On the extent of star countable spaces

For a topological property P, we say that a space X is star Pif for every open cover Uof the space X there exists Y aS, X such that St(Y,U) = X and Y has P. We consider star countable and star Lindelof spaces establishing, among other things, that there exists first countable pseudocompact spaces which are not star Lindelof. We also describe some classes of spaces in which star countability is equivalent to countable extent and show that a star countable space with a dense sigma-compact subspace can have arbitrary extent. It is proved that for any omega (1)-monolithic compact space X, if C (p) (X)is star countable then it is Lindelof.

Lindelof spaces which are indestructible, productive, or D

We discuss relationships in Lindelof spaces among the properties "indestructible". "productive", "D", and related properties. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Countability and star covering properties

Whenever P is a topological property, we say that a topological space is star P if whenever U is an open cover of X, there is a subspace A subset of X with property P such that X = St(A, U). We study the relationships of star P properties for P is an element of {Lindelof, sigma-compact, countable} with other Lindelof type properties. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Star/poverty space: the making of the ‘development celebrity’

What is it that gives celebrities the voice and authority to do and say the things they do in the realm of development politics? Asked another way, how is celebrity practised and, simultaneously, how does this praxis make celebrity, personas, politics and, indeed, celebrities themselves? In this article, we explore this ‘celebrity praxis’ through the lens of the creation of the contemporary ‘development celebrity’ in those stars working for development writ large in the so-called Third World. Drawing on work in science studies, material cultures and the growing geo-socio-anthropologies of things, the key to understanding the material practices embedded in and creating development celebrity networks is the multiple and complex circulations of the everyday and bespectacled artefacts of celebrity. Conceptualised as the ‘celebrity–consumption–compassion complex’, the performances of development celebrities are as much about everyday events, materials, technologies, emotions and consumer acts as they are about the mediated and liquidised constructions of the stars who now ‘market’ development.Moreover, this complex is constructed by and constructs what we are calling ‘star/poverty space’ that works to facilitate the ‘expertise’ and ‘authenticity’ and, thus, elevated voice and authority, of development celebrities through poverty tours, photoshoots, textual and visual diaries, websites and tweets. In short, the creation of star/poverty space is performed through a kind of ‘materiality of authenticity’ that is at the centre of the networks of development celebrity. The article concludes with several brief observations about the politics, possibilities and problematics of development celebrities and the star/poverty spaces that they create.

Queering cyberspace : fan fiction communities as spaces for expressing and exploring sexuality

The social construction of sexuality over the past one hundred and fifty years has created a dichotomy between heterosexual and non-heterosexual identities that essentially positions the former as “normal” and the latter as deviant. Even Kinsey’s and others’ work on the continuum of sexualities did little to alter the predominantly heterosexist perception of the non-heterosexual as “other” (Kinsey, Pomeroy and Martin 2007; Esterberg 2006; Franceour and Noonan 2007). Some political action and academic work is beginning to challenge such perceptions. Even some avenues of social interaction, such as the recent proliferation of online communities, may also challenge such views, or at least contribute to their being rethought in some ways. This chapter explores a specific kind of online community devoted to fan fiction, specifically homoerotic – or what is known colloquially as “slash” – fan fiction. Fan fiction is fiction, published on the internet, and written by fans of well-known books and television shows, using the characters to create new and varied plots. “Slash” refers to the pairing of two of the male characters in a romantic relationship, and the term comes from the punctuation mark dividing the named pair as, for example, Spock/Kirk from the Star Trek television series. Although there are some slash fan-fiction stories devoted to female-female relationships – called “femmeslash” – the term “slash” generally refers to male-male relationships, and will be utilized throughout this chapter, given that the research discussed focuses on communities centered around one such male pairing.

Admissible fundamental operators(star)

Let F and G be two bounded operators on two Hilbert spaces. Let their numerical radii be no greater than one. This note investigates when there is a Gamma-contraction (S, P) such that F is the fundamental operator of (S, P) and G is the fundamental operator of (S*, P*). Theorem 1 puts a necessary condition on F and G for them to be the fundamental operators of (S, P) and (S*, P*) respectively. Theorem 2 shows that this necessary condition is also sufficient provided we restrict our attention to a certain special case. The general case is investigated in Theorem 3. Some of the results obtained for Gamma-contractions are then applied to tetrablock contractions to figure out when two pairs (F1, F2) and (G(1), G(2)) acting on two Hilbert spaces can be fundamental operators of a tetrablock contraction (A, B, P) and its adjoint (A*, B*, P*) respectively. This is the content of Theorem 3. (C) 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Entanglement distribution with global control in a star-shaped multi-splitter

Distributed quantum information processing (QIP) is a promising way to bypass problems due to unwanted interactions between elements. However, this strategy presupposes the engineering of protocols for remote processors. In many of them, pairwise entanglement is a key resource. We study a model which distributes entanglement among elements of a delocalized network without local control. The model is efficient both in finite- and infinite-dimensional Hilbert spaces. We suggest a setup of electromechanical systems to implement our proposal.

Approximation by harmonic polynomials in star-shaped domains and exponential convergence of Trefftz hp-dGFEM

We study the approximation of harmonic functions by means of harmonic polynomials in two-dimensional, bounded, star-shaped domains. Assuming that the functions possess analytic extensions to a delta-neighbourhood of the domain, we prove exponential convergence of the approximation error with respect to the degree of the approximating harmonic polynomial. All the constants appearing in the bounds are explicit and depend only on the shape-regularity of the domain and on delta. We apply the obtained estimates to show exponential convergence with rate O(exp(−b square root N)), N being the number of degrees of freedom and b>0, of a hp-dGFEM discretisation of the Laplace equation based on piecewise harmonic polynomials. This result is an improvement over the classical rate O(exp(−b cubic root N )), and is due to the use of harmonic polynomial spaces, as opposed to complete polynomial spaces.

Participation Space Studies: a socio-technical exploration of activist and community groups’ use of online and offline spaces to support their work

Participation Space Studies explore eParticipation in the day-to-day activities of local, citizen-led groups, working to improve their communities. The focus is the relationship between activities and contexts. The concept of a participation space is introduced in order to reify online and offline contexts where people participate in democracy. Participation spaces include websites, blogs, email, social media presences, paper media, and physical spaces. They are understood as sociotechnical systems: assemblages of heterogeneous elements, with relevant histories and trajectories of development and use. This approach enables the parallel study of diverse spaces, on and offline. Participation spaces are investigated within three case studies, centred on interviews and participant observation. Each case concerns a community or activist group, in Scotland. The participation spaces are then modelled using a Socio-Technical Interaction Network (STIN) framework (Kling, McKim and King, 2003). The participation space concept effectively supports the parallel investigation of the diverse social and technical contexts of grassroots democracy and the relationship between the case-study groups and the technologies they use to support their work. Participants’ democratic participation is supported by online technologies, especially email, and they create online communities and networks around their goals. The studies illustrate the mutual shaping relationship between technology and democracy. Participants’ choice of technologies can be understood in spatial terms: boundaries, inhabitants, access, ownership, and cost. Participation spaces and infrastructures are used together and shared with other groups. Non-public online spaces, such as Facebook groups, are vital contexts for eParticipation; further, the majority of participants’ work is non-public, on and offline. It is informational, potentially invisible, work that supports public outputs. The groups involve people and influence events through emotional and symbolic impact, as well as rational argument. Images are powerful vehicles for this and digital images become an increasingly evident and important feature of participation spaces throughout the consecutively conducted case studies. Collaboration of diverse people via social media indicates that these spaces could be understood as boundary objects (Star and Griesemer, 1989). The Participation Space Studies draw from and contribute to eParticipation, social informatics, mediation, social shaping studies, and ethnographic studies of Internet use.