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Coetzee & co. : failure, lies and autobiography
No full textThe most recent critical studies of J. M. Coetzee's oeuvre have paid little attention to the writer's autobiographical fictions, either downplaying their importance or ignoring them altogether. In this essay I make a case for the their formal and thematic significance. Focusing principally, though not exclusively, on the Scenes from Provincial Life (2011), I demonstrate how this trilogy of works is written against the generic impositions of life-writing. Those impositions turn on the notion of triumphalism: every memoir, auto/biography, confessional narrative, and so on, implicitly or explicitly affirms a teleology of achievement, in showing how the self-reflecting subject becomes a self-writing subject capable of narrating its own development. Coetzee's auto-fictions, by contrast, stage a kind of agon with this generic demand by focusing on failure, on solipsistic distraction, and on the nature of belonging. In addition, and following clues from Coetzee's unpublished notebooks, I suggest that the spurs for these textual reworkings can be found in French literature – in particular, the auto-fictive writings of Roland Barthes and Alain Robbe-Grillet. The Scenes are finally shown to be not only central to Coetzee's wider novelistic concerns, but also to his ethics of the outsider and the ordinary or everyday.18 page(s
Improving conservation outcomes for coral reefs affected by future oil palm development in Papua New Guinea
No full textClearing forests for oil palm plantations is a major threat to tropical terrestrial biodiversity, and may potentially have large impacts on downstream marine ecosystems (e.g., coral reefs). However, little is known about the impacts of runoff from oil palm plantations, so it is not clear how oil palm development should be modified to minimize the risk of degrading marine ecosystems, or how marine conservation plans should be modified to account for the impacts of oil palm development. We coupled terrestrial and marine biophysical models to simulate changes in sediment/nutrient composition on reefs as a result of oil palm development in Papua New Guinea, and predicted the response of coral and seagrass ecosystems to different land-use scenarios. The condition of almost 60% of coastal ecosystems were predicted to be substantially degraded (more than a 50% decline from their initial state) after 5 years if all suitable land was converted to oil palm, with only 4% of coastal ecosystems improving in condition as trees matured. We evaluated marine ecosystem condition if the oil palm developments were consistent with global sustainability guidelines and found that there were only slight improvements in ecosystems condition compared to the scenario with complete conversion of forest to oil palm. Substantially reducing the impact of oil palm development on marine ecosystems required limiting new plantings to hill slopes below 15°, a more stringent restriction than currently allowed for in the sustainability guidelines. We evaluated priority marine conservation areas given current land-use and found reef ecosystems in these areas will likely be heavily degraded in the future from runoff. We find that marine conservation plans should be modified to prioritize turbid areas where coral communities may be more tolerant of increased suspended sediment in the water. The approach developed here provides guidelines for modifying marine conservation priorities in areas with oil palm development. Importantly, oil palm development guidelines cannot be truly ecologically sustainable unless they are modified to account for the impacts of oil palm on coastal marine ecosystems.12 page(s
Effects of spectral smearing on performance of the spectral ripple and spectro-temporal ripple tests
No full textThe main aim of this study was to use spectral smearing to evaluate the efficacy of a spectral ripple test (SRt) using stationary sounds and a recent variant with gliding ripples called the spectro-temporal ripple test (STRt) in measuring reduced spectral resolution. In experiment 1 the highest detectable ripple density was measured using four amounts of spectral smearing (unsmeared, mild, moderate, and severe). The thresholds worsened with increasing smearing and were similar for the SRt and the STRt across the three conditions with smearing. For unsmeared stimuli, thresholds were significantly higher (better) for the STRt than for the SRt. An amplitude fluctuation at the outputs of simulated (gammatone) auditory filters centered above 6400 Hz was identified as providing a potential detection cue for the STRt stimuli. Experiment 2 used notched noise with energy below and above the passband of the SRt and STRt stimuli to reduce confounding cues in the STRt. Thresholds were almost identical for the STRt and SRt for both unsmeared and smeared stimuli, indicating that the confounding cue for the STRt was eliminated by the notched noise. Thresholds obtained with notched noise present could be predicted reasonably accurately using an excitation-pattern model.9 page(s
Professional associations – past contributions, present tensions and future opportunities
No full text14 page(s
Creation of backdoors in quantum communications via laser damage
No full textPractical quantum communication (QC) protocols are assumed to be secure provided implemented devices are properly characterized and all known side channels are closed. We show that this is not always true. We demonstrate a laser-damage attack capable of modifying device behavior on demand. We test it on two practical QC systems for key distribution and coin tossing, and show that newly created deviations lead to side channels. This reveals that laser damage is a potential security risk to existing QC systems, and necessitates their testing to guarantee security.6 page(s
Intrinsic and extrinsic controls on the geomorphic condition of upland swamps in Eastern NSW
No full textTemperate Highland Peat Swamps on Sandstone (THPSS) are a distinctive feature of low-relief plateaus in eastern Australia and are listed as an endangered ecological community under state and federal policy. A significant proportion of these 'upland swamps' occur within the World Heritage Blue Mountains of NSW. Here, long wall mining, coal seam gas extraction and catchment urbanisation are impacting on the conservation and protection status of these systems. Here we undertake a geomorphic condition assessment of these systems and analyse the range of intrinsic and extrinsic controls operating upon them. Of the 458 sites assessed, 120 (26%) were channelised fills and 338 (74%) were intact swamps. For intact swamps, 49% remain in good geomorphic condition compared to only 28% for channelised systems. Incision of these upland swamps cannot be explained by intrinsic controls such as catchment area, swamp slope, swamp size or shape relations alone. A range of interrelated extrinsic impacts associated with urbanisation are key controls on the condition and sensitivity of these systems. The most significant relationships occur between those swamps in good and moderate condition and percent of impervious area in a swamp catchment (< 10% coverage), distance to stormwater pipes and groundwater bores (both < 500 m distant), and the extent of stormwater connectivity (contain no stormwater outlets). In general, once the condition of a swamp deteriorates past good or moderate, it is impacted. In a swamp management context, identifying 'thresholds of concern' and treating extrinsic controls associated with human-disturbance (through either conservation or rehabilitation) has the potential to significantly impact swamp type and condition into the future.13 page(s
Mesoproterozoic Tasmania : witness to the East Antarctica-Laurentia connection within Nuna [reply]
No full text1 page(s
Faecal incontinence : are structural and functional studies of the anorectum indicative of symptomatology?
No full text2 page(s
Reflective indocility : Tariq Ba Odah's Guantánamo hunger strike as a corporeal speech act of circumlocutionary refusal
No full textTariq Ba Odah is a detainee who has spent over a third of his life in Guantánamo Bay's detention camp. Despite being cleared for release in 2009, he has been imprisoned in Guantánamo without charge since 2002. In this essay, I situate Ba Odah's ongoing hunger strike in the context of Michel Foucault's theorization of the politics of resistance. I draw on Foucault's delineation of the criticality of avowal in juridico-penal settings and the manner in which resistant acts of avowal, as instantiations of what he terms "just speech," are imbricated with relations of veridiction and the capacity to speak truth to power. In my theorization of Ba Odah's hunger strike as a defiant speech act fundamentally predicated on a modality of body politics, in the latter part of this essay I work to illuminate the complex relations of embodied cognition that inscribe his resistant practice.22 page(s