410,273 research outputs found
Ugly, dirty and bad: working class aesthetics reconsidered
This article, taking at its starting point the work of Pier Paolo Pasolini, tackles the aesthetic of the working class as an object d'art: how is the aesthetic sense of those who do not belong to the working class, but claim a political interest in its destiny, engaged by the outward appearance of the working class? And, more specifically, has there been a shift from a sense of aesthetic appreciation to what this author perceives as revulsion towards Western working classes? Has our aesthetic gaze wandered off, in search of more distant objects? It is not our goal to answer these questions by means of a quantitative or qualitative sociological analysis, and to this extent, the answers have to be taken as given. The article argues that there is a displacement of our gaze towards the working classes in the developing world, resulting in yet another form of consumption (the campaigns for fair trade would not be so successful without the picture-perfect – and picture-perfect because so completely desolate and objectively poor – sweatshops and small children in the fields). This displacement is not at all innocent. The article will propose that there are legal consequences – by using, and subverting, Luhmann's remark on legal taste; political consequences, where displacement means invisibility and lack of voice; and social consequences, mirroring Pasolini's horror at the cultural genocide, and now looking at the desolate spaces it has left behind.<p></p>
The article intends to focus on the aesthetic of the working class as an object d’art: how is the aesthetic sense of those who do not belong to the working class, but claim a political interest in its destiny, engaged by the outward appearance of the working class? And, more specifically, has there been a shift from a sense of aesthetic appreciation to what this author perceives as revulsion towards Western working classes? Has our aesthetic gaze wandered off, in search of more distant objects? It is not our goal to answer these questions by means of a quantitative or qualitative sociological analysis, and to this extent, the answers have to be taken as given. The article argues that there is a displacement of our gaze towards the working classes in the developing world, resulting in yet another form of consumption (the campaigns for fair trade would not be so successful without the picture-perfect – and picture-perfect because so completely desolate and objectively poor – sweatshops and small children in the fields). This displacement is not at all innocent . The article will propose that there are legal consequences – by using, and subverting, Luhmann’s remark on legal taste; political consequences, where displacement means invisibility and lack of voice; and social consequences, mirroring Pasolini’s horror at the cultural genocide, and now looking at the desolate spaces it has left behind
Future Evolution of Bound Superclusters in an Accelerating Universe
The evolution of marginally bound supercluster-like objects in an
accelerating LambdaCDM Universe is followed, by means of cosmological
simulations, from the present time to an expansion factor a = 100. The objects
are identified on the basis of the binding density criterion introduced by
Dunner et al. (2006). superclusters are identified with the ones whose mass M >
10^15 M_sun/h, the most massive one with M ~ 8x10^15 M_sun/h, comparable to the
Shapley supercluster. The spatial distribution of the superclusters remains
essentially the same after the present epoch, reflecting the halting growth of
the Cosmic Web as Lambda gets to dominate the expansion of the Universe. The
same trend can be seen in the stagnation of the development of the mass
function of virialized haloes and bound objects. The situation is considerably
different when looking at the internal evolution, quantified in terms of their
shape, compactness and density profile, and substructure in terms of their
multiplicity function. We find a continuing evolution from a wide range of
triaxial shapes at a = 1 to almost perfect spherical shapes at a = 100. We also
find a systematic trend towards a higher concentration. Meanwhile, we see their
substructure gradually disappearing, as the surrounding subclumps fall in and
merge to form one coherent, virialized system.Comment: 27 pages, 17 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS, revised
version after referee repor
Circular motion subject to external alignment under active driving: nonlinear dynamics and the circle map
Hardly any real self-propelling or actively driven object is perfect. Thus,
undisturbed motion will generally not follow straight lines but rather circular
trajectories. We here address self-propelled or actively driven objects that
move in discrete steps and additionally tempt to migrate towards a certain
direction by discrete angular adjustment. Overreaction in the angular alignment
is possible. This competition implies pronounced nonlinear dynamics including
period doubling and chaotic behavior in a broad parameter regime. Such behavior
directly affects the appearance of the trajectories, also during collective
motion under spatial self-concentration.Comment: 11 pages, 10 figure
Metallurgy of soft spheres with hard core: from BCC to Frank-Kasper phases
Understanding how soft particles can fill the space is still an open
question. Structures far from classical FCC or BCC phases are now commonly
experimentally observed in many different systems. Models based on pair
interaction between soft particle are at present much studied in 2D. Pair
interaction with two different lengths have been shown to lead to
quasicrystalline architectures. It is also the case for a hard core with a
square repulsive shoulder potential. In 3D, global approaches have been
proposed for instance by minimizing the interface area between the deformed
objects in the case of foams or micellar systems or using self-consistent mean
field theory in copolymer melts. In this paper we propose to compare a strong
van der Waals attraction between spherical hard cores and an elastic energy
associated to the deformation of the soft corona. This deformation is measured
as the shift between the deformed shell compared to a corona with a perfect
spherical symmetry. The two main parameters in this model are: the hard core
volume fraction and the weight of the elastic energy compared to the van der
Waals one. The elastic energy clearly favours the BCC structure but large van
der Waals forces favors Frank and Kasper phases. This result opens a route
towards controlling the building of nanoparticle superlattices with complex
structures and thus original physical properties.Comment: To appear in EPJ
Performance analysis of a caching algorithm for a catch-up television service
The catch-up TV (CUTV) service allows users to watch video content that was previously broadcast live on TV channels and later placed on an on-line video store. Upon a request from a user to watch a recently missed episode of his/her favourite TV series, the content is streamed from the video server to the customer's receiver device. This requires that an individual flow is set up for the duration of the video, and since it is hard to impossible to employ multicast streaming for this purpose (as users seldomly issue a request for the same episode at the same time), these flows are unicast. In this paper, we demonstrate that with the growing popularity of the CUTV service, the number of simultaneously running unicast flows on the aggregation parts of the network threaten to lead to an unwieldy increase in required bandwidth. Anticipating this problem and trying to alleviate it, the network operators deploy caches in strategic places in the network. We investigate the performance of such a caching strategy and the impact of its size and the cache update logic. We first analyse and model the evolution of video popularity over time based on traces we collected during 10 months. Through simulations we compare the performance of the traditional least-recently used and least-frequently used caching algorithms to our own algorithm. We also compare their performance with a "perfect" caching algorithm, which knows and hence does not have to estimate the video request rates. In the experimental data, we see that the video parameters from the popularity evolution law can be clustered. Therefore, we investigate theoretical models that can capture these clusters and we study the impact of clustering on the caching performance. Finally, some considerations on the optimal cache placement are presented
Compact objects from gravitational collapse: an analytical toy model
We develop here a procedure to obtain regular static configurations as
resulting from dynamical gravitational collapse of a massive matter cloud in
general relativity. Under certain general physical assumptions for the
collapsing cloud, we find the class of dynamical models that lead to an
equilib- rium configuration. To illustrate this, we provide a class of perfect
fluid collapse models that lead to a static constant density object as limit.
We suggest that similar models might possibly constitute the basis for the
description of formation of compact objects in nature.Comment: 9 pages, published versio
Charged Vaidya-Tikekar model for super compact star
In this work, we explore a class of compact charged spheres that have been
tested against experimental and observational constraints with some known
compact stars candidates. The study is performed by considering the
self-gravitating, charged, isotropic fluids which is more pliability in solving
the Einstein-Maxwell equations. In order to determine the interior geometry, we
utilize the Vaidya-Tikekar geometry for the metric potential with
Riessner-Nordstrom metric as an exterior solution. In this models, we determine
constants after selecting some particular values of M and R, for the compact
objects SAX J1808.4-3658, Her X-1 and 4U 1538-52. The most striking consequence
is that hydrostatic equilibrium is maintained for different forces, and the
situation is clarified by using the generalized Tolman-Oppenheimer-Volkoff
(TOV) equation. In addition to this, we also present the energy conditions,
speeds of sound and compactness of stars that are very much compatible to that
for a physically acceptable stellar model. Arising solutions are also compared
with graphical representations that provide strong evidences for more realistic
and viable models, both at theoretical and astrophysical scale.Comment: 13 Pages, 5 Figures and 4 Table
A model of ant route navigation driven by scene familiarity
In this paper we propose a model of visually guided route navigation in ants that captures the known properties of real behaviour whilst retaining mechanistic simplicity and thus biological plausibility. For an ant, the coupling of movement and viewing direction means that a familiar view specifies a familiar direction of movement. Since the views experienced along a habitual route will be more familiar, route navigation can be re-cast as a search for familiar views. This search can be performed with a simple scanning routine, a behaviour that ants have been observed to perform. We test this proposed route navigation strategy in simulation, by learning a series of routes through visually cluttered environments consisting of objects that are only distinguishable as silhouettes against the sky. In the first instance we determine view familiarity by exhaustive comparison with the set of views experienced during training. In further experiments we train an artificial neural network to perform familiarity discrimination using the training views. Our results indicate that, not only is the approach successful, but also that the routes that are learnt show many of the characteristics of the routes of desert ants. As such, we believe the model represents the only detailed and complete model of insect route guidance to date. What is more, the model provides a general demonstration that visually guided routes can be produced with parsimonious mechanisms that do not specify when or what to learn, nor separate routes into sequences of waypoints
Distinguishing black holes from naked singularities through their accretion disk properties
We show that, in principle, a slowly evolving gravitationally collapsing
perfect fluid cloud can asymptotically settle to a static spherically symmetric
equilibrium configuration with a naked singularity at the center. We consider
one such asymptotic final configuration with a finite outer radius, and
construct a toy model in which it is matched to a Schwarzschild exterior
geometry. We examine the properties of circular orbits in this model. We then
investigate observational signatures of a thermal accretion disk in this
spacetime, comparing them with the signatures expected for a disk around a
black hole of the same mass. Several notable differences emerge. A disk around
the naked singularity is much more luminous than one around an equivalent black
hole. Also, the disk around the naked singularity has a spectrum with a high
frequency power law segment that carries a major fraction of the total
luminosity. Thus, at least some naked singularities can, in principle, be
distinguished observationally from black holes of the same mass. We discuss
possible implications of these results.Comment: 18 pages, 5 figures, replaced with published versio
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