Book Review: Was Hinduism Invented? : Britons, Indians, and Colonial Construction of Religion

A review of Was Hinduism Invented? : Britons, Indians, and Colonial Construction of Religion by Brian K. Pennington

Ein Pakt mit dem Teufel : Leni Riefenstahl, Triumph of the Will, and the Nature of Guilt

Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will is rightly considered a massive technical achievement in the world of cinema and propaganda. However, this achievement was undertaken at the behest of the immoral, murderous regime of Nazi Germany, a regime that Riefenstahl was more than willing to work with and glorify in order to further her career. This thesis will argue that Riefenstahl’s onscreen deification of Hitler, visual representation of völkisch ideology, and use of the music of Richard Wagner make her later claims of ignorance as to the film’s ultimate meaning impossible to correlate with established facts

Crossover scaling of apparent first-order wetting in two dimensional systems with short-ranged forces

Recent analyses of wetting in the semi-infinite two dimensional Ising model, extended to include both a surface coupling enhancement and a surface field, have shown that the wetting transition may be effectively first-order and that surprisingly the surface susceptibility develops a divergence described by an anomalous exponent with value $\gamma_{11}^{\rm eff}=\frac{3}{2}$. We reproduce these results using an interfacial Hamiltonian model making connection with previous studies of two dimensional wetting and show that they follow from the simple crossover scaling of the singular contribution to the surface free-energy which describes the change from apparent first-order to continuous (critical) wetting due to interfacial tunnelling. The crossover scaling functions are calculated explicitly within both the strong-fluctuation and intermediate-fluctuation regimes and determine uniquely and more generally the value of $\gamma_{11}^{\rm eff}$ which is non-universal for the latter regime. The location and the rounding of a line of pseudo pre-wetting transitions occurring above the wetting temperature and off bulk coexistence, together with the crossover scaling of the parallel correlation length, is also discussed in detail

Bridging transitions for spheres and cylinders

We study bridging transitions between spherically and cylindrically shaped particles (colloids) of radius $R$ separated by a distance $H$ that are dissolved in a bulk fluid (solvent). Using macroscopics, microscopic density functional theory and finite-size scaling theory we study the location and order of the bridging transition and also the stability of the liquid bridges which determines spinodal lines. The location of the bridging transitions is similar for cylinders and spheres, so that for example, at bulk coexistence the distance $H_b$ at which a transition between bridged and unbridged configurations occurs, is proportional to the colloid radius $R$. However all other aspects, and, in particular, the stability of liquid bridges, are very different in the two systems. Thus, for cylinders the bridging transition is typically strongly first-order, while for spheres it may be first-order, critical or rounded as determined by a critical radius $R_c$. The influence of thick wetting films and fluctuation effects beyond mean-field are also discussed in depth

Condensation and evaporation transitions in deep capillary grooves

We study the order of capillary condensation and evaporation transitions of a simple fluid adsorbed in a deep capillary groove using a fundamental measure density functional theory (DFT). The walls of the capillary interact with the fluid particles via long-ranged, dispersion, forces while the fluid-fluid interaction is modelled as a truncated Lennard-Jones-like potential. We find that below the wetting temperature $T_w$ condensation is first-order and evaporation is continuous with the metastability of the condensation being well described by the complementary Kelvin equation. In contrast above $T_w$ both phase transitions are continuous and their critical singularities are determined. In addition we show that for the evaporation transition above $T_w$ there is an elegant mapping, or covariance, with the complete wetting transition occurring at a planar wall. Our numerical DFT studies are complemented by analytical slab model calculations which explain how the asymmetry between condensation and evaporation arises out of the combination of long-ranged forces and substrate geometry

Phototube tests in the MiniBooNE experiment

The MiniBooNE neutrino oscillation experiment at Fermilab uses 1520 8-inch PMTs: 1197 PMTs are Hamamatsu model R1408 and the rest are model R5912. All of the PMTs were tested to qualify for inclusion in the detector, sorted according to their charge and time resolutions and dark rates. Seven PMTs underwent additional low light level tests. The relative detection efficiency as a function of incident angle for seven additional PMTs was measured. Procedures and results are presented.Comment: 4 pages, 7 figures. Presented at Beaune 2005: 4th International Conference on New Developments in Photodetection, Beaune, France, 19-24 June 200

Filling transitions in acute and open wedges

We present numerical studies of first-order and continuous filling transitions, in wedges of arbitrary opening angle $\psi$, using a microscopic fundamental measure density functional model with short-ranged fluid-fluid forces and long-ranged wall-fluid forces. In this system the wetting transition characteristic of the planar wall-fluid interface is always first-order regardless of the strength of the wall-fluid potential $\varepsilon_w$. In the wedge geometry however the order of the filling transition depends not only on $\varepsilon_w$ but also the opening angle $\psi$. In particular we show that even if the wetting transition is strongly first-order the filling transition is continuous for sufficient acute wedges. We show further that the change in the order of the transition occurs via a tricritical point as opposed to a critical-end point. These results extend previous effective Hamiltonian predictions which were limited only to shallow wedges