Mutable Nature Research Articles

"No Moon to Speak of": Identity and Place in Dionne Brand's In Another Place, Not Here

Trinidadian by birth, but having spent most of her life in Canada, Dionne Brand is an uneasy member of the African-Caribbean Diaspora and a writer who grapples with the problems of identity-making for people who have fractured or confused connections to multiple places. Much of her work deals with the dependence of identity upon context: with the ways in which self-knowledge and well-being are inextricably tied to the rela- tionships that people form with their human and nonhuman surroundings, and with the difficulties that arise when people are cut off from their homelands or come to know a new place. I would like to investigate Brand's approach to these issues in her first novel, In Another Place, Not Here (1996), by looking at how identity is depicted in the text as a function of relationships and by considering her characters' manipulation of language and naming as a response to the mutable nature of these relationships and the transformative potential of their own identities. In Another Place, Not Here lends itself to readings informed by theoretical approaches, such as that of Charles Taylor: of many theorists whose work has problematized the idea that identity can be understood as a pure, stable, or inwardly-generated quality by drawing attention to the ways in which identity is always negotiated, performed, or subject to transformation. Taylor describes what he calls the fundamentally dialogical character of human life (102)—the idea that we are able to understand and define ourselves only through our interactions with others. discovering my own he says, doesn't mean that I work it out in isolation, but that I negotiate it through dialogue, partly overt, partly internal, with others. (. . .) My own identity crucially depends on my dialogical relations with others (111). Ecological theorist Neil Evernden draws a similar conclu- sion in his investigation of human and nonhuman identity, but goes step further by suggesting that to understand identity one might say that the relationships are the main event, and that we deceive ourselves in concentrating on the beings rather than on the relationship between them (133). Whether or not we are prepared to follow Evernden in his belief that relationships are more fundamental a category of identity analysis than individuals, the need to consider context when attempting to understand an individual is clear. At the same time, Evernden's insistence on the importance of relationships for identity formation extends explicitly (and, for many students of the humanities, perhaps surprisingly) to relationships with the nonhuman: for Evernden, identity is not just a dialogue between oneself and other people, but a multiplicitous conversation involv- ing all that is present in the perceptual field, whether human, floral, stone, or otherwise. The relevance of this approach to identity and relationships becomes clear early on in In Another Place, Not Here.

Accelerating strategies to the numerical simulation of large‐scale models for sequential excavation

AbstractIn this paper, a novel combination of well‐established numerical procedures is explored in order to accelerate the simulation of sequential excavation. Usually, large‐scale models are used to represent these problems. Due to the high number of equations involved, the solver algorithm represents the critical aspect which makes the simulation very time consuming. The mutable nature of the excavation models makes this problem even more pronounced. To accomplish the representation of geometrical and mechanical aspects in an efficient and simple manner, the proposed solution employs the boundary element method with a multiple‐region strategy. Together with this representational system, a segmented storage scheme and a time‐ordered tracking of the changes form an adequate basis for the usage of fast updating methods instead of frontal solvers. The present development employs the Sherman–Morrison–Woodbury method to speed up the calculation due to sequential changes. The efficiency of the proposed framework is illustrated through the simulation of test examples of 2D and 3D models. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Inscape : Hopkins et le formalisme halluciné

Inscape is a word coined by Gerard Manley Hopkins to distil the concept of natural objective form in a world of apparent flux and disintegration. At first, it means extracting and fixing formal patterns from an elusive and mutable nature. These natural designs or “laws” are often highly detailed, abstract, fractal and oddly shaped. They need a new poetic language to be expressed in words and are made manifest to the attentive eye only under special circumstances. Diurnal light, physical metamorphoses, liquid movements and in-between states trigger a vivid encounter between nature and the solitary observer, who becomes both poet and hallucinated scientist.

Globalização e desenvolvimento baseado em matérias-primas: o caso da indústria do alumínio

From the notion that globalization is a long process, which shows distinct characteristics, in different industries and in different periods, the article examines the mutable nature of the globalization process in the aluminum industry. This article confirms the aluminum industry as one of the most truly global industries and analyses its trajectory, since the creation of the oligopoly structure, in the first years of this industry, until the changes that happened in the 20 th century.

Being geopolitical: comments on Engin Isin's Being Political: Genealogies of Citizenship

What is the role of citizenship in a protest? How are civilian rights used as a source of power to craft socio-spatial strategies of dissent? I argue that the growing civilian consciousness of the “power to” (i.e. capacity to act) and of the border as public space is enhancing civil participation and new dissent strategies through which participants consciously and sophisticatedly use their citizenship as a tool, offering different conceptualizations of borders. This paper examines the role of citizenship in the design and performance of dissent focusing on two groups of Israeli activists, Machsom Watch and Anarchists against the Wall. Using their Israeli citizenship as a source of power, these groups apply different strategies of dissent while challenging the discriminating practices of control in occupied Palestinian territories. These case studies demonstrate a growing civilian consciousness of the mutable nature of borders as designed by state power. Analyzing the ways actors consciously and sophisticatedly use citizenship as a tool in their dissent, which is aimed at supporting indigenous noncitizens, I argue that Machsom Watch and Anarchists against the Wall enact and promote different models of citizenship and understandings of borders, in Israel/Palestine.

Isolation and Characterization of Griffithsin, a Novel HIV-inactivating Protein, from the Red Alga Griffithsia sp.

Griffithsin (GRFT), a novel anti-HIV protein, was isolated from an aqueous extract of the red alga Griffithsia sp. The 121-amino acid sequence of GRFT has been determined, and biologically active GRFT was subsequently produced by expression of a corresponding DNA sequence in Escherichia coli. Both native and recombinant GRFT displayed potent antiviral activity against laboratory strains and primary isolates of T- and M- tropic HIV-1 with EC50 values ranging from 0.043 to 0.63 nM. GRFT also aborted cell-to-cell fusion and transmission of HIV-1 infection at similar concentrations. High concentrations (e.g. 783 nM) of GRFT were not lethal to any tested host cell types. GRFT blocked CD4-dependent glycoprotein (gp) 120 binding to receptor-expressing cells and bound to viral coat glycoproteins (gp120, gp41, and gp160) in a glycosylation-dependent manner. GRFT preferentially inhibited gp120 binding of the monoclonal antibody (mAb) 2G12, which recognizes a carbohydrate-dependent motif, and the (mAb) 48d, which binds to CD4-induced epitope. In addition, GRFT moderately interfered with the binding of gp120 to sCD4. Further data showed that the binding of GRFT to soluble gp120 was inhibited by the monosaccharides glucose, mannose, and N-acetylglucosamine but not by galactose, xylose, fucose, N-acetylgalactosamine, or sialic acid-containing glycoproteins. Taken together these data suggest that GRFT is a new type of lectin that binds to various viral glycoproteins in a monosaccharide-dependent manner. GRFT could be a potential candidate microbicide to prevent the sexual transmission of HIV and AIDS.

Terrorism and Civil Aviation Security: Problems and Trends

General Trends in Present-Day Terrorism The terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 marked the start of a new period in modern history. This period is one characterized by instability, unpredictability, and the reshaping of complex systems, including both traditional and new types of challenges and threats. Of particular significance in the last and most dangerous category is, beyond any doubt, the emergence of terrorism as a truly global threat. It has to be kept in mind that terrorism, as an independent and self-reproducing socio-political phenomenon of violence, can be seen throughout the history of human civilization. However, in the twenty-first century, terrorism has evolved into a major geopolitical factor, capable of causing a systemic crisis at the global level. Some of the distinctive (albeit not unique) characteristics of modern terrorism—also labeled “international terrorism,” “new wave terrorism,” “mega-terrorism,” “fourth-generation terrorism”—are as follows : • Qualitative change of content; • Shift to a strategic approach and a particular type of warfare; • Perpetual reproduction and build-up; • Transformation into mass movements; • Permanent dynamics; • Fluid, mutable nature—convergence; • Increasing importance of non-state actors; • Growing professionalization; • Escalation of technological sophistication; • Weapons of mass effect, techno-terrorism; • Increasing reliance on information technologies and networks; • Cyber-terrorism, psycho-terrorism. The above-mentioned elements make it possible to identify the overall scope of a modern global process that some politicians and experts in terrorism are referring to as

形質說（Hylo-morphism）在聖多瑪斯哲學中的釋義

The reason western philosophy could have touched upon the “relation between Heaven and Man” and become a self-integrated system since ancient Greece is its ability to comprehend the mutability of phenomena. In their exploration of the transformation of phenomena, ancient Greek philosophers could see the substance of constancy embedded in the mutability of phenomena. Among others, Aristotle could build his hylomorphism in the reality of mutability to interpret the principles of transformation, which is the model of self-integrated systems. Regarding the development of western philosophy, hylomorphism was started by Aristotle and reached its climax with Thomas Aquinas. In recent times, many philosophers made enormous efforts to criticize and even reject traditional metaphysics, but not so many efforts in terms of “hylomorphism,” for which the reason was the substantiality of hylomorphism rather than the kindness of recent philosophers. In his works, Οn Heaven, On Earth, Physics, and Metaphysics, Aristotle made good use of his ability to observe the universe and recognize the principle of mutability in the phenomenon of mutability. As for particular changes, Aristotle explained individual changes in terms of the distnction between the nature and the attribute of Category-the nature is constant, while the attribute chages. As for general changes, Aristotle dealt with them in terms of hylomorphism. He assumed that the exisistence of everything from non-being to being is formed by defining “Matter” with “Form”. In the end, “Man” is composed of soul as the form and matter as the body. On the issue of “Category”, Thomas Aquinas basically followed Aristotle's theories, and the philosophical immanence of hylomorphism became theological, expecially exemplified by Eucharistia with the Transsubstantiatio of bread and wine into Christ's blood. Besides, Aquinas made the Mysterium about constant attribute and mutable nature the immanence of faith. This paper is divided into two major parts. First we explain respectively Aristotle’s and then Aquinas's hylomorphisms, since the former is the origin and the latter is the climax. In the end, we will present some views and criticisms about hylomorphism.

The Parent–Child Relationship as an Archetype for the Relationship Between God and Humanity in Genesis

This article explores the idea that the relationship between a parent and developing child may serve as an archetype for understanding the changing relationship between God and humanity in Genesis. With Adam, Abraham, Jacob, and Joseph representing successive stages of human development, the narrative structure of Genesis is said to portray the relationship between God and humanity as changing in a way that parallels a parent's changing relationship with his or her children across their growth toward psychological integration. This changing relationship with God, which starts out with a symbiotic union with the divine, progresses through separation and individuation, and culminates in reintegration with God, may offer a Biblical approach to psychological growth and healing, as well as a theoretical conceptualization for both the parental and mutable nature of God.

What's in an Alias? Family Names, Individual Histories, and Historical Method in the Western Sudan

Writing in hisLes Bambara du Ségou et du Kaarta, the French colonial administrator and ethnographer Charles Monteil considered the family name, orjamu, tosum up the history of the community which bears it: it refers to everything which concerns the ancestors, as well as the accomplishments of current members of the community, including their turpitudes and even their alliances, be they fraternal, conjugal, political, or supernatural.Monteil was right, to a certain degree. In the Western Sudan, family names are weighted with history and significance. Yet what Monteil characterized as evidence of stability and tradition, Charles Bird has more recently called a “ticket to mobility.” The fluidity and mobility that had come to characterize thejamueluded Monteil entirely, just as its mutability often eludes contemporary historians.Ajamurepresentsbothan all-important identity marker and an instrument of “mobility.” Yet it is also highly contigent, even aleatory. This mobility has a double sense, signifying both the mutable nature of the name itself and its potential for “making outsiders insiders” by creating an immediate link between people who would otherwise be strangers.Jamuw—the plural takes a ‘w’—also have a deep historicity. Embedded in them are history and myth, along with suggestions of family occupational category—commonly referred to as ‘caste’—and social status. Epics such asSundiataoften provide etymologies and legendary origins of family names, and scholars have sought—misguidedly—to use these to understand the historical processes of ‘caste’ formation and other aspects of the distant Mande past.

A matter of culture

The nature of culture as the symbolic expression of inarticulate matter is explored from a range of different cultural perspectives. Raymond Williams's work on culture, especially his ideas on material and symbolic production, serves to introduce an analysis of matter and its place in cultural production. The mutable nature of matter is explored through the modern physics of quantum theory as well as modern art, especially the work of Jasper Johns. Late‐modern culture is viewed in terms of a mutable space of matter that resists meaning and location. The implications of this resistance for understanding the cultivation of knowledge and subject‐object relations are then pursued in the contexts of art history (Michael Baxandall), the ‘social body’ (Jean‐Frangois Lyotard), the society of generalized communication (Gianni Vattimo), multi‐media culture (J. Hillis Miller), and computerization.

Detection of viruses in livestock.

Diseases caused by viruses are a constant and major problem for livestock production world wide. The diseases range from highly contagious acute forms with high mortality, to chronic disabling diseases with an insidious effect on production. Such diseases cannot be regarded as static in nature due to the highly mutable nature of viruses and their direct selection at the host level and indirect selection in vectors, inducing changes in pathogenicity. Considerable efforts are needed to control these diseases including accurate and rapid diagnosis using both classical and emerging technologies. The methods used are based on both serological and molecular biological based methods. The ELISA and use of monoclonal antibodies are significant in the serological field whereas the Polymerase Chain reaction (PCR) and its direct and indirect uses for identifying (sequencing) and amplification of gene products, is vital to both research and applied fields. Both areas have to be used in a complementary way in the diagnosis of virus diseases.

Symbols by Nature: animal frequencies in the Upper Palaeolithic of western Europe and the nature of symbolic representation

AbstractIt is well understood that rock art involves symbols, and that the meaning of symbols is not straightforward. In this paper, I show that symbolic values in the iconic depictions in the Upper Palaeolithic of Europe vary across regions. I then show that for one site symbolic values within a constant iconic tradition vary across time. In the final section of the paper, I show that it is easy to be seduced from a modern perspective into a belief that symbolic values have stayed the same over long periods of time. This is counter to what we know from the mutable nature of symbols both from the ethnographic documentation and from the archaeological examples in this paper.

Culture Swapping: Consumption and the Ethnogenesis of Middle‐Class Haitian Immigrants

By means of an ethnographic study of a Haitian family in the midwestern United States, this article demonstrates how ethnic consumers “culture swap,” using goods to move between one cultural identity and another as they negotiate relations between home and host cultures. This interpretation of consumer behavior is grounded in a semiotics of performance, emphasizing the dynamic and mutable nature of self, social identity, and cultural identification in global consumer culture.

Cracking the Code of United States v. Virginia

In setting forth tests and standards for constitutionality, the Supreme Court frequently creates its own artificial language that derives its meaning primarily through repeated application. Indeed, in United States v. Virginia, Chief Justice William Rehnquist acknowledged the mutable nature of the Court’s language when he remarked that even the most familiar tests and standards adopted by the Court “are hardly models of precision.” Given language’s mutability, the words of these tests and standards should be used consistently in order to prevent them from being misinterpreted, as has happened to the language in United States v. Virginia. In United States v. Virginia, the Court struck down the admissions policy of the Virginia Military Institute (VMI), a state school that admitted only men, because it violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. In considering the constitutionality of VMI’s admissions policy, the Court applied

How the British Working Class Became White: The Symbolic (Re)formation of Racialized Capitalism

This article offers an explanation of how and why the British working class, from being marginal to white identity in the nineteenth century, came to adopt and adapt this identity in the twentieth century. The changing position of whiteness within the symbolic constitution of capitalism is discussed. More specifically, the transition from whiteness as bourgeois identity within Victorian, relatively laissez‐faire, capitalism to whiteness as a popular, or mass, identity, within the more state interventionist capitalism of the twentieth century is used to exemplify the mutable nature, and political complexities, of the relationship between working class and white identities. The paper concludes with some observations on the implications of this argument for the theory and practice of anti‐racism.

Differences in value and attitude change over the life course

An abundance of research has asserted that there are predictable changes that occur to a person's values and attitudes over the life course. This assertion follows the claim by some theorists that values and attitudes are similar in structure and function. This report tests the assertion that values and attitudes are mutable early in the life course, change to a conservative orientation over time, and eventually stabilize in the later stages of the life course. Period and cohort effects are discussed as possible sources of change and stability. Results are used to reconsider the idea that values and attitudes are similar in structure and function. This effort concludes that values and attitudes show marked differences in both their mutable nature over the life course and in the function each plays in the evaluation process.

Autobiography as Burla in the "Guzman de Alfarache"

This study analyzes the discursive and narratological articulations of subjectivity in Guzman de Alfarache -- the first picaresque novel of Spain's Golden Age. Davis's study demonstrates that while the Guzman appears to affirm the relationships of power and ideologies it represents, its composition underscores the contextual and mutable nature of discourses that structure society.

Sectoring patterns of spontaneous and radiation-induced somatic pink mutations in the stamen hairs of a temperature-sensitive mutable clone of Tradescantia.

The sectoring patterns of somatic pink mutations were analyzed in the stamen hairs of Tradescantia clone KU 20, a temperature-sensitive mutable clone. This clone is a blue/pink heterozygote, and its spontaneous pink mutation frequency increases up to about 40-fold at lower temperature. In order to elucidate the mutable nature of this clone, the sectoring patterns were analyzed on 1,123 spontaneous pink mutant events and on 2,725 pink mutant events induced by 0.606 and 1.28 Gy of gamma rays. The average number of pink cells per terminal pink mutant event (a row of pink cells including the terminal cell of a hair) occurred spontaneously was 7.40, whereas the number for the terminal pink mutant event induced by gamma rays varied from 3.33 to 9.88 depending on the post-irradiation days, i.e. , increased gradually as the number of days proceeded, then was stabilized at the level of spontaneous mutations after about three weeks. The average number of pink cells per interstitial pink mutant event (a single pink cell or two or more contiguous pink cells between blue cells) was 1.97 for spontaneous mutations, while the number for induced mutations varied also depending on the post-irradiation days. The ratio of the number of interstitial pink mutant events against that of terminal pink mutant events was 1.35 for spontaneous mutations, but the ratio for induced mutations varied also with post-irradiation period reaching 2.89 at the peak, indicating that more interstitial pink mutant events are induced by gamma rays than terminal pink mutant events, as compared with spontaneous mutations. The frequency of multiple pink mutant sectors in a hair was more than four times higher than that expected from independent occurrences in case of spontaneous mutations, while the frequency was close to the expectation in induced mutations, suggesting that somatic recombination is involved as one of the major causes of spontaneous mutations in this mutable clone.

Exercise and resistance to infection.

The influence of exercise on resistance to infection has been debated for decades. Part of this controversy is due to the complex interactions between pathogens and host defense mechanisms as well as to the mutable nature of exercise. Psychological influences and normal temporal variations in immune mechanisms have also complicated the issue. An understanding of how each of these factors affects host defense should help in the design of new experimental approaches to the problem as well as in the interpretation of previously published results.