1,660 research outputs found
Words From Elsewhere: The Rhetoric of Nineteenth Century African American Prophetic Call Narratives
This dissertation examines the various rhetorical tactics of the African American Prophetic Tradition of the nineteenth century, specifically those utilized in the prophetic call narratives of Maria Stewart, Nat Turner, Julia Foote, and Richard Allen. These figures anchor their larger prophetic messages in the claim that God has called them to the prophetic task. This rhetoric of calling assumes that God still speaks, and that God’s speaking matters to local communities under the thumb of racial and gendered oppression. Moreover, the rhetoric of calling assumes that God’s speaking has material (not just spiritual) effect in the world, and that God has spoken through them to criticize systems of oppression and energize resistance. Through the prophetic call narratives of these four figures, communication scholars can glimpse the unique rhetorical contributions the African American Prophetic Tradition makes to American oratory, storytelling, ethics, and protest. These figures invite us to move beyond simplistic, folkish stereotypes of nineteenth-century Black preachers to see that they exercised sophisticated and thoughtful engagements with, indeed, embodiments of the biblical text and the “text” of the world around them
Quantitative determination of perithecium formation
Quantitative determination of perithecium formatio
Probing large-scale wind structures in Vela X-1 using off-states with INTEGRAL
Vela X-1 is the prototype of the class of wind-fed accreting pulsars in high
mass X-ray binaries hosting a supergiant donor. We have analyzed in a
systematic way ten years of INTEGRAL data of Vela X-1 (22-50 keV) and we found
that when outside the X-ray eclipse, the source undergoes several luminosity
drops where the hard X-rays luminosity goes below 3x10^35 erg/s, becoming
undetected by INTEGRAL. These drops in the X-ray flux are usually referred to
as "off-states" in the literature. We have investigated the distribution of
these off-states along the Vela X-1 ~8.9 d orbit, finding that their orbital
occurrence displays an asymmetric distribution, with a higher probability to
observe an off-state near the pre-eclipse than during the post-eclipse. This
asymmetry can be explained by scattering of hard X-rays in a region of ionized
wind, able to reduce the source hard X-ray brightness preferentially near
eclipse ingress. We associate this ionized large-scale wind structure with the
photoionization wake produced by the interaction of the supergiant wind with
the X-ray emission from the neutron star. We emphasize that this observational
result could be obtained thanks to the accumulation of a decade of INTEGRAL
data, with observations covering the whole orbit several times, allowing us to
detect an asymmetric pattern in the orbital distribution of off-states in Vela
X-1.Comment: Accepted for publication in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical
Society (5 pages, 3 figures). A few typos fixed to match the published
versio
UV Exposed Optical Fibers with Frequency Domain Reflectometry for Device Tracking in Intra-Arterial Procedures
Shape tracking of medical devices using strain sensing properties in optical
fibers has seen increased attention in recent years. In this paper, we propose
a novel guidance system for intra-arterial procedures using a distributed
strain sensing device based on optical frequency domain reflectometry (OFDR) to
track the shape of a catheter. Tracking enhancement is provided by exposing a
fiber triplet to a focused ultraviolet beam, producing high scattering
properties. Contrary to typical quasi-distributed strain sensors, we propose a
truly distributed strain sensing approach, which allows to reconstruct a fiber
triplet in real-time. A 3D roadmap of the hepatic anatomy integrated with a 4D
MR imaging sequence allows to navigate the catheter within the
pre-interventional anatomy, and map the blood flow velocities in the arterial
tree. We employed Riemannian anisotropic heat kernels to map the sensed data to
the pre-interventional model. Experiments in synthetic phantoms and an in vivo
model are presented. Results show that the tracking accuracy is suitable for
interventional tracking applications, with a mean 3D shape reconstruction
errors of 1.6 +/- 0.3 mm. This study demonstrates the promising potential of
MR-compatible UV-exposed OFDR optical fibers for non-ionizing device guidance
in intra-arterial procedures
Spectral Changes in the Hyperluminous Pulsar in NGC 5907 as a Function of Super-Orbital Phase
We present broad-band, multi-epoch X-ray spectroscopy of the pulsating
ultra-luminous X-ray source (ULX) in NGC 5907. Simultaneous XMM-Newton and
NuSTAR data from 2014 are best described by a multi-color black-body model with
a temperature gradient as a function of accretion disk radius significantly
flatter than expected for a standard thin accretion disk (T(r) ~ r^{-p}, with
p=0.608^{+0.014}_{-0.012}). Additionally, we detect a hard power-law tail at
energies above 10 keV, which we interpret as being due to Comptonization. We
compare this observation to archival XMM-Newton, Chandra, and NuSTAR data from
2003, 2012, and 2013, and investigate possible spectral changes as a function
of phase over the 78d super-orbital period of this source. We find that
observations taken around phases 0.3-0.4 show very similar temperature
profiles, even though the observed flux varies significantly, while one
observation taken around phase 0 has a significantly steeper profile. We
discuss these findings in light of the recent discovery that the compact object
is a neutron star and show that precession of the accretion disk or the neutron
star can self-consistently explain most observed phenomena.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figures, submitted to ApJ; comments welcom
Variability in high-mass X-ray binaries
Strongly magnetized, accreting neutron stars show periodic and aperiodic
variability over a wide range of time scales. By obtaining spectral and timing
information on these different time scales, we can have a closer look into the
physics of accretion close to the neutron star and the properties of the
accreted material. One of the most prominent time scales is the strong
pulsation, i.e., the rotation period of the neutron star itself. Over one
rotation, our view of the accretion column and the X-ray producing region
changes significantly. This allows us to sample different physical conditions
within the column but at the same time requires that we have
viewing-angle-resolved models to properly describe them. In wind-fed high-mass
X-ray binaries, the main source of aperiodic variability is the clumpy stellar
wind, which leads to changes in the accretion rate (i.e., luminosity) as well
as absorption column. This variability allows us to study the behavior of the
accretion column as a function of luminosity, as well as to investigate the
structure and physical properties of the wind, which we can compare to winds in
isolated stars.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in Astronomische
Nachrichten (proceedings of the XMM-Newton Workshop 2019
3-D GRMHD and GRPIC Simulations of Disk-Jet Coupling and Emission
We investigate jet formation in black-hole systems using 3-D General
Relativistic Particle-In-Cell (GRPIC) and 3-D GRMHD simulations. GRPIC
simulations, which allow charge separations in a collisionless plasma, do not
need to invoke the frozen condition as in GRMHD simulations. 3-D GRPIC
simulations show that jets are launched from Kerr black holes as in 3-D GRMHD
simulations, but jet formation in the two cases may not be identical.
Comparative study of black hole systems with GRPIC and GRMHD simulations with
the inclusion of radiate transfer will further clarify the mechanisms that
drive the evolution of disk-jet systems.Comment: 3 pages, 1 figure, Proceedings of the Eleventh Marcel Grossmann
Meeting on General Relativity, edited by H. Kleinert, R.T. Jantzen and R.
Ruffini, World Scientific, Singapore, 200
Dilatation of Lateral Ventricles with Brain Volumes in Infants with 3D Transfontanelle US
Ultrasound (US) can be used to assess brain development in newborns, as MRI
is challenging due to immobilization issues, and may require sedation.
Dilatation of the lateral ventricles in the brain is a risk factor for poorer
neurodevelopment outcomes in infants. Hence, 3D US has the ability to assess
the volume of the lateral ventricles similar to clinically standard MRI, but
manual segmentation is time consuming. The objective of this study is to
develop an approach quantifying the ratio of lateral ventricular dilatation
with respect to total brain volume using 3D US, which can assess the severity
of macrocephaly. Automatic segmentation of the lateral ventricles is achieved
with a multi-atlas deformable registration approach using locally linear
correlation metrics for US-MRI fusion, followed by a refinement step using
deformable mesh models. Total brain volume is estimated using a 3D ellipsoid
modeling approach. Validation was performed on a cohort of 12 infants, ranging
from 2 to 8.5 months old, where 3D US and MRI were used to compare brain
volumes and segmented lateral ventricles. Automatically extracted volumes from
3D US show a high correlation and no statistically significant difference when
compared to ground truth measurements. Differences in volume ratios was 6.0 +/-
4.8% compared to MRI, while lateral ventricular segmentation yielded a mean
Dice coefficient of 70.8 +/- 3.6% and a mean absolute distance (MAD) of 0.88
+/- 0.2mm, demonstrating the clinical benefit of this tool in paediatric
ultrasound
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