Dissimilar twins: residue of 1947 in the twenty-first century

In this article Meenakshi Mukherjee traces the impact of the Indian partition of 1947 on the creative writing, films and intellectual life of India and Pakistan.     

The Writing Lesson: Imaginary Inscriptions in Cultural Encounters

Abstract

This article takes a moment of intercultural exchange, first reported as "The Writing Lesson" by Claude Lévi-Strauss in Tristes Tropiques and later explored by Jacques Derrida in Of Grammatology, as the occasion for further reflection on the role played by the aesthetic in what it terms intercultural transference. Transference occurs whenever unconscious desires, fantasies or patterns of being and relating are enacted in an interpersonal or intercultural encounter, including the indirect encounters between literary or artistic objects and their recipients. It emerges as a largely unconscious operation designed to bridge, close, fill or deny the inevitable gaps in knowing another person or another culture, and to manage the affects such gaps bring forth. Intercultural transference provides a framework to read "The Writing Lesson" differently and suggests a theoretical model able to account for the complex performances of intercultural transference that enter any exchange or translation between cultures.     

State writing,subversion and citizenship in Southern Rhodesia’s state of emergency, 1959–1960

This article takes a moment of political upheaval – Southern Rhodesia’s 1959 State of Emergency – to explore the uses of writing in the remaking of state authority and citizenship. The 1950s had produced a powerful bureaucratic state, a shaky attempt at multi-racial “partnership,” and African aspirations to a citizenship able to encompass equality, rights and self-determination. The Emergency brought the tensions in these modes of government and citizenship to the fore. The article explores the working out of these tensions in two instances: the bureaucratic attempt to manage political detainees, and the police evidence used to substantiate charges of subversion on the part of nationalists in court. The article traces the limits of the state’s “lawfare” and the means by which detainees and nationalists developed new understandings of citizenship as aspirational imaginary, legal condition and practical tool, through the written word.     

A Set of Handwriting Features for Use in Automated Writer Identification,

A writer's biometric identity can be characterized through the distribution of physical feature measurements (“writer's profile”); a graph‐based system that facilitates the quantification of these features is described. To accomplish this quantification, handwriting is segmented into basic graphical forms (“graphemes”), which are “skeletonized” to yield the graphical topology of the handwritten segment. The graph‐based matching algorithm compares the graphemes first by their graphical topology and then by their geometric features. Graphs derived from known writers can be compared against graphs extracted from unknown writings. The process is computationally intensive and relies heavily upon statistical pattern recognition algorithms. This article focuses on the quantification of these physical features and the construction of the associated pattern recognition methods for using the features to discriminate among writers. The graph‐based system described in this article has been implemented in a highly accurate and approximately language‐independent biometric recognition system of writers of cursive documents.     

牛病毒性腹泻病毒基因1型全基因组的测序分析

以我国新疆地区分离的1株牛源牛病毒性腹泻病毒基因1型毒株为研究对象,参照GenBank中的牛病毒性腹泻病毒1型基因组全序列,根据保守序列设计6对重叠引物,通过RT-PCR扩增出该毒株不同的cDNA片段,分别克隆到pMD19-T载体,转化受体菌JM109,挑取阳性克隆进行PCR、酶切鉴定及测序分析,为了解该毒株的遗传变异及基因结构与生物功能的关系,为开发牛病毒性腹泻病毒新型疫苗奠定基础。测序结果表明,该病毒全基因序列核苷酸为12 302nt(GenBank登录号:JN704144),该病毒基因组具有一个11 694nt开放阅读框编码的多聚蛋白,5′-UTR长382nt,3′-UTR长224nt,BVDV1-3156的全基因组序列分析发现该毒株为BVDV1b亚型。Blast比对分析显示,该毒株与VEDEVAC株的相似性最高,为90.9%。该毒株与BVDV1型其他毒株的全基因组序列具有较大的差异。     

Driving under the influence of alcohol: a sequence analysis approach

Driving under the influence of alcohol is a contributing factor to a number of road traffic accidents. There is, however, a lack of research into the behaviours that lead to drink driving. The current research used a novel approach, behaviour sequence analysis, to investigate the chains of behaviours that lead to drink driving. Statements were taken from individuals (N?=?60) in an interview, reporting a time they had consumed alcohol and driven a vehicle. Statements were coded and the sequences of behavioural pairs were analysed. Results were presented in a state transition diagram, and indicated a variety of behavioural sequences leading to drink driving. A significant chain of events showed that individuals who had attempted to calculate their blood alcohol concentration and then drive a vehicle felt unsafe to drive, after driving. Also, many individuals did not intend to drink and drive; however, influences such as peer pressure and being surrounded by alcohol lead to them being more likely to consume multiple alcoholic drinks, and then drive a vehicle. The current research outlines future research, and implications for polices and laws on behaviours that surround drink driving, as well as providing a new method for research.     

如何保证《实用文体写作》课程教学质量

首都职工素质教育工程是实现党的十六大报告中提出的"形成全民学习、终身学习的学习型社会,促进人的全面发展"的全面建设小康社会目标的重要举措;是深入开展"创争"活动的重要形式,是"学习型城市建设、创新型城市建设、和谐城市建设"的重要途径。《实用文体写作》是通用能力培训的必修课程之一。     

Effect of electron beam irradiation on forensic evidence. 2. Analysis of writing inks on porous surfaces

The effect of electron beam irradiation on a series of different writing inks is described. As the anthrax-tainted letters were discovered in October 2001, the U.S. government began to experiment with the use of the electron beam irradiation process for destroying such biological agents. Plans initially considered a large-scale countrywide use of this technology. However, over time the scope of this plan as well as the radiation dosage were reduced, especially when some adverse consequences to mailed items subjected to this process were observed. Little data existed at the time to characterize what level of damage might be expected to occur with common items sent through the mail. This was especially important to museums and other institutions that routinely ship valuable and historic items through the mail. Although the Smithsonian Institution initiated some studies of the effect of electron beam irradiation on archived materials, little data existed on the effect that this process would have on forensic evidence. Approximately 97 different black, blue, red, green, and yellow writing inks were selected. Writing ink types included ballpoint, gel, plastic/felt tip, and rollerball. All noncontrol samples were subjected to standard mail irradiation conditions used by the U.S. Postal Service at the time this experiment was performed. A video spectral comparator and thin-layer chromatography (TLC) analysis were used to evaluate both the control and the irradiated samples. Some published studies reported changes in the presence/absence of dye bands in the chromatograms of irradiated writing inks. Some of these studies report the formation of additional dye bands on the chromatogram while others report missing dye bands. However, using standard testing guidelines and procedures, none of the 97 irradiated inks tested were found to show any significant optical or chemical differences from the control samples. In addition, random testing of some of the ink samples using a second solvent system did not reveal any changes. However, one control ink did show some minor changes in optical properties and dye characteristics over time (but not TLC) while the irradiated sample remained stable. Significant changes in the ultraviolet fluorescence characteristics of the irradiated paper samples themselves (not inks) were also observed.     

Significance of sequence of strokes in Chinese handwriting examination

This paper reports a statistical study on the sequence of strokes of 61 commonly encountered Chinese radicals and characters written by 372 invited subjects. The distribution of different writing sequence of these Chinese radicals and characters was examined. Comparison of the sequence of strokes executed by the subjects with the standard rule of writing these Chinese radicals and characters revealed that around 60% of the subjects wrote in the correct sequence. Pair comparison of sequences of strokes in Chinese handwriting among the 372 subjects was also performed. The results demonstrated that no two individuals wrote all the 61 radicals and characters with the same sequence of strokes. The findings indicate that, despite some basic rules governing the writing sequence of Chinese characters, writers tend to develop their own habits. The findings also support the hypothesis that the handwriting of experienced writers is individual.