13,965 research outputs found
Time, terror and the technological imagination : Frankenstein's fictional legacy in the scientific age : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in English at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand
There is a long-standing belief that there is an opposing discourse between science and the humanities in relation to the future of humankind. Attitudes towards the environment have changed radically in the last 200 years from a natural view to one where we dominate and re-order our environment to suit ourselves and to further the material self-interests of human beings, regardless of cultural and ecological consequences. In order for human beings to properly understand what is happening and why, we must begin to restore the balance between our relationship with Nature and our new technological worldview. The Introduction firstly addresses issues relating to the changing relationship between human beings and their environment over the last two centuries, and how literature and film have accurately predicted our collective future. It is my objective to illustrate how Mary Shelley's Frankenstein has remained one of the most potent pieces of literature foreshadowing the future of humankind, and the timeless quality of the theme of the controller out of control. The main text focuses on Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, and how the novel embodied humankind's growing anxieties and fears about our technological ambivalence, and I give an overview of how Frankenstein has paved the way for further literary and cinematic predictions of our future in artificial and synthesised environments dominated by the new frontier of genetic engineering, artificial intelligence, virtual reality and beyond, and how these technologies will impact on our cultural worldview and the future evolution of humankind
Hyperpolarizability and operational magic wavelength in an optical lattice clock
Optical clocks benefit from tight atomic confinement enabling extended
interrogation times as well as Doppler- and recoil-free operation. However,
these benefits come at the cost of frequency shifts that, if not properly
controlled, may degrade clock accuracy. Numerous theoretical studies have
predicted optical lattice clock frequency shifts that scale nonlinearly with
trap depth. To experimentally observe and constrain these shifts in an
Yb optical lattice clock, we construct a lattice enhancement cavity
that exaggerates the light shifts. We observe an atomic temperature that is
proportional to the optical trap depth, fundamentally altering the scaling of
trap-induced light shifts and simplifying their parametrization. We identify an
"operational" magic wavelength where frequency shifts are insensitive to
changes in trap depth. These measurements and scaling analysis constitute an
essential systematic characterization for clock operation at the
level and beyond.Comment: 5 + 2 pages, 3 figures, added supplementa
Rate variation during molecular evolution: creationism and the cytochrome c molecular clock
Molecular clocks based upon amino acid sequences in proteins have played a major role in the clarification of evolutionary phylogenies. Creationist criticisms of these methods sometimes rely upon data that might initially seem to be paradoxical. For example, human cytochrome c differs from that of an alligator by 13 amino acids but differs by 14
amino acids from a much more closely related primate, Otolemur garnettii. The apparent anomaly is resolved by taking into consideration the variable substitution rate of cytochrome c, particularly among primates. This paper traces some of the history of extensive research into the topic of rate heterogeneity in cytochrome c including data from
cytochrome c pseudogenes
There's more to volatility than volume
It is widely believed that fluctuations in transaction volume, as reflected
in the number of transactions and to a lesser extent their size, are the main
cause of clustered volatility. Under this view bursts of rapid or slow price
diffusion reflect bursts of frequent or less frequent trading, which cause both
clustered volatility and heavy tails in price returns. We investigate this
hypothesis using tick by tick data from the New York and London Stock Exchanges
and show that only a small fraction of volatility fluctuations are explained in
this manner. Clustered volatility is still very strong even if price changes
are recorded on intervals in which the total transaction volume or number of
transactions is held constant. In addition the distribution of price returns
conditioned on volume or transaction frequency being held constant is similar
to that in real time, making it clear that neither of these are the principal
cause of heavy tails in price returns. We analyze recent results of Ane and
Geman (2000) and Gabaix et al. (2003), and discuss the reasons why their
conclusions differ from ours. Based on a cross-sectional analysis we show that
the long-memory of volatility is dominated by factors other than transaction
frequency or total trading volume.Comment: 25 pages, 9 figure
The Waveform Digitiser of the Double Chooz Experiment: Performance and Quantisation Effects on PhotoMultiplier Tube Signals
We present the waveform digitiser used in the Double Chooz experiment. We
describe the hardware and the custom-built firmware specifically developed for
the experiment. The performance of the device is tested with regards to
digitising low light level signals from photomultiplier tubes and measuring
pulse charge. This highlights the role of quantisation effects and leads to
some general recommendations on the design and use of waveform digitisers.Comment: 14 pages, 8 figures, accepted for publication in JINS
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