The Phenomenology of Koan Meditation in Zen Buddhism

Zen students described their experiences when working with koans, and a phenomenological method was used to identify the structure of those experiences. Zen koans are statements or stories developed in China and Japan by Zen masters in order to help students transform their conscious awareness of the world. Eight participants including 3 females and 5 males from Southern California with 1 to 30 years of experience in Zen answered open-ended questions about koan practice in one tape-recorded session for each participant. Refl ection yielded the following thematic clusters: (a) motivation, (b) approaches to working with koans, (c) experiences while working with koans, (d) experiences of insight into koans, (e) working with a teacher, and (f ) transformation. Participants described positive transformations including better control of emotions and concentration, better awareness of prejudices and biases with the ability to suppress those types of habitual associations, and a new relation to and acceptance of spiritual questions and doubts

Fluctuation-dissipation relation on a Melde string in a turbulent flow, considerations on a "dynamical temperature"

3,5 new printed pagesWe report on measurements of the transverse fluctuations of a string in a turbulent air jet flow. Harmonic modes are excited by the fluctuating drag force, at different wave-numbers. This simple mechanical probe makes it possible to measure excitations of the flow at specific scales, averaged over space and time: it is a scale-resolved, global measurement. We also measure the dissipation associated to the string motion, and we consider the ratio of the fluctuations over dissipation (FDR). In an exploratory approach, we investigate the concept of {\it effective temperature} defined through the FDR. We compare our observations with other definitions of temperature in turbulence. From the theory of Kolmogorov ($1941$), we derive the exponent $-11/3$ expected for the spectrum of the fluctuations. This simple model and our experimental results are in good agreement, over the range of wave-numbers, and Reynolds number accessible ($74000 \leq Re \leq 170000$)

Railroad Preemption Signals at a Roundabout Interchange: SR 265 & SR 62 in Jeffersonville, IN

The use of roundabouts near at-grade railroad crossings has traditionally been shied away from due to the inability to ensure that the tracks can be cleared in advance of a railroad event. The Ohio River Bridges Project incorporated a roundabout interchange near an at-grade railroad crossing on SR 62, and this concern was mitigated using traffic signals. Signal configuration and controller logic, along with video of operational signals, will be shared in this presentation

Structuration et fluidification de gels de noir de carbone

Attractive gels are made of weakly aggregated colloidal particles dispersed in a liquid at lowvolume fraction. Their microstructure can easily be modified when submittedto a shear stress. For instance, those gel can form structures in response to flow under strong confinement. This work is a detailed study of this phenomenon in carbon black gels and in glass beads suspensions in oil made attractive by addition of a small amount water. Those structures are also reproduced in molecular dynamics numerical simulations which allow us to study the conditions for such structures to appear. When sheared in a large gap, yielding and flow of those gels is complex due to the competition between shear-induced aggregation and breakup. Yielding of carbon black gels has been studied by coupling global rheological measurements with local ultrasonic velocimetry providing a link between the global (macroscopic) behaviour and the local dynamics.Les « gels attractifs » constituent une catégorie particulière de fluides complexes. Ces gels sont formés à partir d’une suspension de particules attractives en faible concentration volumique. La microstructure du gel est très facilement modifiée par l’application d’une contrainte. Ainsi, il est possible de structurer ces gels par un cisaillement dans une géométrie suffisamment confinée. Nous avons étudié en détail ce phénomène dans des gels de noirs de carbone ainsi que dans des suspensions de billes de verre dans de l’huile rendues attractives par la présence d’une faible quantité d’eau. Nous avons reproduit ce phénomène dans des simulations numériques de dynamique moléculaire, ce qui permet d’étudier les conditions nécessaires à l’apparition de telles structures. Enfin, en géométrie peu confinée, le mécanisme de rupture et d’écoulement de ces gels en volume est complexe puisque leur rupture est en perpétuelle compétition avec leurcinétique de reformation. Nous avons étudié la rupture des gels de noir de carbone en couplant des techniques classiques de rhéologie avec une technique de mesure locale de déplacement par ultrasons. Ces expériences nous ont permis d’établir un lien entre le comportement global du matériau (sa rhéologie macroscopique) et la dynamique locale de fluidification

Guillaume Pollack, L’armée du silence. Histoire des réseaux de Résistance en France 1940-1945

Version remaniée d’une thèse de doctorat intitulée « À travers les frontières : la résistance des réseaux » soutenue en 2020 à l’Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne sous la direction d’Alya Aglan, cet ouvrage constitue la première synthèse sur l’histoire des réseaux de résistance ayant agi en France entre 1940 et 1945. Le projet est très large et ambitieux puisque l’auteur se donne pour objectif de réaliser la « première étude globale et transversale » sur le sujet. La démarche peut surprend..

A Comparison of Clustering and Missing Data Methods for Health Sciences

In this paper, we compare and analyze clustering methods with missing data in health behavior research. In particular, we propose and analyze the use of compressive sensing\u27s matrix completion along with spectral clustering to cluster health related data. The empirical tests and real data results show that these methods can outperform standard methods like LPA and FIML, in terms of lower misclassification rates in clustering and better matrix completion performance in missing data problems. According to our examination, a possible explanation of these improvements is that spectral clustering takes advantage of high data dimension and compressive sensing methods utilize the near-to-low-rank property of health data

Initial single-shell tank retrieval system tank selection

The Hanford Federal Facility Agreement and Consent Order (also known as the Tri-Party Agreement), established several milestones associated with the Initial Single-Shell Tank Retrieval System (ISSTRS). It also established that the scope of ISSTRS is the retrieval of a complete tank farm or an equivalent number of tanks. This study selected the single- shell tanks to be included in the ISSTRS work scope. This study determined that the ISSTRS work scope should consist of four tanks located in the A, AX, and C, tank farms. One of the tanks (Tank 241-AX-103) will be a salt cake retrieval demonstration tank. The other three (Tanks 241 -A-1 02, 241 -C-1 03, and 241-C-105) are 100-series tanks containing high interim storage risk, high long-term hazard waste and are assumed not to be leaking