"Mutual relations of dialogue, parody, contestation" : writing Nabokov's life in the age of the author's death

textIn her introduction to a special issue of the South Central Review on literary biography published in 2006, Linda Leavell writes, "Many would trace the disdain for literary biography—in both senses of the word “literary”—back through Roland Barthes’s “death of the author” to the New Critics’ division of text from context all the way to T. S. Eliot’s theory of impersonality. Critical theory of the past century has generally deemed an author’s life, personality, and intentions irrelevant to the text" (1). Leavell’s explanation of how critical theory of the twentieth century came to shape the current scholarly attitude towards literary biography establishes the genre’s status in an era of literary theory that is commonly characterized by the diminishment of the author as the source of meaning in a text, an era in which we remain. This characterization, however, overlooks the different ways that the theorists of the era displaced the author as the dominant figure in literary studies. This paper demonstrates how these different ways, despite whatever damage they might have done to the status of literary biography, actually benefit the study of the genre. Additionally, this paper argues that they not only comprise one side of Vladimir Nabokov’s contradictory views on his own authorship, which makes him an ideal subject for the study of authority over biographical representation, but also gave rise to new methodologies of literary biography, which are the methodologies of Nabokov’s biographers themselves. As a result, this paper concludes, “an author’s life, personality, and intentions” in turn have assumed new relevancy in literary studies.Englis

The Mumsnet story: how to engage with online communities

During a nine-hour flight from London to Florida, Justine Roberts was beginning to panic. As she and her husband dashed around the plane trying to alleviate their 1-year-old-twins from an untimely malady (diarrhea) while dealing with a shortage of nappies it was beginning to dawn on Roberts that she may have severely miscalculated their first family vacation. Once they settled in to their under-staffed and over-priced beach resort, tempers were running high. This self-proclaimed “family-friendly” destination was proving to be anything but. It got Roberts wondering: why isn’t there a communal platform for parents to wade through the difficulties of parenting together and to discuss and offer advice on topics such as, say, family holidays? This article by Polis Intern Kate Leisne

Spatial distribution of ions in a linear octopole radio-frequency ion trap in the space-charge limit

We have explored the spatial distribution of an ion cloud trapped in a linear octopole radio-frequency (rf) ion trap. The two-dimensional distribution of the column density of stored silver dimer cations was measured via photofragment-ion yields as a function of the position of the incident laser beam over the transverse cross section of the trap. The profile of the ion distribution was found to be dependent on the number of loaded ions. Under high ion-loading conditions with a significant space-charge effect, ions form a ring profile with a maximum at the outer region of the trap, whereas they are localized near the center axis region at low loading of the ions. These results are explained quantitatively by a model calculation based on equilibrium between the space-charge-induced potential and the effective potential of the multipole rf field. The maximum adiabaticity parameter \eta_max is estimated to be about 0.13 for the high ion-density condition in the present octopole ion trap, which is lower than typical values reported for low ion densities; this is probably due to additional instability caused by the space charge.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figure

Lässt sich die Erde künstlich kühlen?

Eigentlich ist die Mission klar: Wir müssen den weltweiten Kohlendioxidausstoß begrenzen. Doch politisch lässt sich das Ziel womöglich nicht realisieren. Könnten wir der Erderwärmung stattdessen durch gezielte Eingriffe in das Klimasystem entgegenwirken? Dass der Mensch den Strahlungshaushalt der Erde beeinflusst, ist nichts Neues. Bis vor zwei Jahrhunderten geschah das aber praktisch nur durch Veränderung der Landoberflächen, und die Auswirkungen waren so gering, dass sie sich kaum von natürlichen Klimaschwankungen abhoben. Das änderte sich jedoch mit der industriellen Revolution. Von nun an gelangte durch die zunehmende Nutzung fossiler Brennstoffe, die zur Energiegewinnung verfeuert wurden, rasch immer mehr Kohlendioxid (CO2) in die Atmosphäre. Parallel dazu kam es zu einem rapiden Bevölkerungswachstum, das mit einer Intensivierung der Landwirtschaft einherging. Durch die vermehrte Nutzviehhaltung und die künstliche Düngung stiegen vor allem die Emissionen von Methan (CH4), aber auch die von Lachgas (N2O) an. Diese Entwicklung setzt sich bis heute fort, und es gibt kaum Anzeichen für eine Trendwende. Als Folge nehmen die Konzentrationen der drei Gase in der Atmosphäre weiter zu, wo sie die Wärmestrahlung in den unteren Luftschichten zurückhalten. Dadurch heizen sie die Erde allmählich auf. Der resultierende Klimawandel ist durch Messungen der globalen Luft- und Ozeantemperatur, der Schnee- und Eisbedeckung sowie des Meeresspiegels inzwischen klar belegt

Laboratory evidence for volume-dominated nucleation of ice in supercooled water microdroplets

International audienceWe report on measurements of the rate of homogeneous ice nucleation in supercooled water microdroplets levitated in an electrodynamic balance. By comparison of the freezing probability for droplets of radius 49µm and 19µm, we are able to conclude that homogeneous freezing is a volume-proportional process and that surface nucleation might only be important, if at all, for much smaller droplets

Corrigendum to "Broadband Cavity Enhanced Differential Optical Absorption Spectroscopy (CE-DOAS) – applicability and corrections" published in Atmos. Meas. Tech., 2, 713–723, 2009

No abstract available