1,276 research outputs found
Finding Frank
In "Finding Frank," the author considers what to do with a remnant of evidence left behind from her research for a larger project in the history of slavery. The remnant concerns Frank, a black man lost to the domestic slave trade in 1835, and Morgan-Owens argues that the conventions of micronarrative, which tie the worth of a story to its scalability, led to his omission in her manuscript. What does it mean to have a story worth telling, and how much of a story does it take to merit a biographical account? Writing as a white historian, she navigates the archival impulse to write about Frank after the fact and the persistent patterns of white supremacy found in projects of historical retelling.FGW â Publications without University Leiden contrac
Mechanical challenges to freshwater residency in sharks and rays
Major transitions between marine and freshwater habitats are relatively infrequent, primarily as a result of major physiological and ecological challenges. Few species of cartilaginous fish have evolved to occupy freshwater habitats. Current thought suggests that the metabolic physiology of sharks has remained a barrier to the diversification of this taxon in freshwater ecosystems. Here, we demonstrate that the physical properties of water provide an additional constraint for this species-rich group to occupy freshwater systems. Using hydromechanical modeling, we show that occurrence in fresh water results in a two- to three-fold increase in negative buoyancy for sharks and rays. This carries the energetic cost of lift production and results in increased buoyancy-dependent mechanical power requirements for swimming and increased optimal swim speeds. The primary source of buoyancy, the lipidrich liver, offers only limited compensation for increased negative buoyancy as a result of decreasing water density; maintaining the same submerged weight would involve increasing the liver volume by very large amounts: 3- to 4-fold in scenarios where liver density is also reduced to currently observed minimal levels and 8-fold without any changes in liver density. The first data on body density from two species of elasmobranch occurring in freshwater (the bull shark Carcharhinus leucas, Muller and Henle 1839, and the largetooth sawfish Pristis pristis, Linnaeus 1758) support this hypothesis, showing similar liver sizes as marine forms but lower liver densities, but the greatest negative buoyancies of any elasmobranch studied to date. Our data suggest that the mechanical challenges associated with buoyancy control may have hampered the invasion of freshwater habitats in elasmobranchs, highlighting an additional key factor that may govern the predisposition of marine organisms to successfully establish in freshwater habitats
Quantification of stress transfer in a model cellulose nanocrystal/graphene bilayer using Raman spectroscopy
This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Elsevier via the DOI in this recordâŻThe dataset associated with this article is located in ORE at: https://doi.org/10.24378/exe.1303Graphene and cellulose possess a multitude of unique and useful properties for applications in electronics, sensors and composites which has led to significant scientific interest over the past 5â10 years. Despite this interest, there has been no experimental work investigating the interface or stress transfer efficiency between these materials, which limits future developments in this field. With the aim of investigating this interface, we have created a model bilayer composite, consisting of a tunicate derived cellulose nanocrystal (T-CNC) film and a monolayer of graphene produced by chemical vapour deposition. Raman spectroscopy has been used to monitor the four-point bending of this model bilayer composite. Shifts in the position of Raman bands, unique for both the cellulose and graphene components of this model composite, are recorded. Using a novel analysis of these Raman band shifts, we have formed an expression which deconvolutes the total stress transfer efficiency of the model system. Using this deconvolution, a stress transfer efficiency of 66% has been derived at the cellulose/graphene interface. In addition, splitting of the graphene Raman G band has allowed calculation of the shear strain in the graphene, which is assumed to be equal to that at the cellulose-graphene interface. The individual T-CNCs in the reference samples showed location dependent preferential orientations. The film was found to be stiffer when the T-CNCs were oriented parallel to the loading axis. It was intended that the varying stiffness of the cellulose film could be used to analyse the effects of underlying film stiffness on stress transfer efficiency, but conclusions from this test were limited. The detailed interface analysis presented here will help to inform design in future cellulose/graphene devices.Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC
Provenance explorer: Customized provenance views using semantic inferencing
This paper presents Provenance Explorer, a secure provenance visualization tool, designed to dynamically generate customized views of scientific data provenance that depend on the viewer's requirements and/or access privileges. Using RDF and graph visualizations, it enables scientists to view the data, states and events associated with a scientific workflow in order to understand the scientific methodology and validate the results. Initially the Provenance Explorer presents a simple, coarse-grained view of the scientific process or experiment. However the GUI allows permitted users to expand links between nodes (input states, events and output states) to reveal more fine-grained information about particular sub-events and their inputs and outputs. Access control is implemented using Shibboleth to identify and authenticate users and XACML to define access control policies. The system also provides a platform for publishing scientific results. It enables users to select particular nodes within the visualized workflow and drag-and-drop them into an RDF package for publication or e-learning. The direct relationships between the individual components selected for such packages are inferred by the rule-inference engine
Interplay of quark and meson degrees of freedom in a near-threshold resonance
We investigate the interplay of quark and meson degrees of freedom in a
physical state representing a near-threshold resonance for the case of a single
continuum channel. We demonstrate that such a near-threshold resonance may
possess quite peculiar properties if both quark and meson dynamics generate
weakly coupled near-threshold poles in the S-matrix. In particular, the
scattering t-matrix may possess zeros in this case. We also discuss possible
implications for production reactions as well as studies within lattice QCD.Comment: LaTeX2e, 11 pages, minor typo corrections, to appear in Eur.Phys.J.
Are they âworth their weight in goldâ? Sport for older adults: benefits and barriers of their participation for sporting organisations
The ageing global population has led to an increased focus on health for older adults. However, older adults have not been a specific priority for some sporting organisations (SOs). Thus, there is an emerging opportunity for this age group to be considered within international sport policy. The aim of this study was to understand the benefits and barriers that SOs encounter when engaging older adults. Eight focus group interviews (n = 49) were held with representatives of Australian national sporting organisations (NSOs), and older adults who were either sport club or non-sport club members. The socioecological model domains, interpersonal, organisational and policy, were used as a framework for thematic analysis, and organisational capacity building concepts were utilised to explain the findings. Common perceived benefits included interpersonal benefits (intergenerational opportunities and role models) and organisational benefits (volunteering, financial contributions and maximised facility usage) for engaging older adults. Common perceived barriers included interpersonal barriers (competing priorities and perceived societal expectations), organisational barriers (lack of appropriate playing opportunities, lack of facility access and lack of club capacity) and policy barriers (strategic organisational focus on children and elite sport and risk management). Whilst participation in sport is not common for older adults, their involvement can be invaluable for sport clubs. It is not anticipated that any policy focus on older adults will significantly increase active participation for this age group. However, any increase in older adultsâ sport participation either through actively playing, supporting family and friends and/or volunteering will contribute to the positive health of individuals, sport clubs and the community.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio
Predicted modulated differential rates for direct WIMP searches at low energy transfers
The differential event rate for direct detection of dark matter, both the
time averaged and the modulated one due to the motion of the Earth, are
discussed. The calculations focus on relatively light cold dark matter
candidates (WIMP) and low energy transfers. It is shown that for sufficiently
light WIMPs the extraction of relatively large nucleon cross sections is
possible. Furthermore for some WIMP masses the modulation amplitude may change
sign, meaning that, in such a case, the maximum rate may occur six months later
than naively expected. This effect can be exploited to yield information about
the mass of the dark matter candidate, if and when the observation of the
modulation of the event rate is established.Comment: 16 pages, 22 figures; references adde
The Muonium Atom as a Probe of Physics beyond the Standard Model
The observed interactions between particles are not fully explained in the
successful theoretical description of the standard model to date. Due to the
close confinement of the bound state muonium () can be used as
an ideal probe of quantum electrodynamics and weak interaction and also for a
search for additional interactions between leptons. Of special interest is the
lepton number violating process of sponteanous conversion of muonium to
antimuonium.Comment: 15 pages,6 figure
Adiabatic Output Coupling of a Bose Gas at Finite Temperatures
We develop a general theory of adiabatic output coupling from trapped atomic
Bose-Einstein Condensates at finite temperatures. For weak coupling, the output
rate from the condensate, and the excited levels in the trap, settles in a time
proportional to the inverse of the spectral width of the coupling to the output
modes. We discuss the properties of the output atoms in the quasi-steady-state
where the population in the trap is not appreciably depleted. We show how the
composition of the output beam, containing condensate and thermal component,
may be controlled by changing the frequency of the output coupler. This
composition determines the first and second order coherence of the output beam.
We discuss the changes in the composition of the bose gas left in the trap and
show how nonresonant output coupling can stimulate either the evaporation of
thermal excitations in the trap or the growth of non-thermal excitations, when
pairs of correlated atoms leave the condensate.Comment: 22 pages, 6 Figs. To appear in Physical Review A All the typos from
the previous submission have been fixe
Nonlinear dynamics for vortex lattice formation in a rotating Bose-Einstein condensate
We study the response of a trapped Bose-Einstein condensate to a sudden
turn-on of a rotating drive by solving the two-dimensional Gross-Pitaevskii
equation. A weakly anisotropic rotating potential excites a quadrupole shape
oscillation and its time evolution is analyzed by the quasiparticle projection
method. A simple recurrence oscillation of surface mode populations is broken
in the quadrupole resonance region that depends on the trap anisotropy, causing
stochastization of the dynamics. In the presence of the phenomenological
dissipation, an initially irrotational condensate is found to undergo damped
elliptic deformation followed by unstable surface ripple excitations, some of
which develop into quantized vortices that eventually form a lattice. Recent
experimental results on the vortex nucleation should be explained not only by
the dynamical instability but also by the Landau instability; the latter is
necessary for the vortices to penetrate into the condensate.Comment: RevTex4, This preprint includes no figures. You can download the
complete article and figures at
http://matter.sci.osaka-cu.ac.jp/bsr/cond-mat.htm
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