The Debate around Nihilism in 1860s Russian Literature

This investigation investigates the extent to which literature and criticism were politically charged in 1860s Russia. Ideology was clearly present within both literature and literary criticism, despite claims to the contrary. Pisarev, despite his claims to view a text without ideology, in his criticism demonstrated his preference for the Nihilist movement to which he belonged. The fact that Turgenev’s novel sparked such a furore shows how tense society was during this period. The controversy caused shows the extent to which Russia was in need of reform through the degree of division in the national response. Turgenev explained how “one critic even brought forth the fact that I made Bazarov lose at cards to Father Alexey. “He just doesn’t know how to wound and humiliate enough! He doesn’t even know how to play cards!” There is absolutely no doubt that if I had made Bazarov win, the same critic would triumphantly exclaim: “Isn’t it clear? The author wants to suggest that Bazarov is a cheat!

Abundance Uncertainties Obtained With the PizBuin Framework For Monte Carlo Reaction Rate Variations

Uncertainties in nucleosynthesis models originating from uncertainties in astrophysical reaction rates were estimated in a Monte Carlo variation procedure. Thousands of rates were simultaneously varied within individual, temperature-dependent errors to calculate their combined effect on final abundances. After a presentation of the method, results from application to three different nucleosynthesis processes are shown: the $\gamma$-process and the s-process in massive stars, and the main s-process in AGB stars (preliminary results). Thermal excitation of nuclei in the stellar plasma and the combined action of several reactions increase the final uncertainties above the level of the experimental errors. The total uncertainty, on the other hand, remains within a factor of two even in processes involving a large number of unmeasured rates, with some notable exceptions for nuclides whose production is spread over several stellar layers and for s-process branchings.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures; Proceedings of OMEG 2017, Daejeon, Korea, June 27-30, 2017; to appear in AIP Conf. Pro

The development of a ‘normative battleground’ between the EU and Russia from 2004 to 2014

This thesis will chart the development of a “normative battleground” between the European Union and Russia within Ukraine. This “normative battleground” stems from the clashing securitising projects both the EU and Russia are implementing within Ukraine in order to shape the development of the country according to their own interests. The EU and Russia are widely believed to carry out securitising projects from within different international relations spheres. For this thesis, these are the EU’s “postmodern”/“Kantian” security project, which is incompatible with the Russian “modern”/“Hobbesian” security project. These security projects are manifesting themselves in the norms each side is promoting, and this is where the clash is particularly visible, this is the “normative battleground”. This thesis seeks to provide a holistic conceptualisation of the term “normative battleground” within the framework of Buzan’s English School Triad and to tie its development with the contrasting securitising projects being implemented within Ukraine.http://www.ester.ee/record=b4701254*es

Phase transition of the susceptible-infected-susceptible dynamics on time-varying configuration model networks

We present a degree-based theoretical framework to study the susceptible-infected-susceptible (SIS) dynamics on time-varying (rewired) configuration model networks. Using this framework, we provide a detailed analysis of the stationary state that covers, for a given structure, every dynamic regimes easily tuned by the rewiring rate. This analysis is suitable for the characterization of the phase transition and leads to three main contributions. (i) We obtain a self-consistent expression for the absorbing-state threshold, able to capture both collective and hub activation. (ii) We recover the predictions of a number of existing approaches as limiting cases of our analysis, providing thereby a unifying point of view for the SIS dynamics on random networks. (iii) We reinterpret the concept of hub-dominated phase transition. Within our framework, it appears as a heterogeneous critical phenomenon : observables for different degree classes have a different scaling with the infection rate. This leads to the successive activation of the degree classes beyond the epidemic threshold.Comment: 14 pages, 11 figure

Uncertainties in the Production of p Nuclides in SN Ia Determined by Monte Carlo Variations

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019Several thousand tracers from a 2D model of a thermonuclear supernova were used in a Monte Carlo post-processing approach to determine p-nuclide abundance uncertainties originating from nuclear physics uncertainties in the reaction rates.Final Accepted Versio

Xe diffusion and bubble nucleation around edge dislocations in UO2

AbstractRecently it has been suggested that dislocations, generated by radiation damage, may increase the rate of fission gas diffusion from the fuel grains, an affect which is at present not incorporated into fuel performance codes. Therefore, we perform molecular dynamics simulations employing empirical potentials to investigate the diffusion of Xe atoms around edge dislocations in UO2 to establish the importance of this pathway for fission gas release. The results suggest that for isolated atoms near the dislocation the activation energy for Xe diffusion is dramatically reduced relative to the bulk. However, Xe atoms diffusing along the dislocation cluster together to form small bubbles, these bubbles incorporate all of the isolated mobile Xe atoms thereby inhibiting fast diffusion of Xe along the dislocation core

The s-process nucleosynthesis : Impact of the uncertainties in the nuclear physics determined by monte carlo variations

We investigated the impact of uncertainties in neutron-capture and weak reactions (on heavy elements) on the s-process nucleosynthesis in low-mass stars and massive stars using a Monte-Carlo based approach. We performed extensive nuclear reaction network calculations that include newly evaluated temperature-dependent upper and lower limits for the individual reaction rates. We found β-decay rate uncertainties affect only a few nuclei near s-process branchings, whereas most of the uncertainty in the final abundances is caused by uncertainties in the neutron capture rates. We suggest a list of uncertain rates as candidates for improved measurement by future experiments.Peer reviewe