Reading Chapter One, Part Two of Papadiamantes's "The Merchant of the Nations".

This article examines one chapter in Alexandros Papadiamantes’s novel "The Merchants of the Nations" (1882-83) under the rubric of a logic of confession

Between Divine and Human Justice: A Reading of Papadiamantes's 'The Murderess'

Papadiamantes’s novella "The Murderess" has been read either as a moral tale exhibiting its author’s Orthodox beliefs, or as a critique of the gender positions and class structure of Greece at the end of the nineteenth century. Despite the seeming divergence, both approaches share a common foundation, namely that the author is conceived of as the bearer of the truth of the novella. Whereas the issue of truth in narration is presupposed, it remains unexamined. I argue that a conception of “truth” in "The Murderess" is to be gleaned, first, in a series of irresolvable tensions such as inside and outside, narrator and character, and even the very fact of Hadoula’s guilt, and, second, in the site of Hadoula’s death which takes place “between divine and human justice”. The ultimate purpose of this article is to offer the conditions of possible interpretations of "The Murderess" beyond the hold of either religion or sociology

Thermo-Poro-Mechanical Properties of Clayey Gouge and Application to Rapid Fault Shearing

In this paper, the mechanism of fault pressurization in rapid slip events is analyzed on the basis of a complete characterization of the thermo-poro-mechanical behavior of a clayey gouge extracted at 760m depth in Aigion fault in the active seismic zone of the Gulf of Corinth, Greece. It is shown that the thermally collapsible character of this clayey gouge can be responsible for a dramatic reduction of effective stress and a full fluidization of the material. The thickness of the 'ultra localized' zone of highly strained material is a key parameter that controls the competing phenomena of pore pressure increase leading to fluidization of the fault gouge and temperature increase leading to pore fluid vaporization

Anarchic Utopia in Aris Alexandrou's 'The Mission Box'

This paper shows that there are two notions of utopia operating in Aris Alexandrou’s novel The Mission Box (Το κιβώτιο). The first is the autarchic utopia espoused by the Communist Party and represented in the novel by the rational, chronologically organised narrative. The second is the anarchic utopia that disrupts the certainty of the rational narrative as well as the belief in a teleology that will lead to the Party’s victory. I argue that the anarchic interruption avoids a politics of oppression by extrapolating a notion of freedom whose definition does not rely on a negation of imprisonment

Comparative assessment of the effects of climate change on heat- and cold-related mortality in the United Kingdom and Australia.

BACKGROUND: High and low ambient temperatures are associated with increased mortality in temperate and subtropical climates. Temperature-related mortality patterns are expected to change throughout this century because of climate change. OBJECTIVES: We compared mortality associated with heat and cold in UK regions and Australian cities for current and projected climates and populations. METHODS: Time-series regression analyses were carried out on daily mortality in relation to ambient temperatures for UK regions and Australian cities to estimate relative risk functions for heat and cold and variations in risk parameters by age. Excess deaths due to heat and cold were estimated for future climates. RESULTS: In UK regions, cold-related mortality currently accounts for more than one order of magnitude more deaths than heat-related mortality (around 61 and 3 deaths per 100,000 population per year, respectively). In Australian cities, approximately 33 and 2 deaths per 100,000 population are associated every year with cold and heat, respectively. Although cold-related mortality is projected to decrease due to climate change to approximately 42 and 19 deaths per 100,000 population per year in UK regions and Australian cities, heat-related mortality is projected to increase to around 9 and 8 deaths per 100,000 population per year, respectively, by the 2080s, assuming no changes in susceptibility and structure of the population. CONCLUSIONS: Projected changes in climate are likely to lead to an increase in heat-related mortality in the United Kingdom and Australia over this century, but also to a decrease in cold-related deaths. Future temperature-related mortality will be amplified by aging populations. Health protection from hot weather will become increasingly necessary in both countries, while protection from cold weather will be still needed

The Play of Logos and Pathos: Longinus' Philosophical Presuppositions

Longinus' treatise, the first monograph on the sublime, is neither a rhetorical manual, nor a straight-forward philosophical work

The anisotropy of granular materials

The effect of the anisotropy on the elastoplastic response of two dimensional packed samples of polygons is investigated here, using molecular dynamics simulation. We show a correlation between fabric coefficients, characterizing the anisotropy of the granular skeleton, and the anisotropy of the elastic response. We also study the anisotropy induced by shearing on the subnetwork of the sliding contacts. This anisotropy provides an explanation to some features of the plastic deformation of granular media.Comment: Submitted to PR

Homogenization of interlocking masonry walls

International audienceIn a previous publication the authors proposed a continuous model for describing the mechanical behaviour of ‘Running Bond' masonry walls. Here a different masonry structure is considered. This structure is ‘bi-atomic' in the sense that its pattern consists in two kind of blocks with different. The homogenization by differential expansions technique is used for obtaining an equivalent Cosserat continuum. It is shown that the enriched kinematics of the Cosserat continuum is not sufficient to capture the full dynamic behaviour of this bi-atomic system. However, the Cosserat continuum model behaves well for low frequency waves and for wave lengths 5 to 10 times bigger the elementary cell