trail of interannual variability in phytoplankton and climate [abstract and figures]

EXTRACT (SEE PDF FOR FULL ABSTRACT): A selective but nontheless real record of phytoplankton activity over the Santa Barbara Basin can be obtained from the underlying varved sediments. The phytoplankton groups preserved are: diatoms (frustrules and spores), silicoflagellates, dinoflagellates (cysts) and coccoliths.

Equatorial upwelling at Galapagos: the cadmium record in corals since 1600 [abstract and figures]

EXTRACT (SEE PDF FOR FULL ABSTRACT): Chemical isolation of lattice-bound trace elements in marine carbonates has opened new windows to paleoceanographic study. In a modern context at the Galapagos Islands, oceanic upwelling variability is mirrored by changes in the Cd content of reef-building corals. This association derives from cadmium's nutrient-like distribution in the water column and its ability to substitute for calcium in the aragonite lattice of corals. Given corals of sufficient age, it is thus possible to reconstruct near-term ENSO-related changes in surface waters of the eastern Equatorial Pacific on annual and sub-annual timescales.

Interannual variability of siliceous phytoplankton fluxes and relationships with hydrography in the northeastern subarctic Pacific, 1982-1986 [abstract and figures]

EXTRACT (SEE PDF FOR FULL ABSTRACT): Time-series flux variabilities of biogenic opal particles were measured during 1982-1986 at pelagic Station PAPA (50° N, 145° W) located just south of the Gulf of Alaska, eastern North Pacific. PARFLUX sediment traps with two week sampling increments were deployed at 1000 m and 3800 m in 4200 m deep water, yielding nearly continuous time-series flux records for four years. The flux data allowed us to examine interannual and seasonal variabilities of siliceous phytoplankton production as well as environmental signals retained within the siliceous shells, which can be used to reconstruct environments.

A review of water year 1987 in northern California [abstract and figures]

EXTRACT (SEE PDF FOR FULL ABSTRACT): It seems that an average water year is a rare beast; 1987 was no exception. It turned out to be the ninth driest this century in Northern California's Sacramento River basin. I'd like to summarize for you some interesting facts about water year 1987 and how it affected rainfall, snowpack, runoff, and water storage in California.

Configural processing of different topologically structured figures: an ERP Study

According to Chen's theory, topological differences are perceived faster than feature differences in early visual perception. We hypothesized that topological perception is caused by the sensitivity in discriminating figures with and without "holes". An E

Different masking effects on "hole" and "no-hole" figures

Global information is considered the primitive of visual perception in Gestalt psychology. Further, L. Chen ( 2005) proposed a new theory of topological visual perception. According to this theory, the perception of topological difference is faster than o

The Matching of Doubly Ambiguous Stereograms

I have previously described psychophysical experiments that involved the perception of many transparent layers, corresponding to multiple matching, in doubly ambiguous random dot stereograms. Additional experiments are described in the first part of this paper. In one experiment, subjects were required to report the density of dots on each transparent layer. In another experiment, the minimal density of dots on each layer, which is required for the subjects to perceive it as a distinct transparent layer, was measured. The difficulties encountered by stereo matching algorithms, when applied to doubly ambiguous stereograms, are described in the second part of this paper. Algorithms that can be modified to perform consistently with human perception, and the constraints imposed on their parameters by human perception, are discussed.