WHAT DID WE JUST SEE? AMBIGUITY AND REVELATION IN THE EXTREME FIRST PERSON PLURAL

Questions of point of view are pivotal in fictional texts and determine what story, precisely, the author can tell. But what happens when writers present particularly challenging points of view? With a focus on the first person plural, this paper will interrogate stories where point of view ‘asserts’ itself to the reader. Using an approach informed by unnatural narratology, this paper addresses narrative situations where the make-up of a narrative collective is initially unclear, and where a challenging or ambiguous point of view is revealed to be an integral component of the plot.In exploring the relationship between point of view, ambiguity and narrative revelation, this paper will consider a range of contemporary novels written predominately in the first person plural, notably TaraShea Nesbit’s The Wives of Los Alamos, Malcolm Knox’s The Wonder Lover and Jon McGregor’s Even the Dogs. Highlighting the innate ambiguity of an ‘extreme’ first person plural allows us to consider ways in which authors of fiction in the first person plural have exploited this ambiguity to shape key revelations within their texts.

Inverting the Facing-the-Viewer Bias for Biological Motion Stimuli

Depth-ambiguous point-light walkers are most frequently seen as facing-the-viewer (FTV). It has been argued that the FTV bias depends on recognising the stimulus as a person. Accordingly, reducing the social relevance of biological motion by presenting stimuli upside down has been shown to reduce FTV bias. Here, we replicated the experiment that reported this finding and added stick figure walkers to the task in order to assess the effect of explicit shape information on facing bias for inverted figures. We measured the FTV bias for upright and inverted stick figure walkers and point-light walkers presented in different azimuth orientations. Inversion of the stimuli did not reduce facing direction judgements to chance levels. In fact, we observed a significant facing away bias in the inverted stimulus conditions. In addition, we found no difference in the pattern of data between stick figure and point-light walkers. Although the results are broadly consistent with previous findings, we do not conclude that inverting biological motion simply negates the FTV bias; rather, inversion causes stimuli to be seen facing away from the viewer more often than not. The results support the interpretation that primarily low-level visual processes are responsible for the biases produced by both upright and inverted stimuli.

The Uncertainty Elimination in Discrete Topology Optimization of Compliant Mechanisms

Topology uncertainty leads to different topology solutions and makes topology optimization ambiguous. Point connection and grey cell might cause topology uncertainty. They are both eradicated when hybrid discretization model is used for discrete topology optimization. A common topology uncertainty in the current discrete topology optimization stems from mesh dependence. The topology solution of an optimized compliant mechanism might be uncertain when its design domain is discretized differently. To eliminate topology uncertainty from mesh dependence, the genus based topology optimization strategy is introduced in this paper. The topology of a compliant mechanism is defined by its genus which is the number of holes in the compliant mechanism. With this strategy, the genus of an optimized compliant mechanism is actively controlled during its topology optimization process. There is no topology uncertainty when this strategy is incorporated into discrete topology optimization. The introduced topology optimization strategy is demonstrated by examples with different degrees of genus.

Rectifiably ambiguous points of planar sets

Denote by P the Euclidean plane with a rectangular Cartesian coordinate system where the x-axis is horizontal and the y-axis is vertical. An arc in P shall mean a simple continuous curve Λ:{t: 0 ≦ t < 1} P having the properties that limitt→1 Λ(t) exists and limitt→1Λ(t) ≠ Λ(t0) for 0 ≦t0 < 1. An arc at a pointζ in P shall be an arc Λ where limt→1 Λ(t) = ζ. If S is an arbitrary subset of the plane, ζ is termed an ambiguous point relative to S provided there are arcs Λ and Γ at ζ with Λ ⊆ S and Γ ⊆ P–S; such arcs are referred to as arcs of ambiguity at ζ. If A is a set of arcs we say a point ζ in P is accessible via A provided there is an arc at ζ which is an element of A. If B is also a collection of arcs, then A and B are said to be pointwise disjoint if whenever α∈A and β ∈ B, α ∩ β = Ø. The collections A and B are said to be terminally arcwise disjoint if whenever α ∈ A and β ∈ B and both α and β are arcs at a point ζ in P, then a ∩ β contains no arc at ζ. If S is a planar set, we let A(S) denote the set of all arcs contained in S. Note that if S ∩ T = Ø then A(S) and A(T) are pointwise disjoint collections of arcs.

Restricted principal cluster sets of a certain holomorphic function

Let D be the open unit disk and let K be the unit circle. We say that α is an arc at ζ ∈ K if α is contained in D and is the image of a continuous function z = z(t) (0 ≤ t < 1) such that z(t) → ζ as t → 1. We call α a segment as ζ if the function z = z(t) is linear in t. If P is a property which is meaningful for each point of K, we say that nearly every point of K has property P if the exceptional set is a set of first Baire category in K. We assume that the reader is familiar with the rudiments of cluster set theory, and in particular with the terms ambiguous point, Meier point, and Plessner point of a function (cf. [4] or [7]).