A History of Jonathan Alder: His Captivity and Life with the Indians

A History of Jonathan Alder: His Captivity and Life with the Indians is one of the most extensive first person accounts to survive from Ohio\u27s pioneer and early settlement eras. Alder\u27s reminiscence spans half a century, from his capture at the age of nine in 1782, when Ohio had no permanent European settlement and was still the exclusive domain of the Ohio Indian nations, to 1832, nearly a generation after the pioneer era had ended. The narrative provides a unique perspective on frontier Ohio and its transformation from wilderness to statehood. It illustrates the continuing evolution in the relationship between Ohio\u27s Indians and whites from the Revolutionary War era to a time when many of the state\u27s native peoples had been removed. Alder\u27s recollection provides an exceptional look at early Ohio. The portrait of his captors is revealing, complex, and sympathetic. The latter part of his narrative is an extraordinarily rich account of early pioneer life in which he describes his experiences in central Ohio. Further, Alder was fortunate in that he encountered many of the persons and took part in many of the events that have become touchstones in Ohio\u27s pioneer history, including Simon Kenton, Simon Girty, and Colonel William Crawford. He participated in the Battles of Fort Recovery and Fallen Timbers, and his recollection of these actions are among the few extant accounts that describe these events from a Native American perspective.https://ideaexchange.uakron.edu/uapress_publications/1067/thumbnail.jp

Big-Data-Driven Materials Science and its FAIR Data Infrastructure

This chapter addresses the forth paradigm of materials research -- big-data driven materials science. Its concepts and state-of-the-art are described, and its challenges and chances are discussed. For furthering the field, Open Data and an all-embracing sharing, an efficient data infrastructure, and the rich ecosystem of computer codes used in the community are of critical importance. For shaping this forth paradigm and contributing to the development or discovery of improved and novel materials, data must be what is now called FAIR -- Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Re-purposable/Re-usable. This sets the stage for advances of methods from artificial intelligence that operate on large data sets to find trends and patterns that cannot be obtained from individual calculations and not even directly from high-throughput studies. Recent progress is reviewed and demonstrated, and the chapter is concluded by a forward-looking perspective, addressing important not yet solved challenges.Comment: submitted to the Handbook of Materials Modeling (eds. S. Yip and W. Andreoni), Springer 2018/201

Elastic moduli, dislocation core energy and melting of hard disks in two dimensions

Elastic moduli and dislocation core energy of the triangular solid of hard disks of diameter $\sigma$ are obtained in the limit of vanishing dislocation- antidislocation pair density, from Monte Carlo simulations which incorporates a constraint, namely that all moves altering the local connectivity away from that of the ideal triangular lattice are rejected. In this limit, we show that the solid is stable against all other fluctuations at least upto densities as low as $\rho \sigma^2 = 0.88$. Our system does not show any phase transition so diverging correlation lengths leading to finite size effects and slow relaxations do not exist. The dislocation pair formation probability is estimated from the fraction of moves rejected due to the constraint which yields, in turn, the core energy E_c and the (bare) dislocation fugacity y. Using these quantities, we check the relative validity of first order and Kosterlitz-Thouless-Halperin-Nelson-Young (KTHNY) melting scenarios and obtain numerical estimates of the typical expected transition densities and pressures. We conclude that a KTHNY transition from the solid to a hexatic phase preempts the solid to liquid first order transition in this system albeit by a very small margin, easily masked by crossover effects in unconstrained ``brute-force'' simulations with small number of particles.Comment: 17 pages, 8 figure

Phase Transitions of Hard Disks in External Periodic Potentials: A Monte Carlo Study

The nature of freezing and melting transitions for a system of hard disks in a spatially periodic external potential is studied using extensive Monte Carlo simulations. Detailed finite size scaling analysis of various thermodynamic quantities like the order parameter, its cumulants etc. are used to map the phase diagram of the system for various values of the density and the amplitude of the external potential. We find clear indication of a re-entrant liquid phase over a significant region of the parameter space. Our simulations therefore show that the system of hard disks behaves in a fashion similar to charge stabilized colloids which are known to undergo an initial freezing, followed by a re-melting transition as the amplitude of the imposed, modulating field produced by crossed laser beams is steadily increased. Detailed analysis of our data shows several features consistent with a recent dislocation unbinding theory of laser induced melting.Comment: 36 pages, 16 figure

Soft Condensed Matter Physics

Soft condensed matter physics is the study of materials, such as fluids, liquid crystals, polymers, colloids, and emulsions, that are ``soft" to the touch. This article will review some properties, such as the dominance of entropy, that are unique to soft materials and some properties such as the interplay between broken-symmetry, dynamic mode structure, and topological defects that are common to all condensed matter systems but which are most easily studied in soft systems.Comment: 11 Pages, RevTeX, 7 postscript figures. To appear in Solid State Communication

Phase Transitions of Soft Disks in External Periodic Potentials: A Monte Carlo Study

The nature of freezing and melting transitions for a system of model colloids interacting by a DLVO potential in a spatially periodic external potential is studied using extensive Monte Carlo simulations. Detailed finite size scaling analyses of various thermodynamic quantities like the order parameter, its cumulants etc. are used to map the phase diagram of the system for various values of the reduced screening length $\kappa a_{s}$ and the amplitude of the external potential. We find clear indication of a reentrant liquid phase over a significant region of the parameter space. Our simulations therefore show that the system of soft disks behaves in a fashion similar to charge stabilized colloids which are known to undergo an initial freezing, followed by a re-melting transition as the amplitude of the imposed, modulating field produced by crossed laser beams is steadily increased. Detailed analysis of our data shows several features consistent with a recent dislocation unbinding theory of laser induced melting

Brownian motion: a paradigm of soft matter and biological physics

This is a pedagogical introduction to Brownian motion on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of Einstein's 1905 paper on the subject. After briefly reviewing Einstein's work in its contemporary context, we pursue some lines of further developments and applications in soft condensed matter and biology. Over the last century Brownian motion became promoted from an odd curiosity of marginal scientific interest to a guiding theme pervading all of the modern (live) sciences.Comment: 30 pages, revie

Lattice Boltzmann simulations of soft matter systems

This article concerns numerical simulations of the dynamics of particles immersed in a continuum solvent. As prototypical systems, we consider colloidal dispersions of spherical particles and solutions of uncharged polymers. After a brief explanation of the concept of hydrodynamic interactions, we give a general overview over the various simulation methods that have been developed to cope with the resulting computational problems. We then focus on the approach we have developed, which couples a system of particles to a lattice Boltzmann model representing the solvent degrees of freedom. The standard D3Q19 lattice Boltzmann model is derived and explained in depth, followed by a detailed discussion of complementary methods for the coupling of solvent and solute. Colloidal dispersions are best described in terms of extended particles with appropriate boundary conditions at the surfaces, while particles with internal degrees of freedom are easier to simulate as an arrangement of mass points with frictional coupling to the solvent. In both cases, particular care has been taken to simulate thermal fluctuations in a consistent way. The usefulness of this methodology is illustrated by studies from our own research, where the dynamics of colloidal and polymeric systems has been investigated in both equilibrium and nonequilibrium situations.Comment: Review article, submitted to Advances in Polymer Science. 16 figures, 76 page

Exercise and cognitive function: a hypothesis for the association of type II diabetes mellitus and Alzheimer's disease from an evolutionary perspective

The association of type II diabetes mellitus (DM2) with Alzheimer's disease (AD) has received considerable attention in recent years. In the present paper, a hypothesis for this association from an evolutionary perspective, with emphasis on the close interplay between exercise and cognitive function, will be advanced in order to provide a biological rationale for the notion that the fundamental metabolic features of DM2 act in the brain over a protracted time span to induce the neuropathological characteristics of Alzheimer's disease thereby producing cognitive impairment. It is hoped that this hypothesis puts the association of DM2 and AD on firm conceptual grounds from a biological perspective and offers directions for further research