638 research outputs found

    Mass spectrometer with magnetic pole pieces providing the magnetic fields for both the magnetic sector and an ion-type vacuum pump

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    A mass spectrometer (MS) with unique magnetic pole pieces which provide a homogenous magnetic field across the gap of the MS magnetic sector as well as the magnetic field across an ion-type vacuum pump is disclosed. The pole pieces form the top and bottom sides of a housing. The housing is positioned so that portions of the pole pieces form part of the magnetic sector with the space between them defining the gap region of the magnetic sector, through which an ion beam passes. The pole pieces extend beyond the magnetic sector with the space between them being large enough to accommodate the electrical parts of an ion-type vacuum pump. The pole pieces which provide the magnetic field for the pump, together with the housing form the vacuum pump enclosure or housing

    “The gloves are coming off” : a mixed method analysis of the Bush administration’s torture memos

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    This dissertation seeks to delineate some of the fault lines of the disparate worldviews and assumptions that have polarized our national discourse, as well as the imbalances of power they support or disrupt. Building on previous case studies of ideologically oppositional political blogs, the dissertation examines thirty-nine key documents from the website torturingdemocracy.org, primarily legal memos written by Bush Administration lawyers (the “Torture Memos”), to analyze a rhetoric of torture that, as a subset of the war on terror, serves as a “ground zero” of political values and motivations. Further, it seeks to combine mixed methods of analysis from various disciplines to help reveal the underlying beliefs and values that inform current national discourse. The cross-disciplinary methods combine rhetorical, linguistic, and critical discourse analyses to examine and interrogate the language that created metaphorical and actual spaces in which torture was legalized, employed, and legitimated. Applying a grounded theory approach to Huckin’s four levels of linguisticgranularity--context, text, phrase, and word (including the use of concordancing software)--the research reveals the logical fallacies, faulty argumentation, slippery word usage, linguistic and rhetorical manipulations, and finally, authoritarian underpinnings that characterize the memos. The research further uncovers multiple strategies used to create the Other, such as Lazar and Lazar’s four micro-strategies of “outcasting” (criminalization, (e)vilification, orientalization, and enemy construction), and strategies of minimizing or maximizing the positive and negative traits of in-versus out-groups in van Dijk’s “ideological square.” The research shows how, in the language of the war on terror, words take on different, even opposite, meanings from previous significations, shifting the national debate about the legitimacy of torture as a hypothetical means of protection. Further, close examination reveals a different intent behind the memos than the purported defense of the country used repeatedly to justify torture. Findings illuminate the memos as the products of authoritarian followers who enabled what Altemeyer calls “double highs”—ideological social dominants with an authoritarian worldview--in a wide-reaching and largely successful bid for power. Lastly, the dissertation points to the need to further investigate and articulate an anti-authoritarian, social egalitarian worldview as a challenge to power structures that, enshrined in language, may constitute a serious threat to democracy.Department of EnglishThe great divide -- Review of the literature -- Methods and methodology -- The scene, the agents, their agency and their purpose : conceptions of power and the torture debate -- Torture and the law -- Thirty-nine documents -- The "semantic tap-dance" : discursive, rhetorical and lexico-grammatical strategies in the torture memos -- Constructions of identity -- Constructing torture -- Analysis and conclusions.Thesis (Ph. D.

    Tissue fusion over non-adhering surfaces

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    Tissue fusion eliminates physical voids in a tissue to form a continuous structure and is central to many processes in development and repair. Fusion events in vivo, particularly in embryonic development, often involve the purse-string contraction of a pluricellular actomyosin cable at the free edge. However in vitro, adhesion of the cells to their substrate favors a closure mechanism mediated by lamellipodial protrusions, which has prevented a systematic study of the purse-string mechanism. Here, we show that monolayers can cover well-controlled mesoscopic non-adherent areas much larger than a cell size by purse-string closure and that active epithelial fluctuations are required for this process. We have formulated a simple stochastic model that includes purse-string contractility, tissue fluctuations and effective friction to qualitatively and quantitatively account for the dynamics of closure. Our data suggest that, in vivo, tissue fusion adapts to the local environment by coordinating lamellipodial protrusions and purse-string contractions

    Dynamical phase transition for a quantum particle source

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    We analyze the time evolution describing a quantum source for noninteracting particles, either bosons or fermions. The growth behaviour of the particle number (trace of the density matrix) is investigated, leading to spectral criteria for sublinear or linear growth in the fermionic case, but also establishing the possibility of exponential growth for bosons. We further study the local convergence of the density matrix in the long time limit and prove the semiclassical limit.Comment: 24 pages; In the new version, we added several references concerning open quantum systems and present an extended result on linear particle production in the fermionic cas

    Linear vs. nonlinear effects for nonlinear Schrodinger equations with potential

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    We review some recent results on nonlinear Schrodinger equations with potential, with emphasis on the case where the potential is a second order polynomial, for which the interaction between the linear dynamics caused by the potential, and the nonlinear effects, can be described quite precisely. This includes semi-classical regimes, as well as finite time blow-up and scattering issues. We present the tools used for these problems, as well as their limitations, and outline the arguments of the proofs.Comment: 20 pages; survey of previous result

    Densely Entangled Financial Systems

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    In [1] Zawadoski introduces a banking network model in which the asset and counter-party risks are treated separately and the banks hedge their assets risks by appropriate OTC contracts. In his model, each bank has only two counter-party neighbors, a bank fails due to the counter-party risk only if at least one of its two neighbors default, and such a counter-party risk is a low probability event. Informally, the author shows that the banks will hedge their asset risks by appropriate OTC contracts, and, though it may be socially optimal to insure against counter-party risk, in equilibrium banks will {\em not} choose to insure this low probability event. In this paper, we consider the above model for more general network topologies, namely when each node has exactly 2r counter-party neighbors for some integer r>0. We extend the analysis of [1] to show that as the number of counter-party neighbors increase the probability of counter-party risk also increases, and in particular the socially optimal solution becomes privately sustainable when each bank hedges its risk to at least n/2 banks, where n is the number of banks in the network, i.e., when 2r is at least n/2, banks not only hedge their asset risk but also hedge its counter-party risk.Comment: to appear in Network Models in Economics and Finance, V. Kalyagin, P. M. Pardalos and T. M. Rassias (editors), Springer Optimization and Its Applications series, Springer, 201

    Simulation of resonant tunneling heterostructures: numerical comparison of a complete Schr{ö}dinger-Poisson system and a reduced nonlinear model

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    Two different models are compared for the simulation of the transverse electronic transport through an heterostructure: a 1D1D self-consistent Schr{ö}dinger-Poisson model with a numerically heavy treatment of resonant states and a reduced model derived from an accurate asymptotic nonlinear analysis. After checking the agreement at the qualitative and quantitative level on quite well understood bifurcation diagrams, the reduced model is used to tune double well configurations for which nonlinearly interacting resonant states actually occur in the complete self-consistent model

    From Bloch model to the rate equations II: the case of almost degenerate energy levels

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    Bloch equations give a quantum description of the coupling between an atom and a driving electric force. In this article, we address the asymptotics of these equations for high frequency electric fields, in a weakly coupled regime. We prove the convergence towards rate equations (i.e. linear Boltzmann equations, describing the transitions between energy levels of the atom). We give an explicit form for the transition rates. This has already been performed in [BFCD03] in the case when the energy levels are fixed, and for different classes of electric fields: quasi or almost periodic, KBM, or with continuous spectrum. Here, we extend the study to the case when energy levels are possibly almost degenerate. However, we need to restrict to quasiperiodic forcings. The techniques used stem from manipulations on the density matrix and the averaging theory for ordinary differential equations. Possibly perturbed small divisor estimates play a key role in the analysis. In the case of a finite number of energy levels, we also precisely analyze the initial time-layer in the rate aquation, as well as the long-time convergence towards equilibrium. We give hints and counterexamples in the infinite dimensional case
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