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In this work, we concentrate on the graphics processing unit (GPU) implementation of three different methods that are common among peers in the electronic computational domain. We calculate the energy eigenstates of GaN/AlGaN quantum dots on GPU using the tight-binding approach with a $$ sp^3d^5s^* $$ + spin-orbit parametrization for structures ranging from 8039 atoms to 351,600 atoms corresponding to a Hamiltonian matrix size of around 160,780-7,032,000. We perform an analysis for timing, memory occupancy and convergence on a multi-GPU workstation and a high performance computing (HPC) cluster. We also present comparisons between the multi-GPU system having 4 Nvidia Kepler graphic cards and a HPC cluster where the algorithms are benchmarked on up to 256 CPU cores. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: It is a common understanding that once the fête of the city or village was a feast. Yet, the solving of the problem about the degree of festivity of the contemporary folklore festivals and their inscription in the contemporary festive calendar needs a careful approach, especially in relation to their organization in the context of the contemporary understanding of festivity. Of an utmost importance in this respect is the understanding that the festival is a form of reproduction of cultural heritage. This explains the structuring and (supposedly) the proper balancing of its elements: the theme of the festival (rites, singing, dances, music); status; local specifics; chronotope; competitions; jury. All that is a prerequisite for its "being" as a matter related to principles which have to be adequate to the nature of this heritage and the society's aspirations towards a type of festivity adequate to the contemporary cultural situation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Powerful algorithms have recently been proposed for computing eigenvalues of large matrices by methods related to contour integrals; best known are the works of Sakurai and coauthors and Polizzi and coauthors. Even if the matrices are real symmetric, most such methods rely on complex arithmetic, leading to expensive linear systems to solve. An appealing technique for overcoming this starts from the observation that certain discretized contour integrals are equivalent to rational interpolation problems, for which there is no need to leave the real axis. Investigation shows that using rational interpolation per se suffers from instability; however, related techniques involving real rational filters can be very effective. This article presents a technique of this kind that is related to previous work published in Japanese by Murakami. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This text deals with the traditional agricultural/livestock fairs of Galiza from an ethno-historic and ethnographic point of wiew. Places of economic activity, but also with an important festive aspect, they have been in decline for de last decades due to changes in the old agrarian sytem. However some of them still keep features of the past, like the fair of San Martiño in Francos (Teo), near the city of Santiago de Compostela. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of TURyDES is the property of TURYDES and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Feasting is one of the "openings" through which the sacred manifests itself in imanence. The essence of feast is not. in itself, accessible to human knowledge, only its manifestations are. Therefore, the question to ask is not that of what feasting is, but how it is. To be able to grasp feasting in Mircea Blade's literary works, we have resorted to four of its forms of appearance: playing, theatre, creation and sacred eros. These are acts that have a special potential to open up a horizon of significations accessible to the initiated, should the latter undertake to decipher the signs and integrate the meaning in their own life. The article refers to Mircea Eliade's short-stories in which playing, the spectacle, artistic creation and metaphysical love are particularly noticeable, not as mere occurrences but, rather, as festive instances circumscribing a festive chronotope. Eliade's Romanian proses tackled here are; Podul (The Bridge), Adio !... (Goodbye), Uniforme de general (Two Generals' Uniforms), Şarpele (The Serpent) and La țigănci (With the Gypsy Girls). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies territory, memory and the community, based on the land claims in El Rosal, Cauca, Colombia. The said vinculation has been seen through lawsuits, disputes over the construction of buildings on land where construction is prohibited, the misappropriation of land, and the subsequent territorial reorganization (which are evidenced in the regional historic archives). It has also been witnessed through the annual Festival of the Virgen del Rosario, a complex ritual that is conceived as territorial updating through the yearly commemoration of the Virgin, and which renews the presence of the villagers within the territory and their jurisdiction over the territory. Structurally, this study provides strength to the hypothesis on the territory- memory continuum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Teología is the property of Pontificia Universidad Catolica Argentina and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

For modern man time is due to its implacable passage stressful and producing anguish. Without being coupled in the sacred-profane binomial and missing the periodical insertion of a feast (an event that set order into the rhythms of time in ancient communities) time is perceived by contemporary man as a mathematical sum of the stages of life, useless sequences in an unconscious marathon towards nothingness. On the other hand, in the case of traditional man, mythical time presupposes a return towards the origins by means of a ritual re-enactment of the past. The present study tries to demonstrate that mythical time is bi-dimensional, contemplative (past oriented) and anticipatory (looking towards the future). It also demonstrates that in the traditional mentality there is no break or brutal separation between profane and sacred time. Both contribute in a perfect complementarity to the spatial-temporal structure in which the individual and collective existence develop, in an uninterrupted alternative of thresholds meant to essentialize duration and counteract its permanent etropic tendency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Let f(z) be an analytic or meromorphic function in the closed unit disk sampled at the nth roots of unity. Based on these data, how can we approximately evaluate f(z) or f(m)(z) at a point z in the disk? How can we calculate the zeros or poles of f in the disk? These questions exhibit in the purest form certain algorithmic issues that arise across computational science in areas including integral equations, partial differential equations, and large-scale linear algebra. We analyze some of the possibilities and emphasize the distinction between algorithms based on polynomial or rational interpolation and those based on trapezoidal rule approximations of Cauchy integrals. We then show how these developments apply to the problem of computing the eigenvalues in the disk of a matrix of large dimension. Finally we highlight the power of rational in comparison with polynomial approximations for some of these problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article proposes that although Ezekiel's dramatic usage of corpse desecration imagery has long been recognized, one aspect of that motif, namely necrophagia, has not thus far been amply appreciated. Throughout chs. 11, 24, and 34, Ezekiel employs imagery of a zebaḥ sacrificial feast gone awry to relay the concern, implicit in chs. 11 and 24 and explicit in ch. 34, that the people of Israel have been metaphorically cannibalized by their unjust rulers. This widely unrecognized element of necrophagia, this article maintains, plays into Ezekiel's corpse desecration motif to highlight the similar fates of Jerusalem and Gog, while creating a stark contrast with the final outcome of the Babylonian exiles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Feasting is a central component of elite power strategies in complex societies worldwide. In the precolonial Kingdom of Dahomey, located in the Republic of Bénin, public feasts were a critical component of royal strategies to attract and bind political subjects over the course of the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries, a period of dramatic political transformation on the Bight of Benin. Archaeological excavations within the domestic quarters of a series of Dahomean royal palace sites have yielded diverse faunal and ceramic assemblages that represent clear examples of (1) ritualized food consumption and (2) everyday culinary practices. In this paper, faunal and ceramic evidence from two excavated contexts is marshaled to distinguish the archaeological signatures of feasting in Dahomey, highlighting the importance of private feasts in attempts to build political influence in the domestic zones of Dahomean royal palaces. In particular, this analysis foregrounds how royal women jockeyed for power and influence during a period of political uncertainty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Problems of Literary Genres / Zagadnienia Rodzajów Literackich is the property of Lodz Scientific Society / Lodzkie Towarzystwo Naukowe and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The study presents an interpretative analysis of the theatrical aspects of the First May celebrations in the Czechoslovakia in 1948, mass event with crucial importance for the Communist regime, which was then only taking over political power in the country. First step of the analysis is an historical overview of the First may celebrations in the world, followed by a description and characterization of the particular elements of the event using poetic tools borrowed from sociology and sociocultural anthropology, especially the methodology of Jeffrey Alexander. The aim of the analysis is to prove the (un)successfulness of the cultural performance, as far as the interests of the Communist regime are concerned. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights: [•] Cranial Electrotherapy Stimulation is a descendant of Electrosleep. [•] Transcutaneous Cranial Electrical Stimulation is a descendant of Electroanesthesia. [•] There is a need for better reporting of dosages and devices used. [•] There is a shift to basic dosages in contemporary approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of International Social Research is the property of Journal of International Social Research and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Abstract: Background: Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) remains the most effective acute treatment for severe major depression, but with significant risk of adverse cognitive effects. Unidirectional electrical stimulation with a novel electrode placement and geometry (Focal Electrically Administered Seizure Therapy (FEAST)) has been proposed as a means to initiate seizures in prefrontal cortex prior to secondary generalization. As such, it may have fewer cognitive side effects than traditional ECT. We report on its first human clinical application. Method: Seventeen unmedicated depressed adults (5 men; 3 bipolar disorder; age 53 ± 16 years) were recruited after being referred for ECT. Open-label FEAST was administered with a modified spECTrum 5000Q device and a traditional ECT dosing regimen until patients clinically responded. Clinical and cognitive assessments were obtained at baseline, and end of course. Time to orientation recovery, a predictor of long-term amnestic effects, was assessed at each treatment. Nonresponders to FEAST were transitioned to conventional ECT. Results: One patient withdrew from the study after a single titration session. After the course of FEAST (median 10 sessions), there was a 46.1 ± 35.5% improvement in Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression (HRSD24) scores compared to baseline (33.1 ± 6.8, 16.8 ± 10.9; P < 0.0001). Eight of 16 patients met response criteria (50% decrease in HRSD24) and 5/16 met remission criteria (HRSD24 ≤ 10). Patients achieved full re-orientation (4 of 5 items) in 5.5 ± 6.4 min (median = 3.6), timed from when their eyes first opened after treatment. Conclusion: In this feasibility study, FEAST produced clinically meaningful antidepressant improvement, with relatively short time to reorientation. Our preliminary work first in primates and now depressed adults demonstrates that FEAST is feasible, safe, well-tolerated and, if efficacy can be optimized, has potential to replace traditional ECT. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Copyright of Etnolog is the property of Slovene Ethnographic Museum and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

La Plaza de la Corredera, a lo largo de su historia, ha sido uno de los ejes principales y vertebradores del urbanismo y vida de Córdoba, centro de las actividades comerciales, lúdica y representativa, así como nexo de unión de los barrios de la ciudad. Tanto sus usos, como su configuración y aspecto, han ido evolucionando, desde su aparición como espacio abierto en los arrabales cercanos a la muralla de la Medina musulmana, en el siglo XII, hasta la actualidad. Su singularidad dentro de las Plazas Mayores barrocas andaluzas, e influencia en las españolas, hizo que en 1982 fuera declarada monumento histórico-artístico de carácter nacional.All along its history the Plaza de la Corredera has been one of the main axes of Cordoba’s life and urbanism, the centre of commercial activities, festive and representative, as well as a link for the other quarters of the city. Its uses, configuration and appearance have evolved from its origin as an open space in the suburbs near the Muslim Medina in the 11th century up to the present time. For its singularity as an Andalusian Baroque Plaza Mayor and its influence on other Spanish squares it was declared national historic-artistic monument in 1982.

Abstract: This paper explores the religious practice of characters in the five 'ideal' Greek novels, arguing that despite their overall presentation of a world that is in many ways 'realistic', their representation of religion diverges from 'reality'. At one end of the spectrum the behaviour of the rustic couple Daphnis and Chloe is almost hyper-religious, and it is only in Longus' novel that we find a full range of traditional religious practices, including vows and libations. In the other four novels many features correspond to those of the 'real' world - prayers, offerings, sacrifices, feasts and festivals - but libations are sometimes not poured when they might be expected, rituals associated with marriage or burial are omitted or played down, and, most strikingly, the practice of making a vow to a god in times of trouble in order to secure help or rescue, a practice documented in the 'real' world by epigraphy and literature from the archaic period down to at least the third century AD, is wholly absent. The possible reasons for this absence are briefly discussed - is it simply a generally soft-focus and elliptical account of religious behaviour, or is it the avoidance of a device which, if resorted to, would risk short-circuiting characters' escape from cliff-hanging situations? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article looks at the establishment of a national holiday in honor of French Emperor Napoléon Bonaparte's birthday, the fête de saint-Napoléon, which also caused the invention of a saint with the same name. According to the article, the creation of the civil holiday caused a stronger link between the Catholic Church and the government of France. The author discusses the decree of February 19, 1806 which includes the declaration that the fête saint Napoléon will be celebrated on August 15, also the day during which the Catholic holiday The Assumption is celebrated.

Our paper is an interdisciplinary approach, of linguistic and theological analysis of a few lexemes that define saints who became popular in the Romanian culture and spirituality. Our ancient church, a fundamental part of our culture, has always been a coagulant factor for the unity of the Romanians worldwide. And this is also proven by the use of the religious vocabulary in all the anthropological, territorial, socio-professional and socio-cultural variants of the national Romanian language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the song and dance of the Arvanitikes communities of Mount Kithairon, in Attica, Greece, and specifically in the villages of Vilia and Kriekouki, also called Erythres. It analyzes the function and performance of so-called "improvised" songs and dances and their social role in communities, particularly within the context of cultural heritage and collective memory. The author also addresses the impact of socio-economic and cultural changes and analyzes dance from the perspective of sociability, cultural identity, and symbolic community structuring. The feasts, or panigyri, of Saint George at Paliochori, Greece, and of the Virgin Mary at Goura, Greece, are also addressed.

The article examines cultural modulations in a devotional celebration in the city of São Luiz do Paraitinga (SP), Brazil, impacted by a critical event (flood) that hit the town in January 2010. The flood brought down part of the cultural heritage of the town, which was related to the achievement of the traditional Feast of the Saint Ghost. This loss allowed several assemblages religious and cultural policies emerged in the recovery process of the town, producing flows that have introduced new referents for the reinvention of the feast. Here, we seek to describe and analyze the dynamics of these assemblages, indicating the importance of cultural heritage for the affirmation of social esteem of the town and its people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Caderno Virtual de Turismo is the property of Caderno Virtual de Turismo and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

History and ethnicity have been the preferred frameworks for explaining how Levantine societies organ ized themselves during the early Iron Age. Consequently, opportunities are missed to understand how local economic and environmental factors structured social life. In this study, a collection of early Iron Age set tlements from southwest central Jordan, the Dhi ban and Karak Plateaus, is examined using a community perspective. Emphasis is placed on the production and consumption offood, the raw materials for household and communal wealth. The value offood in the communities was heightened due to the difficult semiarid environmental conditions in which it was produced. The sharing offood between households and commu nities was one way to create social bonds, or to gain power over others. Food circulation through practices such as storage, everyday meals andfeasts therefore offers an ideal window through which to observe social life. Evidencefor the communities'foodsystems is considered (faunal andpalaeo botanical data, storage and food production facilities, ceramic vesselproduction). The presence and uneven distribution ofthis evidence within individual communities indicates that households possessed deffirent amounts offood, signaling a degree of inequality between households. A collection of decorated ceramic foodserving vessels is also dis cussed along with information about its production, its semiotic qualities and the possible roles it played in commensal events. One broader implication ofthis study is that materials were entangled in the networks of relationships that constituted early Iron Age social life. This recognition ofthe material word's participation challenges normative ways that early Iron Age societies have been analyzed and represented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Festivities play a relevant role in building and bracing bonds between people living at the frontier region between Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay , the area relating to the gaúcho or gaucho culture. in order to better understand the meaning of festivities in this society, I investigate how they express it -- their own performance. this paper focuses on two kinds of festivities: the Gaúcho Day parade and the criollas. Both can be seen as cultural performances representing, through multiple idioms, the self-image of the local population. Based on a brief ethnography of these happenings, my intention is to analyze in which way these festivities express such "frontier identities". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The traditional ritual year which was characterized by Christian feasts for centuries on one hand, and the cosmological, agrarian (economic), individual, family, and local communal holidays on the other, has been rapidly changing between 1945 and 1956 during the first Socialist/Communist years. A new system of the ritual year was established according to the new ideology and power situation: the so-called Socialist ritual year. It was characterized by international, Soviet and national-communist feasts, refusing the religious holidays. Some softening were introduced only after the 1956 Hungarian revolution. The main Christian feasts were again accepted (Christmas, Easter). This Socialist period with its Socialist feasts lasted for 45 years when in 1989/1990 the legal power system was changed. After the election in 1990 the totalitarian Socialist ideology with its symbolic holidays has mostly disappeared. New national feasts were created e.g. the memorial day of the 1956 revolution which was a prohibited alternative feast during the Socialist period. Patriotic holidays have regained their importance. The symbols of the feasts have been totally changed. The traditional Christian ritual year has been partly restored, but in a rather secularized society. Christmas, Easter have been commercionalized. Local feasts have emerged which serve first of all the restoration of the civil society and express the local identity. The paper deals with the process of changes in Hungary showing the role of the holidays and the ritual year in society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the Greek island of Tinos and the importance it has to both the modern Greek Orthodox Church and the Catholic Church. It looks at why the faithful on the island are more active in their respective churches than most and examines the significance of private ownership of chapels and its place in the greater church hierarchy.

During Antiquity, daily life in Rome was punctuated by very numerous feasts and games, which often had a commemorative function. However, since the event which founded the commemorative act had come out of the collective memory, the rite which preserved the recollection appeared to have lost all meaning. It is therefore necessary to trace back the founding event of the feast or game in order to discover, under the apparent nonsense (anoètos), the mythic affabulation (mythos) giving a sense (logos) or restoring a meaning to incongruous ritual gestures. Three cases are here considered: Lupercalia, Bacchanalia (with their particular extension, Matralia) and Saturnalia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay argues that the Middle English poem Cleanness uses the metaphors of sacrifice and feasting to represent the idea of Christian purity as social custom and obligation, a performable act that both informs spirituality and regulates behavior. The poem's major narratives all explicitly draw on the spiritual component involved in the preparation and consumption of the feast, including the initial act of sacrifice, and the reception of each is framed in the context of an interaction with the divine. Understanding the function of these rituals in the poem enables us to see that the concerns of the poet are far more complex than simply an orthodox treatment of sexual purity. Cleanness's structure enables the poet to discuss both aspects of the title virtue at the same time: the purity that man must struggle for in order to achieve salvation and the purity that is forcibly achieved through cleansing sacrifice; and the connection of both to the re-inscription of the divine hierarchy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is a mainstay in the treatment of severe, medication-resistant depression. The antidepressant efficacy and cognitive side effects of ECT are influenced by the position of the electrodes on the head and by the degree to which the electrical stimulus exceeds the threshold for seizure induction. However, surprisingly little is known about the effects of other key electrical parameters such as current directionality, polarity, and electrode configuration. Understanding these relationships may inform the optimization of therapeutic interventions to improve their risk/benefit ratio. To elucidate these relationships, we evaluated a novel form of ECT (focal electrically administered seizure therapy, FEAST) that combines unidirectional stimulation, control of polarity, and an asymmetrical electrode configuration, and contrasted it with conventional ECT in a nonhuman primate model. Rhesus monkeys had their seizure thresholds determined on separate days with ECT conditions that crossed the factors of current directionality (unidirectional or bidirectional), electrode configuration (standard bilateral or FEAST (small anterior and large posterior electrode)), and polarity (assignment of anode and cathode in unidirectional stimulation). Ictal expression and post-ictal suppression were quantified through scalp EEG. Findings were replicated and extended in a second experiment with the same subjects. Seizures were induced in each of the 75 trials, including 42 FEAST procedures. Seizure thresholds were lower with unidirectional than with bidirectional stimulation (p<0.0001), and lower in FEAST than in bilateral ECS (p=0.0294). Ictal power was greatest in posterior-anode unidirectional FEAST, and post-ictal suppression was strongest in anterior-anode FEAST (p=0.0008 and p=0.0024, respectively). EEG power was higher in the stimulated hemisphere in posterior-anode FEAST (p=0.0246), consistent with the anode being the site of strongest activation. These findings suggest that current directionality, polarity, and electrode configuration influence the efficiency of seizure induction with ECT. Unidirectional stimulation and novel electrode configurations such as FEAST are two approaches to lowering seizure threshold. Furthermore, the impact of FEAST on ictal and post-ictal expression appeared to be polarity dependent. Future studies may examine whether these differences in seizure threshold and expression have clinical significance for patients receiving ECT.Neuropsychopharmacology (2009) 34, 2002–2010; doi:10.1038/npp.2009.12; published online 18 February 2009 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]