Conversion coefficients for superheavy elements

In this paper we report on internal conversion coefficients for Z = 111 to Z = 126 superheavy elements obtained from relativistic Dirac-Fock (DF) calculations. The effect of the atomic vacancy created during the conversion process has been taken into account using the so called "Frozen Orbital" approximation. The selection of this atomic model is supported by our recent comparison of experimental and theoretical conversion coefficients across a wide range of nuclei. The atomic masses, valence shell electron configurations, and theoretical atomic binding energies required for the calculations were adopted from a critical evaluation of the published data. The new conversion coefficient data tables presented here cover all atomic shells, transition energies from 1 keV up to 6000 keV, and multipole orders of 1 to 5. A similar approach was used in our previous calculations [1] for Z = 5 - 110.Comment: Accepted for publication in Atomic Data and Nuclear Data Table

On the reliability of the theoretical internal conversion coefficients

Possible sources of uncertainties in the calculations of the internal conversion coefficients are studied. The uncertainties induced by them are estimated.Comment: 16 pages (including 3 figures inserted by 'epsfig' macro

Visual Aurality in Russian Modernist Experiments: Explorations in Synesthesia and Auditory Imagination

Russian modernist experiments in sensory communication include the interplay of sound and light in Alexander Scriabin’s symphonic mysteries as well as colored sounds in Wassily Kandinsky’s stage compositions. Inspired by various philosophical principles and creative methodologies, these artists explored the dialogue between the aural and the visual and its potential to influence the creative process and impact audience perception. This article seeks to assess the role of music and sound in synesthetic experiments of Scriabin and Kandinsky and place their theory and practice within the larger philosophical, artistic, and scientific contexts of their period and beyond.L’avant-garde russe s’est beaucoup intéressée à la communication par les sens. Cette expérimentation se manifeste, entre autres, dans les mystères symphoniques d’Alexandre Scriabin qui jouent sur l’entrelacement des sons et de la lumière et dans les compositions scéniques de Wassily Kandinsky qui font appel à des “sons colorés”. Trouvant leur inspiration chez divers philosophes et faisant appel des méthodes de création différentes, ces artistes explorent les voies d’un dialogue synesthésique s’adressant à l’oreille et à l’oeil, et ce, tant du point de vue de la création artistique que de celui de la perception d’une oeuvre par son auditoire. Cet article vise à réévaluer les démarches et les théories synesthésiques de Scriabin et de Kandinsky en les situant dans les contextes philosophiques, artistiques et scientifiques de l’époque, puis au-delà

Russian tragifarce and its cultural and political roots.

In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries tragifarce--an extreme form of tragicomedy--became a phenomenon of Russian theatre and drama. The dualistic character of Russian tragifarce embodied the ambivalent spirit of Russian culture and politics. My dissertation analyzes the development of this genre in drama and performance in Russia and determines its place in Russian culture. Gogol and Sukhovo-Kobylin were the first nineteenth-century Russian dramatists to discover a new depth in the genre of farce by imbuing it with a tragic vision at the same time as they approached tragedy itself as an ambivalent genre, existing on the edge of the farcical. In their plays the old form of knockabout farce, filled with physical action, mistaken identities, and love intrigue, received a new philosophical base that dwelled on the futility of characters' aspirations and the foolishness of their condition. In the late nineteenth century Chekhov continued the tragifarcical tradition in his one-act and full-length plays. In 1906 Blok wrote The Fairground Booth, a tragifarcical form of commedia dell'arte that toys with the principles of Symbolist theatre. In the post-revolutionary period such tragifarcical plays as Erdman's The Mandate (1924) and The Suicide (1928) and Bulgakov's Zovka's Apartment (1926), The Crimson Island (1927), and Flight (1928) reflected the ambivalence of Soviet reality; tragifarce perfectly captured the uncertainties in the political and cultural life of this period. The post-revolutionary period of the 1920s and 1930s also initiated the Absurdist movement in Russian drama: Kharms's and Vvedensky's plays prefigured the spirit of Beckett's and Ionesco's tragifarces, which inaugurated the Theatre of the Absurd in the rest of Europe. In my examination of tragifarce in production, I focus on the dialogue between theatre directors--most notably Meyerhold and Vakhtangov--and tragifarcical dramatic works. This dialogue began with Meyerhold's tragic-grotesque staging of The Fairground Booth in 1906 and culminated in Meyerhold's 1926 staging of Gogol's The Inspector General. In its urge to combine dramatic opposites and present a unified picture of reality, however grotesquely exaggerated and absurd, tragifarce has provided numerous possibilities for theatrical production in Russia and simultaneously developed into an intellectually refined and politically ambiguous dramatic form.Ph.D.Asian historyCommunication and the ArtsEuropean historyLanguage, Literature and LinguisticsModern historySlavic literatureSocial SciencesTheaterUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/130049/2/9712020.pd

Stanislavsky And The Avant-Garde

In 1902, Valery Briusov, a Russian poet and advocate for the symbolist philosophy and aesthetic, published a seminal article titled “Unnecessary Truth,” in which he challenged the naturalistic conventions that prevailed on contemporary stages at the turn of the century, specifically in the productions of the Moscow Art Theatre (MAT).1 Pointing to directors’ excessive attention to detail as they attempt to reproduce life faithfully on stage, Briusov shared his observations that in most Russian theatres “actors endeavor to speak as they would in a drawing room, scene painters copy views from nature, [and] costume designers work in accordance with archaeological data” (qtd in Cardullo and Knopf 2001: 73). In the same article, he encouraged theatre artists to engage the spectator\u27s imagination through innovative, non-realistic approaches to scenery and lighting, and he urged playwrights to abandon “superfluous, unnecessary, and ultimately futile copying of life” in search for the spiritual and universal (qtd in Cardullo and Knopf 2001: 76). Around the same time, Anton Chekhov, too, showed interest in symbolist drama and encouraged Konstantin Stanislavsky to expand his realistic repertoire by venturing into the works of the Belgian symbolist playwright Maurice Maeterlinck. Stanislavsky later admitted that it was indeed upon Chekhov\u27s gentle prodding that the MAT made an unlikely decision to produce Maeterlinck\u27s three one acts – The Blind, The Intruder, and The Interior (Stroeva 1973: 136). Thus, in May 1904 Stanislavsky began his work on Maeterlinck\u27s dramatic miniatures in translation by the Russian symbolist poet Konstantin Balmont.2