The Use of Polyethylene Film as a Scenic Medium

This paper deals with the use of fan-inflated polyethylene film as a scenic medium. Undertaken as part of the design of The Little Prince, produced a3 the University Theatre children\u27s theatre production in April 1973» it is devoted to the techniques involved in constructing scenery from polyethylene film. The chemical and physical properties of polyethylene film are described. Construction techniques begin with the floor plan and model. Upon completion of the model, a light weight polyethylene film is fitted to the set model, cut and marked in the same manner as a costume is fitted to an actor. The completed pattern is then transferred to an enlargement grid and the film for the set is marked and cut. The film is temporarily pinned together and inflated and the final fitting is made. The seams ars then heat-3ealed, using either a commercial heat-sealing iron or a salvaged clothing iron. The set is inflated and positioned. Inflating techniques are discussed, as are the propallor- type and squirrel-cage fans used for the inflation. Diagrams are included illustrating the fan3 and their soundproof housings. Special problems such sl3 rate-of-inflat ion, low-pressure flapping, and venting for both practical and decorative units, are brought up and solutions based upon experience with The Little Prince are presented. Anchoring the set is discussed at length and various techniques for anchoring are presented, along with proposals for preparing the inflated polyethylene set for touring. The conclusion based upon production experience is that the inflatable polyethylene scenic unit presents an interesting alternative to standard construction techniques, although its use is limited to stylised productions in proscenium theatres, due to the inherent limitations in the medium. Restrictions include surface texture and glos3, limited acceptance of paint, and lack of structural rigidity, as well as sightline, masking, and noise suppression problems

A new application of emulsions to measure the gravitational force on antihydrogen

We propose to build and operate a detector based on the emulsion film technology for the measurement of the gravitational acceleration on antimatter, to be performed by the AEgIS experiment (AD6) at CERN. The goal of AEgIS is to test the weak equivalence principle with a precision of 1% on the gravitational acceleration g by measuring the vertical position of the anni- hilation vertex of antihydrogen atoms after their free fall in a horizontal vacuum pipe. With the emulsion technology developed at the University of Bern we propose to improve the performance of AEgIS by exploiting the superior position resolution of emulsion films over other particle de- tectors. The idea is to use a new type of emulsion films, especially developed for applications in vacuum, to yield a spatial resolution of the order of one micron in the measurement of the sag of the antihydrogen atoms in the gravitational field. This is an order of magnitude better than what was planned in the original AEgIS proposal.Comment: 17 pages, 14 figure

Integrating Al with NiO nano honeycomb to realize an energetic material on silicon substrate

Nano energetic materials offer improved performance in energy release, ignition, and mechanical properties compared to their bulk or micro counterparts. In this study, the authors propose an approach to synthesize an Al/NiO based nano energetic material which is fully compatible with a microsystem. A two-dimensional NiO nano honeycomb is first realized by thermal oxidation of a Ni thin film deposited onto a silicon substrate by thermal evaporation. Then the NiO nano honeycomb is integrated with an Al that is deposited by thermal evaporation to realize an Al/NiO based nano energetic material. This approach has several advantages over previous investigations, such as lower ignition temperature, enhanced interfacial contact area, reduced impurities and Al oxidation, tailored dimensions, and easier integration into a microsystem to realize functional devices. The synthesized Al/NiO based nano energetic material is characterized by scanning electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction, differential thermal analysis, and differential scanning calorimetry

When Beckett on Film migrated to television

In the migration of drama from one medium to another a text is reshaped, and different audiences are addressed by adaptations because of the process of remediation. This article evaluates the significance of the intermedial migrations that happened to the "Beckett on Film" project in which Samuel Beckett’s 19 theatre plays were performed on stage, then filmed for an international festival, then shown on television in the UK, USA, Ireland and elsewhere. The analysis focuses on the television versions and shows how their distribution and reception contexts framed their meanings in different ways, and assesses how medial migration destabilised the object of analysis itself at the same time as the work became able to address multiple audiences and fulfil different cultural roles

Who is the director of this movie? Automatic style recognition based on shot features

We show how low-level formal features, such as shot duration, meant as length of camera takes, and shot scale, i.e. the distance between the camera and the subject, are distinctive of a director's style in art movies. So far such features were thought of not having enough varieties to become distinctive of an author. However our investigation on the full filmographies of six different authors (Scorsese, Godard, Tarr, Fellini, Antonioni, and Bergman) for a total number of 120 movies analysed second by second, confirms that these shot-related features do not appear as random patterns in movies from the same director. For feature extraction we adopt methods based on both conventional and deep learning techniques. Our findings suggest that feature sequential patterns, i.e. how features evolve in time, are at least as important as the related feature distributions. To the best of our knowledge this is the first study dealing with automatic attribution of movie authorship, which opens up interesting lines of cross-disciplinary research on the impact of style on the aesthetic and emotional effects on the viewers