Education in post-Reformation Scotland : Andrew Melville and the University of St Andrews, 1560-1606

Andrew Melville (1545-1622) was the leader of the Presbyterian wing of the Scottish Kirk between 1574 and 1607, and he and his colleagues were a perpetual irritant to James VI and I in his attempts to establish a royal and Episcopal dominance over the Kirk. Yet much of Melville’s reputation has been based on the seventeenth-century Presbyterian historical narratives written by the likes of James Melville (Andrew’s nephew) and David Calderwood. These partisan accounts formed the basis of modern historiography in Thomas M’Crie’s monumentally influential Life of Andrew Melville. Modern historians broadly agree that Melville’s portrayal as a powerful and decisive church leader in these narratives is greatly exaggerated, and that he was at best an influential voice in the Kirk who was quickly marginalised by the adult James VI. However, only James Kirk has commented at any length on Melville’s other role in Jacobean Scotland—that of developing and reforming the Scottish universities. Melville revitalised the near-defunct Glasgow University between 1574 and 1580, and from 1580 to 1607 was principal of St Mary’s College, St Andrews, Scotland’s only divinity college. He was also rector of the University of St Andrews between 1590 and 1597. This thesis provides a detailed account of Melville’s personal role in the reform and expansion of the Scottish universities. This includes an analysis of his direct work at Glasgow, but focuses primarily on St Andrews, using the untapped archival sources held there and at the Scottish National Library and Archives to create a detailed picture of the development of the University after the Reformation. This thesis also evaluates the intellectual content of Melville’s reform programme, both as it developed during his time in Paris, Poitiers and Geneva, and as we see it in action in St Andrews

Andrew Melville, sacred chronology and world history: the Carmina Danielis 9 and the Antichristus

The accepted view of the ecclesiastical reformer Andrew Melville (1545–1622) as the dynamic leader of the Presbyterian movement in Jacobean Scotland has been severely eroded in recent years, with particular criticism of the actual importance of his contribution to the Kirk and to Scottish higher education. While this reductionism has been necessary, it has resulted in an inversion of the overwhelmingly positive traditional image of Melville, and does not give us a rounded assessment of his life and works. This article attempts to partially redress this balance by looking at a neglected aspect of Melville's Latin writings, which showcase his talents as a humanist intellectual and biblical commentator. It focuses on two long poems that are both commentaries and paraphrases of Daniel and Revelation: the Carmina Danielis and the Antichristus. Through these poems, we see how Melville engaged with two problems exercising reformed theologians across Europe: the dating of key biblical events and the historicised meaning of prophecies within these texts. We also find evidence that Melville read widely among both contemporary and ancient commentators on both these issues

Fundamental limits to optical response in absorptive systems

At visible and infrared frequencies, metals show tantalizing promise for strong subwavelength resonances, but material loss typically dampens the response. We derive fundamental limits to the optical response of absorptive systems, bounding the largest enhancements possible given intrinsic material losses. Through basic conservation-of-energy principles, we derive geometry-independent limits to per-volume absorption and scattering rates, and to local-density-of-states enhancements that represent the power radiated or expended by a dipole near a material body. We provide examples of structures that approach our absorption and scattering limits at any frequency, by contrast, we find that common "antenna" structures fall far short of our radiative LDOS bounds, suggesting the possibility for significant further improvement. Underlying the limits is a simple metric, $|\chi|^2 / \operatorname{Im} \chi$ for a material with susceptibility $\chi$, that enables broad technological evaluation of lossy materials across optical frequencies.Comment: 21 pages and 6 figures (excluding appendices, references

Anomalous near-field heat transfer between a cylinder and a perforated surface

We predict that the radiative heat-transfer rate between a cylinder and a perforated surface depends non-monotonically on their separation. This anomalous behavior, which arises due to near-field effects, is explained using a heuristic model based on the interaction of a dipole with a plate. We show that nonmonotonicity depends not only on geometry and temperature but also on material dispersion - for micron and submicron objects, nonmonotonicity is present in polar dielectrics but absent in metals with small skin depths

Microstructure Effects for Casimir Forces in Chiral Metamaterials

We examine a recent prediction for the chirality-dependence of the Casimir force in chiral metamaterials by numerical computation of the forces between the exact microstructures, rather than homogeneous approximations. We compute the exact force for a chiral bent-cross pattern, as well as forces for an idealized "omega"-particle medium in the dilute approximation and identify the effects of structural inhomogeneity (i.e. proximity forces and anisotropy). We find that these microstructure effects dominate the force for separations where chirality was predicted to have a strong influence. To get observations of chirality free from microstructure effects, one must go to large separations where the effect of chirality is at most $\sim10^{-4}$ of the total force.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure

Gas turbine combustor

A gas turbine engine has a combustor module including an annular combustor having a liner assembly that defines an annular combustion chamber having a length, L. The liner assembly includes a radially inner liner, a radially outer liner that circumscribes the inner liner, and a bulkhead, having a height, H1, which extends between the respective forward ends of the inner liner and the outer liner. The combustor has an exit height, H3, at the respective aft ends of the inner liner and the outer liner interior. The annular combustor has a ratio H1/H3 having a value less than or equal to 1.7. The annular combustor may also have a ration L/H3 having a value less than or equal to 6.0

Teaching Matters, Volume 2: Essays by the faculty and staff at the University of Maine at Farmington

Essays by the faculty and staff at the University of Maine at Farmington.https://scholarworks.umf.maine.edu/publications/1087/thumbnail.jp

The AuScope geodetic VLBI array

The AuScope geodetic Very Long Baseline Interferometry array consists of three new 12-m radio telescopes and a correlation facility in Australia. The telescopes at Hobart (Tasmania), Katherine (Northern Territory) and Yarragadee (Western Australia) are co-located with other space geodetic techniques including Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) and gravity infrastructure, and in the case of Yarragadee, satellite laser ranging (SLR) and Doppler Orbitography and Radiopositioning Integrated by Satellite (DORIS) facilities. The correlation facility is based in Perth (Western Australia). This new facility will make significant contributions to improving the densification of the International Celestial Reference Frame in the Southern Hemisphere, and subsequently enhance the International Terrestrial Reference Frame through the ability to detect and mitigate systematic error. This, combined with the simultaneous densification of the GNSS network across Australia, will enable the improved measurement of intraplate deformation across the Australian tectonic plate. In this paper, we present a description of this new infrastructure and present some initial results, including telescope performance measurements and positions of the telescopes in the International Terrestrial Reference Frame. We show that this array is already capable of achieving centimetre precision over typical long-baselines and that network and reference source systematic effects must be further improved to reach the ambitious goals of VLBI2010

Discoveries from a Near-infrared Proper Motion Survey using Multi-epoch 2MASS Data

We have conducted a 4030-square-deg near-infrared proper motion survey using multi-epoch data from the Two Micron All-Sky Survey (2MASS). We find 2778 proper motion candidates, 647 of which are not listed in SIMBAD. After comparison to DSS images, we find that 107 of our proper motion candidates lack counterparts at B-, R-, and I-bands and are thus 2MASS-only detections. We present results of spectroscopic follow-up of 188 targets that include the infrared-only sources along with selected optical-counterpart sources with faint reduced proper motions or interesting colors. We also establish a set of near-infrared spectroscopic standards with which to anchor near-infrared classifications for our objects. Among the discoveries are six young field brown dwarfs, five "red L" dwarfs, three L-type subdwarfs, twelve M-type subdwarfs, eight "blue L" dwarfs, and several T dwarfs. We further refine the definitions of these exotic classes to aid future identification of similar objects. We examine their kinematics and find that both the "blue L" and "red L" dwarfs appear to be drawn from a relatively old population. This survey provides a glimpse of the kinds of research that will be possible through time-domain infrared projects such as the UKIDSS Large Area Survey, various VISTA surveys, and WISE, and also through z- or y-band enabled, multi-epoch surveys such as Pan-STARRS and LSST.Comment: To appear in the September 2010 issue of The Astrophysical Journal, Supplement Serie