Evolution of Reading: The Case of ‘Dungeons & Dragons’, a fantasy tabletop role-playing game

The article questions the concept of evolution in relation to the ability of reading, and the history of books. From a survey of cross-over literature, visual texts, and intermediality, it moves into analyzing the patterns that characterize branching-path books, solitaire adventures, and role-playing games. The case in point is a famous game of the Seventies, Dungeons & Dragons. The Rule Book of Dungeons & Dragons is analyzed, paying attention to the features that support the gaming activity, but also to the literary elements embedded in the game. Both suggest a complex mutual relationship and the narrative potential attached to gaming.L\u2019article interroge le concept d'\ue9volution appliqu\ue9 aux comp\ue9tences de lecture et \ue0 l\u2019histoire du livre. D\u2019une enqu\ueate sur la litt\ue9rature hybride, les textes visuels et l\u2019interm\ue9dialit\ue9, il passe \ue0 l\u2019analyse des sch\ue9mas caract\ue9risant la litt\ue9rature interactive (livres dont vous \ueates le h\ue9ros), les aventures solitaires et les jeux de r\uf4le. L\u2019exemple concret est un c\ue9l\ue8bre jeu des ann\ue9es soixantedix Donjons & Dragons. Le livre des r\ue8gles de D&D est analys\ue9 en pr\ueatant attention aux aspects qui soutiennent l\u2019activit\ue9 ludique mais aussi aux \ue9l\ue9ments litt\ue9raires ancr\ue9s dans le jeu. Les deux sugg\ue8rent une relation mutuelle complexe et le potentiel narratif du jeu

Victorian Arts and the Challenge of Modernity: Analogy, the Grid, and Chemical Transformations = Les arts victoriens et le défi de la modernité : analogie, ‘grille’ et transformations chimiques

My article has its point of departure among the artists of the 20th-century avant-garde, who worked with a distinct awareness of their modernity and yet adopted an intellectual vantage point that enlarged their vision, to the extent of allowing them to embrace at once modern art and the art of the Neolithic age. Among them T. S. Eliot, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Roger Fry, who variously responded to the drawings of Magdalenian artists, or to the art of Homer, while having recourse to modern science, chemistry especially, in order to explain literary phenomena. Such views are examined by focusing on the transformative power of the arts in Victorian and Edwardian culture and society. The article investigates such a scenario by dwelling first on the epistemic horizon in which science, art and literature conspire together to mould the modern mind. Subsequently the article moves \ue0 rebours, in order to suggest the possible reasons for such hermeneutic proximity. The strategy that allows the artists and critics to move forward and backwards in time is due to their insistence on analogy, which allows them to examine side by side the very modern and the very old. In addition to analogy, optical technology allows them to assess art from a visual point of view, thus emphasizing formal values: in sum the tools adopted have their symbolic and practical equivalent in chemistry. Such are the transformative powers that promote intermedial dynamics among the arts, and they date back to Victorian times, where they appear under the shape of the grid. The grid is the container in which the achievements of Victorian culture, industry and art are ordered and organized. The grid provides the structure to the Crystal Palace housing the Great Exhibition in 1851, and the grid is the structure presiding over modern chemistry, owing to the tabular arrangement of chemical elements envisaged by Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev and first published in 1869. Such grids suggest that the epistemic width invoked by the avant-garde artists\u2014its wide connective capability, its conceptual emphasis on analogy among a variety of different experiences\u2014can be traced back to the Victorian and Edwardian age.Cet article a pour point de d\ue9part les artistes de l\u2019avant-garde du xxe si\ue8cle qui, tout en \ue9tant conscients de leur modernit\ue9, adopt\ue8rent un point de vue intellectuel qui leur donna une vision si large qu\u2019ils purent embrasser \ue0 la fois l\u2019art moderne et l\u2019art du n\ue9olithique. Parmi eux, T. S. Eliot, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf et Roger Fry r\ue9agirent chacun \ue0 leur mani\ue8re aux dessins des artistes magdal\ue9niens ou \ue0 l\u2019art d\u2019Hom\ue8re tout en ayant recours \ue0 la science moderne \u2014 la chimie, en particulier \u2014 pour expliquer des ph\ue9nom\ue8nes litt\ue9raires. Leur point de vue est analys\ue9 au prisme du pouvoir transformateur des arts dans la culture et la soci\ue9t\ue9 victoriennes et \ue9douardiennes. L\u2019article se penche tout d\u2019abord sur l\u2019horizon \ue9pist\ue9mique o\uf9 science, art et litt\ue9rature se liguent pour modeler l\u2019esprit moderne. \uc0 partir de l\ue0, l\u2019article suit une progression \ue0 rebours afin de sugg\ue9rer les raisons qui ont pu pr\ue9sider \ue0 une telle proximit\ue9 herm\ue9neutique. La strat\ue9gie qui permet \ue0 ces artistes et critiques d\u2019avancer et de reculer dans le temps se fonde sur une insistance sur l\u2019analogie, ce qui leur permet d\u2019examiner c\uf4te \ue0 c\uf4te le tr\ue8s moderne et le tr\ue8s ancien. Outre l\u2019analogie, la technologie optique leur permet d\u2019\ue9valuer l\u2019art d\u2019un point de vue visuel et ainsi de mettre en valeur la forme: en somme, les outils adopt\ue9s ont leur \ue9quivalent symbolique et pratique dans le domaine de la chimie. Tels sont les pouvoirs transformateurs qui promeuvent une dynamique interm\ue9diale entre les arts; ces pouvoirs remontent \ue0 l\u2019\ue9poque victorienne o\uf9 ils apparaissent sous la forme d\u2019une \u2018grille\u2019. Cette \u2018grille\u2019 est le contenant dans lequel sont class\ue9es et organis\ue9es les r\ue9alisations de la culture, de l\u2019industrie et des arts victoriens. C\u2019est la grille qui donne sa structure au Crystal Palace qui abrite l\u2019Exposition Universelle de 1851 ; la grille est \ue9galement la structure qui r\ue8gle la chimie moderne, gr\ue2ce au tableau des \ue9l\ue9ments chimiques \ue9labor\ue9 par le chimiste russe Dmitri Mendele\uefev et publi\ue9 pour la premi\ue8re fois en 1869. D\u2019apr\ue8s ces grilles, il appara\ueet que l\u2019origine de l\u2019ampleur \ue9pist\ue9mique invoqu\ue9e par les artistes de l\u2019avant-garde \u2014 sa capacit\ue9 de connexion, l\u2019accent conceptuel qu\u2019elle met sur l\u2019analogie dans un \ue9ventail d\u2019exp\ue9riences diverses \u2014 remonte \ue0 l\u2019\ue9poque victorienne et \ue9douardienne

Where Angels Fear to Tread. Un dialogo sulla Biblioteca di Anglistica

Dopo aver esplorato i lineamenti della biblioteca ideale nella tradizione classica e nel passato britannico, L'Autrice intervista Marialuisa Bignami relativamente alla nozione di bilioteca di lingue straniere in un ateneo italiano, e ai principi che negli anni hanno guidato il progetto della Biblioteca di Anglistica relizzato dalla professoressa Bignami

D.H.L's Oscar : An Introduction

Orestano focusses on D. H. Lawrence's reception in Italy and on the volume of the Oscar Mondadori series, n. 51, L'amante di Lady Chatterley, which marks his popularity in the Sixties. While achieving mass-popularity, Lawrence was also being critically assessed by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, who finely commented on his work and the Italian reception

MICE: the Muon Ionization Cooling Experiment. Step I: First Measurement of Emittance with Particle Physics Detectors

The Muon Ionization Cooling Experiment (MICE) is a strategic R&D project intended to demonstrate the only practical solution to providing high brilliance beams necessary for a neutrino factory or muon collider. MICE is under development at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) in the United Kingdom. It comprises a dedicated beamline to generate a range of input muon emittances and momenta, with time-of-flight and Cherenkov detectors to ensure a pure muon beam. The emittance of the incoming beam will be measured in the upstream magnetic spectrometer with a scintillating fiber tracker. A cooling cell will then follow, alternating energy loss in Liquid Hydrogen (LH2) absorbers to RF cavity acceleration. A second spectrometer, identical to the first, and a second muon identification system will measure the outgoing emittance. In the 2010 run at RAL the muon beamline and most detectors were fully commissioned and a first measurement of the emittance of the muon beam with particle physics (time-of-flight) detectors was performed. The analysis of these data was recently completed and is discussed in this paper. Future steps for MICE, where beam emittance and emittance reduction (cooling) are to be measured with greater accuracy, are also presented

The ATLAS MDT remote calibration centers

The precision chambers of the ATLAS Muon Spectrometer are built with Monitored Drift Tubes (MDT). The requirement of high accuracy and low systematic error, to achieve a transverse momentum resolution of 10% at 1 TeV, can only be accomplished if the calibrations are known with an accuracy of 20 μm. The relation between the drift path and the measured time (the socalled r-t relation) depends on many parameters (temperature T, hit rate, gas composition, thresholds,...) subject to time variations. The r-t relation has to be measured from the data without the use of an external detector, using the autocalibration technique. This method relies on an iterative procedure applied to the same data sample, starting from a preliminary set of constants. The required precision can be achieved using a large (few thousand) number of non-parallel tracks crossing a region, called calibration region, i.e. the region of the MDT chamber sharing the same r-t relation.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/85421/1/jpconf10_219_022028.pd

Large-angle production of charged pions by 3 GeV/c - 12 GeV/c protons on carbon, copper and tin targets

A measurement of the double-differential $\pi^{\pm}$ production cross-section in proton--carbon, proton--copper and proton--tin collisions in the range of pion momentum 100 \MeVc \leq p < 800 \MeVc and angle 0.35 \rad \le \theta <2.15 \rad is presented. The data were taken with the HARP detector in the T9 beam line of the CERN PS. The pions were produced by proton beams in a momentum range from 3 \GeVc to 12 \GeVc hitting a target with a thickness of 5% of a nuclear interaction length. The tracking and identification of the produced particles was done using a small-radius cylindrical time projection chamber (TPC) placed in a solenoidal magnet. An elaborate system of detectors in the beam line ensured the identification of the incident particles. Results are shown for the double-differential cross-sections at four incident proton beam momenta (3 \GeVc, 5 \GeVc, 8 \GeVc and 12 \GeVc)

Absolute Momentum Calibration of the HARP TPC

In the HARP experiment the large-angle spectrometer is using a cylindrical TPC as main tracking and particle identification detector. The momentum scale of reconstructed tracks in the TPC is the most important systematic error for the majority of kinematic bins used for the HARP measurements of the double-differential production cross-section of charged pions in proton interactions on nuclear targets at large angle. The HARP TPC operated with a number of hardware shortfalls and operational mistakes. Thus it was important to control and characterize its momentum calibration. While it was not possible to enter a direct particle beam into the sensitive volume of the TPC to calibrate the detector, a set of physical processes and detector properties were exploited to achieve a precise calibration of the apparatus. In the following we recall the main issues concerning the momentum measurement in the HARP TPC, and describe the cross-checks made to validate the momentum scale. As a conclusion, this analysis demonstrates that the measurement of momentum is correct within the published precision of 3%.Comment: To be published by JINS

Comparison of large-angle production of charged pions with incident protons on cylindrical long and short targets

The HARP collaboration has presented measurements of the double-differential pi+/pi- production cross-section in the range of momentum 100 MeV/c <= p 800 MeV/c and angle 0.35 rad <= theta <= 2.15 rad with proton beams hitting thin nuclear targets. In many applications the extrapolation to long targets is necessary. In this paper the analysis of data taken with long (one interaction length) solid cylindrical targets made of carbon, tantalum and lead is presented. The data were taken with the large acceptance HARP detector in the T9 beam line of the CERN PS. The secondary pions were produced by beams of protons with momenta 5 GeV/c, 8 GeV/c and 12 GeV/c. The tracking and identification of the produced particles were performed using a small-radius cylindrical time projection chamber (TPC) placed inside a solenoidal magnet. Incident protons were identified by an elaborate system of beam detectors. Results are obtained for the double-differential yields per target nucleon d2 sigma / dp dtheta. The measurements are compared with predictions of the MARS and GEANT4 Monte Carlo simulations.Comment: 43 pages, 20 figure

Forward production of charged pions with incident π±\pi^{\pm} on nuclear targets measured at the CERN PS

Measurements of the double-differential $\pi^{\pm}$ production cross-section in the range of momentum 0.5 \GeVc \leq p \le 8.0 \GeVc and angle 0.025 \rad \leq \theta \le 0.25 \rad in interactions of charged pions on beryllium, carbon, aluminium, copper, tin, tantalum and lead are presented. These data represent the first experimental campaign to systematically measure forward pion hadroproduction. The data were taken with the large acceptance HARP detector in the T9 beam line of the CERN PS. Incident particles, impinging on a 5% nuclear interaction length target, were identified by an elaborate system of beam detectors. The tracking and identification of the produced particles was performed using the forward spectrometer of the HARP detector. Results are obtained for the double-differential cross-sections ${{\mathrm{d}^2 \sigma}}/{{\mathrm{d}p\mathrm{d}\Omega}}$ mainly at four incident pion beam momenta (3 \GeVc, 5 \GeVc, 8 \GeVc and 12 \GeVc). The measurements are compared with the GEANT4 and MARS Monte Carlo simulationComment: to be published on Nuclear Physics