Taming savage nature : the body metaphor and material culture in the sixteenth-century conquest of New Spain.

This is a study of how sixteenth-century Spaniards used fundamental aspects of material culture, and the ideas and attitudes surrounding them, to subjugate the Aztec empire of Mexico. Edicts, relaciones, court decisions, letters and chronicles have been employed to discern the attitudes of the time. Those attitudes reveal that food, clothing and shelter were used both to distinguish Spaniards from Amerindians and to bind conquerors and conquered to the same social system. Principles of hierarchy and reciprocity were employed by Spaniards and Amerindians to define the appropriate customs and means of exchange in a new, syncretic culture of conquest. Together, Spaniards and Amerindians created a sixteenth-century body politic and organic society in what Europeans deemed a New World

A benchmark for validation of numerical results in sheet metal forming

Advances in FE codes for simulation of sheet metal forming processes have enabled its use during pre-production stage of a component. Some of recent developments include improvements and implementation of new material models of mechanical behaviour. However, these developments and corresponding results need to be validated, which means being compared with experimental results. On the other hand, in order that experimental results are a reference data, they need to be tested to repeatability and need to be obtained with such characteristic preferably by different institutions.http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/B6TGJ-4CS4NXC-M/1/11b425ff3006b6fcdad85f1f6b4fa57

General Neutralino NLSPs at the Early LHC

Gauge mediated supersymmetry breaking (GMSB) is a theoretically well-motivated framework with rich and varied collider phenomenology. In this paper, we study the Tevatron limits and LHC discovery potential for a wide class of GMSB scenarios in which the next-to-lightest superpartner (NLSP) is a promptly-decaying neutralino. These scenarios give rise to signatures involving hard photons, $W$'s, $Z$'s, jets and/or higgses, plus missing energy. In order to characterize these signatures, we define a small number of minimal spectra, in the context of General Gauge Mediation, which are parameterized by the mass of the NLSP and the gluino. Using these minimal spectra, we determine the most promising discovery channels for general neutralino NLSPs. We find that the 2010 dataset can already cover new ground with strong production for all NLSP types. With the upcoming 2011-2012 dataset, we find that the LHC will also have sensitivity to direct electroweak production of neutralino NLSPs.Comment: 26 page

Modelling Hydrodynamic Drag in Swimming using Computational Fluid Dynamics

In the sports field, numerical simulation techniques have been shown to provide useful information about performance and to play an important role as a complementary tool to physical experiments. Indeed, this methodology has produced significant improvements in equipment design and technique prescription in different sports (Kellar et al., 1999; Pallis et al., 2000; Dabnichki & Avital, 2006). In swimming, this methodology has been applied in order to better understand swimming performance. Thus, the numerical techniques have been addressed to study the propulsive forces generated by the propelling segments (Rouboa et al., 2006; Marinho et al., 2009a) and the hydrodynamic drag forces resisting forward motion (Silva et al., 2008; Marinho et al., 2009b). Although the swimmer’s performance is dependent on both drag and propulsive forces, within this chapter the focus is only on the analysis of the hydrodynamic drag. Therefore, this chapter covers topics in swimming drag simulation from a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) perspective. This perspective means emphasis on the fluid mechanics and CFD methodology applied in swimming research. One of the main aims for performance (velocity) enhancement of swimming is to minimize drag forces resisting forward motion, for a given trust. This chapter will concentrate on numerical simulation results, considering the scientific simulation point-of-view, for this practical implication in swimming. In the first part of the chapter, we introduce the issue, the main aims of the chapter and a brief explanation of the CFD methodology. Then, the contribution of different studies for swimming using CFD and some practical applications of this methodology are presented. During the chapter the authors will attempt to present the CFD data and to address some practical concerns to swimmers and coaches, comparing as well the numerical data with other experimental data available in the literature

Abelian Hidden Sectors at a GeV

We discuss mechanisms for naturally generating GeV-scale hidden sectors in the context of weak-scale supersymmetry. Such low mass scales can arise when hidden sectors are more weakly coupled to supersymmetry breaking than the visible sector, as happens when supersymmetry breaking is communicated to the visible sector by gauge interactions under which the hidden sector is uncharged, or if the hidden sector is sequestered from gravity-mediated supersymmetry breaking. We study these mechanisms in detail in the context of gauge and gaugino mediation, and present specific models of Abelian GeV-scale hidden sectors. In particular, we discuss kinetic mixing of a U(1)_x gauge force with hypercharge, singlets or bi-fundamentals which couple to both sectors, and additional loop effects. Finally, we investigate the possible relevance of such sectors for dark matter phenomenology, as well as for low- and high-energy collider searches.Comment: 43 pages, no figures; v2: to match JHEP versio

Atividade antimicrobiana e efeito combinado sobre drogas antifúngicas e antibacterianas do fruto de Morinda citrifolia L

La aparición de microorganismos resistentes y la toxicidad asociada a los antimicrobianos aumenta la necesidad de investigar nuevos principios activos. Morinda citrifolia L., es una planta fructífera utilizada popularmente como antibacteriano y con otros diversos usos farmacológicos. Posee diversos metabolitos primarios y secundarios, principalmente flavonoides, triterpenoides y alcaloides. Este estudio tuvo como objetivo ensayar la potencial actividad antimicrobiana y moduladora de los extractos obtenidos de su fruta. Los extractos de las frutas fueron testados tanto para determinar el efecto antimicrobiano como también utilizándolo en combinación con agentes antibacterianos y antifúngicos contra microorganismos patógenos, por el método de microdilución en caldo. Se observó que la asociación entre antibióticos y extractos dió resultados clínicamente significativos en pruebas con bacterias Pseudomonas aeruginosa y Escherichia coli.The rising of the drug resistant microrganisms and the toxicity related with the antimicrobial drugs enhances the necessity about the search of new bioactive compounds. Morinda citrifolia L. is a fruit tree traditionally used as antibacterial and with several other pharmacological properties. This plant presents several phytocompounds as flavonoids, alkaloids and triterpenes. The objective of this work was assay the antimicrobial and modulatory potential of the fruit extract. The extract was assayed alone and associated with antibiotics and antifungals against pathogenic microrganisms using the microdilution assay. The results demonstrated that the association between extract and antimicrobial drugs resulted in a potentiation of the drug activity clinically relevant against Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Escherichia coli.The surveillance of resistant microrganisms and the toxicity related with antimicrobial drugs enhances the necessity of research about new remedies. Morinda citrifolia is a plant commonly used as antibacterial, analgesic, and several other bioactivities, presenting aminoacids, anthraquinones, flavonoids, sterols, triterpenes and alkaloids. The aim of this work was evaluate the antimicrobial and the antibiotic-modulatory effect of the fruit extract. The extract was assayed alone and in association with antibiotic and antifungal drugs against clinical isolates by microdilution method. The fruit extract of M. citrifolia demonstrate an interesting modulatory activity, enhancing the effect of the assayed antibiotics against P. aeroginosa and E. coli, but not against Candida strains

An Electron Fixed Target Experiment to Search for a New Vector Boson A' Decaying to e+e-

We describe an experiment to search for a new vector boson A' with weak coupling alpha' > 6 x 10^{-8} alpha to electrons (alpha=e^2/4pi) in the mass range 65 MeV < m_A' < 550 MeV. New vector bosons with such small couplings arise naturally from a small kinetic mixing of the "dark photon" A' with the photon -- one of the very few ways in which new forces can couple to the Standard Model -- and have received considerable attention as an explanation of various dark matter related anomalies. A' bosons are produced by radiation off an electron beam, and could appear as narrow resonances with small production cross-section in the trident e+e- spectrum. We summarize the experimental approach described in a proposal submitted to Jefferson Laboratory's PAC35, PR-10-009. This experiment, the A' Experiment (APEX), uses the electron beam of the Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility at Jefferson Laboratory (CEBAF) at energies of ~1-4 GeV incident on 0.5-10% radiation length Tungsten wire mesh targets, and measures the resulting e+e- pairs to search for the A' using the High Resolution Spectrometer and the septum magnet in Hall A. With a ~1 month run, APEX will achieve very good sensitivity because the statistics of e+e- pairs will be ~10,000 times larger in the explored mass range than any previous search for the A' boson. These statistics and the excellent mass resolution of the spectrometers allow sensitivity to alpha'/alpha one to three orders of magnitude below current limits, in a region of parameter space of great theoretical and phenomenological interest. Similar experiments could also be performed at other facilities, such as the Mainz Microtron.Comment: 19 pages, 12 figures, 2 table

Low-Energy Signals from Kinetic Mixing with a Warped Abelian Hidden Sector

We investigate the detailed phenomenology of a light Abelian hidden sector in the Randall-Sundrum framework. Relative to other works with light hidden sectors, the main new feature is a tower of hidden Kaluza-Klein vectors that kinetically mix with the Standard Model photon and Z. We investigate the decay properties of the hidden sector fields in some detail, and develop an approach for calculating processes initiated on the ultraviolet brane of a warped space with large injection momentum relative to the infrared scale. Using these results, we determine the detailed bounds on the light warped hidden sector from precision electroweak measurements and low-energy experiments. We find viable regions of parameter space that lead to significant production rates for several of the hidden Kaluza-Klein vectors in meson factories and fixed-target experiments. This offers the possibility of exploring the structure of an extra spacetime dimension with lower-energy probes.Comment: (1+32) Pages, 13 Figures. v2: JHEP version (minor modifications, results unchanged

Determining Supersymmetric Parameters With Dark Matter Experiments

In this article, we explore the ability of direct and indirect dark matter experiments to not only detect neutralino dark matter, but to constrain and measure the parameters of supersymmetry. In particular, we explore the relationship between the phenomenological quantities relevant to dark matter experiments, such as the neutralino annihilation and elastic scattering cross sections, and the underlying characteristics of the supersymmetric model, such as the values of mu (and the composition of the lightest neutralino), m_A and tan beta. We explore a broad range of supersymmetric models and then focus on a smaller set of benchmark models. We find that by combining astrophysical observations with collider measurements, mu can often be constrained far more tightly than it can be from LHC data alone. In models in the A-funnel region of parameter space, we find that dark matter experiments can potentially determine m_A to roughly +/-100 GeV, even when heavy neutral MSSM Higgs bosons (A, H_1) cannot be observed at the LHC. The information provided by astrophysical experiments is often highly complementary to the information most easily ascertained at colliders.Comment: 46 pages, 76 figure