Description: This article discusses Salman Rushdie and reading the postcolonial texts in the era of empire. Using the first three novels of Salman Rushdie, this essay articulates a different conceptual framework for reading the postcolonial texts. It is a known fact that in most metropolitan readings of the global periphery, the text is made to stand in for an entire culture. Inundation, a technique introduced in this essay, ensures a more complex reading by inserting silenced knowledge and histories in our reading to challenge any reductive representations of the global periphery. An inundated text, the author suggests, becomes a better tool in teaching the complexities of the postcolony to the metropolitan audiences, while also taking the reader beyond the politics of representation. It is hoped that this essay will invite other scholars to expand on this concept (inundation), for a new mode of reading is absolutely necessary in the politically charged world of today's empire.

Description: This article discusses scaling detection in time series. The methods currently used to determine the scaling exponent of a complex dynamic process described by a time series are based on the numerical evaluation of variance. This means that all of them can be safely applied only to the case where ordinary statistical properties hold true even if strange kinetics are involved. The authors illustrate a method of statistical analysis based on the Shannon entropy of the diffusion process generated by the time series, called diffusion entropy analysis (DEA). The authors adopt artificial Gauss and Lévy time series, as prototypes of ordinary and anomalous statistics, respectively, and the authors analyze them with the DEA and four ordinary methods of analysis, some of which are very popular. The authors show that the DEA determines the correct scaling exponent even when the statistical properties, as well as the dynamic properties, are anomalous. The other four methods produce correct results in the Gauss case but fail to detect the correct scaling in the case of Lévy statistics.

Description: This article accompanies a poster presentation on a self-adaptive burst-detection algorithm. A self-adaptive, time-scale invariant single-unit spike train analysis technique is introduced to detect burst firings in neurons. This burst-detection method is an adaptive algorithm that uses the characteristic firing patterns statistics within and between bursts to identify the inter-burst period, intra-burst period and burst duration.

Description: This article discusses six-, five-, and four-coordinate ruthenium(II) hydride complexes. The Ru(II) hydride complex (IMes)2Ru(Cl)(H)(CO) (1) {IMes = 1,3-bis-(2,4,6-trimethylphenyl)imidazol-2-ylidene} was synthesized from [Ru(CO)2Cl2]n and free IMes. Complex 1 rapidly reacts with CO to produce the cis-dicarbonyl Ru(II) complex (IMes)2Ru(Cl)(H)(CO)2 (2). The reaction of 1 with NaBAr'4 {Ar' = 3,5-(CF3)C6H3} produces the four-coordinate Ru(II) cationic complex [(IMes)2Ru(H)(CO)][BAr'4] (4), which can be trapped by two equivalents of tert-butylisonitrile to produce [(IMes)2Ru(H)(CO)(CNtBu)2][BAr'4] (5). Experimental and computational studies suggest that complex 4 is a diamagnetic system that adopts a sawhorse structure. The hydride ligand of complex 2 is readily displaced as dihydrogen upon reaction with HCI to produce (IMes)2Ru(CI)2(CO)2 (3). Both complex 1 and 4 were found to react with D2 (30 psi) at room temperature to produce the isotopomers (IMes)2Ru(CI)(D)(CO) (1-d1) and [(IMes)2Ru(D)(CO)][BAr'4] (4-d1), respectively, with the rate of formation of 4-d1 at least 28 times faster than the conversion of 1/D2 to 1-d1. In the presence of excess D2 complex 4 reversibly incorporates deuterium into the ortho methyl groups of the IMes ligands, whereas complex 1 does not show evidence of H/D exchange with the IMes ligands. Both 1 and 4 were found to catalyze the hydrogenation of olefins, ketones, and aldehydes.

Description: In this article, the authors consider the low-frequency limit (homogenization) for propagation of sound waves in periodic elastic medium (phononic crystals). Exact analytical formulas for the speed of sound propagating in a three-dimensional periodic arrangement of liquid and gas or in a two-dimensional arrangement of solids are derived. The authors apply their formulas to the well-known phenomenon of the drop of the speed of sound in mixtures. For air bubbles in water, the authors obtain a perfect agreement with the recent results of coherent potential approximation obtained by M. Kafesaki, R.S. Penciu, and E.N. Economou [Phys. Rev. Lett. 84, 6050 (2000)] if the filling of air bubbles is far from close parking. When air spheres almost touch each other, the approximation gives 10 times lower speed of sound than the exact theory does.