Academic literature on the topic 'Nesbit, Evelyn'

This chapter considers the translation of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs along with advancements in printing technologies across the nineteenth century, which led to an increased hieroglyphic presence in modern media. It focuses, in particular, in the use of hieroglyphs by authors of fiction, including H. Rider Haggard and E. Nesbit. In some cases, Egyptologists lent their expertise; alternatively, authors and designers consulted these experts’ grammars and dictionaries to construct their own (sometimes erroneous) meanings. Analysing the use of hieroglyphs in a variety of fiction and other cultural forms not only reveals networks of consultation between those with a professional and an amateur interest in ancient Egypt, but the wealth of connotations that the hieroglyphs suggested: from a magical language (often in children’s or supernatural fiction) to a romantic script suitable for love letters and secret correspondence (suited to romance, mystery, and detective genres). Meanwhile, increased tourism in Egypt resulted in the proliferation of palimpsestic chiselling of names onto temples and pyramids, while ankhs obelisks were incorporated into European and American grave designs. Ultimately, these uses of hieroglyphs reveal a bid for immortality, whether that of the individual or even the literary works that contemporary authors were inscribing with ancient Egyptian script.

This chapter details the author's field notes from the Hastings Natural History Reservation. The author was particularly interested in studying acorn woodpeckers and their nest cavities. Acorn woodpeckers fascinate scientists because they live in groups, often with multiple breeding males and females, and nonbreeding helpers. The breeders share mates readily, and females lay eggs in a common nest, which is always a cavity nest. Moreover, they are quite vocal, even for woodpeckers; some would call them “articulate.” At Hastings, ornithologists annotate their field notes in “bird time” rather than “people time.” This is because birds do not transition to daylight saving time the way people do. The chapter then discusses the “ambush,” which is a capture technique developed at Hastings.

And the secret garden bloomed and bloomed and every morning revealed new miracles. In the robin’s nest there were Eggs and the robin’s mate sat upon them, keeping them warm with her feathery little breast and careful wings. At first she was very nervous...

Ants are truly amazing creatures. Most species of ant are virtually blind; some of which have no vision at all, yet despite this, they are able to explore and find their way around their environment, discovering and ‘remembering’ routes between their nest and food sources. Ants exhibit complex social behaviours, with different roles assigned to different ants, and they are able to perform organised operations, even, for example, relocating their entire nest. Even a casual observer of an ant colony can see the efficiency and organisation with which they perform tasks such as foraging food. They are able to find and follow shortest paths between locations, negotiating obstacles between them, and this problem is an active area of interest in computer science, particularly in computer game AI.

Abstract There may be no satisfactory definition of ‘abstract object’, but philosophers do seem to be able to sort terms that purport to denote objects into two piles—the ‘abstract object’ and the ‘concrete objects’ piles. There may be widespread disagreement over whether ‘God’ or ‘Nessie’ or ‘Robin Hood’ denote anything, but there is no doubt that they purport to denote concreta, and no doubt that ‘1/0’ and ‘the Ricci curvature tensor’ and ‘the mixolydian mode’ purport to denote abstracta. The burden of the chapter is that those who assert the non-existence of abstract objects will find themselves contradicting themselves many times every day—and are therefore “ontologically committed” to the existence of abstract objects.

Social insect nest architectures can be complex, intricate structures. Stigmergy (see section 1.2.3), that is, the coordination of activities through the environment, is an important mechanism underlying nest construction in social insects. Two types of stigmergy are distinguished: quantitative, or continuous stigmergy, in which the different stimuli that trigger behavior are quantitatively different; and qualitative, or discrete stigmergy, in which stimuli can be classified into different classes that differ qualitatively. If quantitative stigmergy can explain the emergence of pillars in termites, the building behavior of the paper wasps Polistes dominulus seems to be better described by qualitative stigmergy. In this chapter, a simple agent-based model inspired by discrete stigmergy is introduced. In the model, agents move in a three-dimensional grid and drop elementary building blocks depending on the configuration of blocks in their neighborhood. From the viewpoint of bricks, this model is a model of self-assembly. The model generates a large proportion of random or space-filling forms, but some patterns appear to be structured. Some of the patterns even look like wasp nests. The properties of the structured shapes obtained with the model, and of the algorithms that generate them, are reviewed. Based on these properties, a fitness function is constructed so that structured architectures have a large fitness and unstructured patterns a small fitness. A genetic algorithm based on the fitness function is used to explore the space of architectures. Several examples of self-assembling systems in robotics, engineering, and architecture are described. Self-assembling or self-reconfigurable robotic systems, although they are not directly inspired by nest construction in social insects, could benefit from the discrete-stigmergy model of nest building. The method of evolutionary design, that is, the creation of new designs by computers using evolutionary algorithms, is a promising way of exploring the patterns that self-assembling models can produce. Many animals can produce very complex architectures that fulfill numerous functional and adaptive requirements (protection from predators, substrate of social life and reproductive activities, thermal regulation, etc.).

The image of the estate — “noble nest” is one of the key ones in Bunin’s depiction of Russian world. This image is illuminated before a reader by writer`s works of different years. It is examined how this image is changing, is subjected to correction and even transformation depending on the time when the book was written. Prognostic and culturally sensitive writer’s concept translated into a fatal attachment of the characters to the estate (“Sukhodol”). That attachment is akin to a religion. Writer’s concept is implemented this way with help of master poetics of surrealism that create the picture where “dreams are sometimes richer than reality”. The dramaticism of culturally sensitive view is replaced by the tragic of an apocalyptic vision in the works of beginning emigrant period (“Nameday”). The phase of “return” of Russian estate to timeless space of culture begins in 1930s — 1940s (“Wanderings”, “The Life of Arseniev”). The culture as well as the Russian world as a whole is illuminated as “not temporary and distorted but eternal and metaphysically enlightened”. It is necessary to bear in mind that in addition to cross-cutting transformations of the estate’s image, world of the estate is organically linked with the general concept in every specific work. This image is enriched with new semantic focuses and nuances every time.

According to Raskin (2000), the way we interact with a product, what we do, and how it responds are what define an interface. This is a good starting definition in one important respect: an interface is not something given or an entirely predefined property, but it is the dynamic interaction that actually takes place when a product meets the users. More precisely, an interface is that interaction that mediates the relation between the user and a tool explaining which approach is necessary to exploit its functions. Hence, an interface can be considered a mediating structure. A useful exemplification of a mediating structure is provided by the so-called stigmergy. Looking at the animal-animal interactions, Raskin (2000) noted that termites were able to put up their collective nest, even if they did not seem to collaborate or communicate with each other. The explanation provided by Grassé (Susi et al., 2001) is that termites do interact with each other, even if their interactions are mediated through the environment. According to the stigmergy theory, each termite acts upon the work environment, changing it in a certain way. The environment physically encodes and stores the change made upon it so that every change becomes a clue that affects a certain reaction from it. Analogously, we might claim that an interface mediates the relation between the user and a tool affording him or her to use it a certain way1. Understanding the kind of mediation involved can be fruitfully investigated from an epistemological point of view. More precisely, we claim that the process of mediating can be understood better when it is considered to be an inferential one.

This chapter discusses Marshal Tito's departure from the Adriatic “eagle's nest” that was prepared in utmost secrecy, not even Tito's closest associates had been informed about it. It describes Tito's retreat as the prehistory of containment, the Cold War, and the Berlin Wall. It also mentions Robert Murphy and Frank Wiesner, US experts for Europe that accompanied Tito for political affairs and intelligence issues. The chapter reviews Vladimir Bakarić's long account that reveals the most important information about the events on Vis and the session of the ZAVNOH, the national front government of Croatia, where Andrija Hebrang ran the show. It provides a background on Hebrang and how he presided over the Eighth Conference of the Zagreb party organization, where he appeared together with the organizing secretary and head of the apparatus.

A contradiction swirls around invention. While invention flows from an uncommon quarter of the mind, it ultimately comes to rest in the day by day world where we live our lives. Invention defines the commonplace world that we all share. The creative imperative is a unique and wonderful thing, yet it grows in the common clay of coping and of play, and that is also where it comes to rest. We celebrate the magnificent steam engines, airplanes, and cathedrals. But look around your room for a moment. When I do that I see paper, windowpanes, wood screws, a pencil sharpener, paint, and carpeting. Everything but the cat sleeping on the window ledge came into being after long sequences of invention by many people. Even the cat’s subtle gestures and communications maybe partly the stuff of my own contrivance. When we look with the eye of the mind at the everyday world around us, we see how much human imagination has run riot through it. We realize how imagination has invested the basest elements of our lives with possibilities. Try counting the cost of the ordinary world in the coin of human ingenuity. Cartographers who invented the globe on my bookshelf gave me a way to visit Fiji, Chad, and Tibet—places where fortune is unlikely to take me. The simple crank mechanism on my pencil sharpener represents a huge leap of the mind that took place only about twelve hundred years ago (a matter we talk about in Chapter II). Imagination has enriched every corner of those common places where we all live out our lives. For example, a hassled secretary hacks out a living on a new IBM typewriter in 1951. The typewriter’s ribbon ink leaves nasty smudges when she erases an error. In a burst of creative frustration, she goes home and invents a liquid for painting out mistakes. Its base is white tempera paint, the woman’s name is Betsy Nesmith, and the liquid is an immediate hit with other typists. By 1956 she is running a cottage industry, mixing the brew for other secretaries.

Neural stem cells have been studied to promote neurogenesis in regenerative therapy. The control of differentiation of neural stem cells to nerve cells and the increase of the number of nerve cells are needed. For the purpose of them, it is important to investigate not only chemical factors but also mechanical factors such as hydrostatic pressure in brain and mechanical vibration in walking. In this study, sinusoidal inertia force was applied to cultured neural stem cells and the effects of mechanical vibration on the cells were investigated. After the cells were cultured in culture plates for