The unburiable: Representations of pain and violence in selected works of Sarah Kane and Caryl Churchill

In this thesis I intend to answer the question of how representations of pain and violence in the selected plays of Kane and Churchill assist the critical understanding of those works. The works I have selected are Sarah Kane’s Blasted and Caryl Churchill’s Seven Jewish Children: A play for Gaza. To assist the understanding of the spectator and to enable me to engage with the plays in closer detail I draw on a selection of theories from the philosophers Judith Butler and Arne Johan Vetlesen. In particular I discuss Butler’s theorisation of grief, vulnerability and responsibility to (and for) the Other. I also discuss Vetlesen’s responses to pain and torture, with emphasis on his notions of pain transference. From my reading and analysis of the plays, I find that both works provoke a complex set of responses to issues of communal responsibility and identity. The reference in the title to ‘the unburiable’ is a term coined by Butler to explain the efforts of some people to dehumanise the Other. Applying the theoretical ideas of Butler and Vetlesen to the plays provides a way to negotiate the fragile gap between those that matter and those who have become the unburiable

Workplace Change and the New Labor Movement

[Excerpt] The authors of this set of papers sharply critique, from a variety of perspectives, the approach to workplace change that has dominated labors thinking for decades. We have not attempted to balance these criticisms with arguments that labor can grow and prosper by fostering win-win methods and outcomes, because those arguments are well-known from a wide range of publications. Instead, we hope that these papers will stimulate and broaden the debate over a critical arena that has not been integrated with labor\u27s new ambitions

A damage model based on failure threshold weakening

A variety of studies have modeled the physics of material deformation and damage as examples of generalized phase transitions, involving either critical phenomena or spinodal nucleation. Here we study a model for frictional sliding with long range interactions and recurrent damage that is parameterized by a process of damage and partial healing during sliding. We introduce a failure threshold weakening parameter into the cellular-automaton slider-block model which allows blocks to fail at a reduced failure threshold for all subsequent failures during an event. We show that a critical point is reached beyond which the probability of a system-wide event scales with this weakening parameter. We provide a mapping to the percolation transition, and show that the values of the scaling exponents approach the values for mean-field percolation (spinodal nucleation) as lattice size $L$ is increased for fixed $R$. We also examine the effect of the weakening parameter on the frequency-magnitude scaling relationship and the ergodic behavior of the model

Modification of the pattern informatics method for forecasting large earthquake events using complex eigenvectors

Recent studies have shown that real-valued principal component analysis can be applied to earthquake fault systems for forecasting and prediction. In addition, theoretical analysis indicates that earthquake stresses may obey a wave-like equation, having solutions with inverse frequencies for a given fault similar to those that characterize the time intervals between the largest events on the fault. It is therefore desirable to apply complex principal component analysis to develop earthquake forecast algorithms. In this paper we modify the Pattern Informatics method of earthquake forecasting to take advantage of the wave-like properties of seismic stresses and utilize the Hilbert transform to create complex eigenvectors out of measured time series. We show that Pattern Informatics analyses using complex eigenvectors create short-term forecast hot-spot maps that differ from hot-spot maps created using only real-valued data and suggest methods of analyzing the differences and calculating the information gain.Comment: 13 pages, 1 figure. Submitted to Tectonophysics on 30 August 200

Widening the scope of virtual reality and augmented reality in dermatology

Virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) are making headlines, pushing the boundaries of educational experiences and applicability in a variety of fields. Medicine has seen a rapid growth of utilization of these devices for various educational and practical purposes. With respect to the field of dermatology, very few uses are discussed in the literature. We briefly present the current status of VR/AR with regard to this specialty

Anisotropy in Fracking: A Percolation Model for Observed Microseismicity

Hydraulic fracturing (fracking) using high pressures and a low viscosity fluid allow the extraction of large quantiles of oil and gas from very low permeability shale formations. The initial production of oil and gas at depth leads to high pressures and an extensive distribution of natural fractures which reduce the pressures. With time these fractures heal, sealing the remaining oil and gas in place. High volume fracking opens the healed fractures allowing the oil and gas to flow the horizontal productions wells. We model the injection process using invasion percolation. We utilize a 2D square lattice of bonds to model the sealed natural fractures. The bonds are assigned random strengths and the fluid, injected at a point, opens the weakest bond adjacent to the growing cluster of opened bonds. Our model exhibits burst dynamics in which the clusters extends rapidly into regions with weak bonds. We associate these bursts with the microseismic activity generated by fracking injections. A principal object of this paper is to study the role of anisotropic stress distributions. Bonds in the $y$-direction are assigned higher random strengths than bonds in the $x$-direction. We illustrate the spatial distribution of clusters and the spatial distribution of bursts (small earthquakes) for several degrees of anisotropy. The results are compared with observed distributions of microseismicity in a fracking injection. Both our bursts and the observed microseismicity satisfy Gutenberg-Richter frequency-size statistics.Comment: 14 pages, 10 figure

Good Duke Humfrey: bounder, cad and bibliophile

This article provides the revised text of a talk delivered to the Volunteer Guides of the Bodleian Library in December 2013. It reviews the career of Humfrey, duke of Gloucester (1390-1447) and discusses the implications of our present knowledge of his book collection. It is followed by an appendix listing all manuscripts presently known to have been owned by him

Only technology can save us from itself

The 7th Future of Wireless International Conference, themed “Wireless is Dead, Long Live Wireless!” took place on 23-24 June 2015. Hosted by Cambridge Wireless at the Emirates Stadium, London, it brought together more than 350 leaders in the tech world to extrapolate trends in wireless, challenge the industry as we know it and debate the disruption to come. Tim Rundle was invited as a keynote presenter to give an industrial designer’s perspective on the opportunities surrounding 5G technology. Rather than propose potential advances in hardware, as was expected, he chose take a more human centred approach and ask whether the increased speed of information transfer and analysis could be used to allow us to disconnect from our mobile devices more often. The idea that people are starting to become more aware of the negative aspects of smart technology was validated through research into emerging products, services and lifestyle trends such as 'digital detoxes' and 'dumb phones' of which the MP01 from Swiss tech brand Punkt is a notable example. Additional secondary research was conducted into emerging or increasing health issues, particularly around stress, that may be linked to constant states of connectivity. Rundle's keynote outlined the human issue at the core of our new connected lifestyle and suggested that maybe the most successful new technologies will be those that require less of our constant attention and give back time to more meaningful interactions