3,984 research outputs found
Inverted Reality in Nabokov\u27s Look at the Harlequins!
Look at the Harlequins! presents itself as the autobiography of a famed Anglo-Russian writer who suffers from bouts of insanity that are connected with his feeling that he is the inferior copy of another, much better writer. The autobiography is devoted mainly to his four great loves and to his books. Close analysis suggests that the narrator\u27s account is false and is essentially a record of his delusive life during periods of insanity. LATH is seen as an example of those of Nabokov\u27s novels that have schizoid narrators, such as The Eye, Despair, and Pale Fire, and is set in opposition to another group of novels (Invitation to a Beheqding, Bend Sinister, and Ada) in which the fictional worlds themselves are twinned
Pterodactyl: Trade Study for an Integrated Control System Design of a Mechanically Deployable Entry Vehicle
This paper presents the trade study method used to evaluate and downselect from a set of guidance and control (G&C) system designs for a mechanically Deployable Entry Vehicle (DEV). The Pterodactyl project was prompted by the challenge to develop an effective G&C system for a vehicle without a backshell, which is the case for DEVs. For the DEV, the project assumed a specific aeroshell geometry pertaining to an Adaptable, Deployable Entry and Placement Technology (ADEPT) vehicle, which was successfully developed by NASAs Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD) prior to this study. The Pterodactyl project designed three different entry G&C systems for precision targeting. This paper details the Figures of Merit (FOMs) and metrics used during the course of the projects G&C system assessment. The relative importance of the FOMs was determined from the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), which was used to develop weights that were combined with quantitative design metrics and engineering judgement to rank the G&C systems against one another. This systematic method takes into consideration the projects input while simultaneously reducing unintentional judgement bias and ultimately was used to select a single G&C design for the project to pursue in the next design phase
Casimir Energies and Pressures for -function Potentials
The Casimir energies and pressures for a massless scalar field associated
with -function potentials in 1+1 and 3+1 dimensions are calculated. For
parallel plane surfaces, the results are finite, coincide with the pressures
associated with Dirichlet planes in the limit of strong coupling, and for weak
coupling do not possess a power-series expansion in 1+1 dimension. The relation
between Casimir energies and Casimir pressures is clarified,and the former are
shown to involve surface terms. The Casimir energy for a -function
spherical shell in 3+1 dimensions has an expression that reduces to the
familiar result for a Dirichlet shell in the strong-coupling limit. However,
the Casimir energy for finite coupling possesses a logarithmic divergence first
appearing in third order in the weak-coupling expansion, which seems
unremovable. The corresponding energies and pressures for a derivative of a
-function potential for the same spherical geometry generalizes the TM
contributions of electrodynamics. Cancellation of divergences can occur between
the TE (-function) and TM (derivative of -function) Casimir
energies. These results clarify recent discussions in the literature.Comment: 16 pages, 1 eps figure, uses REVTeX
Influence of Population III stars on cosmic chemical evolution
New observations from the Hubble ultra deep field suggest that the star
formation rate at z>7 drops off faster than previously thought. Using a newly
determined star formation rate for the normal mode of Population II/I stars
(PopII/I), including this new constraint, we compute the Thomson scattering
optical depth and find a result that is marginally consistent with WMAP5
results. We also reconsider the role of Population III stars (PopIII) in light
of cosmological and stellar evolution constraints. While this input may be
needed for reionization, we show that it is essential in order to account for
cosmic chemical evolution in the early Universe. We investigate the
consequences of PopIII stars on the local metallicity distribution function of
the Galactic halo (from the recent Hamburg/ESO survey of metal-poor stars) and
on the evolution of abundances with metallicity (based on the ESO large program
on very metal-poor stars), with special emphasis on carbon-enhanced metal-poor
stars. Our most important results show that the nucleosynthetic yields of
PopIII stars lead to abundance patterns in agreement with those observed in
extremely metal-poor stars. In this chemical approach to cosmic evolution,
PopIII stars prove to be a compulsory ingredient, and extremely metal-poor
stars are inevitably born at high redshift. (Abridged)Comment: 11 pages, 7 figures, MNRAS in pres
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Evaluation of high-level nuclear waste tanks having a potential flammable gas hazard
In 1990 the U.S. Department of Energy declared an unreviewed safety question as a result of the behavior of tank 241-SY-101. This tank exhibited episodic releases of flammable gases that on a couple of occasions exceeded the lower flammability limit of hydrogen in air. Over the past six years a considerable amount of knowledge has been gained about the chemical and physical processes that govern the behavior of tank 241-SY-101 and the other tanks associated with a potential flammable gas hazard. This paper presents an overview of the current understanding of gas generation, retention, and release and covers the results of direct sampling of the tanks to determine the gas composition and the amount of stored gas
Phenomenological analysis of K+ meson production in proton-nucleus collisions
Total and differential cross sections from literature, on the production of
K+ mesons in pA interactions at projectile energies between T=0.8 and 2.9 GeV,
covering the transition across the free nucleon-nucleon threshold at 1.58 GeV,
have been investigated. From the target-mass dependence of the production cross
sections no evidence for the expected change of the dominant reaction mechanism
from two-step to direct kaon production was found. At T=1.0 GeV the A
dependences of the total cross sections and of the most recent data from
COSY-Juelich, differential cross sections measured under forward angles, are
strongly different. The invariant K+ production cross sections show an overall
exponential scaling behavior with the squared four-momentum transfer between
the beam proton and the produced K+ meson for t< -0.05 GeV^2 independent of the
beam energy and emission angle. The data from COSY-Juelich reveal a strongly
different t dependence in the region of t>0 GeV^2. Further data at forward
angles and different beam energies should be taken in order to explore this
region of kinematically extreme conditions.Comment: 9 Pages, 11 Figure
Extraction of bodily features for gait recognition and gait attractiveness evaluation
This is the author's accepted manuscript. The final publication is available at Springer via
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11042-012-1319-2. Copyright @ 2012 Springer.Although there has been much previous research on which bodily features are most important in gait analysis, the questions of which features should be extracted from gait, and why these features in particular should be extracted, have not been convincingly answered. The primary goal of the study reported here was to take an analytical approach to answering these questions, in the context of identifying the features that are most important for gait recognition and gait attractiveness evaluation. Using precise 3D gait motion data obtained from motion capture, we analyzed the relative motions from different body segments to a root marker (located on the lower back) of 30 males by the fixed root method, and compared them with the original motions without fixing root. Some particular features were obtained by principal component analysis (PCA). The left lower arm, lower legs and hips were identified as important features for gait recognition. For gait attractiveness evaluation, the lower legs were recognized as important features.Dorothy Hodgkin Postgraduate Award and HEFCE
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