Tiny Details Research Articles

Swelling and pillaring of the layered precursor IPC-1P: tiny details determine everything

The influence of swelling (i.e. the size of tetraalkylammonium surfactant molecule, the presence of tetrapropylammonium hydroxide (TPAOH), pH) and pillaring (i.e. the ratio between the swollen precursor IPC-1P and tetraethyl orthosilicate) conditions on the structure and textural properties of the resulting materials was studied in detail for IPC-1P, which is the layered precursor of zeolite PCR. The swelling of IPC-1P proceeds efficiently under basic conditions both in mixed C(n)H(2n+1)N(CH3)3Cl/TPAOH systems and in C(n)H(2n+1)N(CH3)3OH (n = 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18) solutions at pH = 13-14. The intercalation of C(n)H(2n+1)N(+)(CH3)3 in IPC-1P resulted in the formation of expanded materials with interlayer distances growing with increasing length of the alkyl chain in C(n)H(2n+1)N(CH3)3(+): 1.59-1.86 (n = 8) < 1.89-2.11 (10) < 2.05-2.26 (12) = 2.08-2.26 (14) < 2.37-2.43 (16) < 2.57-2.71 (18) Å. IPC-2 zeolite was formed during calcination of IPC-1P samples swollen in C(n)H(2n+1)N(CH3)3OH solution, while PCR zeolite can be obtained by calcination of IPC-1P treated with either C(n)H(2n+1)N(CH3)3Cl/TPAOH or C(n)H(2n+1)N(CH3)3Cl. The pillaring of IPC-1P samples swollen with C(n)H(2n+1)N(CH3)3OH provided mesoporous materials with narrow pore size distribution in the range 2.5-3.5 nm. Pillared materials derived from the samples swollen in the presence of TPAOH were characterized by a broader pore size distribution. The optimal TEOS/IPC-1PSW ratio being sufficient for the formation of well-ordered pillared derivatives characterized by improved textural properties (S(BET) = 878 m(2) g(-1), V(total) = 0.599 cm(3) g(-1)) was found to be 1 : 1.5.

Plants from Abroad: Botanical Terminology in 18th-century British Encyclopaedias

During the 18th century British encyclopaedias included in their lemmata an increasing number of botanical lexis, that is the terminology pertaining to “that branch of natural history which treats of the uses, characters, classes, orders, genera, and species of plants. […] and what useful and ornamental purposes may be expected from the cultivation of it [i.e. botany]” (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1768-1771, s.v. Botany). More often than not, these terms represented migrating plants coming from exotic places, new geographical areas, whether eastwards or westwards. The general aim of this survey is to investigate the representation of the botanical science in 18th-century universal and specialized encyclopaedias, starting from prefaces and going on with the micro-texts of the single entries s.v. Botany. The starting point is thus theoretical botany. A further point in the analysis focuses on applied botany and discusses those plants such as Camellia Sinensis, Coffea Arabica, Theobroma Cacao, Saccharum Officinarum and Cinchona Officinalis which were mostly exploited for commercial and/or medical reasons. The individual entries include the most tiny details on the single headwords-topics and also display an acceptable plurality of beliefs, viewpoints and perspectives, focussing on botanical descriptions, historical information, socio-cultural issues, legal, political and commercial considerations.

Design of Biomaterials: The Balancing Act between Reductionism and Systems Thinking

I start with a story that demonstrates the importance of the above quote. As an undergraduate, I had great interest in biomaterials, and took a technical elective graduate course in biomedical engineering focused on rehabilitation engineering. We studied all sorts of electrical stimulation devices and controllers designed to trigger different muscle groups for various therapies—we even tested them on ourselves! In one case study, our professor told us that he and a team of engineers managed to design a control system and series of implantable electrodes in groups such that locomotion was restored for a quadriplegic patient—a fantastic achievement! Such a solution required knowledge of physiology, electrical engineering, biomedical engineering, computer process control, electronics, and surgery. However, despite such a wonderful achievement (allowing a paralyzed patient to walk again) the project was an utter failure. Why? Simply put, when the patient was asked to comment on what they thought about their restored ability to walk again the patient effectively said: ‘‘Walking is alright I guess, but really, I am used to the wheelchair now. I would much rather have bladder control than to walk again, but no one asked me.’’ The moral? Human factors play a huge role in the design of solutions, and we, as technical people, sometimes forget to ask important non-technical questions. The same is true in research of biomaterials—the big picture is just as important as all the little details. The painting in Fig. 1 by Georges Seurat illustrates that, like a research subject, a big picture is made of many tiny details (inset) with their own problems to solve. For example, the color and placement of each paint daub must be precise and uniform in size or texture, but when a single daub is then seen close to nearest neighbors, next nearest neighbors, and next–next nearest neighbors, etc., an image representative of something altogether different from a single paint daub is formed. The analogy to materials research is that with proper care to integrate the little details, a bigger picture or understanding may follow. The caution is to not get lost in details and to insure a process wherein such little details are purposely designed with the aim of seeing the big picture, or impact of the results. Perhaps this is an obvious analogy, but the analogy can be extended to ways of thinking as well: each paint daub is a detail as discovered by reductionist thinking, yet when all the daubs are integrated together, a beautiful scene blossoms, and forthwith, emotional and psychological responses are triggered based on the viewers’ association with the particular depiction of the world—hence a systems thinking approach, complete with human factors, is seen in the entirety of the impressionist painting. As we have tried to understand our world, two schools of thought, reductionist thinking and systems thinking, have evolved. Each has its merit and disadvantages, but in this commentary we explore each paradigm in relation to how biomaterials design and research is being carried out currently, and we propose some ideas for the future—we need a more present and effective balance between reductionism and systems thinking. John A. Nychka and Jamie J. Kruzic—guest editors for the Biomaterials Committee of the TMS Electronic, Magnetic, and Photonic Materials Division and the TMS Structural Materials Division—coordinated the topic BiologicalMaterials Science: Fundamentals in this issue. JOM

Detail-Preserving Controllable Deformation from Sparse Examples

Recent advances in laser scanning technology have made it possible to faithfully scan a real object with tiny geometric details, such as pores and wrinkles. However, a faithful digital model should not only capture static details of the real counterpart but also be able to reproduce the deformed versions of such details. In this paper, we develop a data-driven model that has two components; the first accommodates smooth large-scale deformations and the second captures high-resolution details. Large-scale deformations are based on a nonlinear mapping between sparse control points and bone transformations. A global mapping, however, would fail to synthesize realistic geometries from sparse examples, for highly deformable models with a large range of motion. The key is to train a collection of mappings defined over regions locally in both the geometry and the pose space. Deformable fine-scale details are generated from a second nonlinear mapping between the control points and per-vertex displacements. We apply our modeling scheme to scanned human hand models, scanned face models, face models reconstructed from multiview video sequences, and manually constructed dinosaur models. Experiments show that our deformation models, learned from extremely sparse training data, are effective and robust in synthesizing highly deformable models with rich fine features, for keyframe animation as well as performance-driven animation. We also compare our results with those obtained by alternative techniques.

Grški vplivi v Ovidijevem Koledarju

V prispevku raziskujemo, v čem se je Ovidij pri svoji didaktični pesnitvi o rimskem koledarju Fastinaslanjal na grško izročilo ajtiološkega upesnjevanja koledarskih enot in astronomije, v čem pa je bil njegov pristop izviren. Med izvirne poteze vsekakor štejeta razsežnost zastavljenega projekta, ki po kronološkem zaporedju obdela večino dni od januarja do junija, in očitna ambicija po stvaritvi besedila, ki bi kljub ne-herojski elegični meri delovalo kot svojevrsten nacionalni ep: tematika rimskih koledarskih praznikov naj bi ustvarjala in utrjevala občutek, kaj pomeni biti Rimljan v avgustejski dobi. Tako je Ovidij grški model ajtiološke pesnitve v elegičnem distihu napolnil z rimsko vsebino, to pa spet nerazdružljivo prepletel s številnimi grškimi nadrobnostmi.

Preface: Phys. Status Solidi C 7/3‐4

Preface: Phys. Status Solidi C 7/3‐4

A Constructivist Study of Middle School Students’ Narratives and Ecological Illustrations

Using participant observation, we describe/interpret the results of teaching a constructivist unit that empowered students in narrative writing and illustration. Participant observation methods included daily note taking, pre-post questioning, and photographing artworks. We analyzed students’ stories and illustrations with borrowed and emerging categories and included students’ criteria from their final peer assessment called Critter Critique. Findings suggest they have misconceptions about the desert (an ugly place or has triangular shaped mountains). When narrating, students showed propensity to use first person narration and humor. They are fascinated with the predator/prey theme and snakes are their dominant desert creatures. When illustrating, some students used expression/projection; all used three or more spatial grounds; and many drew tiny details and secret places. Educators need to discuss with students life cycles in the desert, essential issues such as survival, their place in the preservation of this delicate and quickly disappearing wilderness, and the reasons why they should take care of the desert and its animals.

Interaction of Lipid Membrane with Nanostructured Surfaces

Tiny details of the phospholipid (DMPC) membrane morphology in close vicinity to nanostructured silica surfaces have been discovered in the atomic force microscopy experiments. The structural features of the silica surface were varied in the experiments by the deposition of silica nanoparticles of different diameter on plane and smooth silica substrates. It was found that, due to the barrier function of the lipid membrane, only particles larger than 22 nm in diameter with a smooth surface were completely enveloped by the lipid membrane. However, nanoparticles with bumpy surfaces (curvature diameter of bumps as that of particles <22 nm) were only partially enveloped by the lipid bilayer. For the range of nanostructure dimensions between 1.2 and 22 nm, the lipid membrane underwent structural rearrangements by forming pores (holes). The nanoparticles were accommodated into the pores but not enveloped by the lipid bilayer. The study also found that the lipid membrane conformed to the substrate with surface structures of dimensions less than 1.2 nm without losing the membrane integrity. The experimental results are in accord with the analytical free energy model, which describes the membrane coverage, and numerical simulations which evaluate adhesion of the membrane and dynamics as a function of surface topology. The results obtained in this study are useful for the selection of dimensions and shapes for drug-delivery cargo and for the substrate for supported lipid bilayers. They also help in qualitative understanding the role of length scales involved in the mechanisms of endocytosis and cytotoxicity of nanoparticles. These findings provide a new approach for patterning supported lipid membranes with well-defined features in the 1.2-22 nm range.

Bearing Witness

One of the recurring metaphors in HansGeorg Gadamer's writings on art and specifically poetry is that of and Artwork in Word and Image: 'So True, So Full of Being!' (1993) from the early nineties, he asserts that the that we seek in the testimony of art is the truth that can be attained in art's fulfillment.1 Already in 1971, in one of the articles collected in The Relevance of the Beautiful and Other Essays (1977), Gadamer claims that [the poetic word] bears to itself and does not admit anything that might verify it.2 Whether poetry and art themselves or one's response to them is in question, the motif of witness persists throughout Gadamer's work. his philosophical commentary on Paul Celan's cycle of short poems Breath-crystal [Atemkristall], while referring to his own experience of reading Celan's hermetic and demanding lyrics, whose content Celan delineated in terms of a message in a bottle, Gadamer writes: In bearing here to an extended acquaintanceship, this reader [i.e., Gadamer] believes he has found 'sense' in these dark characters - not always an unambiguous sense, not always a 'complete' sense.3 Celan himself apparently endorsed such an alignment of poetry with testimony in the poem Etched Away whose final words are precisely your witness.4 Pointing out that the phrase is attributed to the poem itself which Celan compares to a breathcrystal, Gadamer's analysis concludes: [One] should also perceive here a contrast between the encircling walls of ice and the tiny crystal of breath, this most fleeting existence [Dasein] of the geometric miracle that is the delicately marked snowflake fluttering alone in the air of a cold winter's day. This tiny detail is, nonetheless, witness. The poem calls it irrefutable witness, apparently in stark contrast to the perjurious testimonies of fashioned [gemachter] poems. are what it testifies to (Your witness) - the intimate, unknown You which, for the I that here is the I of the poet as well as the reader, is its You, wholly, wholly real. (GC 1 25-26) Gadamer's overall approach to poetry and its relation to testimony here may be interpreted in four distinct ways. First, his hermeneutics is often held to promote a traditional and even Aristotelian poetics. Second, some critics, drawing attention to his intense interest in and analyses of Mallarme 's, Rilke's, and especially Celan's poetry, have argued instead that his theory does not operate within a conventional hermeneutic framework. Timothy Clark, for example, underlines Gadamer's affirmation of openness and singularity, and points out his metaphorical portrayal of poetry as the sole truthful and responsible to what it says. On this basis, Clark associates Gadamer's philosophy with Derrida's thinking. Third, as I will show, Gadamer's poetics, in adopting the dichotomy between true and false testimony, relies too much on the received semantics and pragmatics of the institution of testimony, thereby organizing Ideologically all poetic testimony but also subordinating its singularity to the higher demand for proof and truthfulness. Derrida, in contrast, in his examination of bearing in Celan's poetry, in contrast to this, we may then say insists on a certain hiatus between the concept of and the discursive act of testifying, between the a priori singular responsibility of the former and the latter's generalizability. When applied to literature, this hiatus reveals an essential possibility of perjury as the aporetic condition that splits the here and now of the writing and reading efforts and complicates their interpretation in terms of either truthfulness or perjury. Finally, I will briefly go back to Gadamer's text on Celan to suggest that, despite his declarations, there are traces in his study gesturing towards the originary aporia of testimony that Derrida's analysis has brought out. …

After Blanchot: Literature, Criticism, Philosophy by Leslie Hill, Brian Nelson, Dimitris Vardoulakis

550 Reviews collected byTouret, of reviews contemporary withMoravagine's publication, includ ing those of Barbusse, Larbaud and t'Serstevens. All in all, this is an indispensable collection of consistently thought-provoking and penetrating essays on thenovel that Paul Husson called amodern version ofDante's Inferno (p. 255). UNIVERSITY OF EAST ANGLIA CLIVE SCOTT After Blanchot: Literature, Criticism, Philosophy. Ed. by LESLIE HILL, BRIAN NEL SON, and DIMITRIS VARDOULAKIS. Newark: University ofDelaware Press. 2005. Viii+277pp. $30. ISBN 978-o-874I3-946-4. Maurice Blanchot enjoyed celebrating his birthday. Or at least, in a gesture towhich Christophe Bident, Leslie Hill, and Michael Holland have in particular drawn our attention, he seems to have enjoyed encoding references to its date, or near-misses, in and around his works, sometimes even in the date of their dept lgal. It is then perhaps especially fitting,for all the complexity of his rigorous reflections on the question ofmemory, that the centenary ofBlanchot's birth, celebrated inSeptember 2007, should have produced some notable acts of commemoration, including a Cerisy colloque (held in July2007) and thepublication byGallimard of a volume of his early, and previously uncollected, literarycriticism. If the current volume pre-dates these festivities, it comes nevertheless as a welcome indication of the depth, range, and quality of the critical work towhich Blanchot's writings are now consistently giving rise.The collection has itsorigins in the conference 'Blanchot, theObscure' held in Melbourne inAugust 2004, where a number of itsessays were firstgiven. Featuring many of themost significant established Blanchot critics, it also includes thework of younger researchers; and both constituencies do much to indicate the ability of Blanchot's work to engage a diverse range of referencepoints. A good number of the essays here, taken collectively, demonstrate the detail and force of the intersections between Blanchot and such interlocutors, familiar and more unexpected, as Paul de Man, Baudelaire, Holderlin, Jean Paul, Melville, Kierkegaard, or Giorgio Caproni. In a characteristically incisive account of Blanchot's (non-)concept of the 'neuter', Christophe Bident traces the filiations-acknowledged and otherwise-from Blan chot to Barthes, and sets these compellingly in the context ofwhat he presents as Blanchot's ethical search: for a just way of being in theworld. Robert Antelme is of course, as Bident shows, a decisive figurehere; this essential connection is deve loped further, with the crucial addition of Blanchot's reflections on 'Etre juif', by Christopher Fynsk, in a typically sensitive and tenacious discussion of Blanchot's 'L'Indestructible'. Elsewhere, Leslie Hill unfolds with contagious urgency the ex treme demands made by Blanchot's approach to that strange thing called literature on contemporary literarycriticism (demands which emerge as, to say the least, perti nent to the crisis inwhich thisdiscipline plainly finds itself,but which it isdesperate to ignore); Kevin Hart pursues what isemerging as a truly indispensable enquiry into Blanchot's relation toparticular elements of Judaeo-Christian thought and practice (here, with specific and extremely rich reference to iconoclasm); Michael Holland provides an exemplary reading of the significance of Blanchot's manceuvrings in re lation to dates, bringing out with supreme rigour the intimate connections between tiny textual details and themost imposing historical contexts. The collection closes with theextraordinary reflectionsprovoked in sculptor Elizabeth Presa-whose work features on its cover-by Blanchot, here alongside Rilke and Rodin. Overall, this volume is a rich resource, and strangely heartening. If our time, afterBlanchot, is MLR, I03.2, 2oo8 55 I once more a time of need, the kind of thinking this collection brings within reach nevertheless turns thenecessity toendure it into a kind of good fortune. QUEENS' COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE MARTIN CROWLEY Provisionality and thePoem: Transition in the Work ofDu Bouchet, Jaccottet and Noell. By EMMAWAGSTAFF. (Faux Titre, 278) Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi. 2006. 244 pp. E48. ISBN 978-90-420-I939-3. In his recently republished Eclisse, Jacques Dupin recalls the solitariness of the emergent post-war poetic voices of his own generation, who, unlike Char, Artaud, Michaux, or Ponge, had littleprospect of being published, doggedly pursuing their artwithout public recognition, in the shadow of the already verymuch moribund formsofResistance and Surrealist writing. Far removed from the limelight, forming no identifiable group, these poets developed highly individual practices...

The function-transferring model construction for X-ray digital radiographic system

This paper is aimed at presenting a renovated model-building method of transfer function for industrial X-ray digital radiography based on the amorphous silicon X-ray flat-panel detector. The system, known as point-spreading function (PSF), is composed of three parts: the system geometrical dispersion with a non-spot power source, the scintillating screen dispersion and the aperture sampling of the pixel detector. For the innovation purpose, we have first of all established a mathematical simulation of the PSF and the modulation transfer function (MTF) on the basis of analyzing the intensity distribution of X-ray penetration area in each part and by taking Gaussian functions as a mathematical equation for depicting the transfer behavior of each part of the system. And, then, we have worked out the approximately effective bandwidth of the system from its half-wave width. And, finally, by taking the digital radiography based on the flat-panel detector for sampling, the paper has provided a theoretical foundation for the industrial X-ray radiographic testing and measurement operation. In addition, the author has also estimated the validation of the model through experiments and proved that the method helps to make high resolutions of the diacritical tiniest details in the work-pieces, which has shown and will show its technical rationality, technical appropriateness and practical working value.

Caryll Houselander: Essential Writings

Reviewed by: Caryll Houselander: Essential Writings Claire Wolfteich (bio) Caryll Houselander: Essential Writings. Selected with Commentary by Wendy M. Wright. Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Press, 2005. 215 pp. $16.00 Eccentric, offbeat, and deeply attuned to the divine, Frances Caryll Houselander (1901–1954) added a distinctive voice to the vibrant lay Catholicism of her day. This English Catholic mystic, artist, and healer was a popular spiritual writer in the 1940s and 1950s. Hers is a voice well worth discovering, or rediscovering, and Wendy Wright has done a great service in collecting a wide range of her writings and artwork in one introductory volume. Expanding beyond Houselander's most familiar books, such as The Reed of God (London: Sheed and Ward, 1944) and the autobiographical A Rocking Horse Catholic (London: Sheed and Ward, 1955), Caryll Houselander: Essential Writings includes excerpts from the laywoman's personal letters and journals, magazine articles, poetry, and children's stories, as well as reproductions of her artwork. These diverse materials, amplified by Wright's commentary, give us a rich lens through which to view Houselander's spirituality. Key to that spirituality, according to Wright, is Houselander's perception of Christ abundantly present in the incarnate world and our own call to participate fully in that life of Christ—what Houselander calls "the Christing of the world." Houselander's mystical visions began in her childhood following the divorce of her parents during her stay at a boarding school run by French nuns. Her mysticism is richly imbedded in her social context; her first vision occurred during World War I and involved a perception of Christ's crown of thorns placed on the head of a sad, ostracized Bavarian nun at her school. While Catholicism would be her spiritual home for most of her life, Houselander also experienced marginalization within the church and explored other paths—from Protestant churches to Buddhism and Judaism. She was particularly drawn to Russian Orthodoxy, and her second mystical vision brought her face to face with an icon of Christ the King Crucified. Again, her mysticism is not detached from the everyday context of life—this vision occurs on a grey day right in the middle of a London street: "I was on my way to buy potatoes, hurrying because I had been warned that they were wanted for dinner, and so I must not linger. Suddenly I was held still, as if a magnet held my feet to a particular spot in the middle of the road. In front of me, above me . . . was something which I can only call a gigantic and living Russian icon . . . . Christ himself, with His head bowed down by the crown, brooding over the world" (27–28). Houselander's deep convictions about the nature of the church and Christian vocation flow from this perception of the suffering Christ present in the midst of the world. Shaped by the liturgical renewal movement, Houselander writes passionately about the Mystical Body of Christ, in whose life Christians live as interconnected, co-suffering members. "Though Christ in us is our whole life, no one of us can lead His whole life in all its aspects . . . . So we actually do live just one tiny detail of His life but, taking us all together united in Him, we make up the Christ on earth, the Mystical Body" (31). Each person becomes truly part of the body of Christ in becoming fully oneself; that is each person's calling and gift to the body. As Wright explains, for Houselander: "to become holy thus is not to strive to become a generic spiritual person but to become what God intended one to be: oneself made transparent by the indwelling Spirit of Christ" (130). Indeed, Houselander has little patience for piety that squeezes out individuality and authenticity: [End Page 218] "everyone has an absolute obligation to live—not merely to exist, not merely to pickle himself in piety like a gherkin in vinegar awaiting the Eternal feast" (131). She loves the beauty and poetry of Catholicism and she brings her own offbeat sense of humor to spirituality, as when she calls on people to make "slightly mad faces" to others on the bus as a work...

Local Mass Conservation and Velocity Splitting in PV-Based Balanced Models. Part II: Numerical Results

The effects of enforcing local mass conservation on the accuracy of non-Hamiltonian potential-vorticity- based balanced models (PBMs) are examined numerically for a set of chaotic shallow-water f-plane vortical flows in a doubly periodic square domain. The flows are spawned by an unstable jet and all have domain-maximum Froude and Rossby numbers Fr ∼0.5 and Ro ∼1, far from the usual asymptotic limits Ro → 0, Fr → 0, with Fr defined in the standard way as flow speed over gravity wave speed. The PBMs considered are the plain and hyperbalance PBMs defined in Part I. More precisely, they are the plain-δδ, plain-γγ, and plain-δγ PBMs and the corresponding hyperbalance PBMs, of various orders, where “order” is related to the number of time derivatives of the divergence equation used in defining balance and potential-vorticity inversion. For brevity the corresponding hyperbalance PBMs are called the hyper-δδ, hyper-γγ, and hyper-δγ PBMs, respectively. As proved in Part I, except for the leading-order plain-γγ each plain PBM violates local mass conservation. Each hyperbalance PBM results from enforcing local mass conservation on the corresponding plain PBM. The process of thus deriving a hyperbalance PBM from a plain PBM is referred to for brevity as plain-to-hyper conversion. The question is whether such conversion degrades the accuracy, as conjectured by McIntyre and Norton. Cumulative accuracy is tested by running each PBM alongside a suitably initialized primitive equation (PE) model for up to 30 days, corresponding to many vortex rotations. The accuracy is sensitively measured by the smallness of the ratio ϵ = ||QPBM − QPE||2/||QPE||2, where QPBM and QPE denote the potential vorticity fields of the PBM and the PEs, respectively, and || ||2 is the L2 norm. At 30 days the most accurate PBMs have ϵ ≈ 10−2 with PV fields hardly distinguishable visually from those of the PEs, even down to tiny details. Most accurate is defined by minimizing ϵ over all orders and truncation types δδ, γγ, and δγ. Contrary to McIntyre and Norton’s conjecture, the minimal ϵ values did not differ systematically or significantly between plain and hyperbalance PBMs. The smallness of ϵ suggests that the slow manifolds defined by the balance relations of the most accurate PBMs, both plain and hyperbalance, are astonishingly close to being invariant manifolds of the PEs, at least throughout those parts of phase space for which Ro ≲ 1 and Fr ≲ 0.5. As another way of quantifying the departures from such invariance, that is, of quantifying the fuzziness of the PEs’ slow quasimanifold, initialization experiments starting at days 1, 2, . . . 10 were carried out in which attention was focused on the amplitudes of inertia–gravity waves representing the imbalance arising in 1-day PE runs. With balance defined by the most accurate PBMs, and imbalance by departures therefrom, the results of the initialization experiments suggest a negative correlation between early imbalance and late cumulative error ϵ. In such near-optimal conditions the imbalance seems to be acting like weak background noise producing an effect analogous to so-called stochastic resonance, in that a slight increase in noise level brings PE behavior closer to the balanced behavior defined by the most accurate PBMs when measured cumulatively over 30 days.

The ?Crisis of the Soul?: Psychoanalysis and African Literature

Occasional forays notwithstanding, psychoanalysis and African literature have long maintained a studious, if not wary, distance from each other. As one might expect, cost to both has been high: for psychoanalysis, opportunity to actually establish its claims to providing a universal hermeneutics, especially by submitting key concepts (the subject, unconscious, and so forth) and theoretical paradigms (Freud, Jung, Stein, Lacan, etc.) to rigorous scrutiny in context of African literary works of art; for African literature, opportunity not only to use psychoanalytic criticism but also to undertake a rigorous critique of psychoanalytic theories of subject, sexuality and identity. We can take a measure of distance between psychoanalysis and African literature by citing two cases where critical dialogue would have been beneficial to both. first case occurs in Jacques Lacan's The Topic of Imaginary (1954). Lacan opens section of his seminar dealing with the symbolic situation of Oedipus by teasing his audience with prospect of a lecture he might deliver on primitive mythology. Observing that such myths are not inferior, he adds: When we study a mythology, for example one that might perhaps appear with respect to a Sudanese population, we discover that for them Oedipus complex is just a rather thin joke. It is a very tiny detail within an immense myth. In context of this Sudanese myth, he declares, Oedipus complex may so abridged an edition that in end it cannot always be used. This notwithstanding, Lacan reassures his audience: But no matter. Us [sic] analysts have been satisfied with it up to now (86). Perhaps Lacan is correct. Perhaps, too, he is wrong. Indeed, Lacan's reference to this Sudanese myth raises several questions. Why continue to make do with Oedipal schema when one could learn more from Sudanese myth? Rather than make do, might one not use this myth either to corroborate, repudiate, or illuminate distinction Lacan was making between the imaginary, symbolic and real? To what particular primitive Sudanese myth was he referring? Of what significance might its subsumption of Oedipus myth be to Lacan's theory of subject? Does it merely disclose its conceptual limits, or does it subvert theory altogether? It is tempting to let matter rest by reading Lacan's reference to Sudanese myth as just one more instance of Africanist discourse-others include Jung's panic attacks at prospect of going black and Freud's characterization

On the influence of pore shape, contact angle and film flows on drying of capillary porous media

As pointed out in several previous works, thick liquid film flow can represent a major transport mechanism in drying. The effect of films is to greatly reduce the drying time compared to situations where they cannot develop. Using pore network simulations, we explore the influence of pore shape and contact angle on drying rates during the isothermal drying of porous materials in relation with the effect of liquid films when viscous effects are important in the films but not in the liquid saturated pores. It is shown that the overall drying time is greatly affected by the pore shape and contact angle when film flows are important and that incorporating the film effect in the pore network model leads to a much better agreement with experimental results. Film flows can significantly contribute to the occurrence and/or the duration of the constant rate period (CRP), which is a classical feature of convective drying. When film flows are important, the quantitative prediction of drying rate becomes very difficult for it depends on tiny details of the pore space geometry and is affected by possible changes in the local wettability conditions. This contributes to explain why the accurate prediction of drying rate still remains essentially an open question, at least when the effect of films cannot be neglected.

Complex Parameter Landscape for a Complex Neuron Model

The electrical activity of a neuron is strongly dependent on the ionic channels present in its membrane. Modifying the maximal conductances from these channels can have a dramatic impact on neuron behavior. But the effect of such modifications can also be cancelled out by compensatory mechanisms among different channels. We used an evolution strategy with a fitness function based on phase-plane analysis to obtain 20 very different computational models of the cerebellar Purkinje cell. All these models produced very similar outputs to current injections, including tiny details of the complex firing pattern. These models were not completely isolated in the parameter space, but neither did they belong to a large continuum of good models that would exist if weak compensations between channels were sufficient. The parameter landscape of good models can best be described as a set of loosely connected hyperplanes. Our method is efficient in finding good models in this complex landscape. Unraveling the landscape is an important step towards the understanding of functional homeostasis of neurons.

Contextual-based Hopfield neural network for medical image edge detection

Detection and outlining of boundaries of organs and tumors in computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) images are prerequisite in medical applications. A special design Hopfield neural network called the contextual Hopfield neural network (CHNN) is presented for finding the edges of CT and MRI images. Different from the conventional 2-D Hopfield neural networks, the CHNN maps the 2-D Hopfield network at the original image plane. With the direct mapping, the network is capable of incorporating pixels' contextual information into an edge-detecting procedure. As a result, the effect of tiny details and noise will be effectively removed by the CHNN. Furthermore, the problem of satisfying strong constraints can be alleviated and results in a fast converge. Our experimental results show that the CHNN can obtain more appropriate, more continued edge points than Laplacian-based, Marr-Hildreth's, Canny's, wavelet-based, and CHEFNN methods.

REPLY

We would like to thank Dr Kuczkowski and Dr Mikaszewski for their comments as they give us the possibility to clarify some points that probably were not sufficiently highlighted in our work. We congratulate the Polish colleagues for the detailed review of their experience with acute otitis media (AOM); we decided for a point by point reply to their comments. In our study, the epidemiology of otogenic complications of AOM was not developed as it was out of our purposes. We report our experience at the Department of Otolaryngology, Head and Neck Surgery of Padua University, a tertiary referral centre. We deal with patients who come from the whole region Veneto (about 4 500 000 inhabitants), but who have been treated, in the great majority, by general practitioners, general paediatricians and paediatric ENT doctors before coming to our attention, mostly for otitis complications. Even if it is possible to estimate the number of children treated for AOM at our Department, this is not an ideal setting to assess the incidence of AOM or its complications. Considering surgical approach to the second patient, we confirm that complete left mastoidectomy was performed without complete epi-tympanectomy. The first millimetres of tympanic tract of facial nerve resulted dehiscent through antrotomy, just medially to the lateral semicircular canal. We did not complete surgical exploration of facial nerve tympanic tract. High resolution computed tomography (HRCT) offers fine details of the middle ear situation in presence of AOM and is nowadays considered an important investigative tool for surgical indication. Unfortunately HRCT presents some limitations in evaluating the tympanic segment of the facial nerve. Even if the opinion of Swartz1 that facial canal dehiscences are impossible to detect on HRCT was overcome by the rapid technological evolution of computed tomography devices, dehiscences still appear to be extremely difficult to identify.2, 3 Fuse et al.4 reported a correct HRCT diagnosis of the facial canal situation in 75% of the 61 considered patients. The same authors stated that the percentage was lower when only the tympanic portion of the facial nerve was considered. Moreover the patients that we described were infant and children and the small dimensions of the anatomical structures examined did not help the correct diagnosis of these tiny details. Therefore it is not so unusual that in two of our patients the presence of the tympanic wall dehiscence could not be detected at HRCT examination. It is well known that intensive measures to control the infectious process usually allow excellent return of facial function without facial nerve decompression in children. The indication criteria for facial nerve decompression in non-responding patients with complete paralysis are still debated. Electroneurography is a reliable diagnostic tool to differentiate the patients who will have spontaneous recovery from those who are expected to have a poor prognosis.5 For these latter, facial nerve decompression surgery should be considered as the last opportunity to save an already wasted facial function, but the parents of the young patients should be made aware that the untreated outcomes are not known and that the benefits of surgery are proven only by limited series.6, 7 We advocate a randomized study on patients who present >95% fibres degeneration, as it is the only way to set an evidence-based treatment protocol.

Spatiotemporal Hopfield neural cube for diagnosing recurrent nasal papilloma

Gadolinium-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is widely used to detect recurrent nasal tumours. A specifically designed two-layer Hopfield neural network, called the spatiotemporal Hopfield neural cube (SHNC), is presented, to be used for detecting recurrent nasal papilloma. Differing from conventional, two-dimensional Hopfield neural networks, the SHNC extends the one-layer, two-dimensional Hopfield network in the original image plane into a two-layer, three-dimensional (3D) Hopfield network with pixel classification implemented in its third dimension. With extended 3D architecture, the network is able to use each pixel's spatial information in a pixel labelling procedure. Because the SHNC takes pixel spatial information into consideration, the effects of tiny detail or noise are removed. As a result, the drawback of disconnected fractions can be avoided. Furthermore, owing to the incorporation of competitive learning rules to update neuron states, to avoid the problem of having to satisfy strong constraints, the convergence of the network was improved. In addition, a more accurate signal-time curve, the relative intensity change (RIC), was adopted to represent the gadolinium-enhanced MRI temporal information, and the RIC curves of recurrent nasal papilloma were incorporated into the SHNC. The experimental results showed that the SHNC could obtain a more appropriate, precise position of recurrent nasal papilloma than the k-means, principal components analysis (PCA) or Eigenimage-filtering methods. The average sensitivity and specificity of the 26 cases were 0.9998 and 0.9961, respectively. These values demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed technique.

A crisis in oversight [Special section

This work presents the design and modeling of highspeed circuits. Modeling of high-speed circuits is usually divided into physical and behavioral representations. Physical modeling is the actual transistor level design of the high-speed chip or circuit for inter-chip communications and system level simulations. Behavioral modeling imitates the behavior of the circuit when various input/output conditions are encountered. Behavioral modeling is much faster than transistor level modeling because it does not include all the tiny details of transistors. Rather it focuses on the behavior of the circuit. But more accurate results are obtained from physical modeling because it does include all the tiny details that govern the model functionality. Physical modeling using SPICE gives accurate real life operation but requires a long simulation time. While behavioral modeling using input/output buffer information specification takes less simulation time. ASIC designers are using VHDL/Verilog to perform and test chip design on an FPGA for high volume production.