Attitude towards Cross-Culture Exchange in the 1685 French Embassy to the Kingdom of Siam

Traditional histories of Early Modern exchange tend to emphasize the dispersion and adoption (or rejection) of European science and culture. More recently, there has been an historiographical trend to see early modern international interactions as multi-direction exchanges in which all parties are altered in each interaction. The 1685 French-Jesuit Embassy to Siam provides an interesting opportunity to explore the implications of this multi-directional approach. Although this exchange had no significant, lasting impact on either Siam or France, the dynamics at play demonstrate how each party’s attitude towards the exchange impacted their ability to achieve their aims. This paper uses Guy Tachard’s first-hand account of the 1685 Embassy, Voyage to Siam, to explore the political, scientific, and religious exchanges that took place between the French and the Siamese. On each of these levels, the French were consistently concerned with their own perception and cultural superiority whereas the Siamese were primarily motivated by a desire for an intellectual exchange. The Siamese successfully gained scientific equipment and knowledge from the French Jesuits whereas the Jesuits failed to convert Siam to Christianity. Thus, this interaction shows how differing attitudes lead to tangible differences in the outcome of this cross-cultural interaction

Quantification of phase transformation in stainless steel 301LN sheets

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, 2008.Includes bibliographical references (p. 101-102).This thesis investigates the large deformation behavior of stainless steel 301LN cold-rolled sheets which is largely governed by the initial anisotropy combined with the phase transformation during deformation. Stainless steel offers high strength with relatively high ductility as compared with other structural steels. The effect of initial anisotropy on the strength in different material directions is studied in order to predict forming and crash response of vehicle components. It is observed that loading in the material rolling direction results in increased strength in the cross direction, however loading in the material cross-rolling direction results in decreased strength in the rolling direction. The mechanism responsible for the above cross-hardening is complex and requires investigation of the microstructural evolution of the sheets. The austenitic stainless steel studied is comprised of only austenite when in bulk form. However, the process of cold-rolling the bulk material into sheets results in strain-induced martensitic phase transformation. Additional straining of the material leads to even more transformation of austenite to martensite. Because martensite is a harder phase than austenite, micromechanical arguments suggest that the amount of martensite has an effect on the plasticity and eventual fracture of this material. In this thesis, the martensitic evolution as a function of material direction and strain level is measured using three different techniques: X-ray diffraction, microscopy, and magnetic induction. The first two methods require interrupted tests, while using a Feritscope allows for in-situ measurement of the martensite content. However, the Feritscope must be calibrated by another measurement method.(cont.) Observations of the measurements from each of the three methods confirm that the output of the Feritscope, Ferrite Number, is proportional to the martensite content. Therefore in-situ tests employing the Feritscope will allow for monitoring of the martensite content with evolution of stress and strain. From experiments described here, a directional dependence on martensite content is observed. The results from this study can be used to formulate an anisotropic martensite transformation kinetics law to describe the evolution of martensite content as a function of material anisotropy, stress state, and strain state.by Allison M. Beese.S.M

Experimental investigation and constitutive modeling of the large deformation behavior of anisotropic steel sheets undergoing strain-induced phase transformation

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, 2011.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 139-146).The strain-induced phase transformation from austenite to martensite is responsible for the high strength and ductility of TRansformation-Induced Plasticity (TRIP)- assisted steels. The large deformation behavior of conventional steels is governed by crystallographic slip. In the case of TRIP steels, the phase transformation provides an additional microstructural deformation mechanism, which has a particularly strong effect on the strain hardening response at the macroscopic level. This thesis work develops a new plasticity model for TRIP steels that accounts for the effect of phase transformation. In particular, the large deformation behavior of 1.5mm thick stainless steel 301LN sheets at room temperature is studied in detail. Several techniques for quantifying the martensite volume fraction are evaluated including micrography, X-ray diffraction, neutron diffraction, magnetic saturation, and magnetic permeability measurements. The latter is then used to measure the evolution of the martensite content throughout mechanical experiments. The experimental program for different stress states includes experiments for uniaxial tension, uniaxial compression, equi-biaxial tension, pure shear, and transverse plane strain tension. The resulting experimental data demonstrate the influence of both the stress triaxiality and Lode angle parameter on the austenite-to-martensite transformation kinetics. A stress-state dependent transformation kinetics evolution equation is proposed which describes the martensite content as a function of plastic strain, the stress triaxiality, and the Lode angle parameter. Furthermore, a phenomenological plasticity model is developed comprising an anisotropic yield function, an isotropic hardening law, and a nonlinear kinematic hardening law with initial back stress. The isotropic hardening law expresses the increase in deformation resistances as a function of the plastic strain and the martensite content and is directly coupled with the stress-state dependent transformation kinetics equation. As a result, the model is able to describe the experimentally observed effect of stress state on the macroscopic hardening response. The constitutive model is implemented into a finite element program and used to simulate all experiments performed. The model predictions agree well with the experimental results for a wide range of stress states and for both specimens with homogeneous and heterogeneous stress and strain fields.by Allison M. Beese.Ph.D

An image-based transfer learning approach for using in situ processing data to predict laser powder bed fusion additively manufactured Ti-6Al-4V mechanical properties

The mitigation of material defects from additive manufacturing (AM) processes is critical to reliability in their fabricated parts and is enabled by modeling the complex relations between available build monitoring signals and final mechanical performance. To this end, the present study investigates a machine learning approach for predicting mechanical properties for Ti-6Al-4V fabricated through laser powder bed fusion (PBF-LB) AM using in situ photodiode processing signals. Samples were fabricated under different processing parameters, varying laser powers and scan speeds for the purpose of probing a wide range of microstructure and property variations. Photodiode data were collected during fabrication, later to be arranged in image format and extracted to information-dense vectors by the transferal of deep convolutional neural network (DCNN) structures and weights pre-trained on a large computer vision benchmark image database. The extracted features were then used to train and test a newly designed regression model for mechanical properties. Average cross-validation accuracies were found to be 98.7% (r2 value of 0.89) for the prediction of ultimate tensile strength, which ranged from 900 to 1150 MPa in the samples studied, and 93.1% (r2 value of 0.96) for the prediction of elongation to fracture, which ranged from 0 to 17%. Thus, with high accuracy and hardware accelerated inference speeds, we demonstrate that a transfer learning framework can be used to predict strength and ductility of metal AM components based on processing signals in PBF-LB, illustrating a potential route toward real-time closed-loop control and process optimization of PBF-LB in industrial applications

First-principles Investigation of Thermodynamic Properties of CrNbO4 and CrTaO4

In the present study, the DFT+U method was employed to predict the thermodynamic properties of Cr2O3, Nb2O5, and Ta2O5. Results were benchmarked with experimental data showing high accuracy, except for the negative thermal expansion (NTE) of Nb2O5, which is attributed to its polymorphic complexity. Additionally, we extended our analysis to rutile-type oxides CrNbO4 and CrTaO4, examining their entropy and heat capacity at finite temperatures. CrNbO4 displayed slightly higher entropy and heat capacity at high temperatures. The mean linear thermal expansion coefficients for CrNbO4 and CrTaO4 from 500 K to 2000 K were predicted to be 6.00*10-6/K and 13.49*10-6/K, respectively, corroborating with DFT predictions and experimental evidence. Our research highlights the precision of the DFT+U and phonon methods in predicting the thermodynamic properties of oxide materials, offering insights into the design of corrosion-resistant materials

The Organization of Working Memory Networks is Shaped by Early Sensory Experience

Early deafness results in crossmodal reorganization of the superior temporal cortex (STC). Here, we investigated the effect of deafness on cognitive processing. Specifically, we studied the reorganization, due to deafness and sign language (SL) knowledge, of linguistic and nonlinguistic visual working memory (WM). We conducted an fMRI experiment in groups that differed in their hearing status and SL knowledge: deaf native signers, and hearing native signers, hearing nonsigners. Participants performed a 2-back WM task and a control task. Stimuli were signs from British Sign Language (BSL) or moving nonsense objects in the form of point-light displays. We found characteristic WM activations in fronto-parietal regions in all groups. However, deaf participants also recruited bilateral posterior STC during the WM task, independently of the linguistic content of the stimuli, and showed less activation in fronto-parietal regions. Resting-state connectivity analysis showed increased connectivity between frontal regions and STC in deaf compared to hearing individuals. WM for signs did not elicit differential activations, suggesting that SL WM does not rely on modality-specific linguistic processing. These findings suggest that WM networks are reorganized due to early deafness, and that the organization of cognitive networks is shaped by the nature of the sensory inputs available during development

REACTIVITY OF CHLOROPHYLL a/b-PROTEINS AND MICELLAR TRITON X-100 COMPLEXES OF CHLOROPHYLLS a OR b WITH BOROHYDRIDE

The reaction of several plant chlorophyll-protein complexes with NaBH4 has been studied by absorption spectroscopy. In all the complexes studied, chlorophyll b is more reactive than Chi a, due to preferential reaction of its formyl substituent at C-7. The complexes also show large variations in reactivity towards NaBH4 and the order of reactivity is: LHCI > PSII complex > LHCII > PSI > P700 (investigated as a component of PSI). Differential pools of the same type of chlorophyll have been observed in several complexes. Parallel work was undertaken on the reactivity of micellar complexes of chlorophyll a and of chlorophyll b with NaBH4 to study the effect of aggregation state on this reactivity. In these complexes, both chlorophyll a and b show large variations in reactivity in the order monomer > oligomer > polymer with chlorophyll b generally being more reactive than chlorophyll a. It is concluded that aggregation decreases the reactivity of chlorophylls towards NaBH4 in vitro, and may similarly decrease reactivity in naturally-occurring chlorophyll-protein complexes