The Influence of Anton Chekhov on Samuel Beckett: Inaction and Investment of Hope Into Godot-like Figures in Three Sisters and Waiting for Godot

Anton Chekhov has been very much influential on modern drama, especially on the Theatre of the Absurd; however, not much work has been done on his influence on the absurdist playwrights. Considering Harold Bloom's definition of ‘influence'—writing “much like” someone in the past—the seminal influence of Chekhov on Beckett is studied in this article. Chekhov in his plays, especially his major plays, very much like Beckett's waiting for Godot, portrays people who are passively waiting and investing their entire hope into Godot-like figures without taking any action. Thus, the sense of ennui, desperation and consequently disappointment of these characters originates from their unreasonable inaction, stagnancy and their passivity while waiting, rather than ‘waiting for Godot figures'. This article tries to show the influence of Chekhov on Samuel Beckett, investigating the similarities in form, atmosphere and theme between Waiting for Godot, the paradigm of the Theatre of the Absurd, and Three Sisters, one of Chekhov's major play

Physics of brain dynamics: Fokker-Planck analysis reveals changes in EEG delta-theta interactions in anaesthesia

We use drift and diffusion coefficients to reveal interactions between different oscillatory processes underlying a complex signal and apply the method to EEG delta and theta frequencies in the brain. By analysis of data recorded from rats during anaesthesia, we consider the stability and basins of attraction of fixed points in the phase portrait of the deterministic part of the retrieved stochastic process. We show that different classes of dynamics are associated with deep and light anaesthesia, and we demonstrate that the predominant directionality of the interaction is such that theta drives delt

Frequency of Antimicrobial-Resistant Genes in Salmonella enteritidis Isolated from Traditional and Industrial Iranian White Cheeses

Iranian white cheese is one of the most important kinds of cheese produced in large scale with high consumption in the country. This dairy product transmits bacterial pathogens like Salmonella spp. Antibiotic resistant Salmonella are widespread in the world. This study was performed to evaluate the frequency of antimicrobial-resistant Salmonella enteritidis and related genes isolated from traditional and industrial Iranian white cheeses. A total of 200 traditional and industrial Iranian white cheeses were collected within Chaharmahal Va Bakhtiari province (southwest Iran). After culturing on specific media using standard bacterial tests the Salmonella sp. was isolated. For specific detection of S. enteritidis from other Salmonella strains sefA gene was studied. Finally, the antibiotic susceptibility patterns were investigated. Results showed that 17 % of cheese samples were contaminated by Salmonella and 5.5 % of specimens by S. enteritidis. The frequencies of resistance genes including tetA, tetB, tetC, cat3, and floR in isolated S. enteritidis were 36.4, 54.5, 81.8, 54.5, and 36.4 %, respectively. All isolated S. enteritidis were susceptible to ciprofloxacin, cefotaxime, and ceftazidime (100 %). In addition, most of them were resistance to chloramphenicol (64 %) and susceptible to gentamicin (98 %). The Salmonella contamination was more frequent in traditional Iranian white cheeses (11.5 %) as compared to industrial (5.5 %) samples (p < 0.05). As compared to industrial samples, high level of resistant genes in Salmonella enteritidis isolated from traditional Iranian white cheeses were observed (p < 0.05). Therefore, traditional Iranian white cheeses are important source of Salmonella contamination in the country hence examination of dairy products for the presence of this pathogen is importan

Uncertainty in the Fluctuations of the Price of Stocks

We report on a study of the Tehran Price Index (TEPIX) from 2001 to 2006 as an emerging market that has been affected by several political crises during the recent years, and analyze the non-Gaussian probability density function (PDF) of the log returns of the stocks' prices. We show that while the average of the index did not fall very much over the time period of the study, its day-to-day fluctuations strongly increased due to the crises. Using an approach based on multiplicative processes with a detrending procedure, we study the scale-dependence of the non-Gaussian PDFs, and show that the temporal dependence of their tails indicates a gradual and systematic increase in the probability of the appearance of large increments in the returns on approaching distinct critical time scales over which the TEPIX has exhibited maximum uncertainty.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figures. Accepted to appear in IJMP

Particle-Particle, Particle-Scaling function (P3S) algorithm for electrostatic problems in free boundary conditions

An algorithm for fast calculation of the Coulombic forces and energies of point particles with free boundary conditions is proposed. Its calculation time scales as N log N for N particles. This novel method has lower crossover point with the full O(N^2) direct summation than the Fast Multipole Method. The forces obtained by our algorithm are analytical derivatives of the energy which guarantees energy conservation during a molecular dynamics simulation. Our algorithm is very simple. An MPI parallelised version of the code can be downloaded under the GNU General Public License from the website of our group.Comment: 19 pages, 11 figures, submitted to: Journal of Chemical Physic

Altered pituitary hormone secretion in male rats exposed to Bisphenol A

Bisphenol A (BPA) is a xenobiotic estrogenic compound. This compound has been suspected to have estrogenic effects on reproductive system of males and females. In this present study we investigated possible low-dose effects of BPAon Luteinizing Hormone in rats. Male Wistar rats (12-13 weeks old) were administrated a daily intra peritoneal 10 μg/kgbw/day, 50 μg/kgbw/day, 100 μg/kgbw/ day dose of BPA for 6, 6, and 12 days, and one day after last injection, serum level of Luteinizing Hormone was examined by ELISA method. All data were expressed as means ± SE. Two-way ANOVA was performed. Analysis of data showed that in all dose groups, plasma level of Luteinizing Hormone significantly decreased compared to control group. The present study showed that BPA at low doses affects Luteinizing Hormone, one of main hormones in spermatogenesis in the adult Wistar rats, and subsequently alters the steroidgenesis in testicular Leydig cells

A fingerprint based metric for measuring similarities of crystalline structures

Measuring similarities/dissimilarities between atomic structures is important for the exploration of potential energy landscapes. However, the cell vectors together with the coordinates of the atoms, which are generally used to describe periodic systems, are quantities not suitable as fingerprints to distinguish structures. Based on a characterization of the local environment of all atoms in a cell we introduce crystal fingerprints that can be calculated easily and allow to define configurational distances between crystalline structures that satisfy the mathematical properties of a metric. This distance between two configurations is a measure of their similarity/dissimilarity and it allows in particular to distinguish structures. The new method is an useful tool within various energy landscape exploration schemes, such as minima hopping, random search, swarm intelligence algorithms and high-throughput screenings

Daubechies wavelets as a basis set for density functional pseudopotential calculations

Daubechies wavelets are a powerful systematic basis set for electronic structure calculations because they are orthogonal and localized both in real and Fourier space. We describe in detail how this basis set can be used to obtain a highly efficient and accurate method for density functional electronic structure calculations. An implementation of this method is available in the ABINIT free software package. This code shows high systematic convergence properties, very good performances and an excellent efficiency for parallel calculations.Comment: 15 pages, 11 figure