142 research outputs found
Writing from the shadowlands: how cross-cultural literature negotiates the legacy of Edward Said
No full textThis thesis examines the impact of Edward Said's influential work Orientalism and its legacy in respect of contemporary reading and writing across cultures. It also questions the legitimacy of Said's retrospective stereotyping of early examples of cross-cultural representation in literature as uncompromisingly 'orientalist'.
It is well known that the release of Edward Said's Orientalism in 1978 was responsible for the rise of a range of cultural and critical theories from multiculturalism to postcolonialism. It was a study that not only polarized critics and forced scholars to re-examine orientalist archives, but persuaded creative writers to re-think their ethnographic positions when it came to the literary representations of cultures other than their own. Without detracting from the enormous impact of Said, this thesis isolates gaps and silences in Said that need correcting. Furthermore, there is an element of intransigence, an uncompromising refusal to fine-tune what is essentially a binary discourse of the West and its other in Said's work, that encourages the continued interrogation of power relations but which, because of its very boldness, paradoxically disallows the extent to which the conflict of cultures indeed produced new, hybrid social and cultural formations.
In an attempt to challenge the severity of Said's claim that 'every European, in what he could say about the Orient, was consequently a racist, an imperialist, and almost totally ethnocentric', the thesis examines a number of different discursive contexts in which such a presumption is challenged. Thus while the second chapter discusses the 'traditional' profession-based orientalism of nineteenth-century E. G. Browne, the third considers the anti-imperialism of colonial administrator Leonard Woolf. The fourth chapter provides a reflection on the difficulties of diasporic 'orientalism' through the works of Michael Ondaatje while chapter five demonstrates the effects of the dialogism used by Amitav Ghosh as a defence against 'orientalism'. The thesis concludes with an examination of contemporary writing by Andrea Levy that appositely illustrates the legacy of Said's influence.
While the restrictive parameters of Said's work make it difficult to mount a thorough-going critique of Said, this thesis shows that, indeed, it is within the restraints of these parameters and in the very discourse that Said employs that he traps himself. This study claims that even Said is susceptible to 'orientalist' criticism in that he is as much an 'orientalist' as those at whom he directs his polemic
QTrim : a novel tool for the quality trimming of sequence reads generated using the Roche/454 sequencing platform
No full textBackground
Many high throughput sequencing (HTS) approaches, such as the Roche/454 platform, produce sequences in which the quality of the sequence (as measured by a Phred-like quality scores) decreases linearly across a sequence read. Undertaking quality trimming of this data is essential to enable confidence in the results of subsequent downstream analysis. Here, we have developed a novel, highly sensitive and accurate approach (QTrim) for the quality trimming of sequence reads generated using the Roche/454 sequencing platform (or any platform with long reads that outputs Phred-like quality scores).
Results
The performance of QTrim was evaluated against all other available quality trimming approaches on both poor and high quality 454 sequence data. In all cases, QTrim appears to perform equally as well as the best other approach (PRINSEQ) with these two methods significantly outperforming all other methods. Further analysis of the trimmed data revealed that the novel trimming approach implemented in QTrim ensures that the prevalence of low quality bases in the resulting trimmed data is substantially lower than PRINSEQ or any of the other approaches tested.
Conclusions
QTrim is a novel, highly sensitive and accurate algorithm for the quality trimming of Roche/454 sequence reads. It is implemented both as an executable program that can be integrated with standalone sequence analysis pipelines and as a web-based application to enable individuals with little or no bioinformatics experience to quality trim their sequence data
Characterizing the emergence and persistence of drug resistant mutations in HIV-1 subtype C infections using 454 ultra deep pyrosequencing.
No full textBACKGROUND: The role of HIV-1 RNA in the emergence of resistance to antiretroviral therapies (ARTs) is well documented while less is known about the role of historical viruses stored in the proviral DNA. The primary focus of this work was to characterize the genetic diversity and evolution of HIV drug resistant variants in an individual's provirus during antiretroviral therapy using next generation sequencing. METHODS: Blood samples were collected prior to antiretroviral therapy exposure and during the course of treatment from five patients in whom drug resistance mutations had previously been identified using consensus sequencing. The spectrum of viral variants present in the provirus at each sampling time-point were characterized using 454 pyrosequencing from multiple combined PCR products. The prevalence of viral variants containing drug resistant mutations (DRMs) was characterized at each time-point. RESULTS: Low abundance drug resistant viruses were identified in 14 of 15 sampling time-points from the five patients. In all individuals DRMs against current therapy were identified at one or more of the sampling time-points. In two of the five individuals studied these DRMs were present prior to treatment exposure and were present at high prevalence within the amplified and sequenced viral population. DRMs to drugs other than those being currently used were identified in four of the five individuals. CONCLUSION: The presence of DRMs in the provirus, regardless of their observed prevalence did not appear to have an effect on clinical outcomes in the short term suggesting that the drug resistant viral variants present in the proviral DNA do not appear to play a role in the short term in facilitating the emergence of drug resistance
Arthur William Upfield: a biography
No full textThis dissertation is an exhaustive account of the life and work of Arthur William Upfield (1890-1964). It is presented as a critical biography and narrates the life of the writer, in his socio-cultural milieu, from birth. It also positions Upfield as a writer who dealt with issues of Aboriginality at a time when this was a singularly polemical subject. My work is informed by the theory of Zygmunt Bauman and others and is posited in the context of late-modern biography theory.
English-born, Upfield arrived in Australia in 1911 and took work in the bush, serving overseas with the Australian army at the outbreak of World War I and marrying an Australian army nurse in Egypt. Returning with his wife and son to Australia in 1921 he intermittently carried his swag until he was employed patrolling the Western Australian number 1 rabbit-proof fence for three years to 1931. By that time he had published four novels, including two crime novels featuring his fictional creation, the part-Aboriginal, part-European, Detective-Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte ('Bony'), arguably the first fully-developed character in Australian popular fiction.
Leaving the fence, Upfield settled with his family in Perth and wrote full-time until joining the Melbourne Herald in 1933. Retrenched, he resumed career writing to be further interrupted by a war-time intelligence posting in 1939. In 1943 the first Bony mysteries were published in America, where Upfield's critical success was maintained until his death. In 1945 he left his wife for Jessica Uren, to whom he remained devoted.
Upfield's in all twenty-nine Bony novels, many of which have been translated across eleven languages, afforded him notable success both at home and abroad, in good part due to his descriptive gifts and the uniqueness of his fictional character, the part-Aboriginal Bony
Triple intersection formulas for isotropic Grassmannians
No full textA K-theoretic Pieri formula provides a convenient way to calculate the product of arbitrary Schubert classes with certain special classes in the Grothendieck ring of a homogeneous space. In this paper we calculate the triple intersection numbers of Pieri type, for Grassmannians of types B, C, and D. These can be used to quickly compute Pieri coefficients, and we hope they will lead to Pieri formulas in these cases. We also summarize part of our earlier work with Anders Buch [BR12], in which triple intersection numbers lie at the heart of a new geometric proof of Lenart’s K-theoretic Pieri formula for type A Grassmannians [Len00].Ph. D.Includes bibliographical referencesIncludes vitaby Vijay Ravikuma
Characterization of chitinases from microorganisms isolated from Lonar lake
No full text357-363Chitinases, the enzymes that breakdown chitin—the second most abundant polysaccharide in nature—are known to have numerous uses. Alkaline chitinases, in particular are considered to have a greater potential in this respect. Fifteen chitinolytic microbial strains were isolated from the alkaline soil of Lonar lake in Buldhana district of Maharashtra. In this paper, the characters of chitinases produced by the five most potent isolates are presented. All the enzymes exhibited maximum activity in the neutral to alkaline range of pH (from 7.0 to 9.6) with a wide stability range from pH 4 to 11. The temperature optima for all the enzymes were slightly on the higher side, between 35 and 60°C, with a stability range from 25 to 60°C. All the enzymes showed a typical response to substrate concentration. None of the enzymes had any specific requirement for any particular metal ion, though a considerable stimulatory effect of Ca2+ was observed on all the enzymes. Minor effects of Cu2+, Mn2+ and Na1+ were also observed on some of the enzymes
The postmodern sacred: popular culture spirituality in the genres of science fiction, fantasy and fantastic horror
No full textIn my thesis I argue that the return of the religious in contemporary culture has been in two forms the rise of so-called fundamentalisms in the established faiths-Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, even Buddhist-and the rise of a New Age style spirituality that draws from aspects of those faiths even as it produces something distinctively different. I argue that this shift both produces post-modern media culture, and is itself always-already mediated through the realm of the fictional. Secular and profane are always entangled within one another, a constant and pervasive media presence that modulates the way that contemporary subjects experience themselves and their relationship to the spiritual. I use popular culture as an entry point, an entry point that can presume neither belief nor unbelief in its audiences, showing that it is 'unreal' texts such as Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, The Matrix and so on that we find religious symbols and ideas refracted through a postmodernist sensibility, with little regard for the demands of 'real world' epistemology.
I argue that it is in this interplay between traditional religions and New Age-ised spirituality in popular culture that the sacred truly finds itself in postmodernity
The impact of polymeric binder on the morphology and performances of sulfur electrodes in lithium–sulfur batteries
No full textIn this research work, three different polymers LiPAA, PVDF, and PEO were used as polymeric binders for the sulfur electrodes in Li-S cells. All electrodes had a high sulfur, loading similar to 4.0 mg per cm(2). The coincells were characterized by EIS and tested by constant current cycling and cyclic voltammetry using a standard electrolytic solution of LiTFSI in an ether mixture with LiNO3 as additive. The cycled sulfur electrodes were characterized by post-mortem SEM and N-2-sorption and compared to the pristine states. LiPAA-based cells showed the highest reproducibility of the electrochemical performances, the most limited specific capacity fading (at least twice smaller), and the better rate capability compared to PVDF- and PEO-based cells. The electrochemical data agreed with the post-mortem analyses of the different electrodes. The pristine electrodes showed similar morphologies and porosities independent of the polymeric binder used. Dramatic changes were observed for the PEO- and PVDF-based sulfur electrodes, in which a new dense morphology appeared after two and thirty cycles, respectively. Both PEO- and PVDF-based cycled electrodes were prone to delaminate from the current collector. In comparison, the morphology of the LiPAA-based sulfur electrodes remained mostly unchanged even after thirty cycles and no delamination behavior could be observed.The authors are grateful to Imerys Graphite & Carbon for providing the C-nergy Super-C65 and to Arkema for providing the Kynar HSV 900. The authors are thankful to Anne-Marie De Wilde, Danny Havermans, Erwin Van Hoof and Raymond Kemps for their help and support in the laboratory, the characterization of the samples and the analysis of the data.Sallard, S (corresponding author), VITO Flemish Inst Technol Res, Sustainable Mat, B-2400 Mol, Belgium.
Hardy, A (corresponding author), Hasselt Univ, Inst Mat Res IMO Imomec, UHasselt, Martelarenlaan 42, B-3500 Hasselt, Belgium ; Energyville, Thor Pk 8320, B-3600 Genk, Belgium.
[email protected]; [email protected]
A study on the propagation of harmonics in a Power System
No full textThere has been a rapid development in the growth of Wind power generation in the last decade. This has led to wind power becoming a major contributor to the modern electrical grids. For the grids that are still based on conventional sources of energy, integrating wind power causes a serious impact on their performance. While the Windfarm must ensure the quality of power it supplies to the grid, the wind farm should itself remain resistant from the small disturbances coming from the grid. The power electronic converters used in the integration process are often responsible for the disturbance. These disturbances include, among other issues, the generation of certain harmonics based on the high-frequency converter switching. This affects the power quality and performance of the entire system. Certain harmonics are often amplified by resonating impedance. This phenomenon of harmonic resonance has been identified as a major cause of several grid failures.In this master thesis, a study is carried out to investigate the generation and propagation of harmonics in a wind farm network. A modified IEEE-13 node feeder has been considered as a network accommodating a wind farm. The suggestive wind farm consists of 10 wind turbines, with each turbine connected at a different node of the modified IEEE-13 node feeder. These wind turbines are connected with the grid using an IGBT converter and an LCL filter. The switching topology and filter tuning has been discussed in detail. All the components comprising a wind turbine including cables, Voltage Source Converters (VSCs), transformers, filters and control system have been included.The modelling is carried out in MATLAB/Simulink with the necessary data taken from the literature survey. A control system governing the switching of the IGBT converter has been developed. It consists of power control and a current control scheme. A DQ transformation scheme has been selected for the current control of the wind farm. A Phase-Locked Loop (PLL) is used to synchronize the converter with the grid and a Pulse Width Modulator (PWM) is used to generate gate pulses, controlling the switching of the IGBT switches.The simulations have been carried out for 5 cases: the base case, de-tuned control system, disconnection of a part of the grid, wind speed dynamics and finally, a combination of all the above contingency cases termed as "the worst-case scenario". Each case is designed to represent the impacts inside a real offshore wind farm. A quantitative and qualitative analysis has been carried out for the harmonic distortions at different buses of the wind farm network under each case.Results from the simulations show the harmonic orders that are common across the frequency spectrum in different cases. The base case provided relatively low voltage harmonics, but with more disturbances in the network, higher harmonic content was observed. The harmonic order corresponding (or nearest) to the switching frequency of the IGBT converter and the resonant frequency of the network, contributed the most for the Total Harmonic Distortion (THD).Electrical Engineering | Electrical Power Engineerin
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