(Dia)logics of difference : disability, performance & spectatorship

In this paper I examine the way artists with disabilities use performances in public spaces to encourage people to reflect on their own contribution to the construction of publics, or counter-publics, during and after the moment of encounter. I focus on Liz Crow’s Resistance on the Plinth. This is the title Crow gave her performance on the Forth Plinth in Trafalgar Square as part of Antony Gormley’s One and Other project in 2009. Described as a public art project presenting a portrait of the U.K., Gormley’s One and Other gave 2400 people selected at random via a lottery the chance to do whatever they chose for an hour on the vacant Forth Plinth in Trafalgar Square. In her hour, Crow chose to present herself in a Nazi uniform, in her wheelchair. In this paper, I discuss how Crow’s performance used a counterposition of images – the Nazi uniform, associated with eugenics and a desire to eliminate people who do not accord with the Arayan ‘norm’, counterposed with her wheelchair – to encourage passersby to “stop, look, think.” I examine how Crow used this counterposition to prevent passersby from attributing a single, stable, monologic meaning to the image – forestalling the risk that passersby would read the image as a Nazi on the Plinth – and instead draw passersby into a dialogue in which the impossibility of reconciling the contradictory images, ideologies and cultural logics Crow embodied encouraged people to continue thinking and talking about these cultural logics during and after the encounter.

Eschewing the fat: strong production but Neil LaBute below his best : a review

AWARD-WINNING American play and screen writer Neil LaBute is known for producing character-driven dramas that concentrate on the darker side of human nature and desire. In Fat Pig, LaBute picks up on a familiar theme: the way a perverse social preference for physical perfection affects human relationships. It is a topic LaBute has tackled before in The Shape of Things, a compelling play in which a beautiful young woman's efforts to help her new boyfriend pursue a program of self-improvement are eventually revealed to be part of a bizarre human experiment for her master-of-fine-arts degree.

Physical function and health-related quality of life of older adults undergoing hospital rehabilitation : how strong is the association?

The purpose of this research is to report preliminary empirical evidence regarding the association between common physical performance measures and health-related quality of life (HRQoL) of hospitalized older adults recovering from illness and injury. Frequently, these patients do not return to premorbid levels of independence and physical ability. Rehabilitation for this population often focuses on improving physical functioning and mobility with the intention of maximizing their HRQoL for discharge and thereafter. For this reason, longitudinal use of physical performance measures as an indicator of improvement in physical functioning (and thus HRQoL) is common. Although this is a logical approach, there have been mixed results from previous investigations into the association between common measures of physical function and HRQoL amongst other adult patient populations.1,2 There has been no previous investigation reporting the association between HRQoL and a variety of common physical performance measures in hospitalized older adults.

Structure of selected basic zinc/copper (II) phosphate minerals based upon near-infrared spectroscopy : implications for hydrogen bonding

The NIR spectra of reichenbachite, scholzite and parascholzite have been studied at 298 K. The spectra of the minerals are different, in line with composition and crystal structural variations. Cation substitution effects are significant in their electronic spectra and three distinctly different electronic transition bands are observed in the near-infrared spectra at high wavenumbers in the 12000-7600 cm-1 spectral region. Reichenbachite electronic spectrum is characterised by Cu(II) transition bands at 9755 and 7520 cm-1. A broad spectral feature observed for ferrous ion in the 12000-9000 cm-1 region both in scholzite and parascholzite. Some what similarities in the vibrational spectra of the three phosphate minerals are observed particularly in the OH stretching region. The observation of strong band at 5090 cm-1 indicates strong hydrogen bonding in the structure of the dimorphs, scholzite and parascholzite. The three phosphates exhibit overlapping bands in the 4800-4000 cm-1 region resulting from the combinations of vibrational modes of (PO4)3- units.

An advanced implicit meshless approach for fractional partial differential equation in computational mechanics

Recently, the numerical modelling and simulation for fractional partial differential equations (FPDE), which have been found with widely applications in modern engineering and sciences, are attracting increased attentions. The current dominant numerical method for modelling of FPDE is the explicit Finite Difference Method (FDM), which is based on a pre-defined grid leading to inherited issues or shortcomings. This paper aims to develop an implicit meshless approach based on the radial basis functions (RBF) for numerical simulation of time fractional diffusion equations. The discrete system of equations is obtained by using the RBF meshless shape functions and the strong-forms. The stability and convergence of this meshless approach are then discussed and theoretically proven. Several numerical examples with different problem domains are used to validate and investigate accuracy and efficiency of the newly developed meshless formulation. The results obtained by the meshless formations are also compared with those obtained by FDM in terms of their accuracy and efficiency. It is concluded that the present meshless formulation is very effective for the modelling and simulation for FPDE.

Human resource flexibility and strong ties in entrepreneurial teams

Human resource flexibility is important in entrepreneurial ventures that need to respond to the changing challenges of growing the new business. This research investigates the impact of previously well-known people (strong ties) as entrepreneurial team members on the human resource flexibility of new ventures. Data collected from German founding entrepreneurs in technology-oriented, incubator-based firms shows that choosing a well known individual to join the entrepreneurial team increases the founder's ability to modify the team member's work role, but complicates asking the team member to leave the team if required. Hence, strong ties both increase and reduce human resource flexibility. However, the effect of strong ties on role modifiability is statistically significant only with novice entrepreneurs. These research findings counsel founders to discuss role modification and exit during partnership and entrepreneurial team membership negotiations.

The Blair Witch Project : Forming strong attitudes, beliefs and consumer intentions from a myth

This brief consumer marketing case study was published in a consumer marketing text book.

Assembling dynamic repertoires of literate practices : teaching that makes a difference

This chapter considers how teachers can make a difference to the kinds of literacy young people take up. Increasingly, researchers and policy-makers see literacy as an ensemble of socio-cultural situated practices rather than as a unitary skill. Accordingly, the differences in what young people come to do with literacy, in and out of school, confront us more directly. If literacy development involves assembling dynamic repertoires of practices, it is crucial to consider what different groups of children growing up and going to school in different places have access to and make investments in over time; the kinds of literate communities from which some are excluded or included; and how educators make a difference to the kinds of literate trajectories and identities young people put together.

How to tell the difference between a positive image and a stereotype: reading Priscilla, Queen of the Desert

This paper intervenes in critical discussions about the representation of homosexuality. Rejecting the ‘manifest content’ of films, it turns to cultural history to map those public discourses which close down the ways in which films can be discussed. With relation to The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, it examines discussions of the film in Australian newspapers (both queer and mainstream) and finds that while there is disagreement about the interpretation to be made of the film, the terms within which those interpretations can be made are quite rigid. A matrix based on similarity, difference and value provides a series of positions and a vocabulary (transgression, assimilation, positive images and stereotypes) through which to make sense of this film. The article suggests that this matrix, and the idea that similarity and difference provide a suitable axis for making sense of homosexual identity, are problematic in discussing homosexual representation.

Spatial population genetic structure reveals strong natal site fidelity in Echinocladius martini (Diptera: Chironomidae) in northeast Queensland, Australia

1. A diverse array of patterns has been reported regarding the spatial extent of population genetic structure and effective dispersal in freshwater macroinvertebrates. In river systems, the movements of many taxa can be restricted to varying degrees by the natural stream channel hierarchy. 2. In this study, we sampled populations of the non-biting freshwater midge Echinocladius martini in the Paluma bioregion of tropical northeast Queensland to investigate fine scale patterns of within- and among-stream dispersal and gene flow within a purported historical refuge. We amplified a 639 bp fragment of mitochondrial COI and analysed genetic structure using pairwise ΦST, hierarchical AMOVA, Mantel tests and a parsimony network. Genetic variation was partitioned among stream sections using Streamtree to investigate the effect of potential instream dispersal barriers. 3. The data revealed strong natal site fidelity and significant differentiation among neighbouring, geographically proximate streams. We found evidence for only episodic adult flight among sites on separate stream reaches. Overall, however, our data suggested that both larval and adult dispersal was largely limited to within a stream channel. 4. This may arise from a combination of the high density of riparian vegetation physically restricting dispersal and from the joint effects of habitat stability and large population sizes. Together these may mitigate the requirement for movement among streams to avoid inbreeding and local extinction due to habitat change and may thus enable persistence of upstream populations in the absence of regular compensatory upstream flight. Taken together, these data suggest that dispersal of E. martini is highly restricted, to the scale of only a few kilometres, and hence occurs predominantly within the natal stream.

Crystal growth from undercooling melts under strong gradients of temperatures generating in short-duration microgravity

Crystal growth of bulk CdTe in short-duration microgravity is performed by the unidirectional cooling method. The largest growth grains in microgravity samples are 4X2mm. The cooling profiles indicate undercooling melts in microgravity. Cooling melt samples in microgravity generate strong gradient of temperature due to stop thermal convections. Temperature distribution in the melt is calculated by the one-dimensional equation of heat conduction, and about 100 K-undercooling is considered to occur at the cooling surface.

Is there a difference between narrowing of the spinal canal and neurological deficits comparing Denis and Magerl classifications?

We have read with great interest the retrospective study by Caffaro and Avanzi1 evaluating the relation between narrowing of the spinal canal and neurological deficits in patients with burst-type fractures of the spine. The authors are to be commended for obtaining detailed neurological and radiological data in a large cohort of 227 patients. The authors conclude: “The percentage of narrowing of the spinal canal proved to be a pre-disposing factor for the severity of the neurological status in thoracolumbar and lumbar burst-type fractures according to the classifications of Denis and Magerl.” Although this conclusion is mainly in accordance with previous findings, we would like to comment on the methodological approach applied in the current study.

Multiple evolutionary rate classes in animal genome evolution

The proportion of functional sequence in the human genome is currently a subject of debate. The most widely accepted figure is that approximately 5% is under purifying selection. In Drosophila, estimates are an order of magnitude higher, though this corresponds to a similar quantity of sequence. These estimates depend on the difference between the distribution of genomewide evolutionary rates and that observed in a subset of sequences presumed to be neutrally evolving. Motivated by the widening gap between these estimates and experimental evidence of genome function, especially in mammals, we developed a sensitive technique for evaluating such distributions and found that they are much more complex than previously apparent. We found strong evidence for at least nine well-resolved evolutionary rate classes in an alignment of four Drosophila species and at least seven classes in an alignment of four mammals, including human. We also identified at least three rate classes in human ancestral repeats. By positing that the largest of these ancestral repeat classes is neutrally evolving, we estimate that the proportion of nonneutrally evolving sequence is 30% of human ancestral repeats and 45% of the aligned portion of the genome. However, we also question whether any of the classes represent neutrally evolving sequences and argue that a plausible alternative is that they reflect variable structure-function constraints operating throughout the genomes of complex organisms.