Penn Library\u27s LJS 481 - [Ḥaṭṭ al-niqāb ʻan wujūh aʻmāl al-ḥisāb]. (Video Orientation)

https://repository.upenn.edu/sims_video/1220/thumbnail.jp

Aspiring to Be a Buddha and Life Before Liberation: The Colophons of the Siamese Questions of King Milinda

This article presents the colophons of a Buddhist text, the Questions of King Milinda, as seen in manuscripts found mainly in Central Thailand. Through a survey of over seventy Pāli palm-leaf manuscripts and a Thai samut khoi (folding book), the colophons reveal information not only related to textual transmission, but also to the social and soteriological ambitions of the communities that created them. Inspired by the ideology of merit, which promises good karmic returns for presenting and preserving the Dharma in this world, donors and scribes produced various kinds of aspirations (Pāli: patthanā). These aspirations are recorded in colophons. In this group of manuscripts, it is not uncommon to find that the preferred path to Nirvana among stakeholders is to become a Buddha. This is somewhat contrary to the general assumption that the way of arhat is preferred for a community that upheld the Theravāda tradition. Moreover, the quest to be fully awakened and omniscient is shown not to be confined to kings or to the nobility, but shared by a wider layer of society. The colophon of the samut khoi was sponsored by the noble royal ladies (pavaranārī) from the court of Ayutthaya. It gives us a glimpse into what—in a past era—was considered good and righteous, both materially and spiritually, by the inner circle of the ruling establishment. Accordingly, colophons deserve special attention as they provide information not only about their respective manuscripts but also about the socio-cultural aspects of the community that preserved and transmitted them

Collation Model for Ms. Codex 1080: [Theological miscellany].

Writings of Nilus the Elder on the principles of asceticism and religious life; a sermon by John of Damascus about vices and virtues in religious life; three books from Ambrose\u27s De officiis, an ecclesiastical handbook about the ministers of the Church, with marginal annotations and Biblical cross-references; sermons expounding the beliefs of the Carthusian order about regulations, solitary living, and abstinence; and excerpts from the Distichs of Dionysius Cato, a collection of proverbial maxims about wisdom and morality, with marginal annotations.https://repository.upenn.edu/sims_models/1163/thumbnail.jp

Penn Library\u27s Library\u27s LJS 490 - [Astronomical compendium]. (Video Orientation)

https://repository.upenn.edu/sims_video/1228/thumbnail.jp

Penn Library\u27s Library\u27s LJS 492 - [Medical miscellany]. (Video Orientation)

https://repository.upenn.edu/sims_video/1229/thumbnail.jp

BRING IT ON HOME: A Decolonial Analysis of Musical Instruments in the Penn Museum

In conversations focused on decolonizing institutional spaces like ethnographic museums, repatriation remains a contentious goal. Whether museums are willing to change their ethics and practices to relinquish these spoils is one issue, but poor documentation continues to severely hinder efforts of returning objects to source communities. As such, this project reflects on musical instruments in ethnographic archives and their unique representations of cultural heritage, using an ‘ukulele (29-58-122) from the Penn Museum’s collections as a case study. Investigating the provenance of this instrument and connecting it with the cultural significance of its construction (design, use, etc.) will create valuable discussions of cultural heritage and the disembodiment of objects from ancestral homes. This research interacts with literature on decoloniality and musical repatriation to understand how musical instruments convey cultural heritage. Imagining how instruments might be used as symbols of identity in the hands of their descendants is critical to connecting music with cultural repatriation. The ongoing work of musical repatriation in museum contexts should rethink how these objects are cared for, recognizing them beyond artifacts. By taking insight from musicians or other specialists, museums can begin to treat instruments as objects that “breathe” and allow them to keep producing culture

Penn Library\u27s LJS 466 - Laṭāʼif al-kalām fī aḥkām al-aʻwām. (Video Orientation)

https://repository.upenn.edu/sims_video/1204/thumbnail.jp

Lesker PVD75 E-beam/Thermal Evaporator (PVD-02) Standard Operating Procedure

Standard Operating Procedure for the Lesker PVD75 E-beam/Thermal Evaporator (PVD-02) located at the Quattrone Nanofabrication Facility within the Singh Center for Nanotechnology at the University of Pennsylvaniahttps://repository.upenn.edu/scn_sop/1027/thumbnail.jp

Penn Library\u27s LJS 476 - [Yesod ʻolam]. (Video Orientation)

https://repository.upenn.edu/sims_video/1215/thumbnail.jp

Design and Control of a Tunable-Stiffness Coiled-Spring Actuator

We propose a novel design for a lightweight and compact tunable stiffness actuator capable of stiffness changes up to 20x. The design is based on the concept of a coiled spring, where changes in the number of layers in the spring change the bulk stiffness in a near-linear fashion. We present an elastica nested rings model for the deformation of the proposed actuator and empirically verify that the designed stiffness-changing spring abides by this model. Using the resulting model, we design a physical prototype of the tunable-stiffness coiled-spring actuator and discuss the effect of design choices on the resulting achievable stiffness range and resolution. In the future, this actuator design could be useful in a wide variety of soft robotics applications, where fast, controllable, and local stiffness change is required over a large range of stiffnesses