bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Describing function of the nonlinear dynamics of viscous unsteady lift response for a pitching airfoil
Authors: Selim Y. M. , Taha H. E. , El Bayoumi G. M.
Published: November 2023

In recent years, there has been a growing interest in low-Reynolds-number, unsteady flight applications, leading to renewed scrutiny of the Kutta condition. As an alternative, various methods have been proposed, including the combination of potential flow with the triple-deck boundary layer theory to introduce a viscous correction for Theodorsen's unsteady lift. In this research article, we present a dynamical system approach for the total circulatory unsteady lift generation of a pitching airfoil. The system's input is the pitching angle, and the output is the total circulatory lift. By employing the triple-deck boundary layer theory instead of the Kutta condition, a new nonlinearity in the system emerges, necessitating further investigation to understand its impact on the unsteady lift model. To achieve this, we utilize the describing function method to represent the frequency response of the total circulatory lift. Our analysis focuses on a pitching flat plate about the mid-chord point. The results demonstrate that there is an additional phase lag due to viscous effects, which increase as the reduced frequency increases, the Reynolds number decreases, and/or the pitching amplitude increases.
Vortex phase matching of a self-propelled model of fish with autonomous fin motion
Authors: Ito Susumu , Uchida Nariya
Published: November 2023

It has been a long-standing problem how schooling fish optimize their motion by exploiting the vortices shed by the others. A recent experimental study showed that a pair of fish reduce energy consumption by matching the phases of their tailbeat according to their distance. In order to elucidate the dynamical mechanism by which fish control the motion of caudal fins via vortex-mediated hydrodynamic interactions, we introduce a new model of a self-propelled swimmer with an active flapping plate. The model incorporates the role of the central pattern generator network that generates rhythmic but noisy activity of the caudal muscle, in addition to hydrodynamic and elastic torques on the fin. For a solitary fish, the model reproduces a linear relation between the swimming speed and tailbeat frequency, as well as the distributions of the speed, tailbeat amplitude, and frequency. For a pair of fish, both the distribution function and energy dissipation rate exhibit periodic patterns as functions of the front-back distance and phase difference of the flapping motion. We show that a pair of fish spontaneously adjust their distance and phase difference via hydrodynamic interaction to reduce energy consumption.
Dual-wideband radiating surface using interleaved electric and magnetic currents: Underlying physics and experimental verification
Authors: Askarian Amirhossein , Burasa Pascal , Yao Jianping , Lu Zhenguo , Wu Ke
Published: November 2023

Unlike popular multiband antenna array radiation based on either electric or magnetic surface currents, the use of mutually interleaved and tightly coupled electric and magnetic currents results in an aperture-reuse space-efficient multiband radiating surface for highly integrated antenna-frontend architecture and spatial power combining design scenarios. In this work, slot and dipole modes corresponding to magnetic and electric currents are effectively interleaved and excited in a surface to develop a space-efficient dual-wideband aperture-shared radiating surface. In this case, due to an effective reuse of the antenna aperture over both frequency bands, a high aperture-reuse efficiency is achieved. First, we devise a planar magneto-electric (ME)-dipole-alike antenna and analyze it in both the frequency and time domain. The antenna is then studied by the characteristic mode theory and the findings are validated using full-wave simulations. The developed planar ME-dipole-alike antenna is used to realize a dual-wideband radiating surface in which electric and magnetic currents are mutually coupled and interlaced, which is excited by properly oriented and distributed sources on the antenna's surface. Eventually, a highly isolated dual-wideband prototype was developed and fabricated using a cost-effective multi-layer Printed Circuit Board (PCB) process that operates in the Ku-band with both impedance and gain bandwidth of approximately 42% and in the Ka-band with respective impedance and gain bandwidth of 29% and 16.32%.
Device-independent quantum randomness–enhanced zero-knowledge proof
Authors: Li Cheng-Long , Zhang Kai-Yi , Zhang Xingjian , Yang Kui-Xing , Han Yu , Cheng Su-Yi , Cui Hongrui , Liu Wen-Zhao , Li Ming-Han , Liu Yang , Bai Bing , Dong Hai-Hao , Zhang Jun , Ma Xiongfeng , Yu Yu , Fan Jingyun , Zhang Qiang , Pan Jian-Wei
Published: November 2023

Zero-knowledge proof (ZKP) is a fundamental cryptographic primitive that allows a prover to convince a verifier of the validity of a statement without leaking any further information. As an efficient variant of ZKP, noninteractive zero-knowledge proof (NIZKP) adopting the Fiat–Shamir heuristic is essential to a wide spectrum of applications, such as federated learning, blockchain, and social networks. However, the heuristic is typically built upon the random oracle model that makes ideal assumptions about hash functions, which does not hold in reality and thus undermines the security of the protocol. Here, we present a quantum solution to the problem. Instead of resorting to a random oracle model, we implement a quantum randomness service. This service generates random numbers certified by the loophole-free Bell test and delivers them with postquantum cryptography (PQC) authentication. By employing this service, we conceive and implement NIZKP of the three-coloring problem. By bridging together three prominent research themes, quantum nonlocality, PQC, and ZKP, we anticipate this work to inspire more innovative applications that combine quantum information science and the cryptography field.
Eine vergessene Ausgabe von Ciceros De natura deorum
Authors: Gawlick Günter , Lorenz Stefan
Published: November 2023

This article wants to recall a hitherto unnoticed edition of Cicero’s De Natura Deorum, which the
classical philologist Matthäus Dresser (1536–1615) published with an extensive commentary. This edition, however, represents a remarkable
peculiarity within the reception history of Cicero’s text, since Dresser neither claims to be a philologist, interested in textual
criticism, nor a neutral historian of the philosophy of religion. Rather, as an apologetically oriented Protestant in times of confessional
conflict, he is concerned with the argumentative validity of the different answers to the questions discussed in Cicero’s text: Do gods
exist? What qualities do they have? What activities do they display? And which relevance do these answers have for Christian monotheism?
Hence, we may speak of a selective commentary, first and foremost interested in the truth or falsehood of the various answers to these main
questions, in order to set contemporary readers (especially scholars and students) on the right track and to save them from severe religious
errors. Dresser aims to achieve his goal by adding to the text not only extensive Annotationes, but also an introductory
Argumentum to each of the three Ciceronian books of De Natura Deorum. He also gives two
Disputationes (in the form of theses) at the end of each book, which provide a résumé and further guidance on
interpretation. Thus he firmly rejects the atomism of Epicureanism and its denial of Providence, as explained in the first book. Dresser has
to take a differentiated view of the views of Stoicism as presented in the second book: Besides many beneficial doctrines, this school of
philosophers also holds fatalistic and pantheistic views which have to be rejected as dangerous to the Christian faith. As the sceptic Cotta
radically rebukes the religious views of Epicureanism in the third book, but also attacks in large part Stoic theism and its idea of
providence, which is also dear to Dresser’s heart, he is forced to oppose academic scepticism. This gives rise to a “theodicy” avant la
lettre by Dresser, since Cottas denial of providence had also argued with the existence of evil in God’s creation. The Epicurean conceptions
of God are thus not an option. Those of Stoicism are acceptable if purged of dangerous elements. Scepticism in its radical academic form
must be eliminated by argument. In this article, these features of Dresser’s Annotationes and
Disputationes are described and analysed in detail. Important parts of his commentaries are quoted in the author’s
translation. Completely translated are the Disputationes 1 and 2 to Book III, dealing with the sceptical ’epoché’ or
retention of judgement. Thus, the contribution not only represents a unique example of the reception of Cicero’s De Natura
Deorum in the age of confessionalism, but also gives an insight into the reception of the three Hellenistic schools of philosophy
in the early modern period in general, especially that of scepticism.
Cognitive underpinnings of the meaning of Spanish estar
Authors: Piñango María Mercedes , Fuchs Martín
Published: November 2023

The Spanish copula verb estar is currently taking part in two of the most well-known paths of
semantic change across different dialectal varieties of Spanish: (a) as a main copula verb, in its encroachment on the domain of
ser, and (b) as the auxiliary in the Present Progressive marker, as it encroaches in the domain of the Simple
Present form (i.e., Sánchez-Alonso 2018; Fuchs
2020). Here we argue for the hypothesis that estar’s participation in both paths of change is not
coincidental. Focusing on the copular use, we present arguments for the proposal that estar’s encroachment is
connected to its lexico-conceptual structure, which, under specific communicative pressures, is afforded greater conversational
informativity, thus systematically expanding its licensing contexts and, as a result, bolstering its use. Evidence consistent with
this analysis emerges from use variation for estar across several dialects of Spanish, both in its copular and
auxiliary uses.
Inducible tricolor reporter mouse for parallel imaging of lysosomes, mitochondria, and microtubules
Authors: Hutchison Vera , Lynch Anne , Gutierrez-Gamez Andrés Mauricio , Chen Jichao
Published: November 2023

Cell type–specific use of the same DNA blueprint generates diverse cell types. Such diversity must also be executed via differential deployment of the same subcellular machinery. However, our understanding of the size, distribution, and dynamics of subcellular machinery in native tissues and their connection to cellular diversity remains limited. We generate and characterize an inducible tricolor reporter mouse, dubbed “Kaleidoscope,” for simultaneous imaging of lysosomes, mitochondria, and microtubules in any cell type and at a single-cell resolution. The expected subcellular compartments are labeled in culture and in tissues with no impact on cellular and organismal viability. Quantitative and live imaging of the tricolor reporter captures cell type–specific organelle features and kinetics in the lung, as well as their changes after Sendai virus infection. Yap/Taz mutant lung epithelial cells undergo accelerated lamellar body maturation, a subcellular manifestation of their molecular defects. A comprehensive toolbox of reporters for all subcellular structures is expected to transform our understanding of cell biology in tissues.
Temperature dependence of the thermal conductivity of hydroxide catalysis bonds between silicon substrates
Authors: Masso Reid Mariela , Haughian Karen , Cumming Alan V , Faller James , Hammond Giles , Hough James , van Veggel Anna-Maria , Rowan Sheila
Published: November 2023

Future generations of gravitational wave detectors plan to use cryogenics in order to further reduce thermal noise associated with the mirror test masses and their suspensions. It is important that the thermal conductivity of candidate materials for these mirror suspension systems, and any additional thermal resistance associated with the required bonding/jointing, is characterised. Results are presented here for composite single-crystal silicon substrates, with multiple hydroxide catalysis bonds present, in order to assess the thermal conductivity of the bond layers. An average bond thickness of

460
 

nm is observed within the oxide-bond-oxide interfaces, with a calculated thermal conductivity rising from

0.013
→
0.087
 

Wm−1K−1 across a temperature range of

9
→
300

K. This confirms that the thermal conductance through hydroxide catalysis bonds, with geometries being considered for third generation gravitational wave detectors operating at 20 K or 125 K, would have a negligible impact on the required heat extraction for cryogenic operation. Therefore, the use of hydroxide catalysis bonding, as successfully demonstrated within room temperature gravitational wave detectors, remains an attractive solution for building future cryogenic instruments with reduced thermal noise and enhanced astrophysical reach.
Asymmetric solitons induced by transition and beating effects
Authors: Li Xiao-Lin , Meng Ling-Zheng , Zhao Li-Chen
Published: November 2023

We investigate the dynamics of beating solitons in a two-component Bose–Einstein condensate with tunable Rabi coupling strength. Our results demonstrate that the balance between transition and beating effects permits the emergence of a novel family of asymmetric solitons in the symmetric physical settings. We derive the exact analytical solutions for them, which primarily consist of one bright soliton and one dark soliton element. The analytical solutions provide us with precise balance conditions required for the formation of asymmetric solitons. We also show that the degree of asymmetry can be effectively manipulated by adjusting the background density flow of dark soliton element, initial relative phase between two soliton elements, and their width. Furthermore, we discuss the oscillation behavior of asymmetric solitons in a harmonic potential, and the interaction between them.
Topologically originated optical analog of electromagnetically induced reflectance in Dirac semi-metal based photonic structure
Authors: C H Meghna , Mathew Don , Mathew Vincent
Published: November 2023

The optical analog of the electromagnetically induced reflectance (EIR) effect was theoretically studied in an active topological photonic structure comprising Dirac semi-metal and topological photonic crystal. The destructive interference between the optical Tamm state and topological edge state results in an induced reflection. It was known that the EIR-like effect occurs in a system having a radiative state and a metastable state. Topological protection is used here to achieve a metastable state, so an effective design of the EIR-like effect was possible. The observed EIR-like effect was modeled as a coupled oscillator system. The use of bulk Dirac semi-metal makes this an active photonic system at terahertz frequencies where the Fermi energy can act as a tunable and controlling parameter through which the induced transparency can be varied.
Robust photogalvanic effect, full spin polarization and pure spin current in the BiC photodetector by vacancy and substitution-doping
Authors: Fu Xi , Lin Jian , He Chaozheng , Liao Wenhu , Guo Jiyuan , Li Xiaowu , Gao Haixia
Published: November 2023

The photogalvanic effects (PGEs) in low-dimensional devices have attracted great interests recently. Herein, based on non-equilibrium Green’s function combined with density functional theory, we investigated spin-dependent PGE phenomena in the BiC photodetector with the linearly polarized light and zero bias. Due to the presence of strong spin–orbit interaction (SOI) and C
3v
symmetry for the BiC monolayer, the armchair and zigzag BiC photodetectors can produce robust spin-dependent PGEs which possess the cos(2θ) and sin(2θ) relations on the photon energies, respectively. Especially, the pristine armchair and armchair Bi-vacancy BiC photodetectors can produce fully spin polarization, and pure spin current was found in the pristine armchair and zigzag BiC photodetector, respectively. Furthermore, after introducing the Bi-vacancy, C-vacancy, Bi-doping and C-doping respectively, the BiC photodetector can produce higher spin-dependent PGEs for their C

s
symmetry. Additionally, the behaviors of spin-dependent photoresponse are highly anisotropic which can be tuned by the photon energy. This work suggested great potential applications of the BiC monolayer on PGE-driven photodetectors in low energy-consumption optoelectronics and spintronic devices.
A generalization of the maximum likelihood expectation maximization (MLEM) method: Masked-MLEM
Authors: Zheng Yifan , Frame Emily , Caravaca Javier , Gullberg Grant T , Vetter Kai , Seo Youngho
Published: November 2023

Objective. In our previous work on image reconstruction for single-layer collimatorless scintigraphy, we developed the min–min weighted robust least squares (WRLS) optimization algorithm to address the challenge of reconstructing images when both the system matrix and the projection data are uncertain. Whereas the WRLS algorithm has been successful in two-dimensional (2D) reconstruction, expanding it to three-dimensional (3D) reconstruction is difficult since the WRLS optimization problem is neither smooth nor strongly-convex. To overcome these difficulties and achieve robust image reconstruction in the presence of system uncertainties and projection noise, we propose a generalized iterative method based on the maximum likelihood expectation maximization (MLEM) algorithm, hereinafter referred to as the Masked-MLEM algorithm. Approach. In the Masked-MLEM algorithm, only selected subsets (‘masks’) from the system matrix and the projection contribute to the image update to satisfy the constraints imposed by the system uncertainties. We validate the Masked-MLEM algorithm and compare it to the standard MLEM algorithm using experimental data obtained from both collimated and uncollimated imaging instruments, including parallel-hole collimated SPECT, 2D collimatorless scintigraphy, and 3D collimatorless tomography. Additionally, we conduct comprehensive Monte Carlo simulations for 3D collimatorless tomography to further validate the effectiveness of the Masked-MLEM algorithm in handling different levels of system uncertainties. Main results. The Masked-MLEM and standard MLEM reconstructions are similar in cases with negligible system uncertainties, whereas the Masked-MLEM algorithm outperforms the standard MLEM algorithm when the system matrix is an approximation. Importantly, the Masked-MLEM algorithm ensures reliable image reconstruction across varying levels of system uncertainties. Significance. With a good choice of system uncertainty and without requiring accurate knowledge of the actual system matrix, the Masked-MLEM algorithm yields more robust image reconstruction than the standard MLEM algorithm, effectively reducing the likelihood of erroneously reconstructing higher activities in regions without radioactive sources.
Quantum color image watermarking scheme based on quantum error correction coding
*
Authors: Dong Yumin , Mou Dingkang , Liu Hengrui , Zhu Tingting
Published: November 2023

Quantum image processing, which merges classical image processing techniques with quantum computing, provides exceptional storage capacity and unparalleled parallel computing power. In this study, we present a quantum color image watermarking scheme that employs quantum error correction codes to address issues such as pixel loss and image distortion during watermark embedding and extraction. By utilizing the least significant bit method to embed the color values of the watermark image into those of the carrier image, we improve the scheme’s robustness. We also address the error correction capabilities of channel coding for phase-flip errors and follow the majority principle, resulting in more accurate extraction of the watermark image’s color and enhancing the watermarking scheme’s reliability and integrity. Our experimental simulations demonstrate that the proposed watermarking scheme boasts high security, strong robustness, and excellent concealment.
Kondo frustration via charge fluctuations: a route to Mott localisation
Authors: Mukherjee Abhirup , Vidhyadhiraja N S , Taraphder A , Lal Siddhartha
Published: November 2023

We propose a minimal effective impurity model that captures the phenomenology of the Mott–Hubbard metal–insulator transition of the half-filled Hubbard model on the Bethe lattice in infinite dimensions as observed by dynamical mean field theory (DMFT). This involves extending the standard Anderson impurity model Hamiltonian to include an explicit Kondo coupling J, as well as a local on-site correlation Ub
on the conduction bath site connected directly to the impurity. For the case of attractive local bath correlations (

U

b

<
0

), the extended Anderson impurity model (e-SIAM) sheds new light on several aspects of the DMFT phase diagram. For example, the T = 0 metal-to-insulator quantum phase transition (QPT) is preceded by an excited state QPT (ESQPT) where the local moment eigenstates are emergent in the low-lying spectrum. Long-ranged fluctuations are observed near both the QPT and ESQPT, suggesting that they are the origin of the quantum critical scaling observed recently at high temperatures in DMFT simulations. The T = 0 gapless excitations at the quantum critical point display particle-hole interconversion processes, and exhibit power-law behaviour in self-energies and two-particle correlations. These are signatures of non-Fermi liquid behaviour that emerge from the partial breakdown of the Kondo screening.
The transport properties of Kekulé-ordered graphene p–n junction
Authors: Zhang Peipei , Wang Chao , Li Yu-Xian , Zhai Lixue , Song Juntao
Published: November 2023

The transport properties of electrons in graphene p–n junction with uniform Kekulé lattice distortion have been studied using the tight-binding model and the Landauer–Büttiker formalism combined with the nonequilibrium Green’s function method. In the Kekulé-ordered graphene, the original K and Kʹ valleys of the pristine graphene are folded together due to the

3

×

3

enlargement of the primitive cell. When the chiral symmetry breaking of a valley leads to a single-valley phase, there are special transport properties of Dirac electrons in the Kekulé lattice. In the O-shaped Kekulé graphene p–n junction, Klein tunneling is suppressed, and only resonance tunneling occurs. In the Y-shaped Kekulé graphene p–n junction, the transport of electrons is dominated by Klein tunneling. When the on-site energy modification is introduced into the Y-shaped Kekulé structure, both Klein tunneling and resonance tunneling occur, and the electron tunneling is enhanced. Under strong magnetic fields, the conductance of O-shaped and on-site energy-modified Y-shaped Kekulé graphene p–n junctions is non-zero due to the presence of resonance tunneling. It is also found that the disorder can enhance conductance, with conductance plateaus forming in the appropriate range of disorder strength.
Epidemic spreading on coupling network with higher-order information layer
Authors: Zhu Yujie , Li Cong , Li Xiang
Published: November 2023

Epidemic tends to break out with information spreading which occurs between pairwise individuals or in groups. In active social online platform, three or more individuals can share information or exchange opinion, which could be modeled as a clique beyond pairwise interaction. This work studies the influence of information with higher-order cliques whose closure probability is described by higher-order clustering coefficient on epidemic spreading. The coupled spreading process of disease and awareness follows an unaware-aware-unaware-susceptible-infected-susceptible model on multiplex networks. We deduce the epidemic threshold of multiplex network with higher-order cliques, and explore the effects of cliques on epidemic spreading process at slow, middle and fast pairwise information spreading rates. The results show that the epidemic threshold and higher-order clustering coefficient are positively correlated. Moreover, we find that the effect of higher-order cliques could be ignored when pairwise information spreading rate is large enough. Finally, we show that the steady infection ratio decreases with the increase of the higher-order clustering coefficient.
Electromagnetic gyrokinetic instabilities in STEP
Authors: Kennedy D. , Giacomin M. , Casson F.J. , Dickinson D. , Hornsby W.A. , Patel B.S. , Roach C.M.
Published: November 2023

We present herein the results of a linear gyrokinetic analysis of electromagnetic microinstabilites in the conceptual high−β,reactor-scale, tight-aspect-ratio tokamak Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production,https://step.ukaea.uk. We examine a range of flux surfaces between the deep core and the pedestal top for two candidate flat-top operating points of the prototype device. Local linear gyrokinetic analysis is performed to determine the type of microinstabilities that arise under these reactor-relevant conditions. We find that the equilibria are dominated at ion binormal scales by a hybrid version of the kinetic ballooning mode (KBM) instability that has significant linear drive contributions from the ion temperature gradient and from trapped electrons, while collisional microtearing modes (MTMs) are sub-dominantly also unstable at similar binormal scales. Thehybrid-KBM and MTM exhibit very different radial scales. We study the sensitivity of these instabilities to physics parameters, and discuss potential mechanisms for mitigating them. The results of this investigation are compared to a small set of similar conceptual reactor designs in the literature. A detailed benchmark of the linear results is performed using three gyrokinetic codes; alongside extensive resolution testing and sensitivity to numerical parameters providing confidence in the results of our calculations, and paving the way for detailed nonlinear studies in a companion article.
Rochester’s celestial telegram
Authors: Rowson Martin
Published: November 2023

On the face of it, Rochester’s astral communication with the heroine at the conclusion of Jane Eyre (‘Jane! Jane! Jane!’, p. 419) is the most un-Brontëan thing in Charlotte Brontë’s mature fiction. This was the author who declared in the preface to one of her novels that it should be as unromantic as a Monday morning. The Jane –– Rochester exchange across the ether would seem to be the stuff of Walpurgisnacht. It is the more surprising since Brontë is a novelist who firmly eschews supernatural agency and intervention in her narratives.

It will help to summarize the events which precede Rochester’s celestial telegram. Jane is at St John Rivers’s home, where she is detained after evening prayers. It is around nine o’clock on a Monday evening. The family and servants go to bed. St John renews his proposal of marriage. Jane wavers: ‘I could decide if I were but certain,’ she says, ‘were I but convinced that it is God’s will I should marry you’ (p. 419). She wants a sign.
Two-timing novelists
Authors: Rowson Martin
Published: November 2023

Early nineteenth-century novelists had an engagingly cavalier attitude to finer points of chronology. One of Dickens’s footnotes in Chapter 2 of the 1847 reissue of The Pickwick Papers is typical of the freedoms they allowed themselves in such matters. Mr Jingle, in response to Pickwick’s observation that ‘My friend Mr Snodgrass has a strong poetic turn’, replies: ‘So have I . . . Epic poem –– ten thousand lines –– revolution of July –– composed it on the spot.’ When asked, he assures the amazed Pickwick that he was, indeed, there at the event and saw the blood flowing in the Parisian gutters. Dickens adds the footnote to this exchange: ‘A remarkable instance of the prophetic force of Mr Jingle’s imagination; this dialogue occurring in the year 1827, and the Revolution in 1830.’
Is Will Ladislaw legitimate?
Authors: Rowson Martin
Published: November 2023

It helps to picture the dramatis personae of Middlemarch less as a community of English townspeople of the early nineteenth century than as a Papuan tribe –– each connected to the other by complex ties of blood and marriage. Unknotting these ties requires the skills of the anthropologist rather than those of the literary critic. Let us start with Casaubon. Early in the narrative, the middleaged vicar of Lowick is most vexed when Mr Brooke (making unwarranted deductions from their age difference) refers to young Will Ladislaw as ‘your nephew’. Will, as Casaubon testily points out, is his ‘second cousin’, not his nephew. We learn from questions which Dorothea asks on her first visit to Lowick, that Casaubon’s mother, whose Christian and maiden names we never know, had an elder sister, Julia. This aunt Julia –– as we much later learn –– ran away to marry a Polish patriot called Ladislaw and was disinherited by her family. Julia and her husband had one child, as best we can make out.
Mysteries of the Speckled Band
Authors: Rowson Martin
Published: November 2023

‘The Adventure of the Speckled Band’ is one of Sherlock Holmes’s best-known early cases. The affair is recalled by Watson, much later in life. The lady who initially implored the great detective’s assistance has, we guess, recently died (prematurely, it would seem), allowing Watson to divulge her story to the world. As Watson recalls, in April 1883 Miss Helen Stoner, a handsome but clearly distressed young woman with prematurely white strands in her hair, called at 221B Baker Street, early in the morning. Her tale was intriguing. Raised in India, she had returned to England some ten years earlier with her mother, her twin sister Julia, and her stepfather. The girls’ mother has died eight years since, ‘in a railway accident near Crewe’ (p. 175). Helen’s stepfather; who evidently married his wife for her money (some £1,100 a year, shrunk by current agricultural distress to £750), is an unredeemable brute, the degenerate offspring of a ‘dissolute and wasteful’ family on whose decayed estate, Stoke Moran in Surrey, they now live in reduced circumstances. A doctor by profession, Roylott is suspected of having murdered a servant in India and –– as Holmes astutely deduces –– routinely brutalizes his stepdaughters (the detective’s sharp eyes note bruises on Miss Stoner’s wrist and arm). The Misses Stoner, on marriage, will take to their husbands a portion of their mother’s inheritance. Julia, however, has died very recently in suspicious circumstances after indicating an intention to marry.
Why does the Count come to England?
Authors: Rowson Martin
Published: November 2023

Our obsession with vampires supports a commercial empire which mass-produces books, films, cartoons, television dramas, comics, and novelties (such as plastic vampire teeth and Bela Lugosi capes). Like the great Transylvanian monster himself, it would seem that the vampire industry cannot die. Just when you think it is finally exhausted, along come a couple of bigbudget, millions-at-the-box-office-earning movies like Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1993) and the Anne Rice-originated, Neil Jordan-directed, Tom Cruise-starring Interview with the Vampire (1995).

The essential book on the vampire cultus is Paul Barber’s Vampires, Burials and Death. Barber’s survey is massively debunking and wholly convincing, drawing as it does on the resources of folklore scholarship, anthropology, mythography, and forensic pathology (particularly the evidence of post-mortem medical investigators and autopsies). Barber shows how superstitions about vampires –– which are found in cultures as remote from Transylvania as China –– originate not in the epic misdeeds of Vlad the Impaler, but in the behaviour of the human corpse after death. The dead body is not inert, but a veritable hothouse of chemical and physiological activities.
Why the ‘Single Print of a Foot’?
Authors: Rowson Martin
Published: November 2023

J. Donald Crowley is amusingly exasperated about Defoe’s many narrative delinquencies in Robinson Crusoe. ‘Perhaps the most glaring lapse’, Crowley says in his edition of the novel,

occurs when Defoe, having announced that Crusoe had pulled off all his clothes to swim out to the shipwreck, has him stuff his pockets with biscuit some twenty lines later. Likewise, for the purpose of creating a realistic effect, he arranges for Crusoe to give up tallying his daily journal because his ink supply is dangerously low; but there is ink aplenty, when, almost twentyseven years later, Crusoe wants to draw up a contract. . . Having tried to suggest that Crusoe suffers hardship because he lacks salt, he later grants Crusoe the salt in order to illustrate his patient efforts to teach Friday to eat salted meat. Crusoe pens a kid identified as a young male only to have it turn into a female when he hits upon the notion of breeding more of the animals. (p. xiii)

Such inconsistencies convince Crowley that ‘Defoe wrote too hastily to control his materials completely’. His was a careless genius.
Pug: dog or bitch?
Authors: Rowson Martin
Published: November 2023

If there was ever an inconsequential quibble in Austen scholarship, the changing sex of Lady Bertram’s lap-dog would seem to be it. Tony Tanner, who has done more than any living critic to instruct us how to read the six novels, sees it as a litmus test, dividing what is useful to discuss from what is irredeemably petty. Quixotic as it may appear, there is something worthwhile to be dredged up from this, admittedly picayune, detail in Mansfield Park’s background. It does not substantially alter our reading of the novel, but it does offer a sharper outline of one of its principal characters.
How vulgar is Mrs Elton?
Authors: Rowson Martin
Published: November 2023

In 1994 Pat Rogers published an elegant article on a small piece of fashionable (or perhaps not) slang in Emma, entitled: ‘ “Caro Sposo”: Mrs Elton, Burneys, Thrales, and Noels’. The Italian endearment (‘dear husband’) is associated indelibly in the reader’s mind with Mrs Elton (née Augusta Hawkins) –– heiress of Bristol, whose money is very new and breeding rather dubious. We first hear her favourite phrase when she returns, victrix, with the Revd Elton (‘Mr E.’) in tow as her newly wed husband.

Among the flood of offensive things which Mrs Elton pours out to Emma (whom she regards as a bested opponent in love) one remark causes unforgivable offence. Mrs Elton is talking of the descriptions her husband has given her of his circle at Highbury. ‘ “My friend Knightley” had been so often mentioned,’ she tells Emma, ‘that I was really impatient to see him; and I must do my caro sposo the justice to say that he need not be ashamed of his friend’ (p. 250).
Why is Fagin hanged and why isn’t Pip prosecuted?
Authors: Rowson Martin
Published: November 2023

The Dickens scholar Michael Slater reports that two of the questions most often asked him by lay readers are those above. First, why is Fagin hanged? Everyone is familiar with Cruikshank’s great illustration of the prisoner in his death cell, ‘the night before he was stretched’. Like his illustrator, Dickens rises to the occasion, both in the accompanying description of the Jew’s last night in Newgate, and in the preceding trial with its nail-biting suspense as the jury returns with its verdict:
How many pianos has Amelia Sedley?
Authors: Rowson Martin
Published: November 2023

Like other well-brought up girls of her era and class (early nineteenth century, London nouveau riche), Amelia Sedley has been taught to sing and play the piano. She is neither as gifted in this department nor as industrious as her bosom friend at Miss Pinkerton’s Academy, Becky Sharp. Miss Sharp, we are told, ‘was already a musician’ when she was taken in as a non-paying boarder, and she practises ‘incessantly’ (p. 19). None the less, Amelia can handle the instrument well enough to make a private recital the pretext of flirting with George Osborne in the ‘back drawing-room’. It is there that the Sedleys’ family piano is situated (‘as pianos usually are’, the narrator notes on page 39 –– pianos, incidentally, are omnipresent in Vanity Fair). This back-drawing-room piano makes a later appearance at the auction where Mr Hammerdown disposes of the ruined Mr Sedley’s household effects two years later. It is, we are informed as it comes up for sale, a ‘state grand piano’ (p. 205). Presumably it is as vulgar a piece of furniture as the ‘great carved-legged, leather cased grand piano’ in the Osbornes’ hateful upstairs drawing-room, in their house on the other side of Russell Square. At the auction, the point is made that there are in fact two pianos in the Sedleys’ household. Amelia has, as her private possession in her own room, ‘a little square piano’. It is with the changing fortunes of this modest instrument over the years that I am concerned here. It first makes an appearance in chapter 2.
What are the Prynnes doing in Boston?
Authors: Rowson Martin
Published: November 2023

The Scarlet Letter’s many enigmas have been exhaustively explicated. The novel is a literary-critical battleground (with the feminists probably slightly in the ascendant at the moment). But no one, as far as I know, ever asks what series of events brought Hester Prynne to Massachusetts, where so much obloquy is heaped on her. One is not encouraged to be curious on this score. Hawthorne’s text is studiously inscrutable about events antecedent to Hester’s being branded adulteress. The fullest account of her past life is given in sketchy flashback, as she endures her three hours of public shame in the Boston pillory:
How good an oarswoman is Maggie Tulliver?
Authors: Rowson Martin
Published: November 2023

For all his admiration of its author, Henry James did not like the ending of The Mill on the Floss one bit:

The story is told as if it were destined to have, if not a strictly happy termination, at least one within ordinary probabilities. As it stands, the dénouement shocks the reader most painfully. Nothing has prepared him for it; the story does not move towards it; it casts no shadow before it. Did such a dénouement lie within the author’s intentions from the first, or was it a tardy expedient for the solution of Maggie’s difficulties? This question the reader asks himself, but of course he asks it in vain. For my part, although, as long as humanity is subject to floods and earthquakes, I have no objection to see them made use of in novels, I would in this particular case have infinitely preferred that Maggie should have been left to her own devices.

On his part, Leslie Stephen (writing in 1909) could ‘not help wishing that the third volume could have been suppressed’. F. R. Leavis concurred with James, if less dismissively:
Is Daniel Deronda circumcised?
Authors: Rowson Martin
Published: November 2023

The question is posed, and an elegant answer proposed, by Kenneth Newton in an article in Essays in Criticism. Newton’s starting-point is an apparently devastating objection to the vraisemblance of Daniel Deronda noted by Steven Marcus, who in turn was alerted to the anomaly by one of his sharp-eyed graduate students, Lennard Davis:
What does Mrs Charmond say to Grace?
Authors: Rowson Martin
Published: November 2023

The Woodlanders is a novel resting sedately on a huge chronological flaw. In a narrative oddly lacking in clear historical markers, there is a stark contradiction between the only two which the attentive reader will find. Perplexingly, Hardy seems to go to some pains to etch the clash of dates on our consciousness. The first is signposted relatively early in the narrative. When Giles meets the strange gentleman at the midsummer festivity who has terrified the local girls (‘We saw Satan pursuing us’), he feels justified in asking some close questions of the interloper:
What cure for the Madwoman in the Attic?
Authors: Rowson Martin
Published: November 2023

One of the achievements of feminist literary criticism over the last few decades has been the establishment of a canon enriched with ‘rediscovered’ works. If you had asked typical American readers of Scribner’s or the Century Magazine in 1897, ‘what novelist of the day will “last” and still be read in 1997?’ they might well have backed Silas Weir Mitchell, whose historical romance of Quaker pacifism in the Revolutionary War, Hugh Wynne, was the best-selling novel of 1897. Few of them, I suspect, would have backed Kate Chopin or Charlotte Perkins Gilman for immortality. But it is one of literary history’s ironies that, if Mitchell has any name-recognition in the 1990s, it is as not as a novelist but in his other professional capacity as a physician specializing in women’s nervous disorders. Specifically, it is his demonized appearance as the advocate of the ‘rest cure’ in Chopin’s The Awakening and –– most dramatically –– in Gilman’s The Yellow Wall-Paper that has ensured Mitchell a place in modern consciousness.
Who is George Leach?
Authors: Rowson Martin
Published: November 2023

The Sea-Wolf opens brilliantly –– the fog-bound ferry-boat Martinez hooting its way across the San Francisco Bay at night, in an atmosphere shrouded in gloomy foreboding. On board the middle-aged littérateur, Humphrey van Weyden, is mightily pleased with himself –– more particularly he is pleased with his literary reputation and power. He idly observes, as an entomologist might look at an unusual genus of ant, one of his fellow passengers –– a man with no legs who walks on artificial limbs. During Humphrey’s complacent reverie the Martinez collides with another vessel, is holed, and rapidly sinks. So ‘civilized’ is Humphrey that at first he simply watches the spectacle as a disinterested observer. This commotion surely cannot affect him–– the ‘Dean of American Letters the Second’? Why are these women squealing like ‘pigs’? He is too refined even to struggle for his life –– at least initially.
Clarissa’s invisible taxi
Authors: Rowson Martin
Published: November 2023

It is not an easy novel to read, but Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway is the easiest of novels to summarize. ‘A day in the life of a middle-aged upper-class London woman planning her party’, is how the Oxford Companion to Twentieth Century Literature encapsulates it. The long prelude to the novel is Clarissa Dalloway’s morning walk through the West End on a brilliant June morning (the 13th) in 1923 to select the flowers for the entertainment she and her politician husband are giving that evening. One of the pleasures of Mrs Dalloway is that you can follow quite exactly the route taken by Clarissa on her morning walk. OUP has helpfully provided a map for pedestrianminded readers. They should also set their watches. Woolf originally called her novel ‘The Hours’, and Clarissa Dalloway’s early morning peregrination through the London streets is precisely measured by the chimes of two clocks, Big Ben and the slightly belated St Margaret’s (the parish church of the House of Commons). It is with Mrs Dalloway’s morning excursion that I am concerned –– specifically, the puzzle of how she makes her return journey.
Who betrays Elizabeth Bennet?
Authors: Rowson Martin
Published: November 2023

Elizabeth Bennet’s final put-down of Lady Catherine de Bourgh in Volume III, Chapter 14 of Pride and Prejudice ranks with Lady Bracknell and the handbag as one of the most memorable scenes in literature. As Jane Austen tells it, it is a conflict of battleaxe versus rapier with the old battleaxe comprehensively vanquished. Lady Catherine flies the field with her magnificently hollow rebuke: ‘I take no leave of you, Miss Bennet. I send no compliments to your mother. You deserve no such attention. I am most seriously displeased’ (p. 318).

What has so seriously displeased Lady Catherine is the report that Elizabeth is about to become engaged to Darcy –– a marital prize she has reserved for her own daughter Anne. The couple are ‘tacitly’ engaged –– she loftily tells Miss Bennet. But, as she is obliged to add:’ The engagement between them is of a peculiar kind’ (p. 315). The de Bourghs have not troubled, that is, to secure the young man’s compliance in the matter.
Why is the monster yellow?
Authors: Rowson Martin
Published: November 2023

Simon Levene writes wittily in response to Is Heathcliff a Murderer?, correcting an error and pointing out an unobserved other puzzle in Frankenstein:

without seeming ragingly pedantic, may I mention p. 27, where you refer to a ‘metallic bolt’ attaching [the monster’s] head to its body? In fact, it is not a bolt but the ends of the electrodes through which the electricity flows into the monster. More to the point, why should Victor Frankenstein ever construct a body? Why wouldn’t one body have done quite as well?

Mr Levene’s ‘one body’ question sticks in the mind. After wrestling with it, I would offer two possible lines of explanation. The first is to be found in the epigraph from Milton’s Paradise Lost (x. 743–5) on the novel’s title-page:
What are Mr Hale’s ‘doubts’?
Authors: Rowson Martin
Published: November 2023

The Victorians had a soft spot for novels about the ‘agony’ of religious uncertainty. The most popular, by far, was Robert Elsmere (1888) by Mrs Humphry Ward. Mrs Ward’s hero is a young Anglican minister, tormented by spiritual anxiety –– ‘doubts’. Specifically, Robert cannot accept Christ’s divinity, the biblical miracles, or the ‘damnatory psalms’. Yet, the Revd Mr Elsmere ‘believes’.

Elsmere is a product of Oxford in the 1850s. The university had been, since Newman’s first ‘Tract for the Times’ in 1833, the epicentre of religious doubt and what Gladstone (reviewing Robert Elsmere) called ‘the battle of belief’. After much spiritual battling, Elsmere moves towards a Unitarian position on matters of theology. He resigns his country living, and starts a ‘settlement’ for the poor (‘The New Brotherhood’) in the East End of London. At the end of the novel he dies of consumption. His monument, the New Brotherhood, lives on.
Where does Sydney Carton get his chloroform?
Authors: Rowson Martin
Published: November 2023

Before Sydney Carton can do the far better thing than he has ever done he is obliged (rather ignobly) to disable his double, Charles Darnay, with an anaesthetic and have him smuggled insensibly out of Revolutionary France to the safety of England. Carton’s plan is complicated by the fact that, in reprisal for the Evremonde crimes (testified to, unwillingly, by his father-in law, Dr Manette), Charles has been sentenced to death. The young aristo is being held in the impregnable ‘black prison of the Conciergerie’ (p. 428), closely guarded by fanatic sentinels, until –– in a few hours –– Madame Guillotine does her bloody work and there is one Evremonde the less.
Cabinets and detectives
Authors: Rowson Martin
Published: November 2023

The Sherlock Holmes mania –– which shows little sign of abating a century on –– took off not with the first fulllength novel (A Study in Scarlet, 1887), but with the series of six short stories that began in the Strand Magazine in July 1891 and were later collected as The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892). The first story, ‘A Scandal in Bohemia’, lays down what was to be Doyle’s favourite narrative formula in these short tales. It is March 1888. Dr Watson (now a married man) finds himself in the vicinity of 221B Baker Street and drops in on his bachelor friend. Holmes is discovered in his usual cocaine-alleviated state of ennui. He delivers himself of some bracing Holmesian maxims. ‘You see, but you do not observe,’ he tells his dull fidus Achates; how many steps, for example, are there from the hall to the room where they are sitting? Seventeen, as Watson has a thousand times seen and never observed.