Journal articles on the topic 'Titane borure'

Strontium titanium silicates are possible oxide forms for immobilization of short lived fission products in radioactive waste. Through beta decay, strontium decays to yttrium, and then to zirconium. Therefore, not only the stability of Sr-loaded waste forms, but also that of a potential decay product series with charge-balance in a naturally occurring mineral or a ceramic is of fundamental importance. Strontium titanosilicate (SrTiSiO5) is the Sr-analogue of titanite (CaTiSiO5). To incorporate the reaction 3Sr2+ = 2Y3+ + vacancy in the titanite composition, Y-substituted Sr-analogues of titanite, (Sr1–xY2/3x)TiSiO5 (x = 0, 0.25, 0.5, 0.75) were prepared by high temperature synthesis and were found to form glass upon cooling. The Y-end-member (Y2/3TiSiO5, x = 1) crystallized to a mixture of Y2TiSiO7, TiO2, and SiO2 upon quenching in air. The enthalpies of formation of Y-substituted Sr-titanite glasses were obtained from drop solution calorimetry in a molten lead borate (2PbO·B2O3) solvent at 702 °C. The enthalpies of formation from constituent oxides are exothermic but become less so with increasing Y content. The thermodynamic stability of the Y-substituted Sr-analogue of crystalline titanite may become marginal with increasing yttrium content.

L’influence de TiB2 dans des revêtements à base nickel est étudiée du point de vue microstructurale (identification des phases et mesure de la porosité), mécanique (dureté et module d’élasticité par indentation instrumentée) et du comportement mécanique (résistance au frottement par usure pion/disque). Dans les deux revêtements à 2,5 et 10 % de TiB2, on note la présence de siliciures, carbures et borures mais uniquement la présence d’oxyde de titane pour la teneur à 10 %. La porosité est plus élevée (6 %) lorsque la teneur en TiB2 est plus petite, elle est de 1,2 % pour l’autre revêtement. Après une discussion sur l’effet de taille et l’influence de la porosité sur la mesure des propriétés par indentation, la dureté est trouvée sensiblement la même dans les deux cas, autour de 3 GPa, alors que le module d’élasticité semble plus élevé (175 GPa au lieu de 150 GPa) pour la teneur la plus élevée en TiB2. Enfin, le coefficient de frottement est plus grand dans la zone de transition ou de rodage avant d’atteindre la même valeur moyenne de 0,6 dans le régime stationnaire.

Grapevine flavescence dorée (FD) was detected first in Hungary in 2013 in Zala County (South-West-Hungary). The disease is a serious danger for grapevine growing and grapevine propagating production. In 2014, the pathogen has been found in several new places in Hungary, viz. in Vas and Fejér Counties, and it was also detected in the former location in Zala County. The american grapevine leafhopper (Scaphoideus titanus) is the main vector of the disease. This pest was detected first in Hungary in 2006 and then it has spread all over the country. Since we have not detailed distribution data of this pest in surroundings of Debrecen, therefore we made observations in this region in 2014. The presence of the pest was confirmed by yellow sticky cards in two locations in Debrecen and another site in West Romania near to Hungarian border. We found that S. titanus is present in each sampled sites that cause serious potential danger for the appearance and spread of Grapevine flavescence dorée (FD) in this region.

A collaboration between poetry and nationalism, exemplified by the tutelary border guard or “genius of the shore,” accounts for the interest of many Renaissance poems; redrawing the map, poets express the myths and grievances that hold their nations together. In “Lycidas,” Milton tries to redeem the fatal voyage of Edward King, his Anglo-Irish friend, by renewing the ideal of a missionary spirit, joining poet, saint, and soldier in a protectorate to bridge Ireland and England. In The Lusiads, Camões personifies the Cape of Storms as the titan Adamastor (“Unconquerable”), who curses the audacity of da Gama's voyagers and predicts their future calamities; hence the figure represents both the glory and the self-pity of Portugal and of its national poet. Though Milton and Camões hope for a bright colonial future, they turn their faces, like Benjamin's Angel of History, toward memories of shipwreck in the past.

This work presents a method for reducing acoustic resonances in ferroelectric barium strontium titanate (BST)-based bulk ceramic varactors, which are capable of operation in high-power matching circuits. Two versions of parallel-plate varactors are manufactured here: one with pure BST and one with 10 vol-% magnesium borate, Mg3B2O6 (MBO). Each varactor includes a 0.85-mm-thick ferroelectric layer. Acoustic resonances that are present in the pure BST varactor are strongly suppressed in the BST-MBO varactor and, hence, the Q-factor is increased over a wide frequency range by the addition of small amounts of a low-dielectric-constant (LDK) MBO. Although the tunability is reduced due to the presence of non-tunable MBO, the increased Q-factor extends the varactor’s availability for low-loss and high-power applications.

Two oil-soluble organic titanium compounds (OTCs) such as titanium dialkyldithiocarbamate (TiDDC) and sulfurized titanate (TiS) were synthesized and identified by Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR). The antiwear and extreme pressure properties of TiDDC or TiS with borate ester containing nitrogen (BNO) additive in mineral base oils were evaluated by four ball tester. The results show that TiDDC and TiS not only possess good antiwear and load-carrying properties, respectively, but also exhibit good antiwear synergism with BNO additive without impairing extreme pressure performances. Moreover, the synergistic antiwear properties of the said additives are improved significantly under the optimum additives ratios. The topography of wear scar and the composition and chemical states of typical elements on the rubbing surfaces were analyzed by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) with energy dispersive X-ray (EDX) and X-ray photoelectron spectrometer (XPS). The proposed synergistic antiwear mechanism involves an effective interaction between TiDDC or TiS and BNO additive, respectively.

La-B-TiO2photocatalysts were prepared using tetrabutyl titanate, tributyl borate, and lanthanum chloride as the precursors by solvothermal method. The prepared sample is composed of irregular particles with fairly rough surface in the size within 5 μm. Large surface area and pore volume are benefit to adsorption and photocatalytic degradation activity of the materials. Pore size of the 1%La-3%B-TiO2sample mainly distributes in the range between 5-35 nm. Specific surface area of the material is 101.45 m2/g. The sample containing 0.5% La presents the maximum decoloration efficiency. When La content is 0.5%, methyl orange adsorption rate on the material is less than 5%, and photocatalytic degradation rate is 39.9%.

In the present study, an aluminum alloy AA6351 was reinforced with different percentages (1, 3 and 5 wt %) of TiB2 particles and they were successfully fabricated by in situ reaction of halide salts, potassium hexafluoro-titanate and potassium tetrafluoro-borate, with aluminium melt. Tensile strength, yield strength and hardness of the composite were investigated. In situ reaction between the inorganic salts K2TiF6 and KBF4 to molten aluminum leads to the formation of TiB2 particles. The prepared aluminum matrix composites were characterized using X-ray diffraction and scanning electron microscope. Scanning electron micrographs revealed a uniform dispersal of TiB2 particles in the aluminum matrix. The results obtained indicate that the hardness and tensile strength were increased with an increase in weight percentages of TiB2 contents.

An atlante is a corbel figure (or pillar support) sculpted in the form of a man carrying a heavy load. A group of well-preserved stone carved atlantes from c. 1250 carrying the vaults of the Ribe Cathedral in western Jylland, Denmark, represents the antique titan Atlas and are up to 150 cm high. Their obviously foreign origin has so far remained uncertain. The figures are made of a relatively soft, sandy limestone. A new nannofossil analysis of small chips of the chalky and sandy limestone narrows the age of the stone down to the late Campanian (Late Cretaceous). Upper Campanian sandy limestones of this type are exposed in the Münster Basin in North Rhine-Westphalia, western Germany. The Campanian Baumberger Sandstein in this region fits well with the atlantes in terms of lithology and age and is the only possible provenance of the stone. Around 1250 the Baumberger Sandstein was used for baptismal fonts as far north as Ostfriesland at the Dutch-German border, and it is a novel finding of this investigation that it even reached Denmark. The stone was most likely floated along the rivers Lippe and Rhine and shipped via the Wadden Sea to Ribe. It is a remarkably long transport distance for historic commercial stone transportation in continental northern European art in the High Middle Ages.

The dielectric and magnetic polarizations of quantum paraelectrics and paramagnetic materials have in many cases been found to initially increase with increasing thermal disorder and hence, exhibit peaks as a function of temperature. A quantitative description of these examples of “order-by-disorder” phenomena has remained elusive in nearly ferromagnetic metals and in dielectrics on the border of displacive ferroelectric transitions. Here, we present an experimental study of the evolution of the dielectric susceptibility peak as a function of pressure in the nearly ferroelectric material, strontium titanate, which reveals that the peak position collapses toward absolute zero as the ferroelectric quantum critical point is approached. We show that this behavior can be described in detail without the use of adjustable parameters in terms of the Larkin–Khmelnitskii–Shneerson–Rechester (LKSR) theory, first introduced nearly 50 y ago, of the hybridization of polar and acoustic modes in quantum paraelectrics, in contrast to alternative models that have been proposed. Our study allows us to construct a detailed temperature–pressure phase diagram of a material on the border of a ferroelectric quantum critical point comprising ferroelectric, quantum critical paraelectric, and hybridized polar-acoustic regimes. Furthermore, at the lowest temperatures, below the susceptibility maximum, we observe a regime characterized by a linear temperature dependence of the inverse susceptibility that differs sharply from the quartic temperature dependence predicted by the LKSR theory. We find that this non-LKSR low-temperature regime cannot be accounted for in terms of any detailed model reported in the literature, and its interpretation poses an empirical and conceptual challenge.

ABSTRACT: The Monte de Trigo alkaline suite is a SiO2-undersaturated syenite-gabbroid association from the Serra do Mar alkaline province. Eudialyte-group minerals (EGMs) occur in one nepheline microsyenite dyke, associated with aegirine-augite, wöhlerite, låvenite, magnetite, zircon, titanite, britholite, and pyrochlore. Major compositional variations include Si (25.09- 25.57 apfu ), Nb (0.31- 0.76 apfu ), Fe (1.40-2.13 apfu ), and Mn (1.36- 2.08 apfu ). The EGMs also contain relatively high contents of Ca (6.13- 7.10 apfu ), moderate enrichment of rare earth elements (0.38-0.67 apfu ), and a relatively low Na content (11.02-12.28 apfu ), which can be correlated with their transitional agpaitic assemblage. EGM compositions indicate a complex solid solution that includes eudialyte, kentbrooksite, feklichevite, zirsilite-(Ce), georgbarsanovite, and manganoeudialyte components. EGM trace element analyses show low Sr and Ba contents and a negative Eu/Eu* anomaly, which are interpreted as characteristic of the parental magma due to the previous fractionation of plagioclase and/or alkali feldspar. The EGMs from the dyke border have higher contents of Fe, Sr (2,161-2,699 ppm), Mg (1,179-3,582 ppm), and Zn (732- 852 ppm) than those at the dyke center. These differences are related to the incorporation of xenoliths and xenocrysts of melatheralitic host rock into the nepheline-syenitic magma followed by crystal-melt diffusive exchange.

The Piedade Granite (~600 Ma) was emplaced shortly after the main phase of granite magmatism in the Agudos Grandes batholith, Apiaí-Guaxupé Terrane, SE Brazil. Its main units are: mafic mineral-rich porphyritic granites forming the border (peraluminous muscovite-biotite granodiorite-monzogranite MBmg unit) and core (metaluminous titanite-bearing biotite monzogranite BmgT unit) and felsic pink inequigranular granite (Bmg unit) between them. Bmg has high LaN/YbN (up to 100), Th/U (>10) and low Rb, Nb and Ta, and can be a crustal melt derived from deep-seated sources with residual garnet and biotite. The core BmgT unit derived from oxidized magmas with high Mg# (~45), Ba and Sr, fractionated REE patterns (LaN/YbN= 45), 87Sr/86Sr(t)~ 0.710, epsilonNd(t) ~ -12 to -14, interpreted as being high-K calc-alkaline magmas contaminated with metasedimentary rocks that had upper-crust signature (high U, Cs, Ta). The mafic-rich peraluminous granites show a more evolved isotope signature (87Sr/86Sr(t) = 0.713-0.714; epsilonNd(t)= -14 to -16), similar to Bmg, and Mg# and incompatible trace-element concentrations intermediate between Bmg and BmgT. A model is presented in whichMBmgis envisaged as the product of contamination between a mafic mineral-rich magma consanguineous with BmgT and pure crustal melts akin to Bmg.

Working with young readers, aged 10 to 14, as they responded to narrative texts in a variety of media (Mackey, 2002), I observed a recurring phenomenon: In a variety of ways they repeatedly stepped in and out of the fictional universe of their different stories. Some examples will perhaps give the flavor of this experience: Two 14-year-old girls playing Starship Titanic alternate between lively engagement in the narrative world of the story and stepping outside the fiction to console themselves, “Oh well, if we die, we can just start again.” A 10-year-old girl speaks of alternating between the novel and the computer game of My Teacher is an Alien, using the novel as a source of game-playing repertoire. Two 10-year-old boys look at the DVD of the film Contact, learning how the special effects of an explosion scene were composed, and commenting on how their new awareness of scene construction would affect how they view the film in the future. As I recorded and analyzed numerous examples of such behaviors, I was struck by a common element of interpretive activity on the boundaries of the fictional universe. Sensitized to the topic, I began to notice, and then to collect, examples of contemporary texts that foster various forms of such border crossing, in and out of the diegesis, the framework of events as narrated in the text. This article explores how an awareness of this aspect of contemporary texts may enhance our understanding of interpretive processes and expand what happens in literature classes.

The Zealand Station beryl (aquamarine) and molybdenite deposit is located 25 km northwest of Fredericton, New Brunswick, along the northeastern cusp of the Hawkshaw Granite, previously dated at 411 ± 1 Ma (U–Pb titanite), of the multiphase Devonian Pokiok Batholith. A late-stage, southeast-trending, pegmatite–aplite dyke has abundant aquamarine associated with pegmatitic sections. An exposure of a pegmatitic dyke is predominantly quartz and K-feldspar that exhibits a border, intermediate, and core zone. The main pegmatite–aplite dyke has been dated at 400.5 ± 1.2 Ma using U–Pb thermal ionization mass spectrometry on magmatic zircon. This is consistent with the 404 ± 8 Ma age using the chemical U–Th – total Pb isochron method from the pegmatitic beryl-rich section. These ages link these pegmatitic to aplitic dykes to the Allandale Granite, which is the youngest (402 ± 1 Ma by U–Pb on monazite) and most evolved phase of the Pokiok Batholith. The granitic aplite and pegmatite dyke samples are predominantly magnesian with one pegmatite sample being ferroan (FeOt/(FeOt +MgO) = 0.64–0.94); the samples are slightly potassic and calc-alkaline with strong peraluminosity (A/CNK = 1.23–4.76). The various phases of dykes were derived from magma with crustal A-type source characteristics similar to the Allandale Granite. The Sm–Nd isotope values for the aplite dyke (εNd(400) = –2.15) and the Allandale Granite (εNd(400) = –1.6) reflect some assimilation of metasediments relative to other phases of the Pokiok Batholith. The pegmatite and aplite dykes are high-level, rare-earth element pegmatite phases (Nb–Y–F-type) with some Li–Cs–Ta-type characteristics.

Background: The potential of applying TiO2-based materials has been ascertained in both wastewater and polluted air. Boron is proven to be an effective dopant to promote the activity of TiO2 in our previous work. The density of hollow material is little larger than water so that the hollow photocatalyst can suspend in wastewater under stirring or aeration. Methods: The graphical spheres were prepared from glucose using hydrothermal method. The hollow spherical x%B-TiO2 was synthesized through a sol-gel route, using tetrabutyl titanate and tributyl borate in the precursor. The materials were characterized by X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscope, infrared spectrum, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, and N2 adsorption-desorption techniques. Photocatalytic degradation of RBR X-3B dye was studied to show the activity of the x%B-TiO2 materials. Results: Anatase TiO2 phase forms in all the x%B-TiO2 samples despite the difference in boron content. An absolute Ti4+ oxidation state exists in the x%B-TiO2, which is hardly affected by the doped boron. XPS analysis proves the formation of B-Ti-O structure in anatase TiO2 lattice. BET surface area increases with rising boron doping content in the hollow spherical x%B-TiO2 samples. Photocatalytic activity of TiO2 is enhanced after doping boron. The photocatalytic efficiency on RBR X- 3B degradation reaches the maximum value when n(B)/n(Ti) is 8%. After five photocatalytic cycles, decoloration efficiency on 8%B-TiO2 is as much as 80% of the initial value. Conclusion: A continuous expansion of TiO2 crystal happens with increasing boron content. The Ti4+ oxidation state of titanium in the hollow spherical material is not changed after doping boron. BET surface area of the hollow spherical x%B-TiO2 increases with rising boron doping content. The hollow spherical 8%B-TiO2 has satisfactory performs for recycling and lifetime.

Background: TiO2-based materials can be utilized in both polluted air and wastewater treatments. Ion doping is the most applied modification method, and many kinds of metal ions and nonmetal ions are doped into a TiO2 crystalline skeleton. The hollow spherical photocatalyst can both easily suspend in wastewater under aeration and settle down after treatment to release the water. Methods: The hollow spherical B-TiO2 photocatalyst was prepared by a sol-gel method. Tetrabutyl titanate and tributyl borate were used as the titanium and boron sources. The materials were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscope (SEM), infrared spectrum (FTIR), and N2 adsorption-desorption techniques. Results: The 8%B-TiO2 material is composed of anatase TiO2 when the calcination temperature is below 600°C. The graphical template is burnt out during calcination to leave a hole in the spherical 8%B-TiO2. The BET surface area of the materials declines from 53.2 m2/g at 400°C to 10.6 m2/g at 700°C. High-temperature thermal treatment results in the small surface area and large pore size. The activity of the 8%B-TiO2 materials was studied on adsorption and photocatalytic degradation of RBR X-3B dye. The 8%B-TiO2 sample prepared at 600°C has the maximum activity on RBR X-3B degradation. After five cycles, decoloration efficiency on the 8%B-TiO2 decreases from 100% in the first cycle to 80% in the fifth cycle. Conclusion: Photocatalytic activity of the hollow spherical material depends on calcination temperature with the optimum activity on the sample obtained at 600°C. The hollow spherical 8%B-TiO2 has satisfactory performance for recycling. Photocatalytic degradation of RBR X-3B can be proven by the UV-Vis spectra during the degradation process.

AbstractThe St. Elias orogen and the Surveyor Fan in the adjacent Gulf of Alaska are a coupled source to sink system recording the interplay of tectonics and variable degrees of glaciation during the collision of the Yakutat terrane with the southern Alaska margin since the Miocene. The Miocene to Holocene sediments of the Surveyor Fan were drilled during IODP expedition 341. The recovered material is used to constrain information on changes in erosion centers during the last 10 Ma to study the impact of climatic and tectonic processes on orogen evolution. Point counting of sand- and silt-sized light framework components and geochemical single grain analysis of heavy mineral groups epidote and pyroxene is applied to analyze patterns of sedimentary provenance of two sites on the distal and proximal Surveyor Fan (Site U1417 and U1418, respectively). The studied sands and silts of Miocene to Pleistocene age are slightly enriched in feldspar (plag >> kf) at the proximal site, compositions at both sites do not show systematical changes with time of deposition. Framework component spectra uniformly reflect the expected active margin provenance. Epidote and pyroxene compositions are very consistent and show no change with time of deposition. Associations of epidote and pyroxene with albite, titanite and pumpellyite are in line with near-shore sources in the Chugach Metamorphic Complex and the metabasite belt at its southern border, and in units of recycled detritus exposed in the fold and thrust belt on the western Yakutat Terrane, respectively. Rock fragments indicate input from mainly metamorphic sources during the Miocene and Pliocene and an increase of input from low-grade metamorphic and sedimentary rocks in the Pleistocene, a finding also indicated by the abundance of epidote and pyroxene. This implies increasing erosion of the near-shore areas of the fold and thrust belt with advance of glaciers to the shore since the Miocene, being enhanced by the onset of the Northern Hemisphere glaciation at the beginning of the Pleistocene. Climate changes connected to the mid-Pleistocene transition did not result in appreciable changes in the petrographic compositions. Glaciers seem to have remained nested in their topographically predefined positions, continuously feeding material with uniform characteristics into the fan.

The present work studies the tuffs associated with the volcanic area of the Paleogene Sheinovets caldera, located on the southeastern part of the Rhodope massif, in Bulgaria. Its purpose is to describe the mineralogical and geochemical composition of the zeolitized volcaniclastic deposits in the broader area of Petrota village, in the northwesternmost part of the Greek regional unit of Evros, in northeast Greece. The samples studied in this work were collected from seven (7) different locations, covering an area of almost 4 km in length and 2 km in width. Macroscopically, the samples display a greyish-green hue and they are widespread in the area of study. They often contain fragments of the crystalline metamorphic basement (mica-schists, phyllites, amphibolites, quartzites) and/or rhyolitic clasts. A rhyolitic outcrop of greyish-pink hue is observed in the Mavri Petra region, probably related to the Rupelian acid volcanism that occurred in the Sheinovets caldera. The mineralogy of the tuffs was studied under light polarizing microscope and using Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), and it was further confirmed by X-ray powder diffraction (XRPD) method. The initial matrix of the tuffs consisted predominantly of glass shards that are now partly or fully altered into zeolites and clay minerals, such as celadonite, displaying characteristic pseudomorphic structures. The dominant zeolite is clinoptilolite, while in some areas the presence of mordenite is also noticed. Feldspar phenocrysts are abundant, and they are represented by plagioclase and sanidine. Although quartz crystals can be observed under light-polarizing microscope solely in metamorphic fragments, the presence of silica polymorphs was also confirmed through SEM and XRPD analysis, with quartz and cristobalite prevailing. The mineralogical assemblage includes phenocrysts of biotite and in some cases amphiboles, while pyroxene, epidote, garnet, titanite, apatite, zircon, ilmenite, magnetite and rutile are additional minerals which have been identified locally in accessory quantities. Chemical analysis was carried out for major and trace elements, using the X-ray fluorescence (XRF) method and 4 Acid digestion ICP-MS analysis, respectively. The samples of Mavri Petra region, exhibit high concentrations in Cu, Pb, Mn, V, P and W. The analyzed concentrations of U in the area of Palaeokklisi are relatively high in comparison to the rest due to its proximity to a fault. Towards the northwestern study area, close to the Greek-Bulgarian border, the concentrations of Sr appear to be particularly high, probably because the area is closer to the volcanic centre.

AbstractThe first room-temperature liquid compounds useful for the CVD of alkaline earth metalcontaining oxides were prepared by reacting metal (Mg, Ca, Sr, and Ba) beta-diketonates with novel polyamine ligands. The compounds are monomeric and can be completely flash-vaporized without leaving any non-volatile residue detectable at the parts-per-million level. A stable, solvent-free liquid mixture was formed by mixing new liquid barium, strontium and titanium compounds. CVD experiments using direct liquid injection of this liquid mixture deposited films of barium strontium titanate. This approach should also be applicable to the deposition of many other multicomponent oxides containing alkaline earth metals: ferroelectrics (strontium bismuth tantalate), metallic conductors (strontium vanadium oxide, lanthanum strontium cobalt oxide), phosphors (calcium tungstate), non-linear optical materials (beta-barium borate), magnetic oxides (barium ferrite), colossal magnetoresistive materials (lanthanum strontium manganese oxide), high Tc superconductors (yttrium barium copper oxide, bismuth calcium strontium copper oxide) and microwave dielectrics (barium magnesium tantalate).

ABSTRACTNew precursors have been found for chemical vapor deposition (CVD) of many metal oxides. Each precursor is a mixture formed by randomly attaching a selected set of organic groups, such as the isomers of the butyl group, to a metal 2,4-pentanedionate (also known as acetylacetonate) in place of the methyl groups of the 2,4-pentanedionate ligand. Most of these new mixed metal beta-diketonates are liquids at room temperature, whereas the corresponding metal 2,4-pentanedionates are solids. In the cases where they were solids or viscous liquids, small amounts of organic solvents were added to reduce the viscosity. We have so far prepared mixed beta-diketonate precursors for barium, strontium, calcium, magnesium, aluminum, indium, tin, lead, bismuth, titanium, zirconium, vanadium, niobium, tantalum, chromium, molybdenum, manganese, iron, ruthenium, cobalt, nickel, copper, zinc, yttrium, lanthanum and cerium.Liquid sources are much more convenient for CVD than solid sources. These liquid mixtures or solutions were vaporized by ultrasonically nebulizing the liquid into a flow of hot nitrogen carrier gas preheated to 150–250 °C. These vapor mixtures were mixed with air or oxygen and flowed over substrates heated typically to 350–450 °C. Films of the corresponding metal oxide (or carbonate, in the case of barium, strontium and calcium) were deposited on substrates of silicon or glass. Gas pressures from 20–760 Torr were used.Because a common set of ligands is used for each of these metal precursors, they can be mixed as liquids or vapors without any precipitation due to ligand exchange reactions. To demonstrate their use in forming mixed metal oxides, we have prepared films of ferroelectric barium titanate. This method should be applicable to other mixed metal oxides of current interest, such as high dielectric constant strontium titanate, ferroelectric bismuth strontium tantalate, superconducting yttrium barium copper oxide, refractory yttrium zirconium oxide, second-harmonic generating barium borate, metallic lanthanum strontium cobalt oxide and magnetoresistive lanthanum strontium manganate.

Abstract The initial stage of Rodinia supercontinent break-up occurred at about 750 Ma. It preceded formation of the Irkutsk and Franklin Large Igneous Provinces (LIPs)at 712 ± 2 Ma to 739 ± 8 Ma. These LIPs were emplaced within the formerly connected Laurentian and Siberian cratons. The Kingash massif is located in the Precambrian Kan terrane in direct contact with the Siberian Craton at its southwestern boundary. It has been linked to an important suite of mafic-ultramafic intrusions which border the southern margin of the Siberian craton, and which have been inferred to belong to the Irkutsk LIP. The massif is also significant, because it hosts PGE-Cu-Ni rich mineralization and is the only large deposit in the region. However, despite numerous dating attempts, the age of the massif had not been resolved. A significant difficulty is post-magmatic recrystallization at amphibolite facies that affected the rocks of the massif. In this study we used U-Pb dating of zircon, titanite and apatite from rocks of the Kingash massif and cross-cutting granite and monzonite veins. The oldest igneous zircon grain of the Kingash massif analysed by LA-ICPMS yields an age of c. 750 Ma, taken as a tentative age of magmatism. Dating of multiple grains of metamorphic zircon by CA-ID-TIMS yielded 564.8 ± 2.2 Ma, which is in agreement with LA-ICPMS titanite ages 557 ± 19 Ma, 565 ± 35 Ma and 551 ± 17 Ma. Apatite of two different samples showed ages of 496.4 ± 7.9 Ma and 497.0 ± 1.8 Ma (LA-ICPMS), which are interpreted as the time when the terrane cooled below the closure temperature of apatite. Using our new data we suggest that at the time of the Irkutsk-Franklin LIP event the Kan terrane was a part of Rodinia, then it separated from either Siberia or Laurentia during the break-up of Rodinia and finally collided with Siberia at 560 Ma; the time of regional amphibole facies metamorphism.

Summary: Guinea is described as a geological scandal, due to the richness of its soil, its subsoil, and its complexity. But this geology is poorly studied and under exploited and the region of Nimba hardly escapes to this fact. Located in the south-east of the country, Nimba is about 60 km long and 25 km wide, it belongs to the Precambrian domain (Archean basement (Craton) and Proterozoic) and is characterized by volcano-sedimentary rocks. In addition to mineral diversity, shear, brecciation and fault structures are observed in the rocks (Nion District), while they are not observable in rocks of other parts of the region. Large deposits of iron (magnetite, hematite, goethite) occupy the summits of the region. Granites exhibit magmatic differentiation whereas amphibolites occupy the MORB domain set upby rifting. The major elements exhibit perfect positive and negative linear relationships, while the rare earths exhibit perfect positive linear relationships. The PCA of the major elements confirms the differentiation of granitic rocks while the amphibolites do not show differentiation due to weathering. Objective: Geological cross sections of the Nimba range, petrographic studies of the different rocks and mineralogical description of these rocks were realized. And this to know the context of setting up of the region using the results of chemical analysis, the knowing of the different correlations which allow to visualize a space with p dimensions using spaces of smaller dimensions of the Geochemical data. Materials and Methods: This study in the Nimba region was done in two stages. The first stage performed in the field (period from November 25 to December 20, 2015 and from January 23 to February 15, 2017); it permits to collect the samples, the realization of two geological cross sections (one in the South near the border between the Republic of Guinea and Liberia, and one in the North in the fan zone of the region). The second step, carried out in the laboratories, with the digitalization of the two (2) geological cross sections (using Canvas version: 11Build 1252), then a microscopic description of the samples and the analysis of the different spectroscopies and diffractograms of the rocks of the Nimba region (using the Bruker Raman SENTERRA type spectroscope and the Pert Pro Panalytical X-type diffractometer). The rocks were analyzed geochemically by ICP-AES and ICP-MS. Finally, the geochemical data is processed by statistical methods (using Statgraphic Centurion software version _16.1.11). Results: The Nimba region contains two (2) groups of rocks, the first group clear and SiO2 rich (Gneiss, Granites, and Quartzites) and the second group is dark and SiO2 poor (Muscovitites, Amphibolites). But il also contains Itabirite-type iron deposits (Banded Irons Formations: BIFs) which occupy the main peaks of the Nimba region chain. These rocks contain minerals that are abundant in some and rare in others or even absent (Table 1). Next, they reveal that the quartzite facies are characterized by open muscovite crystals in the form of "S" slits and crystals of quartz, K feldspar and "C" plagioclases that give the "C / S" structures and hence the formation of "Shears Zones" (District of Nion, photo 2r). Amphibolitic rocks (Nion District) reveal both a breccia zone and a fault zone (Figure 2w and 2x). The breccia zone constitutes the phase S1 which is filled by the grunerite and the fault zone constitutes the phase S2 filled with microcrystals of quartz, magnetite, feldspars and grunerite. This phase S2 is characterized by the displacement of the blocks due to the fault activity. On the other hand, in the district of Gbié, the amphibolites do not contain zones of breccias or of faults, but they reveal the arrangement of the minerals (figure 2z and 2aa). The spectroscopies and diffractograms of the different rocks of the Nimba region confirm the results obtained from the petrographic description but also the appearance of new minerals (Table 2). The chemical rocks analyses of the Nimba region reveal that they are sub-alkaline. The amphibolites are tholeiitics, occupying the area of MORBs, with REE spectra (normalized to chondrites of N-MORBs derived from depleted upper mantle) showing depletion in LREE and almost flat in HREE. The granitics rocks are calco-alkaline, peraluminous, marked by the decrease of minerals ferromagnesian, ferro-titanic oxides and plagioclase with an increase of the alkali feldspar content. The spectra of REE of granitic rocks chondrite normalized at the chondrite show both negative in Eu anomalies suggesting on one hand that the plagioclase was fractioned and positive anomalies in EU that indicates on the other hand that the plagioclase has not been fractioned. All these spectra present the enrichment in LREE and a poverty in HREE. The Bravais-Pearson correlation of the major elements of amphibolitic and granitic rocks shows that Al2O3 does not correlate with other major elements and P2O5 correlates only with TiO2. The rest of the major elements have both positive linear relations and perfect negatives with P-Values less than 0.05. The Pearson-Pearson correlation of REE of amphibolitic and granitic rocks shows perfect positive linear relationships with P-Values less than 0.05. The Principal Components Analysis (PCA) of the major elements of amphiboles and granites has three groups of major elements, the first formed of SiO2, Na2O and K2O which correlate with each other to the component 1. The second formed of MgO , TiO2, MnO, Fe2O3t and CaO correlate with each other at component 1; these groups are anti-correlated with respect to component 2. The third group of major elements consists of Al2O3 and P2O5 which correlate neither with component 2 nor with the first two groups of major elements. Only TiO2 correlates with P2O5. Finally, the amphibolites have an affinity with the second group and do not exhibit magmatic differentiation due to weathering and weather conditions. The granitic rocks have an affinity with the first group, they are distributed according to the magmatic differentiation. The Principal Component Analysis (PCA) of REE of amphibolitic and granitic rocks has two groups: the first formed of Ce, La, Pr, Nd, Sm, Gd, and Eu which correlate with each other at component 1. The second, Tb, Dy, Er, Ho, Tm, Yb and Lu that correlate with each other at component 1. These two groups of chemical elements are not anti-correlated to component 2, which is confirmed by the hypothesis of the linear correlation method. Conclusions: The region of Nimba belongs to the precambrian domain, it is largely correlated with those of Brazil and Venezuella. It is formed by metavolcanic and metasedimentary rocks: quartzitic rocks characterized by 'C / S' shear and zoned zircon; grunerite amphibolites (cummingtonite family) rich in iron and associated with large iron deposits in fault and breccia zones. These amphibolites are located in the MORB field, which was emplaced by rifting, while the granitic rocks were emplaced by magmatic differentiation. This region is rich in iron deposits that occupy the main peaks and whose establishment was made by precipitation of a silico-ferruginous gel in a closed basin, virtually protected from other terrigenous inputs. This precipitation of dissolved iron results from an enrichment in atmospheric O2 characteristic of the Archean and Paleoproterozoic.

Whenever a people can be mediatized, they are.Paul Virilio In one of its most popular works – Electronic Civil Disobedience and Other Unpopular Ideas, the Critical Art Ensemble (CAE) outlines what it views as a major power shift characterizing the present, namely, the traditional public space – the street, has turned into ‘dead capital’. Borrowing from Guy Debord’s ideas on spectacular society, CAE theorizes that the spectacle has appropriated all, while power has mutated into a nomadic form of pure absence – ‘power itself cannot be seen; only its representation appears.’ To counter this, the activist movement must of course appropriate the same tactics of nomadic absence – eluding mediatization by the virtual power, staying below the radar and yet creating and altering the spectacle by poetic/symbolic acts of absence that will (hopefully) open cracks in the edifice of the monolith. Another strategy would be to perpetuate standard tactics of public space occupation where the _public _is dispensed with, in favor of a virtual counterpart – the ‘controlled deployment of information’. In this Marxist scenario, the activist gains power by attaining control of the means of production of an elusive and virtual ‘semiotic power’ (16). Thus, where Umberto Eco’s semiological guerilla warfare aimed to win the battle ‘not where the communication originates, but where it arrives’ (142), CAE argues that ‘no power base benefits from listening to an alternative message’(17), in effect abolishing the basic tool for communicating public dissent – the channeling of an alternative vision through some sort of public media. The reason for this is, according to CAE, twofold. First, when brought to its extreme, its power analysis leads it to believe that the capitalist means of production are nowadays virtual, and moreover, still worth seizing. Second, the spectacle inevitably appropriates all alternative public messages for its own uses, thus rendering oppositional movements powerless – ‘since mass media allegiance is skewed toward the status quo… there is no way that activist groups can outdo them’ (15). As a consequence of this order, CAE argues for the subversive and the covert while preaching ‘abhorrence of public space as a theatre of action’ (25). A quasi-ontological beta-utopian order emerges, marked by the homogenous essence of all actors, including history, and their dissolution into power-bases interested in self perpetuation. The activist avant-garde is the only actor able to ‘maintain at all times a multi-dimensional persona’, thus not losing its own identity to a mediatized image. The avant-garde fights for the rights of the oppressed but is not and cannot be known to them – a force ex nihilo, an alter ego to the elusive power. The avant-garde of Electronic Civil Disobedience (ECD) is moreover predestined to be the eternal significant other of power. CAE’s vision of this struggle insists that ‘authoritarian structure cannot be smashed; it can only be resisted’, therefore creating a dialectical condition of ever-shifting nomadic identities of resistance and oppression. A more or less similar beta-utopian order is framed by Peter Lamborn Wilson (aka Hakim Bey) in A Network of Castles – a quintessential text expanding on his earlier ideas of the Tong and the Temporary Autonomous Zone (TAZ) with regard to the virtual condition. Starting with the TAZ, Hakim Bey claimed its existence as utopia somewhere, preferably here and now, appearing and disappearing, a paradoxical identity without image, beyond the spectacle yet spectacular – in effect virtual. Similar to the ECD, the TAZ is built around the concept of staying below the radar of power and countering nomadic capital with nomadic dissent. The activist ”nomadic war machine” conquers without being noticed and moves on before the map can be adjusted.’ The Tong in turn – a term borrowed from Chinese secret societies – is similar to the ECD’s avant-garde – an invisible-virtual activist force, united by a dissenting identity and ‘devoted not to one project but to an on-going “cause”’. Here beta-utopia is seen as a necessary edifice, what Bey calls ‘the legend of the Tong’, which creates meaning through its paradoxical absence/presence – it is not (as in does not exist as an image) but it could and must be taken as physically present. The purpose of the Tong, like ECD’s avant-garde, is to escape mediatization and thus sublimate a perfect identity free from desire: ‘it will call a world into being – even if only for a few moments – in which our desires are not only articulated but satisfied.’ The virtual Tong can be implemented through a Network of Castles – existing on the border between the real and the virtual, inaccessible to power, ‘rooted partly in the imaginaire…in the image of mysterious inaccessibility and danger.’ In what presents itself as the synthesis of the TAZ and Tong, the Network of Castles is both physical utopia here and now, and a construct of perfectly fluid virtual identity, by nature inaccessible to mediatization. The Net is to elevate the TAZ and the Tong into a potent possibility to escape mediatization and thus be real again. The Network of Castles is the answer to the problem of virtual identity and real action. As Bey puts it – ‘the tactical problem consists of the need (or desire) to stay ahead of representation – not just to escape it, but to attain through mobilization a relative invulnerability to representation.’ In effect, Bey sublimates from the virtual a physical reality without mediated desire. In this beta-utopian order of fluid (dis)appearance, the icon of the image is abolished, public space is exorcised from mediated desire and the void left by the spectacle presents itself as a fulfilled identity. Thus framed, the activist struggle against oppression looms as a utopian quest for the perfect self – a symbolic and aesthetic paradoxical order. I consider the ECD and the Network of Castles to represent a desire for beta-utopian order, where beta stands for the discourse of an unfinished project, the pre-release that will test the waters for the real thing. A resolution to this order is by definition not supposed to come; utopia is now, in an eternal pre-release form, demanding eternal debugging. Utopian order is seen here as a virtual meta-narrative, thriving around an obfuscated central absence. This order can be also reconstructed as, paraphrasing Mark Dery, a modified ‘ejector seat’ condition, where instead of the utopian task of Cartesian mind escaping matter, virtual identity escapes desire. The imagined order of an unmediated space constantly re-created by unmediated acts is an expression of the need for an identity that is real in itself, beyond history. For, is it not that ‘the fantasy of a social world free from mass media of any kind, ancient or modern, is really a fantasy about being free from desire, by being free from the fantasy space mass media create for collective desire’? (Wark 324). Isaiah Berlin outlines three pillars of utopian belief: that the central problems of humans are the same throughout history; that they are in principle soluble; and that the solutions form a harmonious whole (Rothstein, Muschamp and Marty: 84). CAE’s and Bey’s beta-utopian order characteristically fulfills the first and the third condition, but drops the second. The clash with the oppressive spectacle is universal – in that sense history is homogenous. This clash however will never be solved and this condition precisely enables the harmonious existence of a fluid identity – the pure and eternal virtual dissent. In their beta-utopian order CAE and Bey create and obfuscate an other, their projects thrive around a central absence – the fleeing virtual capital, the hollow body of the State, the overwhelming spectacle. In this, they are inescapably modernist, struggling to escape the historical and touch the unperturbed real. ‘The Modernist narrative establishes a process of liberation at the heart of history which requires at its base a pre-social, foundational, individual identity. The individual is posted as outside of and prior to history, only later becoming ensnared in externally imposed chains. The insistence on the freedom of the subject, the compulsive, repetitive inscription into discourse of the sign of the resisting agent, functions to restrict the shape of identity to its modern form’ (Poster: 213-14). Indeed, history is viewed as a layer of oppressive power representations, ensnaring a primordial and foundational identity, which the dissenting activist, the TAZ and the ECD aim to rediscover. History is perceived to have turned into ‘nothing more than a homogeneous construct that continuously replays capitalist victories’ (17). The real, in contrast, is perceived to be marked by the titanic struggle of a liberation movement in opposition to power. However, if the modernist project can be considered as an obfuscation of a central absence, the postmodern by comparison, exposes the arbitrary character of the object and its created, rather than found, relation to the subject. Postmodernism ‘consists not in demonstrating that the game works without an object, that the play is set in motion by a central absence, but rather in displaying the object directly, allowing it to make visible its own indifferent and arbitrary character.’ (Wright: 41) References Bey, Hakim. A Network of Castles. 1997. Available: http://www.hermetic.com/bey/. 21 June 2004. ———. “Temporary Autonomous Zones.” 1992. Autonomedia. Available: http://www.hermetic.com/bey/. 21 June 2004. ———. Tong Aesthetics. 1997. Available: http://www.hermetic.com/bey/. 21 June 2004. CAE. “Digital Resistance.” 2001. Autonomedia. Available: http://www.critical-art.net/books/. 21 June 2004. ———. “Electronic Civil Disobedience and Other Unpopular Ideas.” 1996. Autonomedia. Available: http://www.critical-art.net/books/. 21 June 2004. Dery, Mark. Escape Velocity: Cyberculture at the End of the Century. New York: Grove Press, 1996. Eco, Umberto. “Towards a Semiological Guerilla Warfare.” Travels in Hyperreality. Ed. Umberto Eco. London: Picador, 1987. 135-44. Poster, Mark. “Cyberdemocracy: The Internet and the Public Sphere.” Virtual Politics: Identity and Community in Cyberspace. Ed. David Holmes. London: Sage, 1997. 212-25. Rothstein, E., H. Muschamp, and M. Marty. Visions of Utopia. Oxford University Press, 2003. Wark, McKenzie. Celebrities, Culture and Cyberspace. Pluto Press, 1999. Wright, Elizabeth. The Zizek Reader. Blackwell, 1999. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Mitew, Teodor. "Beta-Utopian Order." M/C Journal 7.6 (2005). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0501/04-mitew.php>. APA Style Mitew, T. (Jan. 2005) "Beta-Utopian Order," M/C Journal, 7(6). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0501/04-mitew.php>.

For seven months in 1999/2000, six-year old Cuban Elián González was embroiled in a family feud plotted along rival national and ideological lines, and relayed televisually as soap opera across the planet. In Miami, apparitions of the Virgin Mary were reported after Elián’s arrival; adherents of Afro-Cuban santería similarly regarded Elián as divinely touched. In Cuba, Elián’s “kidnapping” briefly reinvigorated a torpid revolutionary project. He was hailed by Fidel Castro as the symbolic descendant of José Martí and Che Guevara, and of the patriotic rigour they embodied. Cubans massed to demand his return. In the U.S.A., Elián’s case was arbitrated at every level of the juridical system. The “Save Elián” campaign generated widespread debate about godless versus godly family values, the contours of the American Dream, and consumerist excess. By the end of 2000 Elián had generated the second largest volume of TV news coverage to that date in U.S. history, surpassed only by the O. J. Simpson case (Fasulo). After Fidel Castro, and perhaps the geriatric music ensemble manufactured by Ry Cooder, the Buena Vista Social Club, Elián became the most famous Cuban of our era. Elián also emerged as the unlikeliest of popular-cultural icons, the focus and subject of cyber-sites, books, films, talk-back radio programs, art exhibits, murals, statues, documentaries, a South Park episode, poetry, songs, t-shirts, posters, newspaper editorials in dozens of languages, demonstrations, speeches, political cartoons, letters, legal writs, U.S. Congress records, opinion polls, prayers, and, on both sides of the Florida Strait, museums consecrated in his memory. Confronted by Elián’s extraordinary renown and historical impact, John Carlos Rowe suggests that the Elián story confirms the need for a post-national and transdisciplinary American Studies, one whose practitioners “will have to be attentive to the strange intersections of politics, law, mass media, popular folklore, literary rhetoric, history, and economics that allow such events to be understood.” (204). I share Rowe’s reading of Elián’s story and the clear challenges it presents to analysis of “America,” to which I would add “Cuba” as well. But Elián’s story is also significant for the ways it challenges critical understandings of fame and its construction. No longer, to paraphrase Leo Braudy (566), definable as an accidental hostage of the mass-mediated eye, Elián’s fame has no certain relation to the child at its discursive centre. Elián’s story is not about an individuated, conscious, performing, desiring, and ambivalently rewarded ego. Elián was never what P. David Marshall calls “part of the public sphere, essentially an actor or, … a player” in it (19). The living/breathing Elián is absent from what I call the virtualizing drives that famously reproduced him. As a result of this virtualization, while one Elián now attends school in Cuba, many other Eliáns continue to populate myriad popular-cultural texts and to proliferate away from the states that tried to contain him. According to Jerry Everard, “States are above all cultural artefacts” that emerge, virtually, “as information produced by and through practices of signification,” as bits, bites, networks, and flows (7). All of us, he claims, reside in “virtual states,” in “legal fictions” based on the elusive and contested capacity to generate national identities in an imaginary bounded space (152). Cuba, the origin of Elián, is a virtual case in point. To augment Nicole Stenger’s definition of cyberspace, Cuba, like “Cyberspace, is like Oz — it is, we get there, but it has no location” (53). As a no-place, Cuba emerges in signifying terms as an illusion with the potential to produce and host Cubanness, as well as rival ideals of nation that can be accessed intact, at will, and ready for ideological deployment. Crude dichotomies of antagonism — Cuba/U.S.A., home/exile, democracy/communism, freedom/tyranny, North/South, godlessness/blessedness, consumption/want — characterize the hegemonic struggle over the Cuban nowhere. Split and splintered, hypersensitive and labyrinthine, guarded and hysterical, and always active elsewhere, the Cuban cultural artefact — an “atmospheric depression in history” (Stenger 56) — very much conforms to the logics that guide the appeal, and danger, of cyberspace. Cuba occupies an inexhaustible “ontological time … that can be reintegrated at any time” (Stenger 55), but it is always haunted by the prospect of ontological stalling and proliferation. The cyber-like struggle over reintegration, of course, evokes the Elián González affair, which began on 25 November 1999, when five-year old Elián set foot on U.S. soil, and ended on 28 June 2000, when Elián, age six, returned to Cuba with his father. Elián left one Cuba and found himself in another Cuba, in the U.S.A., each national claimant asserting virtuously that its other was a no-place and therefore illegitimate. For many exiles, Elián’s arrival in Miami confirmed that Castro’s Cuba is on the point of collapse and hence on the virtual verge of reintegration into the democratic fold as determined by the true upholders of the nation, the exile community. It was also argued that Elián’s biological father could never be the boy’s true father because he was a mere emasculated puppet of Castro himself. The Cuban state, then, had forfeited its claims to generate and host Cubanness. Succoured by this logic, the “Save Elián” campaign began, with organizations like the Cuban American National Foundation (CANF) bankrolling protests, leaflet and poster production, and official “Elián” websites, providing financial assistance to and arranging employment for some of Elián’s Miami relatives, lobbying the U.S. Congress and the Florida legislature, and contributing funds to the legal challenges on behalf of Elián at state and federal levels. (Founded in 1981, the CANF is the largest and most powerful Cuban exile organization, and one that regards itself as the virtual government-in-waiting. CANF emerged with the backing of the Reagan administration and the C.I.A. as a “private sector initiative” to support U.S. efforts against its long-time ideological adversary across the Florida Strait [Arboleya 224-5].) While the “Save Elián” campaign failed, the result of a Cuban American misreading of public opinion and overestimation of the community’s lobbying power with the Clinton administration, the struggle continues in cyberspace. CANF.net.org registers its central role in this intense period with silence; but many of the “Save Elián” websites constructed after November 1999 continue to function as sad memento moris of Elián’s shipwreck in U.S. virtual space. (The CANF website does provide links to articles and opinion pieces about Elián from the U.S. media, but its own editorializing on the Elián affair has disappeared. Two keys to this silence were the election of George W. Bush, and the events of 11 Sep. 2001, which have enabled a revision of the Elián saga as a mere temporary setback on the Cuban-exile historical horizon. Indeed, since 9/11, the CANF website has altered the terms of its campaign against Castro, posting photos of Castro with Arab leaders and implicating him in a world-wide web of terrorism. Elián’s return to Cuba may thus be viewed retrospectively as an act that galvanized Cuban-exile support for the Republican Party and their disdain for the Democratic rival, and this support became pivotal in the Republican electoral victory in Florida and in the U.S.A. as a whole.) For many months after Elián’s return to Cuba, the official Liberty for Elián site, established in April 2000, was urging visitors to make a donation, volunteer for the Save Elián taskforce, send email petitions, and “invite a friend to help Elián.” (Since I last accessed “Liberty for Elián” in March 2004 it has become a gambling site.) Another site, Elian’s Home Page, still implores visitors to pray for Elián. Some of the links no longer function, and imperatives to “Click here” lead to that dead zone called “URL not found on this server.” A similar stalling of the exile aspirations invested in Elián is evident on most remaining Elián websites, official and unofficial, the latter including The Sad Saga of Elian Gonzalez, which exhorts “Cuban Exiles! Now You Can Save Elián!” In these sites, a U.S. resident Elián lives on as an archival curiosity, a sign of pathos, and a reminder of what was, for a time, a Cuban-exile PR disaster. If such cybersites confirm the shipwrecked coordinates of Elián’s fame, the “Save Elián” campaign also provided a focus for unrestrained criticism of the Cuban exile community’s imbrication in U.S. foreign policy initiatives and its embrace of American Dream logics. Within weeks of Elián’s arrival in Florida, cyberspace was hosting myriad Eliáns on sites unbeholden to Cuban-U.S. antagonisms, thus consolidating Elián’s function as a disputed icon of virtualized celebrity and focus for parody. A sense of this carnivalesque proliferation can be gained from the many doctored versions of the now iconic photograph of Elián’s seizure by the INS. Still posted, the jpegs and flashes — Elián and Michael Jackson, Elián and Homer Simpson, Elián and Darth Vader, among others (these and other doctored versions are archived on Hypercenter.com) — confirm the extraordinary domestication of Elián in local pop-cultural terms that also resonate as parodies of U.S. consumerist and voyeuristic excess. Indeed, the parodic responses to Elián’s fame set the virtual tone in cyberspace where ostensibly serious sites can themselves be approached as send ups. One example is Lois Rodden’s Astrodatabank, which, since early 2000, has asked visitors to assist in interpreting Elián’s astrological chart in order to confirm whether or not he will remain in the U.S.A. To this end the site provides Elián’s astro-biography and birth chart — a Sagittarius with a Virgo moon, Elián’s planetary alignments form a bucket — and conveys such information as “To the people of Little Havana [Miami], Elian has achieved mystical status as a ‘miracle child.’” (An aside: Elián and I share the same birthday.) Elián’s virtual reputation for divinely sanctioned “blessedness” within a Cuban exile-meets-American Dream typology provided Tom Tomorrow with the target in his 31 January 2000, cartoon, This Modern World, on Salon.com. Here, six-year old Arkansas resident Allen Consalis loses his mother on the New York subway. His relatives decide to take care of him since “New York has much more to offer him than Arkansas! I mean get real!” A custody battle ensues in which Allan’s heavily Arkansas-accented father requires translation, and the case inspires heated debate: “can we really condemn him to a life in Arkansas?” The cartoon ends with the relatives tempting Allan with the delights offered by the Disney Store, a sign of Elián’s contested insertion into an American Dreamscape that not only promises an endless supply of consumer goods but provides a purportedly safe venue for the alternative Cuban nation. The illusory virtuality of that nation also animates a futuristic scenario, written in Spanish by Camilo Hernández, and circulated via email in May 2000. In this text, Elián sparks a corporate battle between Firestone and Goodyear to claim credit for his inner-tubed survival. Cuban Americans regard Elián as the Messiah come to lead them to the promised land. His ability to walk on water is scientifically tested: he sinks and has to be rescued again. In the ensuing custody battle, Cuban state-run demonstrations allow mothers of lesbians and of children who fail maths to have their say on Elián. Andrew Lloyd Weber wins awards for “Elián the Musical,” and for the film version, Madonna plays the role of the dolphin that saved Elián. Laws are enacted to punish people who mispronounce “Elián” but these do not help Elián’s family. All legal avenues exhausted, the entire exile community moves to Canada, and then to North Dakota where a full-scale replica of Cuba has been built. Visa problems spark another migration; the exiles are welcomed by Israel, thus inspiring a new Intifada that impels their return to the U.S.A. Things settle down by 2014, when Elián, his wife and daughter celebrate his 21st birthday as guests of the Kennedys. The text ends in 2062, when the great-great-grandson of Ry Cooder encounters an elderly Elián in Wyoming, thus providing Elián with his second fifteen minutes of fame. Hernández’s text confirms the impatience with which the Cuban-exile community was regarded by other U.S. Latino sectors, and exemplifies the loss of control over Elián experienced by both sides in the righteous Cuban “moral crusade” to save or repatriate Elián (Fernández xv). (Many Chicanos, for example, were angered at Cuban-exile arguments that Elián should remain in the U.S.A. when, in 1999 alone, 8,000 Mexican children were repatriated to Mexico (Ramos 126), statistical confirmation of the favored status that Cubans enjoy, and Mexicans do not, vis-à-vis U.S. immigration policy. Tom Tomorrow’s cartoon and Camilo Hernández’s email text are part of what I call the “What-if?” sub-genre of Elián representations. Another example is “If Elián Gonzalez was Jewish,” archived on Lori’s Mishmash Humor page, in which Eliat Ginsburg is rescued after floating on a giant matzoh in the Florida Strait, and his Florida relatives fight to prevent his return to Israel, where “he had no freedom, no rights, no tennis lessons”.) Nonetheless, that “moral crusade” has continued in the Cuban state. During the custody battle, Elián was virtualized into a hero of national sovereignty, an embodied fix for a revolutionary project in strain due to the U.S. embargo, the collapse of Soviet socialism, and the symbolic threat posed by the virtual Cuban nation-in-waiting in Florida. Indeed, for the Castro regime, the exile wing of the national family is virtual precisely because it conveniently overlooks two facts: the continued survival of the Cuban state itself; and the exile community’s forty-plus-year slide into permanent U.S. residency as one migrant sector among many. Such rhetoric has not faded since Elián’s return. On December 5, 2003, Castro visited Cárdenas for Elián’s tenth birthday celebration and a quick tour of the Museo a la batalla de ideas (Museum for the Battle of Ideas), the museum dedicated to Elián’s “victory” over U.S. imperialism and opened by Castro on July 14, 2001. At Elián’s school Castro gave a speech in which he recalled the struggle to save “that little boy, whose absence caused everyone, and the whole people of Cuba, so much sorrow and such determination to struggle.” The conflation of Cuban state rhetoric and an Elián mnemonic in Cárdenas is repeated in Havana’s “Plaza de Elián,” or more formally Tribuna Anti-imperialista José Martí, where a statue of José Martí, the nineteenth-century Cuban nationalist, holds Elián in his arms while pointing to Florida. Meanwhile, in Little Havana, Miami, a sun-faded set of photographs and hand-painted signs, which insist God will save Elián yet, hang along the front fence of the house — now also a museum and site of pilgrimage — where Elián once lived in a state of siege. While Elián’s centrality in a struggle between virtuality and virtue continues on both sides of the Florida Strait, the Cuban nowhere could not contain Elián. During his U.S. sojourn many commentators noted that his travails were relayed in serial fashion to an international audience that also claimed intimate knowledge of the boy. Coming after the O.J. Simpson saga and the Clinton-Lewinsky affair, the Elián story confirmed journalist Rick Kushman’s identification of a ceaseless, restless U.S. media attention shift from one story to the next, generating an “übercoverage” that engulfs the country “in mini-hysteria” (Calvert 107). But In Elián’s case, the voyeuristic media-machine attained unprecedented intensity because it met and worked with the virtualities of the Cuban nowhere, part of it in the U.S.A. Thus, a transnational surfeit of Elián-narrative options was guaranteed for participants, audiences and commentators alike, wherever they resided. In Cuba, Elián was hailed as the child-hero of the Revolution. In Miami he was a savior sent by God, the proof supplied by the dolphins that saved him from sharks, and the Virgins who appeared in Little Havana after his arrival (De La Torre 3-5). Along the U.S.A.-Mexico border in 2000, Elián’s name was given to hundreds of Mexican babies whose parents thought the gesture would guarantee their sons a U.S. future. Day by day, Elián’s story was propelled across the globe by melodramatic plot devices familiar to viewers of soap opera: doubtful paternities; familial crimes; identity secrets and their revelation; conflicts of good over evil; the reuniting of long-lost relatives; and the operations of chance and its attendant “hand of Destiny, arcane and vaguely supernatural, transcending probability of doubt” (Welsh 22). Those devices were also favored by the amateur author, whose narratives confirm that the delirious parameters of cyberspace are easily matched in the worldly text. In Michael John’s self-published “history,” Betrayal of Elian Gonzalez, Elián is cast as the victim of a conspiracy traceable back to the hydra-headed monster of Castro-Clinton and the world media: “Elian’s case was MANIPULATED to achieve THEIR OVER-ALL AGENDA. Only time will bear that out” (143). His book is now out of print, and the last time I looked (August 2004) one copy was being offered on Amazon.com for US$186.30 (original price, $9.95). Guyana-born, Canadian-resident Frank Senauth’s eccentric novel, A Cry for Help: The Fantastic Adventures of Elian Gonzalez, joins his other ventures into vanity publishing: To Save the Titanic from Disaster I and II; To Save Flight 608 From Disaster; A Wish to Die – A Will to Live; A Time to Live, A Time to Die; and A Day of Terror: The Sagas of 11th September, 2001. In A Cry for Help, Rachel, a white witch and student of writing, travels back in time in order to save Elián’s mother and her fellow travelers from drowning in the Florida Strait. As Senauth says, “I was only able to write this dramatic story because of my gift for seeing things as they really are and sharing my mystic imagination with you the public” (25). As such texts confirm, Elián González is an aberrant addition to the traditional U.S.-sponsored celebrity roll-call. He had no ontological capacity to take advantage of, intervene in, comment on, or be known outside, the parallel narrative universe into which he was cast and remade. He was cast adrift as a mere proper name that impelled numerous authors to supply the boy with the biography he purportedly lacked. Resident of an “atmospheric depression in history” (Stenger 56), Elián was battled over by virtualized national rivals, mass-mediated, and laid bare for endless signification. Even before his return to Cuba, one commentator noted that Elián had been consumed, denied corporeality, and condemned to “live out his life in hyper-space” (Buzachero). That space includes the infamous episode of South Park from May 2000, in which Kenny, simulating Elián, is killed off as per the show’s episodic protocols. Symptomatic of Elián’s narrative dispersal, the Kenny-Elián simulation keeps on living and dying whenever the episode is re-broadcast on TV sets across the world. 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