Deceiving, Fraudulent, and Seductive: The Discourses of Money in US Novels of the Early Republic

This thesis focuses on the importance of money and the representations of its various physical manifestations (such as coin, paper money) in American fiction of the 1790s. My project traces the transition from the colonies\u27 financial dependency on Britain to their independency, relating to the monetary union created after the passage of the constitution. I argue that this shift from financial dependency to independency influences books such as Charlotte Temple by Susanna Rowson, Kelroy by Rebecca Rush, Ormond or the Secret Witness and Arthur Mervyn by Charles Brockden Brown. My project highlights, on the one hand, the importance of such a transition as it demonstrated a form of independence from the Crown; yet, on the other hand, this independence created issues among the colonists particularly as periodic financial crises or shortages of circulating money led to great uncertainty. These uncertainties emerge in the fiction of the day, especially in anxiety over the monetary union and paper currency. The transition toward a monetary union created social and commercial problems for merchants, businessmen, and families. Within this system, money seemingly becomes a traumatic object that deceives, seduces, and betrays people. Characters in the novels perceive money as treacherous, tricking people into believing in its arbitrary, imaginary, and socially constructed power. Money is anthropomorphized insofar as it seems to have intentions. Building on thing theory, I consider paper money a hyperobject, imbued with an apparent agency. In my thesis, I explore the implications of this widespread reaction to this strange power of paper currency. In this regard, paper money\u27s hyperobjectivity is revealed by examining the notion of commodification, closely exploring instantaneous changes that occur in the novels in relationship to economic changes, and money\u27s ephemerality

“Shadowy objects in test tubes”: Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go as an Example of Freud’s “Uncanny” and Agamben’s “Bare Life”

According to Freud, “the idea of being buried alive by mistake is the most uncanny thing of all” (10). He vividly describes a fear many people cannot grasp because it is too abstract to think about even though death is the indisputable consequence of being alive. The difference is, however, that we are consciously living through our own demise, being aware that death is inevitable and at hand, which rightly depicts one of the most frightening situations a human being can experience. Therefore, human beings desperately attempt to prevent death by trying to cheat it and even avoid it all together. People invent various kinds of remedies such as vaccinations or medications that are supposed to prolong life and create a form of security for us by further fueling our desired immortality. At present, many doctors even fashion through stem cell transplantation so-called “savior siblings” whose sole purpose is to save their sibling’s life. Hence, it is only a matter of time until humans can create clones in order to be able to harvest their organs for the benefit and survival of the society

Aircraft control system

An aircraft control system is described which is particularly suited to rotary wing aircraft. Longitudinal acceleration and course rate commands are derived from a manual control stick to control translational velocity of the aircraft along a flight path. In the collective channel the manual controls provide vertical velocity commands. In the yaw channel the manual controls provide sideslip or heading rate commands at high or low airspeeds, respectively. The control system permits pilots to fly along prescribed flight paths in a precise manner with relatively low work load

Fixed-base simulation evaluation of various low-visibility landing systems for helicopters

Fixed base simulation evaluation of one fully automatic and six manual low visibility landing systems for helicopter

Characterization and Low-Dimensional Modeling of Urban Fluid Flow

This report describes work that was done under AFOSR Contract Number FA9550-11-1-0056, studying the structure of a model urban boundary layer flow. The model geometry consisted of a set of plexiglass blocks, and the flow around this geometry was studied both experimentally as well as computationally. For the experiment, a Stereoscopic Particle Image Velocimetry (SPIV) method was developed that allows for a three-dimensional description of this urban flow, and helps gain insight into the characteristic flow structures in the streets and canyons of our model urban geometry. On the computational side, a new spectral-element code was developed that was demonstrated to produce accurate results, and can scale to thousands of processors on large high-performance computing systems. Good agreement between the experiment and computation was demonstrated. Most notably, wind tunnel experiments were performed at a number of different angles of incidence, providing for the first time a detailed overview of the effect of wind direction on the flow structures in the urban geometry. Valuable information about the flow structures are presented. The effects of incidence angles from 0 to 45 degrees of the incoming flow with respect to the urban array are investigated. A major observation from this work is that a strong channeling effect is observed for all incidence angles and is in agreement with that observed in other investigations for as little as 4 degrees. This channeling significantly affects the turbulence distribution within the array, the correlations between the various gust components and the structures responsible for contaminant transport

Observation of new quantum interference effect in solids

In order to achieve quantum interference of free electrons inside a solid, we have modified the geometry of the solid so that de Broglie waves interfere destructively inside the solid. Quantum interference of de Broglie waves leads to a reduction in the density of possible quantum states of electrons inside the solid and increases the Fermi energy level. This effect was studied theoretically within the limit of the quantum theory of free electrons inside the metal. It has been shown that if a metal surface is modified with patterned indents, the Fermi energy level will increase and consequently the electron work function will decrease. This effect was studied experimentally in both Au and SiO2 thin films of special geometry and structure. Work function reductions of 0.5 eV in Au films and 0.2 eV in SiO2 films were observed. Comparative measurements of work function were made using the Kelvin Probe method based on compensation of internal contact potential difference. Electron emission from the same thin films was studied by two independent research groups using Photoelectron Emission Microscopy (PEEM).Comment: 11 pages, 5 figure