Preposterous America: The Language of Inversion in Thoreau, Melville, and Hawthorne

This dissertation stages a series of readings that activate the inherent pull towards a queer aesthetic of “preposterousness” in the American Renaissance. In the introduction, I claim that American Studies and Queer Studies have been mutually implicated ever since F.O. Matthiessen’s seminal work American Renaissance. In this way, I bring to light the nascent strands of homoeroticsm and “deviant” practices that disrupt the teleology of normative masculinity in the nineteenth century. My intervention develops a queer heuristic through an exploration of the classical figure of hysteron proteron—the rhetorical inversion of the order of things. As a master-trope for my investigation, hysteron proteron allows for a closer investigation of texts on the syntactical level of discourse. Hence, through my textual methodology, I expose a backward-oriented aesthetic that confuses the norm of American progress, in order to build towards potential, or “eventual,” queer spaces. My authors employ hysteron proteron, or the preposterous, in order to champion a different vision of American masculinity. The texts of Thoreau, Melville, and Hawthorne overlap figurally in ways that allow me to establish a sense of contiguity between them. Thoreau employs hysteron proteron in order to condemn the increasing materiality of nineteenth-century American progress. Thoreau’s turn away from modernity—which is a return to the wilderness—engenders the potential for a sexual mobility that travels along paths that the normative trajectory of nineteenth-century masculinity could not glimpse. Reading Melville through the lens of architectural theory, I am here interested in tracing keywords related to masculine and feminine versions of domesticity as they appear in the short story, “I and My Chimney.” The aim is to show how the confusion of different spaces and directions works to enhance the profusion of ironic clusters in the narrative. In my final chapter, I show how questions of time, space, gender, and the nonhuman are filtered through a number of “childish confusions” in Hawthorne’s literature. I read the preposterous in Hawthorne as being undercut by a network of surprising connections between orifices and parts, natural and artificial, which recall the figural compounds that informed Thoreau’s nature and Melville’s architecture

The Design of Random Surfaces with Specified Scattering Properties: Surfaces that Suppress Leakage

We present a method for generating a one-dimensional random metal surface of finite length L that suppresses leakage, i.e. the roughness-induced conversion of a surface plasmon polariton propagating on it into volume electromagnetic waves in the vacuum above the surface. Perturbative and numerical simulation calculations carried out for surfaces generated in this way show that they indeed suppress leakage.Comment: Revtex 6 pages (including 4 figures

Low-loss photonic crystal fibers for transmission systems and their dispersion properties

We report on a single-mode photonic crystal fiber with attenuation and effective area at 1550 nm of 0.48 dB/km and 130 square-micron, respectively. This is, to our knowledge, the lowest loss reported for a PCF not made from VAD prepared silica and at the same time the largest effective area for a low-loss (< 1 dB/km) PCF. We briefly discuss the future applications of PCFs for data transmission and show for the first time, both numerically and experimentally, how the group velocity dispersion is related to the mode field diameterComment: 5 pages including 3 figures + 1 table. Accepted for Opt. Expres

Photonic crystal fiber with a hybrid honeycomb cladding

We consider an air-silica honeycomb lattice and demonstrate a new approach to the formation of a core defect. Typically, a high or low-index core is formed by adding a high-index region or an additional air-hole (or other low-index material) to the lattice, but here we discuss how a core defect can be formed by manipulating the cladding region rather than the core region itself. Germanium-doping of the honeycomb lattice has recently been suggested for the formation of a photonic band-gap guiding silica-core and here we experimentally demonstrate how an index-guiding silica-core can be formed by fluorine-doping of the honeycomb lattice.Comment: 5 pages including 3 figures. Accepted for Optics Expres

Fear and its implications for stock markets

The value of stocks, indices and other assets, are examples of stochastic processes with unpredictable dynamics. In this paper, we discuss asymmetries in short term price movements that can not be associated with a long term positive trend. These empirical asymmetries predict that stock index drops are more common on a relatively short time scale than the corresponding raises. We present several empirical examples of such asymmetries. Furthermore, a simple model featuring occasional short periods of synchronized dropping prices for all stocks constituting the index is introduced with the aim of explaining these facts. The collective negative price movements are imagined triggered by external factors in our society, as well as internal to the economy, that create fear of the future among investors. This is parameterized by a ``fear factor'' defining the frequency of synchronized events. It is demonstrated that such a simple fear factor model can reproduce several empirical facts concerning index asymmetries. It is also pointed out that in its simplest form, the model has certain shortcomings.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figures. Submitted to the Proceedings of Applications of Physics in Financial Analysis 5, Turin 200

Relative Value Guides and The Sherman Antitrust Act

The skyrocketing costs of health care services for the American people constitute a crisis of national importance.\u27 The seriousness of this crisis is reflected in the attention that antitrust enforcement agencies of the federal government are giving to the health care industry. The agencies are responding, at least in part, to the common perception that these skyrocketing costs result as much from the restrictive trade practices of the health care industry as from the growing use of sophisticated technology and inflation. Competition is viewed as an antidote to increasing prices and antitrust laws as the vehicle by which federal agencies such as the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the antitrust division of the Department of Justice (Justice) may administer the antidote. One practice of the health care industry, the use of relative value guides (RVGs), is currently receiving close scrutiny by the FTC and Justice, both of which characterize RVGs as anticompetitive in purpose and effect.\u27 A RVG is an index of services that assigns each service a value equal to a number of arbitrary units.\u27 The user of a RVG can compute the price of a particular service by multiplying a conversion factor, the value of one unit, with the number of units assigned to that service. RVGs, first published by the medical profession in 1956, probably affect price formation. Whether RVGs constitute price fixing, conduct illegal per se under the antitrust laws, however, remains unclear. In 1975 Justice initiated the first formal challenge to the legality under the antitrust laws of a medical association\u27s RVG in United States v. American Society of Anesthesiologists.,\u27 Anesthesiologists is the only action initiated by Justice or the FTC against RVGs that went to trial.\u27 In the other actions the defendants signed consent orders prohibiting them from further development or dissemination of RVGs. Therefore, the decision of the Anesthesiologists court, upholding the use of a RVG, threatens to frustrate the efforts of the FTC and Justice to prevent physicians\u27 groups from formulating and using RVGs. After reviewing the applicable case law under the Sherman Act, this Recent Development focuses on the impact of United States v. American Society of Anesthesiologists on the law of antitrust. The Development concludes with a consideration of the legality of RVGs and the proper role of RVGs in the fight against increases in the costs of health care

Synchronization Model for Stock Market Asymmetry

The waiting time needed for a stock market index to undergo a given percentage change in its value is found to have an up-down asymmetry, which, surprisingly, is not observed for the individual stocks composing that index. To explain this, we introduce a market model consisting of randomly fluctuating stocks that occasionally synchronize their short term draw-downs. These synchronous events are parameterized by a ``fear factor'', that reflects the occurrence of dramatic external events which affect the financial market.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Random Surfaces that Suppress Single Scattering

We present a method for generating numerically a one-dimensional random surface, defined by the equation x_3 = \zx, that suppresses single-scattering processes in the scattering of light from it within a specified range of scattering angles. Rigorous numerical calculations of the scattering of light from surfaces generated by this approach show that the single-scattering contribution to the mean scattered intensity is indeed suppressed within that range of angles.Comment: 3 pagers (Latex), 3 figure

Distinguishing fractional and white noise in one and two dimensions

We discuss the link between uncorrelated noise and Hurst exponent for one and two-dimensional interfaces. We show that long range correlations cannot be observed using one-dimensional cuts through two-dimensional self-affine surfaces whose height distributions are characterized by a Hurst exponent lower than -1/2. In this domain, fractional and white noise are not distinguishable. A method analysing the correlations in two dimensions is necessary. For Hurst exponents larger than -1/2, a crossover regime leads to a systematic over estimate of the Hurst exponent.Comment: 3 pages RevTeX, 4 Postscript figure

Multi-mode photonic crystal fibers for VCSEL based data transmission

Quasi error-free 10 Gbit/s data transmission is demonstrated over a novel type of 50 micron core diameter photonic crystal fiber with as much as 100 m length. Combined with 850$ nm VCSEL sources, this fiber is an attractive alternative to graded-index multi-mode fibers for datacom applications. A comparison to numerical simulations suggests that the high bit-rate may be partly explained by inter-modal diffusion.Comment: Accepted for Optics Expres