“Colonial Problems, Transnational American Studies”

Excerpt from After American Studies: Rethinking Legacies of Transnational Exceptionalis

Towards 3-D Sound: Spatial Presence and the Space Vacuum

This chapter demonstrates the evolution of relationships between sound design and music in cinematic representations of the interstellar space vacuum. Mera provides a framework for understanding how audiences believe they are physically present in the represented environment and argues that, in the late 2000s, we move towards three-dimensional (3-D) sound, an aesthetic and technical extension of the superfield and the ultrafield as defined by Chion and Kerins, respectively. 3-D Sound’s primary characteristic is the emancipation of music from a fixed sound-stage spatialization, resulting in greater fluidity between sound design and music. This chapter examines the relationship between two types of spatial presence, articulating both the audience’s suspension of disbelief within a film’s narrative world and the spatial presence of sound and music within a multichannel cinema environme

Topologically protected quantization of work

The transport of a particle in the presence of a potential that changes periodically in space and in time can be characterized by the amount of work needed to shift a particle by a single spatial period of the potential. In general, this amount of work, when averaged over a single temporal period of the potential, can take any value in a continuous fashion. Here we present a topological effect inducing the quantization of the average work. We find that this work is equal to the first Chern number calculated in a unit cell of a space-time lattice. Hence, this quantization of the average work is topologically protected. We illustrate this phenomenon with the example of an atom whose center of mass motion is coupled to its internal degrees of freedom by electromagnetic waves.Comment: 10 pages (including Supplemental Material), 1 figure, 1 table; closer to published versio

Vacuum energy density and pressure of a massive scalar field

With a view toward application of the Pauli-Villars regularization method to the Casimir energy of boundaries, we calculate the expectation values of the components of the stress tensor of a confined massive field in 1+1 space-time dimensions. Previous papers by Hays and Fulling are bridged and generalized. The Green function for the time-independent Schrodinger equation is constructed from the Green function for the whole line by the method of images; equivalently, the one-dimensional system is solved exactly in terms of closed classical paths and periodic orbits. Terms in the energy density and in the eigenvalue density attributable to the two boundaries individually and those attributable to the confinement of the field to a finite interval are distinguished so that their physical origins are clear. Then the pressure is found similarly from the cylinder kernel, the Green function associated most directly with an exponential frequency cutoff of the Fourier mode expansion. Finally, we discuss how the theory could be rendered finite by the Pauli-Villars method.Comment: 18 pages; v2 and v3 have minor improvement

Hematology and serum chemistry values in captive and wild pichis, Zaedyus pichiy (Mammalia, Dasypodidae)

As part of an ongoing study on the health status of pichis, Zaedyus pichiy (Mammalia, Dasypodidae), blood was collected under manual restraint from 72 free-ranging pichis captured in Mendoza Province, Argentina, between November 2001 and December 2006, and from 22 captive-kept pichis in January 2007. Reference values were established for hematology and serum chemistry. Pichis had lower leukocyte counts and higher mean corpuscular volumes than most other mammals. Blood values were similar for captive and wild pichis, and only a few significant differences were found among genders or age classes.Fil: Superina, Mariella. Department Of Biological Sciences; Estados Unidos. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Mendoza. Instituto de Medicina y Biología Experimental de Cuyo; ArgentinaFil: Mera y Sierra, Roberto. Universidad "Juan Agustín Maza". Facultad de Ciencias Veterinarias y Ambientales; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de Cuyo. Facultad de Ciencias Médicas; Argentin

Current-constraining variational approaches to quantum transport

Presently, the main methods for describing a nonequilibrium charge-transporting steady state are based on time-evolving it from the initial zero-current situation. An alternative class of theories would give the statistical nonequilibrium density operator from principles of statistical mechanics, in a spirit close to Gibbs ensembles for equilibrium systems, leading to a variational principle for the nonequilibrium steady state. We discuss the existing attempts to achieve this using the maximum entropy principle based on constraining the average current. We show that the current-constrained theories result in a zero-induced drop in electrostatic potential, so that such ensembles cannot correspond to the time-evolved density matrix, unless left- and right-going scattering states are mutually incoherent