Literary meals in Canada : the Food/books of Austin Clarke, Hiromi Goto, Tessa McWatt and Fred Wah

Literary Meals in Canada étudie Pig Tails ’n Breadfruit d'Austin Clarke, Chorus of Mushrooms et The Kappa Child de Hiromi Goto, This Body de Tessa McWatt, ainsi que Diamond Grill de Fred Wah. Cette thèse entreprend d’établir la signification de la nourriture dans ces récits, ce qu'elle permet aux auteur(e)s d'exprimer par rapport à divers thématiques—les structures sociales, la culture, le langage, ou encore la subjectivité—et comment ils/elles établissent des connexions entre elles, et quelles conclusions ils/elles en tirent. En d'autres termes, cette thèse s'interroge sur les stratégies utilisées par ces auteur(e)s lorsqu'ils écrivent de la “nourritéra-ture.” Ma lecture de ces oeuvres est aussi ancrée au sein d'une conversation sur la nourriture au sens large: que ce soit dans les cercles académiques, dans les supermarchés, par l'intermédiaire des étiquettes, ou dans les médias. J'examine comment mon corpus littéraire répond, infirme, ou confirme les discours actuels sur la nourriture. Divisé en quatre chapitres—Production, Approvisionnement, Préparation, et Consommation—ce mémoire précise la signification du “literary supermarket” de Rachel Bowlby, en s'appuyant sur les travaux de Michael Pollan et Hiromi Goto; compare la haute cuisine d'Escoffier à la “hot-cuisine” d'Austin Clarke; recherche les connections entre l’acte de faire la cuisine et celui de l’écrire chez Luce Giard, Austin Clarke, et Fred Wah; confronte les préceptes d'Emily Post concernant les bonnes manières de la table à la cacophonie et aux bruits de mastication chez Hiromi Goto; et relie Tessa McWatt et Elspeth Probyn qui partagent, toutes deux, un intérêt et une approche à la sustentation des corps. Les textes qui composent ce corpus sont des “foodbooks” (“aliment-textes”). La nourriture, et les différentes activités qui y sont associées, y est transcrite. C’est pourquoi cette thèse accorde une grande importance aux particularités de ce moyen d'expression.

Improving sampling, optimization and feature extraction in Boltzmann machines

L’apprentissage supervisé de réseaux hiérarchiques à grande échelle connaît présentement un succès fulgurant. Malgré cette effervescence, l’apprentissage non-supervisé représente toujours, selon plusieurs chercheurs, un élément clé de l’Intelligence Artificielle, où les agents doivent apprendre à partir d’un nombre potentiellement limité de données. Cette thèse s’inscrit dans cette pensée et aborde divers sujets de recherche liés au problème d’estimation de densité par l’entremise des machines de Boltzmann (BM), modèles graphiques probabilistes au coeur de l’apprentissage profond. Nos contributions touchent les domaines de l’échantillonnage, l’estimation de fonctions de partition, l’optimisation ainsi que l’apprentissage de représentations invariantes. Cette thèse débute par l’exposition d’un nouvel algorithme d'échantillonnage adaptatif, qui ajuste (de fa ̧con automatique) la température des chaînes de Markov sous simulation, afin de maintenir une vitesse de convergence élevée tout au long de l’apprentissage. Lorsqu’utilisé dans le contexte de l’apprentissage par maximum de vraisemblance stochastique (SML), notre algorithme engendre une robustesse accrue face à la sélection du taux d’apprentissage, ainsi qu’une meilleure vitesse de convergence. Nos résultats sont présent ́es dans le domaine des BMs, mais la méthode est générale et applicable à l’apprentissage de tout modèle probabiliste exploitant l’échantillonnage par chaînes de Markov. Tandis que le gradient du maximum de vraisemblance peut-être approximé par échantillonnage, l’évaluation de la log-vraisemblance nécessite un estimé de la fonction de partition. Contrairement aux approches traditionnelles qui considèrent un modèle donné comme une boîte noire, nous proposons plutôt d’exploiter la dynamique de l’apprentissage en estimant les changements successifs de log-partition encourus à chaque mise à jour des paramètres. Le problème d’estimation est reformulé comme un problème d’inférence similaire au filtre de Kalman, mais sur un graphe bi-dimensionnel, où les dimensions correspondent aux axes du temps et au paramètre de température. Sur le thème de l’optimisation, nous présentons également un algorithme permettant d’appliquer, de manière efficace, le gradient naturel à des machines de Boltzmann comportant des milliers d’unités. Jusqu’à présent, son adoption était limitée par son haut coût computationel ainsi que sa demande en mémoire. Notre algorithme, Metric-Free Natural Gradient (MFNG), permet d’éviter le calcul explicite de la matrice d’information de Fisher (et son inverse) en exploitant un solveur linéaire combiné à un produit matrice-vecteur efficace. L’algorithme est prometteur: en terme du nombre d’évaluations de fonctions, MFNG converge plus rapidement que SML. Son implémentation demeure malheureusement inefficace en temps de calcul. Ces travaux explorent également les mécanismes sous-jacents à l’apprentissage de représentations invariantes. À cette fin, nous utilisons la famille de machines de Boltzmann restreintes “spike & slab” (ssRBM), que nous modifions afin de pouvoir modéliser des distributions binaires et parcimonieuses. Les variables latentes binaires de la ssRBM peuvent être rendues invariantes à un sous-espace vectoriel, en associant à chacune d’elles, un vecteur de variables latentes continues (dénommées “slabs”). Ceci se traduit par une invariance accrue au niveau de la représentation et un meilleur taux de classification lorsque peu de données étiquetées sont disponibles. Nous terminons cette thèse sur un sujet ambitieux: l’apprentissage de représentations pouvant séparer les facteurs de variations présents dans le signal d’entrée. Nous proposons une solution à base de ssRBM bilinéaire (avec deux groupes de facteurs latents) et formulons le problème comme l’un de “pooling” dans des sous-espaces vectoriels complémentaires.

Sign, meaning and violence in Laurell K. Hamilton’s novels : a postmodernist approach

La nature iconoclaste de l'ère postmoderne se manifeste dans une révolution contre les normes littéraires préétablies. Cet iconoclasme est plus flagrant dans la fantaisie urbaine. Dans un environnement désordonné, fragmenté et très stéréotypé, la fantaisie urbaine est considérée comme un événement qui défie tout jugement, et toute stratification sociale. Bien qu'elle ait été bien accueillie par les lecteurs et qu'elle a obtenue de fortes ventes, c'est seulement depuis deux décennies que ces genres ont commencé à attirer l'attention académique. Ce travail peut être considéré comme une tentative pour comprendre la fantaisie urbaine à travers la série d'une de ses écrivains les plus éminents, Laurell K. Hamilton. En conséquence, j’ai choisi trois romans de sa série Anita Blake: Guilty Pleasures (1993), Circus of the Damned (1995) et Blue Moon (1998). Les paramètres stylistiques et thématiques dans ses romans créent une philosophie postmoderne de subversion, qui valide et invalide les discussions sur la structure du signe, la violence, et la réaction du lecteur. Le premier chapitre étudie la construction du sens à travers la structure de la langue de la fantaisie urbaine. Il traite la signification que le résultat de l'interaction entre les différents signes linguistiques. Il suit également l'évolution de ce que Derrida appelle «inflated signs», qui sont au coeur de la régénération du sens à travers les romans. La saturation dans ces signes implique une «absence» qui s'affiche à travers la désintégration du système de la langue et les ruptures récurrentes de sa structure globale. Le deuxième chapitre se concentre sur les tendances de la violence dans les romans de la fantaisie urbaine qui rendent les jeux de pouvoir des personnages truculents et leurs réactions apparaissent inadmissibles. Il examine la violence par rapport à ses causes et sa ii logique. Grâce aux concepts de Derrida de l’‘arché-violence’, de ‘décision’ et de ‘sacrifice,’ je démontre que la violence est inévitable dans le monde créé de Hamilton et dans le monde qu'elle simule. Le troisième chapitre examine la réaction du lecteur sur les événements exotiques et la caractérisation paranormale des romans de Hamilton. Il révèle comment la fantaisie urbaine conteste la conception de Wolfgang Iser de réaction du lecteur et le concept d'‘apparence’ de Jean Baudrillard. J’insiste sur le fait que les lecteurs de la fantaisie urbaine ne sont plus des interprètes ou des réceptifs passifs d'images paranormaux. En effet, l'interaction entre l’auteur et le lecteur, que ces romans entrainent, défie ces conceptions réductrices de la réaction du lecteur.

Career Officers and Political Appointees in American Diplomacy: Contending for Diplomatic Positions through Boundary Work

American Political and Economic Series

A Prototype for a Multimodal Biometric Security system based on Face and Audio Signatures

Any automatically measurable, robust and distinctive physical characteristic or personal trait that can be used to identify an individual or verify the claimed identity of an individual, referred to as biometrics, has gained significant interest in the wake of heightened concerns about security and rapid advancements in networking, communication and mobility. Multimodal biometrics is expected to be ultra-secure and reliable, due to the presence of multiple and independent—verification clues. In this study, a multimodal biometric system utilising audio and facial signatures has been implemented and error analysis has been carried out. A total of one thousand face images and 250 sound tracks of 50 users are used for training the proposed system. To account for the attempts of the unregistered signatures data of 25 new users are tested. The short term spectral features were extracted from the sound data and Vector Quantization was done using K-means algorithm. Face images are identified based on Eigen face approach using Principal Component Analysis. The success rate of multimodal system using speech and face is higher when compared to individual unimodal recognition systems

Tailoring Magnetic Properties of Co-Fe Thin Films by Topographical Modifications Using Thermal Annealing and Swift Heavy Ion Irradiation and Fabrication of Magnetoelectric Multilayers for Device Applications

Magnetism and magnetic materials have been playing a lead role in improving the quality of life. They are increasingly being used in a wide variety of applications ranging from compasses to modern technological devices. Metallic glasses occupy an important position among magnetic materials. They assume importance both from a scientific and an application point of view since they represent an amorphous form of condensed matter with significant deviation from thermodynamic equilibrium. Metallic glasses having good soft magnetic properties are widely used in tape recorder heads, cores of high-power transformers and metallic shields. Superconducting metallic glasses are being used to produce high magnetic fields and magnetic levitation effect. Upon heat treatment, they undergo structural relaxation leading to subtle rearrangements of constituent atoms. This leads to densification of amorphous phase and subsequent nanocrystallisation. The short-range structural relaxation phenomenon gives rise to significant variations in physical, mechanical and magnetic properties. Magnetic amorphous alloys of Co-Fe exhibit excellent soft magnetic properties which make them promising candidates for applications as transformer cores, sensors, and actuators. With the advent of microminiaturization and nanotechnology, thin film forms of these alloys are sought after for soft under layers for perpendicular recording media. The thin film forms of these alloys can also be used for fabrication of magnetic micro electro mechanical systems (magnetic MEMS). In bulk, they are drawn in the form of ribbons, often by melt spinning. The main constituents of these alloys are Co, Fe, Ni, Si, Mo and B. Mo acts as the grain growth inhibitor and Si and B facilitate the amorphous nature in the alloy structure. The ferromagnetic phases such as Co-Fe and Fe-Ni in the alloy composition determine the soft magnetic properties. The grain correlation length, a measure of the grain size, often determines the soft magnetic properties of these alloys. Amorphous alloys could be restructured in to their nanocrystalline counterparts by different techniques. The structure of nanocrystalline material consists of nanosized ferromagnetic crystallites embedded in an amorphous matrix. When the amorphous phase is ferromagnetic, they facilitate exchange coupling between nanocrystallites. This exchange coupling results in the vanishing of magnetocrystalline anisotropy which improves the soft magnetic properties. From a fundamental perspective, exchange correlation length and grain size are the deciding factors that determine the magnetic properties of these nanocrystalline materials. In thin films, surfaces and interfaces predominantly decides the bulk property and hence tailoring the surface roughness and morphology of the film could result in modified magnetic properties. Surface modifications can be achieved by thermal annealing at various temperatures. Ion irradiation is an alternative tool to modify the surface/structural properties. The surface evolution of a thin film under swift heavy ion (SHI) irradiation is an outcome of different competing mechanism. It could be sputtering induced by SHI followed by surface roughening process and the material transport induced smoothening process. The impingement of ions with different fluence on the alloy is bound to produce systematic microstructural changes and this could effectively be used for tailoring magnetic parameters namely coercivity, saturation magnetization, magnetic permeability and remanence of these materials. Swift heavy ion irradiation is a novel and an ingenious tool for surface modification which eventually will lead to changes in the bulk as well as surface magnetic property. SHI has been widely used as a method for the creation of latent tracks in thin films. The bombardment of SHI modifies the surfaces or interfaces or creates defects, which induces strain in the film. These changes will have profound influence on the magnetic anisotropy and the magnetisation of the specimen. Thus inducing structural and morphological changes by thermal annealing and swift heavy ion irradiation, which in turn induce changes in the magnetic properties of these alloys, is one of the motivation of this study. Multiferroic and magneto-electrics is a class of functional materials with wide application potential and are of great interest to material scientists and engineers. Magnetoelectric materials combine both magnetic as well as ferroelectric properties in a single specimen. The dielectric properties of such materials can be controlled by the application of an external magnetic field and the magnetic properties by an electric field. Composites with magnetic and piezo/ferroelectric individual phases are found to have strong magnetoelectric (ME) response at room temperature and hence are preferred to single phasic multiferroic materials. Currently research in this class of materials is towards optimization of the ME coupling by tailoring the piezoelectric and magnetostrictive properties of the two individual components of ME composites. The magnetoelectric coupling constant (MECC) (_ ME) is the parameter that decides the extent of interdependence of magnetic and electric response of the composite structure. Extensive investigates have been carried out in bulk composites possessing on giant ME coupling. These materials are fabricated by either gluing the individual components to each other or mixing the magnetic material to a piezoelectric matrix. The most extensively investigated material combinations are Lead Zirconate Titanate (PZT) or Lead Magnesium Niobate-Lead Titanate (PMNPT) as the piezoelectric, and Terfenol-D as the magnetostrictive phase and the coupling is measured in different configurations like transverse, longitudinal and inplane longitudinal. Fabrication of a lead free multiferroic composite with a strong ME response is the need of the hour from a device application point of view. The multilayer structure is expected to be far superior to bulk composites in terms of ME coupling since the piezoelectric (PE) layer can easily be poled electrically to enhance the piezoelectricity and hence the ME effect. The giant magnetostriction reported in the Co-Fe thin films makes it an ideal candidate for the ferromagnetic component and BaTiO3 which is a well known ferroelectric material with improved piezoelectric properties as the ferroelectric component. The multilayer structure of BaTiO3- CoFe- BaTiO3 is an ideal system to understand the underlying fundamental physics behind the ME coupling mechanism. Giant magnetoelectric coupling coefficient is anticipated for these multilayer structures of BaTiO3-CoFe-BaTiO3. This makes it an ideal candidate for cantilever applications in magnetic MEMS/NEMS devices. SrTiO3 is an incipient ferroelectric material which is paraelectric up to 0K in its pure unstressed form. Recently few studies showed that ferroelectricity can be induced by application of stress or by chemical / isotopic substitution. The search for room temperature magnetoelectric coupling in SrTiO3-CoFe-SrTiO3 multilayer structures is of fundamental interest. Yet another motivation of the present work is to fabricate multilayer structures consisting of CoFe/ BaTiO3 and CoFe/ SrTiO3 for possible giant ME coupling coefficient (MECC) values. These are lead free and hence promising candidates for MEMS applications. The elucidation of mechanism for the giant MECC also will be the part of the objective of this investigation.

Poor people and risky business

We try to explain why economic conflicts and illegal business often take place in poor countries. We use the concept of subsistence level of consumption (d) and assume a regular concave utility function for consumption levels higher than d. For consumption levels lower than d utility is constant and equal to zero. Under this framework poor agents are risk-lovers. This result helps to explain why economic conflicts are more likely to appear in poor economies and why poor agents are more willing to undertake illegal business.

A new perspective on Southern hemisphere storm-tracks.

A detailed view of Southern Hemisphere storm tracks is obtained based on the application of filtered variance and modern feature-tracking techniques to a wide range of 45-yr European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) Re-Analysis (ERA-40) data. It has been checked that the conclusions drawn in this study are valid even if data from only the satellite era are used. The emphasis of the paper is on the winter season, but results for the four seasons are also discussed. Both upper- and lower-tropospheric fields are used. The tracking analysis focuses on systems that last longer than 2 days and are mobile (move more than 1000 km). Many of the results support previous ideas about the storm tracks, but some new insights are also obtained. In the summer there is a rather circular, strong, deep high-latitude storm track. In winter the high-latitude storm track is more asymmetric with a spiral from the Atlantic and Indian Oceans in toward Antarctica and a subtropical jet–related lower-latitude storm track over the Pacific, again tending to spiral poleward. At all times of the year, maximum storm activity in the higher-latitude storm track is in the Atlantic and Indian Ocean regions. In the winter upper troposphere, the relative importance of, and interplay between, the subtropical and subpolar storm tracks is discussed. The genesis, lysis, and growth rate of lower-tropospheric winter cyclones together lead to a vivid picture of their behavior that is summarized as a set of overlapping plates, each composed of cyclone life cycles. Systems in each plate appear to feed the genesis in the next plate through downstream development in the upper-troposphere spiral storm track. In the lee of the Andes in South America, there is cyclogenesis associated with the subtropical jet and also, poleward of this, cyclogenesis largely associated with system decay on the upslope and regeneration on the downslope. The genesis and lysis of cyclones and anticyclones have a definite spatial relationship with each other and with the Andes. At 500 hPa, their relative longitudinal positions are consistent with vortex-stretching ideas for simple flow over a large-scale mountain. Cyclonic systems near Antarctica have generally spiraled in from lower latitudes. However, cyclogenesis associated with mobile cyclones occurs around the Antarctic coast with an interesting genesis maximum over the sea ice near 150°E. The South Pacific storm track emerges clearly from the tracking as a coherent deep feature spiraling from Australia to southern South America. A feature of the summer season is the genesis of eastward-moving cyclonic systems near the tropic of Capricorn off Brazil, in the central Pacific and, to a lesser extent, off Madagascar, followed by movement along the southwest flanks of the subtropical anticyclones and contribution to the “convergence zone” cloud bands seen in these regions.

Sensitivity of feature-based analysis methods of storm tracks to the form of background field removal

For the tracking of extrema associated with weather systems to be applied to a broad range of fields it is necessary to remove a background field that represents the slowly varying, large spatial scales. The sensitivity of the tracking analysis to the form of background field removed is explored for the Northern Hemisphere winter storm tracks for three contrasting fields from an integration of the U. K. Met Office's (UKMO) Hadley Centre Climate Model (HadAM3). Several methods are explored for the removal of a background field from the simple subtraction of the climatology, to the more sophisticated removal of the planetary scales. Two temporal filters are also considered in the form of a 2-6-day Lanczos filter and a 20-day high-pass Fourier filter. The analysis indicates that the simple subtraction of the climatology tends to change the nature of the systems to the extent that there is a redistribution of the systems relative to the climatological background resulting in very similar statistical distributions for both positive and negative anomalies. The optimal planetary wave filter removes total wavenumbers less than or equal to a number in the range 5-7, resulting in distributions more easily related to particular types of weather system. For the temporal filters the 2-6-day bandpass filter is found to have a detrimental impact on the individual weather systems, resulting in the storm tracks having a weak waveguide type of behavior. The 20-day high-pass temporal filter is less aggressive than the 2-6-day filter and produces results falling between those of the climatological and 2-6-day filters.

Global observations and forecast skill

The impact of selected observing systems on forecast skill is explored using the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) 40-yr reanalysis (ERA-40) system. Analyses have been produced for a surface-based observing system typical of the period prior to 1945/1950, a terrestrial-based observing system typical of the period 1950-1979 and a satellite-based observing system consisting of surface pressure and satellite observations. Global prediction experiments have been undertaken using these analyses as initial states, and which are available every 6 h, for the boreal winters of 1990/1991 and 2000/2001 and the summer of 2000, using a more recent version of the ECMWF model. The results show that for 500-hPa geopotential height, as a representative field, the terrestrial system in the Northern Hemisphere extratropics is only slightly inferior to the control system, which makes use of all observations for the analysis, and is also more accurate than the satellite system. There are indications that the skill of the terrestrial system worsens slightly and the satellite system improves somewhat between 1990/1991 and 2000/2001. The forecast skill in the Southern Hemisphere is dominated by the satellite information and this dominance is larger in the latter period. The overall skill is only slightly worse than that of the Northern Hemisphere. In the tropics (20 degrees S-20 degrees N), using the wind at 850 and 250 hPa as representative fields, the information content in the terrestrial and satellite systems is almost equal and complementary. The surface-based system has very limited skill restricted to the lower troposphere of the Northern Hemisphere. Predictability calculations show a potential for a further increase in predictive skill of 1-2 d in the extratropics of both hemispheres, but a potential for a major improvement of many days in the tropics. As well as the Eulerian perspective of predictability, the storm tracks have been calculated from all experiments and validated for the extratropics to provide a Lagrangian perspective.

New perspectives on the Northern Hemisphere winter storm tracks

The aim of this paper is to explore the use of both an Eulerian and system-centered method of storm track diagnosis applied to a wide range of meteorological fields at multiple levels to provide a range of perspectives on the Northern Hemisphere winter transient motions and to give new insight into the storm track organization and behavior. The data used are primarily from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts reanalyses project extended with operational analyses to the period 1979-2000. This is supplemented by data from the National Centers for Environmental Prediction and Goddard Earth Observing System 1 reanalyses. The range of fields explored include the usual mean sea level pressure and the lower- and upper-tropospheric height, meridional wind, vorticity, and temperature, as well as the potential vorticity (PV) on a 330-K isentropic surface (PV330) and potential temperature on a PV = 2 PVU surface (theta(PV2)). As well as reporting the primary analysis based on feature tracking, the standard Eulerian 2-6-day bandpass filtered variance analysis is also reported and contrasted with the tracking diagnostics. To enable the feature points to be identified as extrema for all the chosen fields, a planetary wave background structure is removed at each data time. The bandpass filtered variance derived from the different fields yield a rich picture of the nature and comparative magnitudes of the North Pacific and Atlantic storm tracks, and of the Siberian and Mediterranean candidates for storm tracks. The feature tracking allows the cyclonic and anticyclonic activities to be considered seperately. The analysis indicates that anticyclonic features are generally much weaker with less coherence than the cyclonic systems. Cyclones and features associated with them are shown to have much greater coherence and give tracking diagnostics that create a vivid storm track picture that includes the aspects highlighted by the variances as well as highlighting aspects that are not readily available from Eulerian studies. In particular, the upper-tropospheric features as shown by negative theta(PV2), for example, occur in a band spiraling around the hemisphere from the subtropical North Atlantic eastward to the high latitudes of the same ocean basin. Lower-troposphere storm tracks occupy more limited longitudinal sectors, with many of the individual storms possibly triggered from the upper-tropospheric disturbances in the spiral band of activity.

Trace fossils and pseudofossils from the Wealden strata (non-marine Lower Cretaceous) of southern England

The trace fossils of the Wealden (non-marine Lower Cretaceous) of southern England are described. Sixteen invertebrate ichnotaxa include Agrichnium fimbriatus, Beaconites antarcticus, B. barretti, Cochlichnus anguineus, Diplichnites triassicus, Diplocraterion parallelum, Lockeia siliquaria, L. serialis, Monocraterion cf. tentaculum, Palaeophycus striatus, P. tubularis, Planolites montanus, Protovirgularia rugosa, Rhizocorallium isp., Scoyenia cf. gracilis, Unisulcus minutus, insect and root traces. Tetrapod tracks and trackways include tridactyl Iguanodontipus burreyi and other ornithopods, theropod, and tetradactyl sauropod (or possibly ankylosaur), together with extensive dinosaur tramplings. Coprolites are referred to two broad types: spiral, with or without included fish scales (attributable to sharks), and elongate and irregular (possibly produced by reptiles). A skinprint and two types of pseudofossil are also included. Five environmental associations are recognised: (1) lacustrine/lagoonal; (2) brackish incursions (flooding events) into the lacustrine/lagoonal environment; (3) a marginal lacustrine association with fluvial input; (4) a fluvial (lacustrine delta) association; (5) floodplain sediments (seasonal wetlands). These associations are assigned to the fluvial-lacustrine Scoyenia Ichnofacies and the incursions to Glossifungites lchnofacies. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The basic ingredients of the North Atlantic storm track. Part I: land-sea contrast and orography

Understanding and predicting changes in storm tracks over longer time scales is a challenging problem, particularly in the North Atlantic. This is due in part to the complex range of forcings (land–sea contrast, orography, sea surface temperatures, etc.) that combine to produce the structure of the storm track. The impact of land–sea contrast and midlatitude orography on the North Atlantic storm track is investigated through a hierarchy of GCM simulations using idealized and “semirealistic” boundary conditions in a high-resolution version of the Hadley Centre atmosphere model (HadAM3). This framework captures the large-scale essence of features such as the North and South American continents, Eurasia, and the Rocky Mountains, enabling the results to be applied more directly to realistic modeling situations than was possible with previous idealized studies. The physical processes by which the forcing mechanisms impact the large-scale flow and the midlatitude storm tracks are discussed. The characteristics of the North American continent are found to be very important in generating the structure of the North Atlantic storm track. In particular, the southwest–northeast tilt in the upper tropospheric jet produced by southward deflection of the westerly flow incident on the Rocky Mountains leads to enhanced storm development along an axis close to that of the continent’s eastern coastline. The approximately triangular shape of North America also enables a cold pool of air to develop in the northeast, intensifying the surface temperature contrast across the eastern coastline, consistent with further enhancements of baroclinicity and storm growth along the same axis.