10,022 research outputs found
Disciples of a crazy saint: The Buchen of Spiti
No full textThe Buchen are specialist religious performers from Spiti, a culturally Tibetan valley in North India. They are widely known for performing an elaborate exorcism ritual that culminates in a slab of stone, marked with images of demons, being smashed on a man’s belly. In winter groups of Buchen perform their religious theatre, a localised form of Ache Lhamo, the Tibetan Opera. This book, published in conjunction with an exhibition at the Pitt Rivers Museum at the University of Oxford is the result of a research project and substantial fieldtrip funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, with project partnership from the Pitt Rivers Museum.
Patrick Sutherland has been photographing in Spiti for nearly two decades and working with the Buchen for several years.
The book consists of a self-reflexive essay by Patrick Sutherland illustrated with historical photographs and his own photographs, followed by four sections of photographs and captions by Patrick Sutherland. It concludes with a substantial essay, placing the Buchen into a wider cultural and historical context, by Tashi Tsering, founding Director of the Amnye Machen Institute (Tibetan Centre for Advanced Studies) in Dharamsala. This essay is also illustrated with historical photographs
Experiences Using Large Scale Video Walls for Distance Education
No full textWe describe our experiences building and using the Rutgers Videowall, a low-cost telepresence system that has been used teaching 15 courses and colloquia. By relaxing typical spatial telepresence features, such as background continuity, we greatly reduced costs and gained flexibility in the rooms it could be deployed in. The lower costs and room flexibility enabled academic departments to use the wall, in contrast to traditional telepresence systems which remained inaccessible. We found that the Videowall’s spatial distortions did not have a significant impact on useability, as our initial survey results show that students had an overall positive experience.Technical report DCS-tr-72
U-Pn geochronology of deformed metagranites in central Sutherland, Scotland: evidence for widespread late Silurian metamorphism and ductile deformation of the Moine Supergroup during the Caledonian orogeny
No full textWithin the Caledonides of central Sutherland, Scotland, the Neoproterozoic metasedimentary rocks of the Moine Supergroup record NW-directed D2 ductile thrusting and nappe assembly, accompanied by widespread tight-to-isoclinal folding and amphibolite-facies metamorphism. A series of metagranite sheets which were emplaced and penetratively deformed during D2 have been dated using SHRIMP UâPb geochronology. Zircon ages of 424 8 Ma (Vagastie Bridge granite), 420 6 Ma (Klibreck granite) and 429 11 Ma (Strathnaver granite) are interpreted to date emplacement, and hence regional D2 deformation, during
mid- to late Silurian time. Titanite ages of 413 3 Ma (Vagastie Bridge granite) and 416 3 Ma (Klibreck granite) are thought to date post-metamorphic cooling through a blocking temperature of c. 550â 500 8C. A mid- to late Silurian age for D2 deformation supports published models that have viewed the internal ductile thrusts of this part of the orogen as part of the same kinematically linked system of forelandpropagating thrusts as the marginal Moine Thrust Zone. The new data contrast with previous interpretations that have viewed the dominant structures and metamorphic assemblages within the Moine Supergroup as having formed during the early to mid-Ordovician Grampian arcâcontinent orogeny. The mid-to late Silurian D2 nappe stacking event in Sutherland is probably a result of the collision of Baltica with the Scottish segment of Laurentia
Transformation of a terminal to a bridging carbonyl ligand accompanied by iridium-iridium bond cleavage: an example of transmission of electronic effects from one metal center to another
No full textThe alkyne-bridged complex [Ir2Cl2(CO)(μ-DMA)(DPM)2] [DMA = di-Me acetylenedicarboxylate, DPM = bis(diphenylphosphino)methane] reacts with 1 equiv of CO, PMe3, P(OMe)3, or NCMe to give one of two types of species. Reaction with CO yields the complex [Ir2Cl2(CO)2(μ-DMA)(DPM)2], in which both carbonyl groups are terminally bound, one to each metal. However, reaction with L = PMe3, P(OMe)3, or NCMe yields the adduct [Ir2Cl2L(μ-CO)(μ-DMA)(DPM)2], in which the carbonyl group bridges the metals with no accompanying Ir-Ir bond. The long metal-metal sepn. of 3.4580 (7) Å results in a geometry at the bridging carbonyl ligand that is reminiscent of sp2 hybridization [Ir-C(O)-Ir angle of 119.4 (6)°]
Overactive bladder in men as a marker of cardiometabolic risk
No full textGary A. Wittert, Sean Martin, Peter Sutherland, Susan Hill, Varant Kupelian and Andre Arauj
Correction to Supporting Information for Martin et al., Flexible synthesis can deliver more tailored and timely evidence for research and policy
No full textCorrection to Supporting Information for “Flexible synthesis can deliver more tailored and timely evidence for research and policy,” by Philip A. Martin, Alec P. Christie, Gorm E. Shackelford, Amelia S. C. Hood, Shengyu Wang, Bo Li, William Morgan, Madeleine Lee, David C. Aldridge, and William J. Sutherland, which published June 14, 2023; 10.1073/pnas.2221911120 (Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 120, e2221911120).
The authors note that the Reference section for the SI Appendix was accidentally omitted. The SI Appendix has been corrected online
The relative influence of place and direction in the Morris water task
No full textThe present study evaluated the generality of directional responding (Hamilton, Akers, Weisend, & Sutherland, 2007) in the Morris water task and attempted to identify methods that would yield a preference for navigation to the precise spatial location of an escape platform in the room. Four experiments evaluated the effects of training with the pool in a fixed location by repositioning the pool for a no-platform probe trial such that the absolute spatial location of the platform and the relative location of the platform within the pool (to which a directional response would occur) were in opposite quadrants. Two experiments attempted to explicitly train navigation to an absolute location in the room by repositioning the pool
during training while keeping the platform at the same location in the room. A preference for directional responding over navigation to the precise location of the platform was observed across a wide range of conditions including when rats were given extensive training (240 trials; Experiment 1), only given
platform placement experience in the absence of active swim training (Experiment 2), trained to navigate to multiple platform locations in a moving platform variant of the task (Experiment 3), and when animals were trained to navigate to a particular location regardless of the position of the apparatus in the room
(Experiments 4 - 5). A preference for navigation to the absolute spatial location of the platform was observed only when the salience of the pool was reduced by filling it to the top with water (Experiment 6)
England Calling: A Narratological Exploration of Martin Amis’s 'London Fields'
No full textThis paper will explore connections between fictional narrative methodology and contemporary conceptions of Englishness by applying aspects of Gerald Prince’s (2005) conceptions of a ‘postcolonial narratology’ to Martin Amis’s “London Fields” (1989). Amis has commented that ‘it’s almost an act of will on my part trying not to be an English writer’. However, this paper will suggest that the novel under consideration here exhibits methodological tendencies which have their roots in a protracted engagement with problematic notions of English identity (principally, instability and disengagement) and that postcolonial approaches to narrative technique can lead to very interesting results, even when applied to the work of writers not typically identified with such constituencies. The central point of investigation will be the novel’s exhibition of metafictional tendencies. In “London Fields”, Amis narrates via an authorial surrogate, Samson Young, who purports to be the author of the text, yet becomes implicated in the events of the novel to the point where his actions, rather than his imagination, determine its outcome. It is interesting also in this connection that the novel is voiced by an ‘outsider’ to England, an American.
Prince is intrigued by the possibility that a postcolonial narrative discourse might emerge ‘free of any narratorial introduction, mediation, or patronage.’ He also points to the significance of narratological features such as hybridity, migrancy, otherness, fragmentation, diversity and power relations. Amis’s novel exhibits all of these features, and takes the ambition of authorial invisibility to a paradoxical extreme. Voices, characters, reliability and even actantial events are brusquely ‘disowned’ by the author, resulting in a textual instability and uncertainty which, it will be demonstrated through close textual analysis, is intimately linked to England’s postcolonial condition
Pervasive Computing for the 99%
No full textA key limiting factor for the pervasive community has been the difficulty developing and deploying general purpose systems. Such systems should make application development easy, support a wide range of devices and sensors, and allow users to share these resources. Designing a multi-user middleware system that allows novice users to add arbitrary hardware and software raises several challenges, such as resolution between conflicting and stale data, managing data dependencies as software and hardware is changed, and tradeoffs between complexity and expressiveness in the API of such a system. We will discuss the feature set that could solve these problem, and test these features through a software implementation. We then evaluate the system after a year long deployment supporting smart office applications.Technical report DCS-TR-69
GRAIL: A General Purpose Real Time Localization System: Version 1.0
No full textThis paper describes a general purpose Real Time Location System (RTLS), GRAIL, version 1.0. GRAIL provides real-time, adaptable, indoor localization for wireless devices. Because GRAIL’s focus is to localize as diverse a set of devices as possible, it utilizes a centralized, anchor based approach. GRAIL defines an abstract data model for various system components to support different physical modalities and various localization algorithms. We show through real deployments that GRAIL functions over a variety of physical modalities, networks, and algorithms. Further, we found that a centralized solution has critical advantages over distributed implementations for handling privacy concerns. A contribution of this system is its universal approach: it can integrate different hardware and software capabilities within a single localization framework. The deployment of such a system in academic and research environments allows researchers to explore issues beyond algorithms and investigate effects in real deployments.
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