Modal Representation of the Resonant Body within a Finite Difference Framework for Simulation of String Instruments

This paper investigates numerical simulation of a string coupled
transversely to a resonant body. Starting from a complete nite
difference formulation, a second model is derived in which the
body is represented in modal form. The main advantage of this hybrid form is that the body model is scalable, i.e. the computational
complexity can be adjusted to the available processing power. Numerical results are calculated and discussed for simplied models
in the form of string-string coupling and string-plate coupling.

The Representation of the Female Body in the Multimedia Works of Regina José Galindo

The female body is central to the performance art, poetry and blog site interventions of Guatemalan Regina José Galindo. While Galindo is best known for her performance work, this article compares the hereto overlooked, distinctive and often shocking representations of the female body across her multimedia outputs. We first consider the ways in which, in all three media, Galindo presents an ‘excessive’, carnivalised, grotesque and abject female body. Second, we analyse representations of the female body that has been subjected to violence at a private and public level. In so doing, we show how Galindo not only contests hegemonic visions of gender and (national) identity but also challenges the viewer/reader to engage with, rather than look away from, the violence to which women are subjected in patriarchal society.

Body mass-abundance relationships are robust to cascading effects in marine food webs

Body mass has been shown to scale negatively with abundance in a wide range of habitats and ecosystems. It is believed that this relationship has important consequences for the distribution and maintenance of energy in natural communities. Some studies have shown that the relationship between body mass and abundance may be robust to major food web perturbations, fuelling the belief that natural processes may preserve the slope of this relationship and the associated cycling of energy and nutrients. Here, we use data from a long-term experimental food web manipulation to examine this issue in a semi-natural environment. Similar communities were developed in large experimental mesocosms over a six month period. Some of the mesocosms were then subjected to species removals, based on the mean strength of their trophic interactions in the communities. In treatments where the strongest interactors were removed, a community-level trophic cascade occurred. The biomass density of invertebrates increased dramatically in these communities, which led to a suppression of primary production. In spite of these widespread changes in ecosystem functioning, the slope of the relationship between body mass and abundance remained unchanged. This was the case whether average species body mass and abundance or individual organism size spectra were considered. An examination of changes in species composition before and after the experimental manipulations revealed an important mechanism for maintaining the body mass-abundance relationship. The manipulated communities all had a higher species turnover than the intact communities, with the highest turnover in communities that experienced cascading effects. As some species increased in body mass and abundance, new species filled the available size-abundance niches that were created. This maintained the overall body mass-abundance relationship and provided a stabilising structure to these experimental communities.

Sounding the network: The body as disturbant

This paper investigates the network as a site for music performance; in particular, the net’s performative conditions with the tightly linked notion of community are exposed through the medium of
music as an intrinsic social practice. The paper provides a brief cultural overview of the development of the
network metaphor before problematizing perspectival views of the network.

Mapping a Colonial Borderland: Objectifying the Geo-Body of India's Northeast

India’s Northeast frontier is at the margins of three study areas: South Asia, Southeast Asia, and East Asia. This paper attempts a history of “mapping” in its broader sense as a cultural universal over a relatively long period. It is not a history of cartography, but focuses on the interface between cartography and cosmography, which were, in turn, shaped by imperial power and geographical knowledge. This approach offers a high-altitude view of this Asian borderland as the imperial frontier of both the Mughals and the British, and the national fringe of Republican India. The authors argue that imperial geographical discourses invested the colonial Northeast (British Assam) with a new kind of territorial identity. Surveyors and mapmakers objectified the “geo-body” of this borderland in a spatial fix and visualized it as a Northeast-on-the-map. Cartographic territoriality naturalized traditional frontiers into colonial borderlands, which, in turn, forged national boundaries.