This 1994 article by Jeffrey Gray originally appeared in the journal NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction (Duke University Press). An early foray into transnational American Studies, Gray’s analysis of the role “Europe” plays both in the narrative and in the life of the author herself begins with a discussion of the object of art—the self as exoticized, distanced other—imagined and displayed against the carceral black body in the American imaginary, an imaginary that holds the protagonist, Helga, hostage to an indeterminacy represented by her mulatto status. Gray argues that the “quicksand” of the search for essence, whether located in the body or in the eyes of others, eventually dissolves the protagonist’s sense that a change of place can change the truth that essence does not exist. Gray references the shared observation among African American international celebs (Richard Wright, James Baldwin, and Josephine Baker—whose 1973 interview with Henry Louis Gates, Jr., is cited) that “being different is different” in Europe, yet that otherness is finally also not an experience of self, which the narrative (and perhaps the author’s life as well) proves to be endlessly deferred.

This music score was submitted for the Kaleidoscope 2020 Call for Scores, an open access collaboration with the UCLA Music Library.

Seymour Johnson Air Force Base (SJAFB), North Carolina lies within the Atlantic Flyway waterfowl migration corridor and is home to the 4th Fighter Wing (4FW), with 4 fighter squadrons and 2 training units, and the tenant 916th Air Refueling Wing (916 ARW), operating 10 KC-135R Stratotankers. To allow the 4FW and 916 ARW to continue their operations at SJAFB, the City of Goldsboro must maintain the safety of the military’s assets. This includes ensuring that land usage within a 5-mile radius of the base is compatible with safe flight operations (e.g., areas should not attract large populations of birds). Over the last 3 years, $4 million in damage to SJAFB aircraft was caused by duck, goose, gull, and vulture strikes. These birds are known to utilize wetlands, ponds, and quarries surrounding the base. With populations of these birds increasing around SJAFB, the addition of incompatible land uses could cause the city and surrounding region to lose $340 million per year in revenue if the base was to relocate due to safety concerns related to striking birds. The economic value of the base has helped prompt city officials to coordinate with the base before granting permits for new land uses. The city also has recognized the need to reduce the abundance of birds currently using the wetlands and ponds adjacent to the SJAFB airfield.

We consider an Electrohydraulic Valve System (EHVS) model with uncertain parameters that may possibly vary with time. This is a nonlinear third order system consisting of two clearly separated subsystems, one for piston position and the other for the chamber pressure. The nonlinearities involved are flow-pressure characteristics of the solenoid valves, the pressure dynamics of the chamber due to varying volume, and a variable damping nonlinearity. We develop a parametric model that is linear in the unknown parameters of the system using filtering. We deal with a nonlinear parameterization in the variable damping term using the Taylor approximation. We design two parameter identifiers which employs either a continuous-time unnormalized least-squares update law with a forgetting factor or a gradient update law. These update laws exponentially converges to the true parameters under a persistence of excitation condition, which is satisfied due to the periodic regime of operation of EHVS. We present simulation results that show good following of unknown parameters even with the presence of sensor noise. We also create a hybrid model of the EHVS and apply the identifiers. In the presence of the unmodelled dynamics we find there remains good following of the unknown parameters

High-energy physics is facing a daunting computing challenge with the large datasets expected from the upcoming High-Luminosity Large Hadron Collider in the next decade and even more so at future colliders. A key challenge in the reconstruction of events of simulated data and collision data is the pattern recognition algorithms used to determine the trajectories of charged particles. The field of quantum computing shows promise for transformative capabilities and is going through a cycle of rapid development and hence might provide a solution to this challenge. This article reviews current studies of quantum computers for charged particle pattern recognition in high-energy physics. This article is part of the theme issue 'Quantum technologies in particle physics'.