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Information transmission via communication between agents is ubiquitous on Earth, and is a vital facet of living systems. In this paper, we aim to quantify this rate of information transmission associated with Earth's biosphere and technosphere (i.e., a measure of global information flow) by means of a heuristic order-of-magnitude model. By adopting ostensibly conservative values for the salient parameters, we estimate that the global information transmission rate for the biosphere might be ∼ 10 24 bits/s, and that it may perhaps exceed the corresponding rate for the current technosphere by ∼9 orders of magnitude. However, under the equivocal assumption of sustained exponential growth, we find that information transmission in the technosphere can potentially surpass that of the biosphere ∼90 years in the future, reflecting its increasing dominance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which author discusses articles on topics including focuses on offering context for Gertrude Stein's 1934 interview on NBC radio and investigates its surrounding historical archive.

This essay interprets Gertrude Stein's 1934 interview on NBC radio and its surrounding historical archive to unfold a powerful phantasy about radio audience as it simultaneously connects Stein to a new mass audience and frees her from it. In this phantasy, radio audience becomes the state of listening itself which takes place in the protected space of the studio while broadcasting becomes analogous to writing. The essay then turns to Theodor Adorno's contemporaneous work on 'radio physiognomics' in order to analyse his attempt to separate radio from its social ideals and the uses to which it has been put, and to supplement Adorno's Kleinian–Ferenczian approach to introjection, or the interiorisation of the microphone and the studio both in production and reception. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The morphology of bipolar planetary nebulae (PNe) can be attributed to interactions between a fast wind from the central engine and the dense toroidal-shaped ejecta left over from common envelope (CE) evolution. Here we use the 3D hydrodynamic adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) code AstroBEAR to study the possibility that bipolar PN outflows can emerge collimated even from an uncollimated spherical wind in the aftermath of a CE event. The output of a single CE simulation via the smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) code phantom serves as the initial conditions. Four cases of winds, all with high enough momenta to account for observed high momenta pre-PN outflows, are injected spherically from the region of the CE binary remnant into the ejecta. We compare cases with two different momenta and cases with no radiative cooling versus application of optically thin emission via a cooling curve to the outflow. Our simulations show that in all cases highly collimated bipolar outflows result from deflection of the spherical wind via the interaction with the CE ejecta. Significant asymmetries between the top and bottom lobes are seen in all cases. The asymmetry is strongest for the lower momentum case with radiative cooling. While real post-CE winds may be aspherical, our models show that collimation via 'inertial confinement' will be strong enough to create jet-like outflows even beginning with maximally uncollimated drivers. Our simulations reveal detailed shock structures in the shock-focused inertial confinement (SFIC) model and develop a lens-shaped inner shock that is a new feature of SFIC-driven bipolar lobes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the effect of the housing market on nursing home diversion and/or transition. Prior evaluations of federally funded diversion/transition efforts indicate that lack of housing may be a significant impediment to diversion policy efforts. We test this charge by examining the transition rates in all 351 municipalities in Massachusetts, using a data set of over 15,000 individuals seeking to remain or transition home between 2010 and 2014 through Massachusetts' Options Counseling program and their relation to key indicators of housing quality and affordability, including housing burden, crowding, and incomplete kitchen and plumbing facilities. We also control for demographic indicators identified in previous findings, which are age, level of frailty, and whether seniors live alone. We do not find a significant relationship between housing affordability or quality and successful nursing home diversion. This fact suggests that consumers are not as sensitive to housing costs and conditions as previously expected. Future research should continue to investigate the economic and social conditions behind this fact in the context of home value appreciation, incidence of home ownership, and the ability of seniors to offset nursing home costs through accumulated home equity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We develop a physical framework for interpreting high-resolution images and kinematics of pre-planetary nebulae ("prePNe"). We use hydrodynamical models to infer the historical properties of fast collimated nuclear flows ("jet") that successfully form hollow, candle-shaped lobes over ≈103 yr, including the density, momenta, and geometry of the jet and its environment. Next we vary the most influential parameters of this "baseline" model to investigate how changes in the flow parameters affect the model outcomes after 900 yr. Several generic conclusions emerge, such as the injected flows that create the hollow lobes must be light, "tapered," and injected considerably faster than the lobe expansion speed. Multipolar and starfish prePNe probably evolve from wide-angle flows in which thin-shell instabilities corrugate their leading edges. We show how the common linear correlation of Doppler shift and position along the lobe is a robust outcome of the interaction of tapered diverging streamlines with the lobes' curved walls. Finally, we probe how modest toroidal magnetic fields added to the fast flow affect the outcome of the baseline model. We conclude that the light, field-free, tapered baseline flow model is not only a successful and universal paradigm for unraveling the histories of lobe formation in prePNe, but also provides a comprehensive, inclusive framework for understanding the details of the shapes, sizes, and internal kinematics of their edges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Common envelope evolution (CEE) is presently a poorly understood, yet critical, process in binary stellar evolution. Characterizing the full 3D dynamics of CEE is difficult in part because simulating CEE is so computationally demanding. Numerical studies have yet to conclusively determine how the envelope ejects and a tight binary results, if only the binary potential energy is used to propel the envelope. Additional power sources might be necessary and accretion onto the inspiraling companion is one such source. Accretion is likely common in post-asymptotic giant branch binary interactions but how it operates and how its consequences depend on binary separation remain open questions. Here we use high-resolution global 3D hydrodynamic simulations of CEE with the adaptive mesh refinement code AstroBEAR, to bracket the range of CEE companion accretion rates by comparing runs that remove mass and pressure via a subgrid accretion model with those that do not. The results show that if a pressure release valve is available, super-Eddington accretion may be common. Jets are a plausible release valve in these environments, and they could also help unbind and shape the envelopes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While an undergraduate at Cornell University, Drake attended a lecture by visiting astronomer Otto Struve and was introduced to the possibility that planets and life might be common in the universe. Drake had not, however, given up on his fascination with other planets and their potential for life. It was Drake who carried out the first astronomical search for what are now called technosignatures - signatures of technology and hence life beyond Earth. [Extracted from the article]

We investigate mass transfer and the formation of discs in binary systems using a combination of numerical simulations and theory. We consider six models distinguished by binary separation, secondary mass and outflow mechanism. Each system consists of an asymptotic giant branch (AGB) star and an accreting secondary. The AGB star loses its mass via a wind. In one of our six models, the AGB star incurs a short period of outburst. In all cases, the secondary accretes part of the ejected mass and also influences the mass-loss rate of the AGB star. The ejected mass may remain gravitationally bound to the binary system and form a circumbinary disc, or contribute to an accretion disc around the secondary. In other cases, the ejecta will escape the binary system. The accretion rate on to the secondary changes non-linearly with binary separation. In our closest binary simulations, our models exemplify the wind Roche lobe overflow while in our wide binary cases, the mass transfer exhibits Bondi–Hoyle accretion. The morphologies of the outflows in the binary systems are varied. The variety may provide clues to how the late AGB phase influences planetary nebula shaping. We employ the adaptive-mesh-refinement code ASTROBEAR for our simulations and include ray tracing, radiation transfer, cooling and dust formation. To attain the highest computational efficiency and the most stable results, all simulations are run in the corotating frame. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay offers a reading of Henry James’s midcareer novelWhat Maisie Knew(1897) as a study in group psychology. Maisie, James’s child heroine, is at the center of an expanding and transforming family group that includes various governesses as well as her divorced parents’ multiple new partners. I set James’s novel beside Bion’sExperiences in Groups and Other Papers(1961) and its Kleinian approach to the continuities and discontinuities between individual and group experience. Rather than insisting (as Freud tends to) only on a narrative of individuation and adaptation, Bion emphasizes the necessity and difficulty an individual inevitably experiences in making contact with the emotional life of the group in which she lives. James casts the frustrating necessity of group experience in entirely theatrical terms, figuring Maisie from the start as a spectator to, and eventually an active participant in, the affective circuits of those around her. In my reading the transferential poetics of James and Bion make available the affective, transindividual nature of knowing as a contingent activity that takes place between persons and other objects. The essay concludes by unfolding some of the surprising televisual aspects of James’s late style. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The possibility that mass ejected during Asymptotic Giant Branch (AGB) stellar evolution phases falls back towards the star has been suggested in applications ranging from the formation of accretion discs to the powering of late-thermal pulses. In this paper, we seek to explicate the properties of fallback flow trajectories from mass-loss events. We focus on a transient phase of mass ejection with sub-escape speeds, followed by a phase of a typical AGB wind. We solve the problem using both hydrodynamic simulations and a simplified one-dimensional analytic model that matches the simulations. For a given set of initial wind characteristics, we find a critical shell velocity that distinguishes between 'shell fallback' and 'shell escape'. We discuss the relevance of our results for both single and binary AGB stars. In particular, we discuss how our results help to frame further studies of fallback as a mechanism for forming the substantial population of observed post-AGB stars with dusty discs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Quantummechanics, thephysical theory describing themicroworld, is oneof science's greatest triumphs.Remarkably, however, after more than 100 years it is still unclear what quantum mechanics means in terms of basic philosophical questions about thenature of reality.While there aremany interpretations of the mathematicalmachinery of quantum physics, there remain no experimental means to distinguish between most of them. In this contribution, I wish to consider the ways in which the enduring lack of an agreed-upon interpretation of quantum physics influences a number of critical philosophical debates about physics and reality. I briefly review two problems affected by quantum interpretations: the meaning of the term universe and the nature of consciousness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From the discovery of new galaxies and nearly undetectable dark energy to the quantum entanglement of particles across the universe, new findings in physics naturally elicit a sense of awe and wonder. For the founders of modern physics--from Einstein and Bohr to Heisenberg, Pauli, and Bohm--a fascination with deeper questions of meaning and ultimate reality led some of them to explore esoteric traditions and metaphysics. More recently, however, physicists have largely shunned such philosophical and spiritual associations.What can contemporary physics offer us in the quest to understand our place in the universe? Has physics in some ways become a religion unto itself that rejects the search for existential meaning? Discussion of these and related questions is presented in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Star formation can be triggered by compression from wind or supernova-driven shock waves that sweep over molecular clouds. Because these shocks will likely contain processed elements, triggered star formation has been proposed as an explanation for short-lived radioactive isotopes (SLRIs) in the Solar system. Previous studies have tracked the triggering event to the earliest phases of collapse and have focused on the shock properties required for both successful star formation and mixing of SLRIs. In this paper, we use adaptive mesh refinement simulation methods, including sink particles, to simulate the full collapse and subsequent evolution of a stable Bonnor– Ebert sphere subjected to a shock and post-shock wind. We track the flow of the cloud material after a star (a sink particle) has formed. For non-rotating clouds, we find robust triggered collapse and little bound circumstellar material remaining around the post-shock collapsed core. When we add initial cloud rotation, we observe the formation of discs around the collapsed core which then interact with the post-shock flow. Our results indicate that these circumstellar discs are massive enough to form planets and are long lived, in spite of the ablation driven by post-shock-flow ram pressure. As a function of the initial conditions, we also track the time evolution of the accretion rates and particle mixing between the ambient wind and cloud material. The latter is maximized for cases of highest Mach number. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The role of charge exchange in shaping exoplanet photoevaporation remains a topic of contention. Exchange of electrons between stellar wind protons from the exoplanet's host star and neutral hydrogen from the planet's wind has been proposed as a mechanism to create 'energetic neutral atoms' (ENAs), which could explain the high absorption line velocities observed in systems where mass-loss is occurring. In this paper, we present results from three-dimensional hydrodynamic simulations of the mass-loss of a planet similar to HD 209458b. We self-consistently launch a planetary wind by calculating the ionization and heating resulting from incident high-energy radiation, inject a stellar wind into the simulation, and allow electron exchange between the stellar and planetary winds. We predict the potential production of ENAs by the wind–wind interaction analytically, and then present the results of our simulations, which confirm the analytic limits. Within the limits of our hydrodynamic simulation, we find that charge exchange with the stellar wind properties examined here is unable to explain the absorption observed at high Doppler velocities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study the interaction of strong shock waves with magnetized clumps. Previous numerical work focused on a simplified scenario in which shocked clumps are immersed in a globally uniform magnetic field that extends through both the clump and the ambient medium. Here, we consider the complementary circumstance in which the field is completely self-contained within the clumps. This situation could arise naturally during clump formation via dynamical or thermal instabilities, for example, as a magnetic field pinches off from the ambient medium. Using our adaptive mesh refinement magnetohydrodynamics code AstroBEAR, we carry out a series of simulations with magnetized clumps that have different self-contained magnetic field configurations. We find that the clump and magnetic evolution are sensitive to the fraction of the magnetic field aligned with, or perpendicular to, the shock normal. The relative strength of magnetic pressure and tension in the different field configurations allows us to analytically understand the different cases of post-shock evolution. We also show how turbulence and the mixing it implies depends of the initial field configuration and suggest ways in which the observed shock-clump morphology may be used as a proxy for identifying internal field topologies a posteriori. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essay is presented on the aesthetic basis of taijiquan. It states that taijiquan lineages reflect Confucian values of existence and balanced hierarchy in the world. It mentions the argument of Li Zehou which emphasizes that Daoism is a way of experiencing the world an opposition to the effective way of living in the world. The author also relates his experience on ethnographic fieldwork with the practitioners taijiquan Wu Jianquan style in Shanghai, China.

This essay offers a reading of Gertrude Stein's lecture “Plays” (1934) alongside the work of several thinkers on emotion, William James, Silvan Tomkins, and Wilfred Bion. The problem of what Stein calls “emotional syncopation” at the theater is understood in the context of James’ theory of emotion. The essay proceeds to unfold Stein's emphasis on varieties of excitement by way of Silvan Tomkins’ writing. It then turns to Wilfred Bion's theory of thinking to argue that the main problem with theater, for Stein, is the difficulty it poses to learning or arriving at genuinely new knowledge. The essay concludes with the suggestion that Stein's plays address the further difficulties of analyzing group dynamics or numbers of individuals, especially in the context of modernist mass media. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article comments on Ruth Leys' essay on Silvan Tomkins's affect theory. It criticizes Leys' opinion that Tomkins's work and those of Paul Ekman, William Connolly and Brian Massumi form group of like-minded theorists. It also argues against Leys' depiction of Tomkins as being extensively influential on research in both the sciences and the critical humanities.

This paper presents a brief review of new perspectives in the field of protostellar outflows concentrating on scales above those associated with the launch region (L > 10 AU). The formation and propagation of protostellar or Young Stellar Object (YSO) jets and collimated outflows has been intensively studied over the last 30 years with enormous progress being made in both theory and observations. As both the resolution and integration of observational platforms increases new features are revealed which have shifted the emphasis of research efforts. In this paper we review results in two different domains of YSO outflows research which focus on these new perspectives. We first review attempts to model jets as intrinsically heterogeneous (clumpy) systems. The role of sub-radial clumps (rc < rj) within a jet are explored and these models are differentiated from the classic paradigm of pulsed jets. In the second section we look at YSO jets in a global, environmental context. The ability of YSO jets and outflows to generate and/or sustain turbulence in star forming environments has been suggested as a major source of feedback in young clusters. Until recently this suggestion has been untested via direct simulations. We review new work on star formation outflow feedback and discuss issues for future studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article translates aspects of Freud's analysis of uncanny experiences and feelings using Silvan Tomkins' writing on the taboos on looking and phantom limb phenomenon. Centering on a poem by Emily Dickinson that has often been read in terms of the return of the repressed, the article argues that Dickinson's poem may be better understood using the idea of the sudden return or quickening of old, forgotten and overwritten visceral or kinesthetic theories. The article suggests that both Dickinson's poem and Freud's essay register peculiar experiences conditioned by photography as the graphic reproduction of facial affect, and proposes Tomkins' affect theory as a tool for better describing these media conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Heritable mutations, known as inborn errors of metabolism, cause numerous devastating human diseases, typically as a result of a deficiency in essential metabolic products or the accumulation of toxic intermediates. We have isolated a missense mutation in the Drosophila sugarkill (sgk) gene that causes phenotypes analogous to symptoms of triosephosphate isomerase (TPI) deficiency, a human familial disease, characterized by anaerobic metabolic dysfunction resulting from pathological missense mutations affecting the encoded TPI protein. In Drosophila, the sgk gene encodes the glycolytic enzyme TPI. Our analysis of sgk mutants revealed TPI impairment associated with reduced longevity, progressive locomotor deficiency, and neural degeneration. Biochemical studies demonstrate that mutation of this glycolytic enzyme gene does not result in a bioenergetic deficit, suggesting an alternate cause of enzymopathy associated with TPI impairment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores Silvan Tomkins' post-Freudian work on affect through Margaret Mead's cultural anthropology. It seeks to distinguish between the externalization of shame in some cultures and the integration of guilt in others. The distinction between shame and guilt was based on the classical psychoanalytic theory, in which guilt can seem to be less a substantive emotion with a shape, texture and movement of its own compared to a symptom of a structure.

A literary criticism of the comic book Plastic Man by Jack Cole is presented. It shows a great pleasure, a pleasure taken not only in Plastic Man's face and its outrageous effects on his viewer, but in the great assortment of exaggerated faces and twisted bodies. It also offers sadness, a sad man who provokes sympathy on his onlookers takes to the ridiculous limit that manipulative role played by distressed straight masculinity.

Mitochondrial encephalomyopathies are common and devastating multisystem genetic disorders characterized by neuromuscular dysfunction and tissue degeneration. Point mutations in the human mitochondrial ATP6 gene are known to cause several related mitochondrial disorders: NARP (neuropathy, ataxia, and retinitis pigmentosa), MILS (maternally inherited Leigh's syndrome), and FBSN (familial bilateral striatal necrosis). We identified a pathogenic mutation in the Drosophila mitochondrial ATP6 gene that causes progressive, adult-onset neuromuscular dysfunction and myodegeneration. Our results demonstrate ultrastructural defects in the mitochondrial innermembrane, neural dysfunction, and a marked reduction in mitochondrial ATP synthase activity associated with this mutation. This Drosophila mutant recapitulates key features of the human neuromuscular disorders enabling detailed in vivo studies of these enigmatic diseases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a discussion on Edgar Allan Poe's short story "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar." Poe's "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar" caused a stir when it first appeared in American magazines in December 1845; many readers were willing to believe the tale's first-person scientific account of a mesmeric experiment in deferring death which ends with an instantaneously putrefying body. The article reads the dying man's tongue and its impossible utterances as figures for electromagnetic telegraphy and its unlikely communications, and takes up the dying man in the context of Poe's other writing on mesmerism of the mid-1840s to unfold perceptions and experiences of this ambient technology.

We present two dimensional cylindrically symmetric hydrodynamic simulations and synthetic emission maps of a stellar wind propagating into an infalling, rotating environment. The resulting outflow morphology, collimation and stability observed in these simulations have relevance to the study of young stellar objects, Herbig-Haro jets and molecular outflows. Our code follows hydrogen gas with molecular, atomic and ionic components tracking the associated time dependent molecular chemistry and ionization dynamics with radiative cooling appropriate for a dense molecular gas. We present tests of the code as well as new simulations which indicate the presence of instabilities in the wind-blown bubble’s swept-up shell. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We review the state of observational and theoretical studies of the shaping of planetary nebulae (PNe) and protoplanetary nebulae (pPNe). In the past decade, high-resolution studies of PNe have revealed a bewildering array of morphologies with elaborate symmetries. Recent imaging studies of pPNe exhibit an even richer array of shapes. The variety of shapes, sometimes multiaxial symmetries, carefully arranged systems of low-ionization knots and jets, and the often Hubble-flow kinematics of PNe and pPNe indicate that there remains much to understand about the last stages of stellar evolution. In many cases, the basic symmetries and shapes of these objects develop on extremely short timescales, seemingly at the end of AGB evolution when the mode of mass loss abruptly and radically changes. No single explanation fits all of the observations. The shaping process may be related to external torques of a close or merging binary companion or the emergence of magnetic fields embedded in dense outflowing stellar winds. We suspect that a number of shaping processes may operate with different strengths and at different stages of the evolution of any individual object. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We show that the Southern Crab (aka Hen2â€"104) presents an auspicious opportunity to study the form and speed of the invisible winds that excavate and shock the lobes of various types of bipolar nebulae associated with close and highly evolved binary stars. A deep three-color image overlay of Hen2â€"104 reveals that the ionization state of its lobe edges, or “claws,” increases steadily from singly to doubly ionized values with increasing wall latitude. This “reverse” ionization pattern is unique among planetary nebulae (and similar objects) and incompatible with UV photoionization from a central source. We show that the most self-consistent explanation for the ionization pattern is shock ionization by a fast (∼600 km sâˆ'1) “tapered” stellar wind in which the speed and momentum flux of the wind increase with equatorial latitude. We present a hydrodynamic simulation that places the latitude-dependent form, the knotty walls, and the reverse ionization of the outer lobes of Hen2â€"104 into a unified context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]