An Annotated transcription of Eustachio Celebrino’s "Li stupendi et marauigliosi miracoli del glorioso Christo di San Roccho"

This document offers an annotated transcription of an important early sixteenth-century text. It is meant to accompany my article, “Figuring Miraculous Agency Between Literature and Art: An Analysis and Translation of Eustachio Celebrino’s Li stupendi et marauigliosi miracoli del glorioso Christo di San Roccho (ca. 1523),” which will be published in the 131st volume of the journal Modern Language Notes (MLN) (January 2016). These data could not be included in the article due to limits on word word count

Geomechanics applied to reservoir development in the coso geothermal field

The Coso geothermal field is located approximately 220 kilometers north of Los Angeles, CA. In 2002, a project began to develop the east flank of the Coso geothermal field into an enhanced geothermal system (EGS); in such a system water is injected via injection well(s) into hot dry basement rock through naturally occurring or stimulated fractures. The injected water gathers heat from the reservoir rock before being extracted for direct use or energy production. To develop such a reservoir, adequate understanding of the reservoir geomechanics is necessary. This thesis investigates the state of stress and rock fractures, the existing permeable fractures in the reservoir, and the effects of water injection into fractures at the Coso EGS. A lower bound estimate of the magnitude of the maximum horizontal in-situ stress (SHmax) was obtained using a fracture mechanics approach incorporating thermal effects on drilling induced fractures in well 38C-9. The maximum principal stress was found to transition from horizontal ( σ1 = SHmax) to vertical ( σ1 = Sv) A fracture propagation study was applied to compare the estimate presented herein with other published estimates that utilized frictional faulting and rock strength theory. The results showed the lower bound estimate resulted in little or no fracture propagation away from the wellbore; published estimates predicted extensive fracture propagation away from the wellbore. The state of the jointed rock mass was characterized based on formation micro scanner (FMS) data as they applied to the joint network fractures with significant aperture (Rose et al, 2004). The joint network supported the stress regime concluded from the state of stress estimation. A linear and non-linear failure criterion was applied to investigate critically and non-critically stressed joints, also the pore pressure increase required to critically stress non-critically stressed joints was found. At the proposed injection depth, critically oriented joints with friction angles 25º were critically stressed. A plane strain mathematical model was developed to investigate induced effects of water injection into a permeable deformable fracture. Three fracture geometries were considered: (i) injection/extraction from a line fracture, (ii) injection into an infinite radial fracture, and (iii) injection into a joint. Expressions for the induced pressure and temperature in the fracture and reservoir rock were developed and used to develop expressions for the induced thermoelastic, poroelastic, and combined thermo- and poroelastic fracture width changes, and the resulting induced fracture pressure. Analytic solutions were derived utilizing constant injection and leak-off assumptions. It was found the poroelastic effects tend to close the fracture as a result of leak off, while the thermoelastic effects tend to open the fracture as a result of the cold water injection into hot rock. For conditions in the Coso EGS, the thermoelastic effects are dominant. At early times and high injection rates, the poroelastic effects cannot be ignored when considering the induced pressure even though the effects on the fracture width are relatively small. The fluid/solid coupling incorporated into model (iii) can alter the fracture width and pressure

Titian’s Miracles: Artistry and Efficacy Between the San Rocco Christ and the Accademia Pietà

In the 1568 edition of his Lives, Giorgio Vasari attributed a miracle-working icon to Titian. The San Rocco Christ Carrying the Cross had been working miracles since 1519, and following Vasari’s attribution it was inextricably linked to Titian’s artistry. The magnitude of this claim has not been appreciated. Titian’s final painting, the Pietà (Venice, Galleria dell’Accademia), cannot be understood outside of this heritage of miraculous efficacy. This painting had been ideated as the altarpiece for Titian’s tomb. Therefore, scholars have long seen the painting as a reflection of Titian’s artistic identity. This article suggests that the painting attests to the complexity and instability of that identity as it relates to the larger question of how images and image-makers mediated the dispersal of divine grace, which had been evoked by Vasari. In his final picture Titian capitalized on the anxieties that attended his reputation as the producer of a miraculous image. While recalling this earlier moment in Titian’s career, this last painting layers references to miraculous agency by including votive objects associated with miracles; appropriating the history of the painting’s intended site; and citing a little known miracle-working image, the Madonna della Navicella. All of these coordinates point to Titian’s Pietà as the vector of miraculous grace, which is a radical claim for the artist to put forward in the wake of the Reformation and the decrees of the Council of Trent

Automated Grain Yield Behavior Classification

A method for classifying grain stress evolution behaviors using unsupervised learning techniques is presented. The method is applied to analyze grain stress histories measured in-situ using high-energy X-ray diffraction microscopy (HEDM) from the aluminum-lithium alloy Al-Li 2099 at the elastic-plastic transition (yield). The unsupervised learning process automatically classified the grain stress histories into four groups: major softening, no work-hardening or softening, moderate work-hardening, and major work-hardening. The orientation and spatial dependence of these four groups are discussed. In addition, the generality of the classification process to other samples is explored

Lessons Learned from Mir - A Payload Perspective

Among the principal objectives of the Phase 1 NASA/Mir program were for the United States to gain experience working with an international partner, to gain working experience in long-duration space flight, and to gain working experience in planning for and executing research on a long-duration space platform. The Phase 1 program was to provide to the US early experience prior to the construction and operation of the International Space Station (Phase 2 and 3). While it can be argued that Mir and ISS are different platforms and that programmatically Phase 1 and ISS are organized differently, it is also clear that many aspects of operating a long-duration research program are platform independent. This can be demonstrated by a review of lessons learned from Skylab, a US space station program of the mid-1970's, many of which were again "learned" on Mir and are being "learned" on ISS. Among these are optimum crew training strategies, on-orbit crew operations, ground support, medical operations and crew psychological support, and safety certification processe

Flood severity along the Usumacinta River, Mexico : Identifying the anthropogenic signature of tropical forest conversion

Anthropogenic activities are altering flood frequency-magnitude distributions along many of the world's large rivers. Yet isolating the impact of any single factor amongst the multitudes of competing anthropogenic drivers is a persistent challenge. The Usumacinta River in southeastern Mexico provides an opportunity to study the anthropogenic driver of tropical forest conversion in isolation, as the long meteorological and discharge records capture the river's response to large-scale agricultural expansion without interference from development activities such as dams or channel modifications. We analyse continuous daily time series of precipitation, temperature, and discharge to identify long-term trends, and employ a novel approach to disentangle the signal of deforestation by normalising daily discharges by 90-day mean precipitation volumes from the contributing area in order to account for climatic variability. We also identify an anthropogenic signature of tropical forest conversion at the intra-annual scale, reproduce this signal using a distributed hydrological model (VMOD), and demonstrate that the continued conversion of tropical forest to agricultural land use will further exacerbate large-scale flooding. We find statistically significant increasing trends in annual minimum, mean, and maximum discharges that are not evident in either precipitation or temperature records, with mean monthly discharges increasing between 7% and 75% in the past decades. Model results demonstrate that forest cover loss is responsible for raising the 10-year return peak discharge by 25%, while the total conversion of forest to agricultural use would result in an additional 18% rise. These findings highlight the need for an integrated basin-wide approach to land management that considers the impacts of agricultural expansion on increased flood prevalence, and the economic and social costs involved.Peer reviewe

Application of Tomographic Inversion in Studying Airglow in the Mesopause Region

It is pointed out that observations of periodic nightglow structures give excellent information on atmospheric gravity waves in the mesosphere and lower thermosphere. The periods, the horizontal wavelengths and the phase speeds of the waves can be determined from airglow images and, using several cameras, the approximate altitude of the luminous layer can also be determined by triangulation. In this paper the possibility of applying tomographic methods for reconstructing the airglow structures is investigated using numerical simulations. A ground-based chain of cameras is assumed, two-dimensional airglow models in the vertical plane above the chain are constructed, and simulated data are calculated by integrating the models along a great number of rays with different elevation angles for each camera. After addition of random noise, these data are then inverted to obtain reconstructions of the models. A tomographic analysis package originally designed for satellite radiotomography is used in the inversion. The package is based on a formulation of stochastic inversion which allows the input of a priori information to the solver in terms of regularization variances. The reconstruction is carried out in two stages. In the first inversion, constant regularization variances are used within a wide altitude range. The results are used in determining the approximate altitude range of the airglow structures. Then, in the second inversion, constant non-zero regularization variances are used inside this region and zero variances outside it. With this method reliable reconstructions of the models are obtained. The number of cameras as well as their separations are varied in order to find out the limitations of the method