8,705 research outputs found
The story of Oh: the aesthetics and rhetoric of a common vowel sound
Studies in Musical Theatre is the only peer-reviewed journal dedicated to musical theatre. It was launched in 2007 and is now in its seventh volume. It has an extensive international readership and is edited by Dominic Symonds and George Burrows.
This article investigates the use of the ‘word’ ‘Oh’ in a variety of different performance idioms. Despite its lack of ‘meaning’, the sound is used in both conversation and poetic discourse, and I discuss how it operates communicatively and expressively through contextual resonances, aesthetic manipulation and rhetorical signification. The article first considers the aesthetically modernist work of Cathy Berberian in Bussotti’s La Passion Selon Sade; then it considers the rhetorically inflected use of ‘Oh’ to construct social resonance in popular song;finally, it discusses two important uses of the sound ‘Oh’ which bookend the Broadway musical Oklahoma!, serving to consolidate the allegorical and musico-dramatic narrative of the show
A RANS modelling approach for predicting powering performance of ships in waves
In this paper, a modelling technique for simulating self-propelled ships in waves is presented. The flow is modelled using a RANS solver coupled with an actuator disk model for the propeller. The motion of the ship is taken into consideration in the definition of the actuator disk region as well as the advance ratio of the propeller. The RPM of the propeller is controlled using a PID-controller with constraints added on the maximum permissible RPM increase rate. Results are presented for a freely surging model in regular waves with different constraints put on the PID-controller. The described method shows promising results and allows for the studying of several factors relating to selfpropulsion. However, more validation data is needed to judge the accuracy of the mode
Matching methods to produce maps for pest risk analysis to resources
Decision support systems (DSSs) for pest risk mapping are invaluable for guiding pest risk analysts seeking to add maps to pest risk analyses (PRAs). Maps can help identify the area of potential establishment, the area at highest risk and the endangered area for alien plant pests. However, the production of detailed pest risk maps may require considerable time and resources and it is important to match the methods employed to the priority, time and detail required. In this paper, we apply PRATIQUE DSSs to Phytophthora austrocedrae, a pathogen of the Cupressaceae, Thaumetopoea pityocampa, the pine processionary moth, Drosophila suzukii, spotted wing Drosophila, and Thaumatotibia leucotreta, the false codling moth. We demonstrate that complex pest risk maps are not always a high priority and suggest that simple methods may be used to determine the geographic variation in relative risks posed by invasive alien species within an area of concern
Efficiencies of Quantum Optical Detectors
We propose a definition for the efficiency that can be universally applied to
all classes of quantum optical detectors. This definition is based on the
maximum amount of optical loss that a physically plausible device can
experience while still replicating the properties of a given detector. We prove
that detector efficiency cannot be increased using linear optical processing.
That is, given a set of detectors, as well as arbitrary linear optical elements
and ancillary light sources, it is impossible to construct detection devices
that would exhibit higher efficiencies than the initial set.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure
A Review and Meta-Analysis of Age-Based Stereotype Threat: Negative Stereotypes, Not Facts, Do the Damage.
Stereotype threat effects arise when an individual feels at risk of confirming a negative stereotype about their group and consequently underperforms on stereotype relevant tasks (Steele, 2010). Among older people, underperformance across cognitive and physical tasks is hypothesized to result from age-based stereotype threat (ABST) because of negative age-stereotypes regarding older adults’ competence. The present review and meta-analyses examine 22 published and 10 unpublished articles, including 82 effect sizes (N = 3882) investigating ABST on older people’s (Mage = 69.5) performance. The analysis revealed a significant small-to-medium effect of ABST (d = .28) and important moderators of the effect size. Specifically, older adults are more vulnerable to ABST when (a) stereotype-based rather than fact-based manipulations are used (d = .52); (b) when performance is tested using cognitive measures (d = .36); and (c) occurs reliably when the dependent variable is measured proximally to the manipulation. The review raises important theoretical and methodological issues, and areas for future research. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved
Fluctuation Spectra and Force Generation in Non-equilibrium Systems
Many biological systems are appropriately viewed as passive inclusions
immersed in an active bath: from proteins on active membranes to microscopic
swimmers confined by boundaries. The non-equilibrium forces exerted by the
active bath on the inclusions or boundaries often regulate function, and such
forces may also be exploited in artificial active materials. Nonetheless, the
general phenomenology of these active forces remains elusive. We show that the
fluctuation spectrum of the active medium, the partitioning of energy as a
function of wavenumber, controls the phenomenology of force generation. We find
that for a narrow, unimodal spectrum, the force exerted by a non-equilibrium
system on two embedded walls depends on the width and the position of the peak
in the fluctuation spectrum, and oscillates between repulsion and attraction as
a function of wall separation. We examine two apparently disparate examples:
the Maritime Casimir effect and recent simulations of active Brownian
particles. A key implication of our work is that important non-equilibrium
interactions are encoded within the fluctuation spectrum. In this sense the
noise becomes the signal
Unravelling Nanoconfined Films of Ionic Liquids
The confinement of an ionic liquid between charged solid surfaces is treated
using an exactly solvable 1D Coulomb gas model. The theory highlights the
importance of two dimensionless parameters: the fugacity of the ionic liquid,
and the electrostatic interaction energy of ions at closest approach relative
to thermal energy, in determining how the disjoining pressure exerted on the
walls depends on the geometrical confinement. Our theory reveals that
thermodynamic fluctuations play a vital role in the "squeezing out" of charged
layers as the confinement is increased. The model shows good qualitative
agreement with previous experimental data, with all parameters independently
estimated without fitting
Effects of hydrocarbon contamination on soil microbial community and enzyme activity
Acknowledgment I would like to gratefully acknowledge the government of Saudi Arabia for the scholarship and financial support.Peer reviewedPublisher PD
- …