6,826 research outputs found
Postmodern Trickster Strands in Shamanic Worlds
This essay explores socio-philosophical meanings of shamanic cultures and practices and
their affirmation and revival. What is their potential significance for humanity’s future? I
argue that shamanism engages humans in practices that put us potentially at the center of
our creativity and creative visioning. The trickster figure, a pervasive indigenous presence,
so often seems pivotal in this process and this pervasively male figure plays an important
part in this regenerative interpretation of postmodernism; in fact, postmodernism can be
understood as trickster. Just like the trickster, the nature of postmodernism is ambiguous.
I explore this ambiguity and suggest that shamanic practices and paradigms may inspire a
way out of our contemporary conundra with trickster help. This essay is concerned with
paradigmatic issues, it presents broad brush strokes rather than ethnographic details. Its
form attempts to honor trickster storytelling
Dynamic characteristics and processing of fillers in polyurethane elastomers for vibration damping applications
Polyurethane elastomers have the potential of being used to reduce vibrational noise in many engineering applications. The performance of the elastomer is directly related to matching the nature of the mechanical loss characteristics to the frequency and temperature dependence of the source of the vibration. Materials with a broad frequency response and good mechanical properties are desirable for situations were load bearing and isolation becomes an issue. Because automobile, and other related vehicles operate over a broad temperature range, it is desirable for the damping characteristics of the elastomer to ideally be independent of temperature and frequency. In practice, this is not possible and the creation of materials with a broad spectrum response is desirable. In this paper, the effects of various fillers on the breadth and temperature dependence of the vibration damping characteristics of a filled and crosslinked polyurethane elastomer are explored. The fillers studied are wollastonite, barium sulphate and talc. These materials have different shapes, sizes and surface chemistry and undergo different types of interaction with the matrix. The vibration damping characteristics were further varied by the use of a crosslinking agent. Data presented on the rheological characteristics indicate the strength of the filler-polyol interactions. Dielectric relaxation and dynamic mechanical thermal analysis demonstrate the way in which changes in the type of filler, concentration and amount of crosslinker lead to changes in the location and breadth of the energy dissipation process in these elastomers. The vibration damping characteristics of a selected material are presented to demonstrate the potential of these materials
Revealing the pure confinement effect in glass-forming liquids by dynamic mechanical analysis
Many molecular glass forming liquids show a shift of the glass transition Tg
to lower temperatures when the liquid is confined into mesoporous host
matrices. Two contrary explanations for this effect are given in literature:
First, confinement induced acceleration of the dynamics of the molecules leads
to an effective downshift of Tg increasing with decreasing pore size. Secondly,
due to thermal mismatch between the liquid and the surrounding host matrix,
negative pressure develops inside the pores with decreasing temperature, which
also shifts Tg to lower temperatures. Here we present novel dynamic mechanical
analysis measurements of the glass forming liquid salol in Vycor and Gelsil
with pore sizes of d = 2.6, 5.0 and 7.5 nm. The dynamic complex elastic
susceptibility data can be consistently described with the assumption of two
relaxation processes inside the pores: A surface induced slowed down relaxation
due to interaction with rough pore interfaces and a second relaxation within
the core of the pores. This core relaxation time is reduced with decreasing
pore size d, leading to a downshift of Tg in perfect agreement with recent DSC
measurements
Evolution of transport properties of BaFe2-xRuxAs2 in a wide range of isovalent Ru substitution
The effects of isovalent Ru substitution at the Fe sites of BaFe2-xRuxAs2 are
investigated by measuring resistivity and Hall coefficient on high-quality
single crystals in a wide range of doping (0 < x < 1.4). Ru substitution
weakens the antiferromagnetic (AFM) order, inducing superconductivity for
relatively high doping level of 0.4 < x < 0.9. Near the AFM phase boundary, the
transport properties show non-Fermi-liquid-like behaviors with a
linear-temperature dependence of resistivity and a strong temperature
dependence of Hall coefficient with a sign change. Upon higher doping, however,
both of them recover conventional Fermi-liquid behaviors. Strong doping
dependence of Hall coefficient together with a small magnetoresistance suggest
that the anomalous transport properties can be explained in terms of
anisotropic charge carrier scattering due to interband AFM fluctuations rather
than a conventional multi-band scenario.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev.
Effects of 1,25 Dihydroxyvitamin D3 and Calcium on Growth and Differentiation and on c-fos and p53 Gene Expression in Normal Human Keratinocytes
Calcium enhances keratinocyte differentiation, and 1,25 dihydroxyvitamin D3 (1,25(OH)2D3) is both antiproliferative and prodifferentiative in many cell types, including normal human keratinocytes. In the present study, we examined the combined effects of calcium and 1,25(OH)2D3 on parameters of growth and differentiation and on c-fos and p53 gene expression in normal human keratinocytes. Exposure of normal human keratinocytes to 1,25(OH)2D3 markedly reduced [3H] thymidine incorporation and cell number at low and high medium Ca++ concentrations. Simultaneously, cells in the G0/G1 phase of the cell cycle increased significantly and those in the S phase fell precipitously. l,25(OH)2D3 and calcium also induced keratinocyte differentiation independently, as assessed by iminuno- cytochemistry and by induction of involucrin mRNA. Both Ca++ and 1,25(OH)2D3 were shown, by nuclear run-on assays, to increase involucrin gene transcription. A rapid, transient elevation in c-fos protooncogene expression preceded these effects when epidermal growth factor was present alone. When 1,25(OH)2D3 was added to quiescent keratinocytes, there was a marked augmentation of c-fos mRNA accumulation at low and high medium Ca++ concentrations. Varying medium Ca++ concentrations had no effect on c-fos mRNA levels. Increasing medium Ca++ concentrations from 0.15 to 2.0mM produced marked elevations of p53 mRNA accumulation and of the rate of p53 gene transcription, whereas 1,25(OH)2D3 had no effect.These results, therefore, suggest that 1,25(OH)2D3 and calcium act in concert to modulate the expression of two important cell-cycle-associated genes, which may be important components in the initial programming of growth and differentiation of normal human keratinocytes
Irreversible Processes in a Universe modelled as a mixture of a Chaplygin gas and radiation
The evolution of a Universe modelled as a mixture of a Chaplygin gas and
radiation is determined by taking into account irreversible processes. This
mixture could interpolate periods of a radiation dominated, a matter dominated
and a cosmological constant dominated Universe. The results of a Universe
modelled by this mixture are compared with the results of a mixture whose
constituents are radiation and quintessence. Among other results it is shown
that: (a) for both models there exists a period of a past deceleration with a
present acceleration; (b) the slope of the acceleration of the Universe
modelled as a mixture of a Chaplygin gas with radiation is more pronounced than
that modelled as a mixture of quintessence and radiation; (c) the energy
density of the Chaplygin gas tends to a constant value at earlier times than
the energy density of quintessence does; (d) the energy density of radiation
for both mixtures coincide and decay more rapidly than the energy densities of
the Chaplygin gas and of quintessence.Comment: 8 pages, 1 figure, to be published in GR
Cooperative motion and growing length scales in supercooled confined liquids
Using molecular dynamics simulations we investigate the relaxation dynamics
of a supercooled liquid close to a rough as well as close to a smooth wall. For
the former situation the relaxation times increase strongly with decreasing
distance from the wall whereas in the second case they strongly decrease. We
use this dependence to extract various dynamical length scales and show that
they grow with decreasing temperature. By calculating the frequency dependent
average susceptibility of such confined systems we show that the experimental
interpretation of such data is very difficult.Comment: 7 pages of Latex, 3 figure
Confinement effects on glass forming liquids probed by DMA
Many molecular glass forming liquids show a shift of the glass transition T-g
to lower temperatures when the liquid is confined into mesoporous host
matrices. Two contrary explanations for this effect are given in literature:
First, confinement induced acceleration of the dynamics of the molecules leads
to an effective downshift of T-g increasing with decreasing pore size. Second,
due to thermal mismatch between the liquid and the surrounding host matrix,
negative pressure develops inside the pores with decreasing temperature, which
also shifts T-g to lower temperatures. Here we present dynamic mechanical
analysis measurements of the glass forming liquid salol in Vycor and Gelsil
with pore sizes of d=2.6, 5.0 and 7.5 nm. The dynamic complex elastic
susceptibility data can be consistently described with the assumption of two
relaxation processes inside the pores: A surface induced slowed down relaxation
due to interaction with rough pore interfaces and a second relaxation within
the core of the pores. This core relaxation time is reduced with decreasing
pore size d, leading to a downshift of T-g proportional to 1/d in perfect
agreement with recent differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) measurements.
Thermal expansion measurements of empty and salol filled mesoporous samples
revealed that the contribution of negative pressure to the downshift of T-g is
small (<30%) and the main effect is due to the suppression of dynamically
correlated regions of size xi when the pore size xi approaches
Towards artificial photosynthesis: Promoting microscale photochemistry in science education
In order to simulate basic features of the natural cycle of photosynthesis and respiration, a model experiment called Photo-Blue-Bottle PBB has been developed. According to the title of this paper, the experiment will be presented and interpreted in accordance to basic contents from science education. An extended version of the PBB experiment also enables the evolution of hydrogen. This is a key step towards a prospective technological scenario with solar light driven production of “green fuels”. The concept of electronically excited state, the “heart of all photoprocesses” (N. J. Turro), will be completed by further teaching experiments and concepts concerning the up-to-date topic of photoactive molecular switches
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