Photography and the Right to Life: Activestills’ and Anne Paq’s "Obliterated Families" Project

The essay focuses on the repurposing of family photography in the project “Obliterated Families” by Activestills collective photographer Anne Paq. In this project, Paq rephotographed photographs of family members who were killed in Israel’s air strikes in Gaza in 2014 at the actual bombed sites. The essay analyzes “Obliterated Families” as a project of visual activism and traces its different modes of dissemination and circulation as part of an effort to solicit a “public” for it. The mobilization of familial imagery is meant to disturb the circulation of affective responses in the Israeli public sphere by politically “presencing” those “whose lives are not regarded as lives worth saving and defending,” as Judith Butler argues. Through this project, the essay reconsiders the relations between photographic practices and the concept of universality as it pertains to a politics of human rights in light of the privatization of citizenship under neoliberal rationality.     

What’s in a name?

SomerecentsubmissiontoCARBONhaveindicatedatrendtogetcertain“buzz”wordsintothetitle .Themostcommonbeing“nano” ,andmore recently“fullerene like” .Inthelasteightmonthsover 35 %ofallpaperssubmittedtomehavenanointhetitle .WithrespecttotheformerIhavebeenp     

Yesterday’s dreams and today’s reality in telecommunications

Twenty-five years ago the telecommunications industry had its vision of the future. There were three dreams that, given the right technology, they could achieve: (1) the Dick Tracy wristwatch phone; (2) the Picturephone; and (3) the set-top box for the home television which could access an information store maintained by the telephone company. None of these dreams turned out as planned, but it is interesting to compare the original concepts with what has actually transpired in the last quarter-century. Today, having achieved some form of each of these three dreams, it seems as if, looking ahead to tomorrow’s technology, the industry has no similar vision.     

‘Carte du Ciel’: Sydney Observatory's Role in the International Project to Photograph the Heavens

One of the most ambitious photographic projects the world has ever seen was announced at the 1887 International Astronomical Conference. Known as the Carte du Ciel’ or ‘Mapping the Stars’ project, its grand aim was to record on photographic plates the stars in the night sky. Worked on by eighteen observatories around the world, it was estimated that it would require 22,154 photographic plates. Although little known today, this project cemented the role of photography as a tool for astronomers and was in particular a major accomplishment for the Sydney Observatory, where it was worked on for over seventy years.     

A manufacturer’s production and pricing strategies with a salvage channel

We study a manufacturer’s production quantity and pricing decisions when the manufacturer has an opportunity to sell surplus inventory through a salvage channel. Before sales begin, the manufacturer determines the production quantity without knowing customer demand. After demand is realised, the manufacturer first satisfies the demand through primary channel while charging a fixed price or adjusting price to maximise profit. At the end of the selling season, the manufacturer resells surplus inventory through the salvage channel, which can be either integrated with or independent of the manufacturer. The manufacturer’s optimal production quantity and expected profit are investigated under different salvage channel structures. We show that the salvage channel improves the manufacturer’s profitability as well as the availability of the product to potential customers through both primary and salvage channels.     

Participation of ‘international national organisations’ in Africa’s research: a bibliometric study of agriculture and health in Zimbabwe

Scientometrics - The study investigated the participation of so-called ‘international national organisations’ (INOs) in agricultural and health research in Zimbabwe, a country in...     

China’s rising leadership in science and technology: quantitative and qualitative indicators

China has a long and proud history of world leadership in science and technology, but in the past two centuries it has experienced a period of instability that has challenged that leadership. However, since its political consolidation in the middle part of the 20th Century and its subsequent economic reforms, China’s rise in science has been meteoric. This rise was first detected by the scientometric community through its indicators, but it has now become obvious. Indeed in 2017 the question, “Will China come to lead world science?” was becoming to some, “Does China already lead world science?” This paper tries to make the case that the answer is “yes” (or at least “soon”)—but the answer depends on which metrics one considers. China already leads many countries in some measures of GDP, scientific paper production, researchers, plus high technology manufacturing and exports. China also recently passed the European Union in R&D investment. Even in some of those indicators where China has not yet taken the lead, reasonable forecasts predict that it soon will. However, there are some indicators where China is still far behind. For example while rising, it still lags the U.S. and EU in citations in Western publications, and will take years to catch up. Here, these quantitative measures are supplemented by qualitative ones from WTEC assessments and by survey results of scientists and the public, which present a more nuanced conclusion. While Chinese leadership may be difficult for Westerners to accept, it can be viewed as China merely regaining its historical position of leadership in science and technology.     

Digital publishing and China’s core scientific journals: a position paper

In this position paper we discuss the current status of the core scientific journals in China. Based on discussions of journals’ relation to a small group of full-text database providers, open access publishing and copyright problems, we conclude that China’s digital publishing industry is not yet in a healthy state and some key issues related to revenue, digital piracy and copyright must be solved.     

Dispersion in a two-zone packed tube: An extended Taylor’s analysis

Taylor’s classical analysis for scalar dispersion in a single phase fluid flow is rigorously generalized for an instantaneous release of scalar substances into a fully developed flow through a long tube of two zones distinctively packed with porous media. A formulation for the dispersion is presented by cross-sectionally averaging the concentration transport equations and introducing a closure model for the concentration deviation terms produced in the averaging procedure. The velocity distribution of the flow through the tube is derived, with existing solution for a single zone tube flow included as a special case. Corresponding dispersivity is analytically determined, and Taylor’s well-known result for a single phase flow in a single-zone tube is recovered by setting corresponding parameters as unity. The effects of relevant parameters on both velocity profile and Taylor dispersivity are illustrated.     

Understanding Infrastructure Resiliency in Chennai,India Using Twitter’s Geotags and Texts: A Preliminary Study

Geotagging is the process of labeling data and information with geographical identification metadata, and text mining refers to the process of deriving information from text through data analytics. Geotagging and text mining are used to mine rich sources of social media data, such as video, website, text, and Quick Response (QR) code. They have been frequently used to model consumer behaviors and market trends. This study uses both techniques to understand the resilience of infrastructure in Chennai, India using data mined from the 2015 flood. This paper presents a conceptual study on the potential use of social media (Twitter in this case) to better understand infrastructure resiliency. Using feature-extraction techniques, the research team extracted Twitter data from tweets generated by the Chennai population during the flood. First, this study shows that these techniques are useful in identifying locations, defects, and failure intensities of infrastructure using the location metadata from geotags, words containing the locations, and the frequencies of tweets from each location. However, more efforts are needed to better utilize the texts generated from the tweets, including a better understanding of the cultural contexts of the words used in the tweets, the contexts of the words used to describe the incidents, and the least frequently used words.     

A new approach to constructing Green’s functions and integral solutions in thermoelasticity

This paper is devoted to a new approach for the derivation of main thermoelastic Green’s functions (MTGFs), based on their new integral representations via Green’s functions for Poisson’s equation. These integral representations have permitted us to derive in elementary functions new MTGFs and new Poisson-type integral formulas for a thermoelastic octant under mixed mechanical and thermal boundary conditions, which are formulated in a special theorem. Examples of validation of the obtained MTGFs are presented. The effectiveness of the obtained MTGFs and of the Poisson-type integral formula is shown on a solution in elementary functions of a particular BVP of thermoelasticity for octant. The graphical and numerical computer evaluation of the obtained MTGFs and of the thermoelastic displacements of the particular BVP for an octant is also presented. By using the proposed approach, it is possible to derive in elementary functions many new MTGFs and new Poisson-type integral formulas for many canonical Cartesian domains.     

Proximity at a distance: the role of institutional and geographical proximities in Vancouver’s infection and immunity research collaborations

This article explores the role of proximity in facilitating scientific collaboration. It argues that multiple dimensions of proximity exist and analyses their influences on Vancouver, Canada’s infection and immunity research network based on individual-level co-authorship patterns. It finds strong support for institutional and geographic proximities and limited support that geographical proximity can compensate for a lack of institutional proximity.Using individuals as the unit of analysis, this article addresses a methodological shortcoming of previous studies that took organisations as the unit of analysis. In doing so, the role that multiple affiliations play within this network is highlighted.     

Montage and Multiples in Hannah Maynard’s Self-Portraits

Hannah Maynard was a prolific photographic portraitist who opened her first commercial studio in Victoria, British Columbia, in 1862. While she maintained a conventional commercial practice, her creative photographic work began to assimilate and respond to significant societal shifts in unconventional ways. In the 1880s Maynard started to experiment with a variety of ‘avant-garde’ techniques including photo collage, photo montage, photo sculpture, and multiple and composite images. In her late series of multiple exposure self-portraits, the integrity of the self and of the image, an imperative of conventional photographic portraiture, comes into question. Through a metaphorical relationship with spirit photography, these self-reflexive images toy with the distance between realism and surrealism, between coherent self and spectral other, and between the living and the dead.     

The Transition to Turbulent Drag for a Cylinder Oscillating in Superfluid 4He: A Comparison of Quantum and Classical Behavior

We have measured the drag and inertial forces on wire resonators in superfluid ⁴He at millikelvin temperatures. At low velocities the behavior is dominated by the intrinsic properties of the resonators which can be measured in vacuum. On increasing velocity we see a sharp transition corresponding to the sudden appearance of drag and inertial forces arising from quantum vortex lines in the superfluid. We present detailed measurements of the superfluid drag and inertial forces as a function of the resonator velocity. We discuss results for two different wire diameters and for different resonant frequencies. We compare and contrast the observed behavior with that measured for cylinders in oscillating classical fluids.     

Mathematical and physical aspects of material failure: A tribute to Jean-Baptiste Leblond’s odyssey in fracture mechanics

International Journal of Fracture -