Language, Historiography and Economy in late- and post-Soviet Leningrad: “the Entire Soviet People Became the Authentic Creator of the Fundamental Law of their Government.”

This dissertation is about holes. It begins by analyzing the proverbial “hole in the fence” at late-Soviet enterprises: the way that workers pragmatically employed the planned economy's distribution rules by actions that were both morally commendable and questionably legal. It then analyzes the omission of this hole in perestroika economic analysis, which devoted surprisingly little attention to enterprises' central role in providing welfare and exerting social control, or to employees' pragmatic employment of the enterprises' rules. This analytic hole is compounded by a historiographic one: by the omission of the post-1956 omission of Stalin's name from public mention. Framing the perestroika reforms against “Stalinism,” perestroika-era texts typically trace the start of de-Stalinization to Khrushchev's “Cult of Personality” speech, after which Stalin's name disappeared from textbooks; rather than to the post-1953 reforms that fundamentally restructured labor, economic and punitive institutions to create characteristically late-Soviet methods of retaining and motivating labor: including the widespread disciplinary lenience that allowed workers to pragmatically employ enterprise rules. Precluded by this historiography from seeing how late-Soviet institutions had evolved in the post-Stalin absence of forced labor laws and how they practically functioned, popular and expert analysis instead tended to analyze citizens' relationships to the state in subjective terms: as a question of stagnant mindsets and loss of faith. Defined by its non-complicit denouncement of a retrospectively posited “Stalinist” state, the subject position taken by this analysis precluded speakers from seeing the presence behind all these holes: from seeing how they had practically constructed themselves and the late-Soviet system by pursuing their own economic, social and political goals through its institutions. The perestroika reform laws that were justified by this analysis intended to “speed up” society by intervening in workers' and citizens' feelings of ownership and responsibility. But, lacking a practical understanding of how late-Soviet institutions functioned, they instead quickly crashed the economy

On weak convergence of locally periodic functions

We prove a generalization of the fact that periodic functions converge weakly to the mean value as the oscillation increases. Some convergence questions connected to locally periodic nonlinear boundary value problems are also considered.Comment: arxiv version is already officia

On selection criteria for problems with moving inhomogeneities

We study mechanical problems with multiple solutions and introduce a thermodynamic framework to formulate two different selection criteria in terms of macroscopic energy productions and fluxes. Studying simple examples for lattice motion we then compare the implications for both resting and moving inhomogeneities.Comment: revised version contains new introduction, numerical simulations of Riemann problems, and a more detailed discussion of the causality principle; 18 pages, several figure

Development of a method for introducing 1-aminophosphonate fragment in a siloxane matrix

© 2016 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.A versatile synthetic method for the preparation of 1-aminophosphonate derivatives of methylsiloxane oligomers was developed. The introduction of trimethylsilyl amino protecting groups promotes hydrosilylation. The proposed modeling technique allows entering 1-aminophosphonate fragment into the siloxane skeleton of the matrix structure, as well as into the hydrolytically unstable alkoxy-functionalized organosilicon compounds

Synthesis of methyl(1-aminophosphonate)siloxane oligomers

© 2016, Springer Science+Business Media New York.A synthesis of 1-aminophosphonate derivative of methylsiloxane oligomer was developed. A methodology of the introduction of 1-aminophosphonate fragment not only into the stable siloxane structures, but also into hydrolytically unstable alkoxyfunctional organosilicon compounds was suggested

Approximate quantum cloaking and almost trapped states

We describe families of potentials which act as approximate cloaks for matter waves, i.e., for solutions of the time-independent Schr\"odinger equation at energy $E$, with applications to the design of ion traps. These are derived from perfect cloaks for the conductivity and Helmholtz equations, by a procedure we refer to as isotropic transformation optics. If $W$ is a potential which is surrounded by a sequence $\{V_n^E\}_{n=1}^\infty$ of approximate cloaks, then for generic $E$, asymptotically in $n$ (i) $W$ is both undetectable and unaltered by matter waves originating externally to the cloak; and (ii) the combined potential $W+V_n^E$ does not perturb waves outside the cloak. On the other hand, for $E$ near a discrete set of energies, cloaking {\it per se} fails and the approximate cloaks support wave functions concentrated, or {\it almost trapped}, inside the cloaked region and negligible outside. Applications include ion traps, almost invisible to matter waves or customizable to support almost trapped states of arbitrary multiplicity. Possible uses include simulation of abstract quantum systems, magnetically tunable quantum beam switches, and illusions of singular magnetic fields.Comment: Revised, with new figures. Single column forma

Periodic Homogenization and Material Symmetry in Linear Elasticity

Here homogenization theory is used to establish a connection between the symmetries of a periodic elastic structure associated with the microscopic properties of an elastic material and the material symmetries of the effective, macroscopic elasticity tensor. Previous results of this type exist but here more general symmetries on the microscale are considered. Using an explicit example, we show that it is possible for a material to be fully anisotropic on the microscale and yet the symmetry group on the macroscale can contain elements other than plus or minus the identity. Another example demon- strates that not all material symmetries of the macroscopic elastic tensor are generated by symmetries of the periodic elastic structure.Comment: 18 pages, 5 figure

Homogenized dynamics of stochastic partial differential equations with dynamical boundary conditions

A microscopic heterogeneous system under random influence is considered. The randomness enters the system at physical boundary of small scale obstacles as well as at the interior of the physical medium. This system is modeled by a stochastic partial differential equation defined on a domain perforated with small holes (obstacles or heterogeneities), together with random dynamical boundary conditions on the boundaries of these small holes. A homogenized macroscopic model for this microscopic heterogeneous stochastic system is derived. This homogenized effective model is a new stochastic partial differential equation defined on a unified domain without small holes, with static boundary condition only. In fact, the random dynamical boundary conditions are homogenized out, but the impact of random forces on the small holes' boundaries is quantified as an extra stochastic term in the homogenized stochastic partial differential equation. Moreover, the validity of the homogenized model is justified by showing that the solutions of the microscopic model converge to those of the effective macroscopic model in probability distribution, as the size of small holes diminishes to zero.Comment: Communications in Mathematical Physics, to appear, 200

Spectral super-resolution in metamaterial composites

We investigate the optical properties of periodic composites containing metamaterial inclusions in a normal material matrix. We consider the case where these inclusions have sharp corners, and following Hetherington and Thorpe, use analytic results to argue that it is then possible to deduce the shape of the corner (its included angle) by measurements of the absorptance of such composites when the scale size of the inclusions and period cell is much finer than the wavelength. These analytic arguments are supported by highly accurate numerical results for the effective permittivity function of such composites as a function of the permittivity ratio of inclusions to matrix. The results show that this function has a continuous spectral component with limits independent of the area fraction of inclusions, and with the same limits for both square and staggered square arrays.Comment: 17 pages, 6 figure