My back pages: uma análise de Chronicles: Volume One, de Bob Dylan, sob a perspectiva da Memória Cultural

O seguinte projeto, construído para a dissertação de mestrado, tem como objetivo analisar o livro Chronicles: Volume One, escrito pelo compositor norte-americano Bob Dylan, sob a perspectiva da memória cultural. Para atingir este objetivo, o trabalho foi dividido em quatro capítulos. No primeiro capítulo, intitulado “Bob Dylan, a vida e a obra”, as origens do cantor e sua trajetória artística foram expostas para, em seguida, abordar o livro Chronicles: Volume One, desde sua concepção até sua estrutura narrativa. No segundo capítulo os estudos de memória e de cultura são tratados por meio de seus principais conceitos e autores, como a Memória Coletiva de Maurice Halbwachs, os Lugares de Memória de Pierre Nora, e a Análise de Cultura de Raymond Williams. No terceiro capítulo, a análise documental como metodologia de investigação foi apresentada para, em seguida, desenvolver a análise dos capítulos do livro Chronicles, que consiste em compreender como os conceitos de memória e a tradição seletiva se manifestam dentro dos trechos selecionados onde Dylan discorre sobre suas perspectivas culturais e sobre os lugares e as pessoas que contribuíram para seu amadurecimento artístico. O trabalho é concluído com uma reflexão acerca da importância desta obra para a preservação da memória cultural a partir das conclusões tiradas da análise da obra, e também da relação dos estudos de memória com o registro autobiográficoThe following project, written for the master's thesis, aims to analyze the book Chronicles: Volume One, written by the American composer Bob Dylan, from the perspective of Cultural Memory. To achieve this goal, this project was divided into four chapters. In the first chapter, entitled “Bob Dylan, life and work”, the singer's origins and his artistic trajectory were analysed as to, then, address the book Chronicles: Volume One, from its conception to its narrative structure. In the second chapter, memory and culture studies deal with their main concepts and authors, such as Maurice Halbwachs’ Collective Memory, Pierre Nora’s Places of Memory, and the Analysis of Culture by Raymond Williams. In the third chapter, document analysis as a research methodology was presented so as to develop the analysis of the chapters of the book Chronicles, which consists of understanding how the concepts of memory and selective tradition are manifested within the selected excerpts where Dylan discusses his perspectives on culture and the places and people who contributed to his artistic maturation. This project concludes with a reflection on the importance of this project for the preservation of cultural memory based on the conclusions drawn from the exploration of the object of study, and also on the relationship between memory studies and the autobiographical record

Semi-empirical analysis of Sloan Digital Sky Survey galaxies: II. The bimodality of the galaxy population revisited

We revisit the bimodal distribution of the galaxy population commonly seen in the local universe. Here we address the bimodality observed in galaxy properties in terms of spectral synthesis products, such as mean stellar ages and stellar masses, derived from the application of this powerful method to a volume-limited sample, with magnitude limit cutoff M_r = -20.5, containing about 50 thousand luminous galaxies from the SDSS Data Release 2. In addition, galaxies are classified according to their emission line properties in three distinct spectral classes: star-forming galaxies, with young stellar populations; passive galaxies, dominated by old stellar populations; and, hosts of active nuclei, which comprise a mix of young and old stellar populations. We show that the extremes of the distribution of some galaxy properties, essentially galaxy colours, 4000 A break index, and mean stellar ages, are associated to star-forming galaxies at one side, and passive galaxies at another. We find that the mean light-weighted stellar age of galaxies is the direct responsible for the bimodality seen in the galaxy population. The stellar mass, in this view, has an additional role since most of the star-forming galaxies present in the local universe are low-mass galaxies. Our results also give support to the existence of a 'downsizing' in galaxy formation, where massive galaxies seen nowadays have stellar populations formed at early times.Comment: 18 pages, 19 figures, accepted for publication in MNRA

High speed machining of aluminium gear box without temperature stabilization

At the present time both clutch and mechanism housings, which are the main components from automotive gear boxes, are made of special aluminium alloys. These alloys are extremely light when compared with steel, making them a perfect choice to mitigate the cars weight and machining costs. Nonetheless they possess a high thermal expansion coefficient, which can be considered a major disadvantage since it makes necessary to pay extraordinary attention to dimensional variations during the production cycle due to temperature deviations. High speed machining of precision components made of aluminium requests thus their temperature to become previously stable. This procedure is the only way to force dimensions to stay inside its tolerance intervals. The main purpose of the present work was to assess the possibility to avoid the use of special ovens to make the clutch housing temperature become stable prior to machining. The dimensional stabilization of 40 sample parts, pre-heated at three temperature levels, was accomplished through the use of this system. The achieved results were made possible by analysing the part’s temperature at the machine’s entrance, the machine’s interior temperature, 35 measured dimensions and their tolerance intervals as well as the average temperature deviations of each of the five considered batches. By analysing the obtained results in detail it was possible to determine which dimensions show high sensitiveness to temperature (high correlation between dimension’s variation and temperature). Among these dimensions we can point out the ones related with depth, since they display the highest deviations due to temperature. Being a work with practical application it was possible to confirm the benefit of using this methodology by achieving significant enhancements on production efficiency, energy savings and reduction on maintenance costs, through the application of small adjustments to the machining sequence and by adopting a systematic tuning of certain dimensions

The star formation histories of fossil group galaxies

A comparison is carried out among the star formation histories of the early-type galaxies (ETGs) in fossil groups, clusters and low density environments. Although they show similar evolutionary histories, a significant fraction of the fossils are younger than their counterparts, suggesting that they can be precursors of the isolated ETG galaxies