George MacDonald and J.R.R. Tolkien on Faerie and Fairy Stories

The paper discusses the ideas of George MacDonald and J.R.R. Tolkien on Faërie and Fairy Stories, based on an analysis of MacDonald\u27s essay The Fantastic Imagination, Tolkien\u27s On Fairy-Stories, Tolkien\u27s correspondence, and Tolkien\u27s unpublished introduction to MacDonald\u27s The Golden Key

The Development of J.R.R. Tolkien\u27s Ideas on Fairy-stories

The paper is an analysis of how Tolkien\u27s thought on fairy-stories evolved between his 1939 St. Andrews Andrew Lang Lecture Fairy Stories, through his contribution On Fairy-Stories to the 1947 Essays Presented to Charles Williams, and concluding with his 1967 essay on the nature of Faërie. Time permitting, the paper will also include a discussion on how Tolkien\u27s Smith of Wooton Major illustrates his concepts

Overcoming Communism\u27s Dysfunctional Legacy: The Romanian Case

The paper develops the idea that post-communist societies are dysfunctional societies and applies this analysis to a study of contemporary Romania, 1989-2011. It looks at how the historical experiences of Romania both before and during communist rule created such a society, the development of Romania as a dysfunctional society between 1989 and 2002, and assesses the progress Romania has made in dealing with its legacy between 2002 and 2011 on the basis of several international indices

Ion I. Nistor in Romanian Politics, Scholarship, and Culture, 1919-1933

In the first decades after unification in 1918, Ion Nistor – the remarkable historian and leader of the movement for defending the historical rights of Romanians in Bukovina - was involved in the process of consolidation of the Great Romania. In an era of vitality and creativity, as of disputes and divisions, he was asked to contribute to the so-called "full integration of Bucovina in the new Romanian state." The following study points out some characteristics of Nistor’s activity between 1919-1933, focusing on the political principles which inspired him in his career, as well as the main cultural achievements

Relativity tests by complementary rotating Michelson-Morley experiments

We report Relativity tests based on data from two simultaneous Michelson-Morley experiments, spanning a period of more than one year. Both were actively rotated on turntables. One (in Berlin, Germany) uses optical Fabry-Perot resonators made of fused silica; the other (in Perth, Australia) uses microwave whispering-gallery sapphire resonators. Within the standard model extension, we obtain simultaneous limits on Lorentz violation for electrons (5 coefficients) and photons (8) at levels down to $10^{-16}$, improved by factors between 3 and 50 compared to previous work.Comment: 5 pages revtex, 2 figure

Improved test of Lorentz Invariance in Electrodynamics using Rotating Cryogenic Sapphire Oscillators

We present new results from our test of Lorentz invariance, which compares two orthogonal cryogenic sapphire microwave oscillators rotating in the lab. We have now acquired over 1 year of data, allowing us to avoid the short data set approximation (less than 1 year) that assumes no cancelation occurs between the $\tilde{\kappa}_{e-}$ and $\tilde{\kappa}_{o+}$ parameters from the photon sector of the standard model extension. Thus, we are able to place independent limits on all eight $\tilde{\kappa}_{e-}$ and $\tilde{\kappa}_{o+}$ parameters. Our results represents up to a factor of 10 improvement over previous non rotating measurements (which independently constrained 7 parameters), and is a slight improvement (except for $\tilde{\kappa}_{e-}^{ZZ}$) over results from previous rotating experiments that assumed the short data set approximation. Also, an analysis in the Robertson-Mansouri-Sexl framework allows us to place a new limit on the isotropy parameter $P_{MM}=\delta-\beta+{1/2}$ of $9.4(8.1)\times10^{-11}$, an improvement of a factor of 2.Comment: Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.

Improved Constraints on Isotropic Shift and Anisotropies of the Speed of Light using Rotating Cryogenic Sapphire Oscillators

We demonstrate that Michelson-Morley tests, which detect direction-dependent anisotropies in the speed of light, can also be used to place limits upon isotropic deviations of the vacuum speed of light from $c$, as described by the photon sector Standard Model Extension (SME) parameter $\tilde{\kappa}_{tr}$. A shift in the speed of light that is isotropic in one inertial frame implies anisotropic shifts in others. Using observer Lorentz covariance, we derive the time-dependent variations in the relative resonance frequencies of a pair of electromagnetic resonators that would be generated by such a shift in the rest frame of the Sun. A new analysis of a recent experimental test of relativity using this result constrains $\tilde{\kappa}_{tr}$ with a precision of $7.4\times10^{-9}$. This represents the first constraint on $\tilde{\kappa}_{tr}$ by a Michelson-Morley experiment and the first analysis of a single experiment to simultaneously set limits on all nine non-birefringent terms in the photon sector of the SME