296 research outputs found
Interview with scholar, translator and lexicographer Donald Rayfield
Donald Rayfield is Emeritus Professor of Russian and Georgian at Queen Mary, University of
London. He has been at the forefront of Georgian studies for many years and has published
widely on Georgia, authoring several major studies on its literature and history, and translating
works by Galaktion Tabidze, Otar Chiladze, Akaki Tsereteli and, most recently, Mikheil
Javakhishvili. Slovo meets him to find out about the past, present and (speculative) future of this
rich but much underrepresented literature in the Anglophone world
What more can we know about Chekhov?
What more can we
know about
Chekhov? es —
junto a 'Medicine is
my legitimate wife,
and literature is my
mistress"— una de
las dos conferencias
que pronunció el
profesor Donald
Rayfield en las VII
Lecciones Anuales
de Poética de la
Cátedra Félix
Huarte, celebradas
con motivo del centenario
de la muerte
de Antón Chéjov
(1860-1904), los
dÃas 21 y 22 de
abril de 2004
Epidemiologic and evolutionary relationships between Romanian and Brazilian HIV-subtype F strains.
Combining geometric morphometrics and finite element analysis with evolutionary modeling:towards a synthesis
<p>Geometric morphometrics (GM) and finite element analysis (FEA) are increasingly common techniques for the study of form and function. We show how principles of quantitative evolution in continuous phenotypic traits can link the two techniques, allowing hypotheses about the relative importance of different functions to be tested in a phylogenetic and evolutionary framework. Finite element analysis is used to derive quantitative surfaces that describe the comparative performance of different morphologies in a morphospace derived from GM. The combination of two or more performance surfaces describes a quantitative adaptive landscape that can be used to predict the direction morphological evolution would take if a combination of functions was selected for. Predicted paths of evolution also can be derived for hypotheses about the relative importance of multiple functions, which can be tested against evolutionary pathways that are documented by phylogenies or fossil sequences. Magnitudes of evolutionary trade-offs between functions can be estimated using maximum likelihood. We apply these methods to an earlier study of carapace strength and hydrodynamic efficiency in emydid turtles. We find that strength and hydrodynamic efficiency explain about 45% of the variance in shell shape; drift and other unidentified functional factors are necessary to explain the remaining variance. Measurement of the proportional trade-off between shell strength and hydrodynamic efficiency shows that throughout the Cenozoic aquatic turtles generally sacrificed strength for streamlining and terrestrial species favored stronger shells; this suggests that the selective regime operating on small to mid-sized emydids has remained relatively static.</p> <p>SUPPLEMENTAL DATA—Supplemental materials are available for this article for free at <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/UJVP" target="_blank">www.tandfonline.com/UJVP</a></p> <p>Citation for this article: Polly, P. D., C. T. Stayton, E. R. Dumont, S. E. Pierce, E. J. Rayfield, and K. D. Angielczyk. 2016. Combining geometric morphometrics and finite element analysis with evolutionary modeling: towards a synthesis. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. DOI: 10.1080/02724634.2016.1111225.</p
Friction force on a vortex due to the scattering of superfluid excitations in helium II
The longitudinal friction acting on a vortex line in superfluid He is
investigated within a simple model based on the analogy between such vortex
dynamics and that of the quantal Brownian motion of a charged point particle in
a uniform magnetic field. The scattering of superfluid quasiparticle
excitations by the vortex stems from a translationally invariant interaction
potential which, expanded to first order in the vortex velocity operator, gives
rise to vortex transitions between nearest Landau levels. The corresponding
friction coefficient is shown to be, in the limit of elastic scattering
(vanishing cyclotron frequency), equivalent to that arising from the Iordanskii
formula. Proposing a simple functional form for the scattering amplitude, with
only one adjustable parameter whose value is set in order to get agreement to
the Iordanskii result for phonons, an excellent agreement is also found with
the values derived from experimental data up to temperatures about 1.5 K.
Finite values of the cyclotron frequency arising from recent theories are shown
to yield similar results. The incidence of vortex-induced quasiparticle
transitions on the friction process is estimated to be, in the roton dominated
regime, about 50 % of the value of the friction coefficient, 8 % of which
corresponds to roton-phonon transitions and 42 % to roton
ones.Comment: 15 pages, 4 figures; typos corrected, to be published in PR
Watching dark solitons decay into vortex rings in a Bose-Einstein condensate
We have created spatial dark solitons in two-component Bose-Einstein
condensates in which the soliton exists in one of the condensate components and
the soliton nodal plane is filled with the second component. The filled
solitons are stable for hundreds of milliseconds. The filling can be
selectively removed, making the soliton more susceptible to dynamical
instabilities. For a condensate in a spherically symmetric potential, these
instabilities cause the dark soliton to decay into stable vortex rings. We have
imaged the resulting vortex rings.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure
The use of extruded finite-element models as a novel alternative to tomography-based models:a case study using early mammal jaws
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