“La culpa es de los tlaxcaltecas”: Gender, the Burden of Blame, and a Re-examination of the Myth of La Malinche

This paper explores Elena Garro’s short story “La culpa es de los tlaxcaltecas.” Supplementing close readings with analyses drawn from relevant authors and theorists, I highlight the key ideas regarding gender, identity, memory, and history that Garro weaves into her text, and I consider Garro’s emphasis on patriarchal control, the internalization of female culpability for the Spanish Conquest of Mexico, and women’s role in constructing and reconstructing historical discourses. By travelling into her own and Mexico’s past, Laura Aldama, one of the main female protagonists in the story, not only challenges gendered histories but also reveals how patriarchal thought continues to influence contemporary realities. In addition, by paralleling Laura’s guilt and feelings of betrayal with the La Malinche myth, Garro’s work restructures this cultural symbol. Ultimately, I argue that “La culpa es de los tlaxcaltecas” redefines women’s role in history and society; valorizes female solidarity, voice, and perspective; and encourages women to challenge the limitations of masculinist discourses

An Exploration of Female Sexuality, Class Status, and Art in Hardy’s Short Stories

In this paper, I examine Hardy’s treatment of female sexuality as mediated by art in two short stories: “The Fiddler of the Reels” and “An Imaginative Woman.” Given Hardy’s role as an artist, his noted compassion for women, and his interest in Victorian attitudes toward sexuality, my analysis of these topics in his short stories is particularly relevant. Hardy’s investment in class issues is also pertinent, as I consider how Hardy uses his heroines’ relationships with art to underline the distinct disadvantages of lower-class women. While Ella, the middle-class heroine of “An Imaginative Woman,” uses poetry to channel stagnant sensual energies as a relatively empowered subject, music objectifies and overpowers the lower-class Car’line of “The Fiddler of the Reels.” In my analysis, I compare Ella and Car’line’s interactions with art, noting art’s potential to serve as an emotional outlet, a source of pleasure, or an overwhelming and dangerous force. I argue that middle-class women possess a clear advantage: their access to Victorian discourses that acknowledge female sexuality and their encouragement to engage the creative arts as active agents afford them a level of power. Ella thus uses art as a tool to express her desires and to obtain a degree of sexual satisfaction. On the contrary, the rural, working-class Car’line is completely vulnerable to Wat’s fiddle, and its power ultimately causes her emotional and physical deterioration. In my comparison of female sexuality and artistic expression in “The Fiddler of the Reels” and “An Imaginative Woman, I elucidate Hardy’s efforts to reveal the distinct disadvantages of lower-class women in Victorian society

Event generator to construct cross sections for the multiphonon excitation of a set of collective vibrational modes

The construction of differential cross sections as a function of excitation energy for systems with a collection of low- and high-lying intrinsic vibrational modes has been attempted in the past. A prescription is proposed that simplifies the implementation of such calculation schemes with a remarkable reduction in computational time.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures, to be published in Phys. Rev.

Excitation of the GDR and the Compressional Isoscalar Dipole State by alpha scattering

The excitation of the isovector giant dipole resonance (GDR) by alpha scattering is investigated as a method of probing the neutron excess in exotic nuclei. DWBA calculations are presented for 28O and 70Ca and the interplay of Coulomb and nuclear excitation is discussed. Since the magnitude of the Coulomb excitation amplitude is strongly influenced by the Q-value, the neutron excess plays an important role, as it tends to lower the energy of the GDR. The excitation of the compressional isoscalar dipole state in 70Ca by alpha scattering is also investigated. It is shown that the population of this latter state may be an even more sensitive probe of the neutron skin than the isovector GDR.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figures, Latex2

Social Security Reform: Legal Analysis of Social Security Benefit Entitlement Issues

[Excerpt] Calculations indicating that the current Social Security program will not be financially sustainable in the long run under the present statutory scheme have fueled the current debate regarding Social Security reform. This report addresses selected legal issues that may be raised regarding entitlement to Social Security benefits as Congress considers possible changes to the Social Security program in view of projected long-range shortfalls in the Social Security Trust Funds. Social Security benefits are administered pursuant to Title II of the Social Security Act, known as the Old Age, Survivors and Disability Insurance (OASDI) program. Title II is part of a larger social insurance program in which Congress uses its power to tax and spend for the general welfare to promote the social goals of aiding the aged, survivors of workers, disabled persons, and persons of limited means. Beneficiaries under Title II have a legal entitlement to receive Social Security benefits as set forth by the Social Security Act and as administered by the Social Security Administration (SSA), an independent agency in the executive branch. An individual’s right to Social Security benefits is in a sense “earned,” since there is a general relationship between OASDI benefits and wages earned and the tax paid thereon. However, benefits are not directly measured by the amount of payments made through the years into the system. Thus, the fact that Social Security benefits are financed by taxes on an employee’s wages does not provide a limit on Congress’s power to fix the levels of benefits under the Social Security Act, or the conditions upon which they may be paid

A condition-specific codon optimization approach for improved heterologous gene expression in Saccharomyces cerevisiae

All authors are with the Department of Chemical Engineering, The University of Texas at Austin, 200 E Dean Keeton St. Stop C0400, Austin, TX 78712, USA -- Hal S. Alper is with the Institute for Cellular and Molecular Biology, The University of Texas at Austin, 2500 Speedway Avenue, Austin, TX 78712, USA -- Amanda M. Lanza Current Address: Bristol-Myers Squibb, Biologics Development, 35 South Street, Hopkinton, MA 01748, USABackground: Heterologous gene expression is an important tool for synthetic biology that enables metabolic engineering and the production of non-natural biologics in a variety of host organisms. The translational efficiency of heterologous genes can often be improved by optimizing synonymous codon usage to better match the host organism. However, traditional approaches for optimization neglect to take into account many factors known to influence synonymous codon distributions. Results: Here we define an alternative approach for codon optimization that utilizes systems level information and codon context for the condition under which heterologous genes are being expressed. Furthermore, we utilize a probabilistic algorithm to generate multiple variants of a given gene. We demonstrate improved translational efficiency using this condition-specific codon optimization approach with two heterologous genes, the fluorescent protein-encoding eGFP and the catechol 1,2-dioxygenase gene CatA, expressed in S. cerevisiae. For the latter case, optimization for stationary phase production resulted in nearly 2.9-fold improvements over commercial gene optimization algorithms. Conclusions: Codon optimization is now often a standard tool for protein expression, and while a variety of tools and approaches have been developed, they do not guarantee improved performance for all hosts of applications. Here, we suggest an alternative method for condition-specific codon optimization and demonstrate its utility in Saccharomyces cerevisiae as a proof of concept. However, this technique should be applicable to any organism for which gene expression data can be generated and is thus of potential interest for a variety of applications in metabolic and cellular engineering.Chemical EngineeringInstitute for Cellular and Molecular [email protected]

Microscopic description of Coulomb and nuclear excitation of multiphonon states in 40^{40}Ca + 40^{40}Ca collisions

We calculate the inelastic scattering cross sections to populate one- and two-phonon states in heavy ion collisions with both Coulomb and nuclear excitations. Starting from a microscopic approach based on RPA, we go beyond it in order to treat anharmonicities and non-linear terms in the exciting field. These anharmonicities and non-linearities are shown to have important effects on the cross sections both in the low energy part of the spectrum and in the energy region of the Double Giant Quadrupole Resonance. By properly introducing an optical potential the inelastic cross section is calculated semiclassically by integrating the excitation probability over all impact parameters. A satisfactory agreement with the experimental results is obtained.Comment: 20 pages, 2 figures, revtex, to be published in Phys. Rev.