Reprocessing interference : an artistic exploration of the visual material generated by interference

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 45-47).My body of work is concerned with the constructed promise of telecommunication - that is, the promise to connect people all over the world via telephone lines, computer networks and, most recently, satellite signals. The development of and access to networked systems has brought about this "utopian promise" (Mitchell 2005: 305), an ideal of instant connectivity that allows a user to be in contact with others through technological devices over vast distances. Connectivity supposedly enables users to develop and sustain relationships on the Internet. However, the question arises whether telecommunication technologies are living up to their promise. My title, Reprocessing Inte/ference: An artistic exploration of the visual material generated by inte/terence, refers to the concepts pertaining to this promise and also to the failure of the promise, focusing on the notions of distance and interference. It further encapsulates my working method, a process of degrading and filtering both my own and found footage

Dogma: How a Convenient Narrative Led to the Holocaust

I developed this research paper as a result of my study abroad experience in Germany in June of 2023. In this paper I weave a combination of personal experience, primary sources, and works by historians to explain how Nazi ideology developed into genocide. I also emphasize the importance of how history is remembered in the form of monuments and museums

Surrogate Accelerated Bayesian Inversion for the Determination of the Thermal Diffusivity of a Material

Determination of the thermal properties of a material is an important task in many scientific and engineering applications. How a material behaves when subjected to high or fluctuating temperatures can be critical to the safety and longevity of a system's essential components. The laser flash experiment is a well-established technique for indirectly measuring the thermal diffusivity, and hence the thermal conductivity, of a material. In previous works, optimization schemes have been used to find estimates of the thermal conductivity and other quantities of interest which best fit a given model to experimental data. Adopting a Bayesian approach allows for prior beliefs about uncertain model inputs to be conditioned on experimental data to determine a posterior distribution, but probing this distribution using sampling techniques such as Markov chain Monte Carlo methods can be incredibly computationally intensive. This difficulty is especially true for forward models consisting of time-dependent partial differential equations. We pose the problem of determining the thermal conductivity of a material via the laser flash experiment as a Bayesian inverse problem in which the laser intensity is also treated as uncertain. We introduce a parametric surrogate model that takes the form of a stochastic Galerkin finite element approximation, also known as a generalized polynomial chaos expansion, and show how it can be used to sample efficiently from the approximate posterior distribution. This approach gives access not only to the sought-after estimate of the thermal conductivity but also important information about its relationship to the laser intensity, and information for uncertainty quantification. We also investigate the effects of the spatial profile of the laser on the estimated posterior distribution for the thermal conductivity

The Festive Remembrance of Shakespeare: A Comparative Study of the Mission, Identity, and Rhetoric of Three American Shakespeare Companies

Much has been written over the years on the collective memory of Shakespeare and how it continues to be perpetuated centuries after his death, even in places such as America, to which he had no direct connection. Most recently, the intersection of performance studies and memory studies has afforded theatre historians the opportunity to reevaluate the impact of performance on the collective memory of Shakespeare by acknowledging that the embodied performance of a text is no less important than its written words. This dissertation’s examination of three American Shakespeare companies -- Shakespeare & Company in Lenox, Massachusetts, the Three Rivers Shakespeare Festival in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and the American Shakespeare Center in Staunton, Virginia -- explores the shifting sands of this intersection. Relying on contemporary theories regarding the inherently social process of memory, this examination posits that the performances of these companies both partake of and constitute commemorations of Shakespeare. The institutional identity of each company is so integral to the performances they produce that the rhetoric and graphics used by these companies in their marketing and promotional materials, are, like the performances themselves, capable of affecting and sustaining the collective memory of Shakespeare. In case studies of each institution, I examine the particular bond these companies had to the community in which they performed and the ways that each became intimately entwined in the cultural life of that community, pointing to the ways in which their promotional rhetoric and general production aesthetic is directly related to their ideas about how Shakespeare should be remembered and the distinct target audience they hope to attract

Structural and Tectonic History of the Eastern San Juan Islands, Washington

In order to address the heterogeneous character of the Decatur terrane, the rocks that occur within the easternmost San Juan Islands, Washington, are described and compared with respect to lithology, metamorphism, and structure. Based on these observations, a local structural and tectonic history is proposed. The exposed bedrock in the south part of the study area (Guemes, Huckleberry, Hat, Dot, and Saddlebag Islands) consists primarily of an arc-volcanic intrusive complex (diorite with crosscutting mafic to felsic dikes) as well as ultramafic cumulates of dunite, Iherzolite, and wehrlite. Most of the igneous rocks have no deformational fabric and are relatively unmetamorphosed, containing only very low-grade veins of quartz, calcite, and prehnite. These intrusive and ultramafic rocks are probably correlative with the Fidalgo Igneous Complex of Brown (1977). Highly deformed oceanic turbidites occur in the central and north part of the study area (Jack, Eliza, and Samish Islands). These rocks consist of chert-rich lithic-quartzofeldspathic metagraywacke with interbedded metasiltstone and phyllite, along with minor intercalated metatuff. The metasedimentary rocks are all distinguished by the presence of at least one well-developed deformational fabric, with textural zones ranging from TZ 2A to TZ 3A-. Metamorphic minerals include abundant white mica, pumpellyite, prehnite, and lesser actinolite. Ar/Ar ages of two white mica samples indicate a Late Jurassic to Early Cretaceous age for the metamorphic fabric (~137 to ~154 Ma). The Ar/Ar spectrum of white mica from a third sample is interpreted to indicate a Carboniferous detrital age. Based on their overall similarities in lithology, geochemistry, metamorphic minerals, metamorphic age, and structure, the metasedimentary rocks are interpreted to represent part of a single terrane, and the apparent age of the metamorphic fabric suggests that they may be equivalent to the westernmost Shuksan Suite, which lies to the immediate east of the study area (Gallagher,1986; Gallagher and others, 1988). Along the northeast shoreline of Guemes Island, there is a zone of intensely disrupted and intermixed lithologies that appears to separate the metasedimentary (Shuksan-type?) terrane to the north from the Fidalgo Igneous Complex to the south. This zone is interpreted to be a possible terrane-bounding fault and at this location, the Fidalgo Igneous Complex appears to lie structurally above the metasedimentary (Shuksan) package. In spite of many similarities within the metasedimentary (Shuksan-type) rocks, there are significant differences in fabric development and there appears to be an eastward and southward increase in textural reconstitution, number of fabrics, and possibly metamorphic age within the study area. Since this direction is also down the plunge of an inferred SE-plunging regional antiform, this suggests that the earliest and most recrystallized rocks are now at the structurally highest levels. Internal imbrication and structural inversion of a once coherent stack is proposed to explain this pattern. An inferred structural history for the study area is as follows: (1) early metamorphism, ductile deformation, and development of metamorphic fabric(s) within the metasedimentary rocks during the Late Jurassic to Early Cretaceous (~137 to ~154 Ma); (2) juxtaposition of the metasedimentary package (Shuksan Suite) with the plutonic rocks and ophiolite (Fidalgo Igneous Complex), probably during the Late Cretaceous thrust event of Brandon and others (1988) and producing an early stage of (north- and east-vergent?) thrust faults; (3) normal/extensional faulting (generally top-to west and south), which is possibly related to uplift; (4) relatively late (Tertiary?) strike-slip faults and regional folds about northwest-trending axes; (5) very recent (post-Tertiary?) folding about east-west trending axes

The incidence and position of melanocytic nevi for the purposes of forensic image comparison

Expert witness opinion based on the comparison of images has been accepted by UK courts as admissible evidence in relation to issues of identity. Within images of the hand are a multiplicity of anatomical features of different aetiology, incidence and distribution patterns and this includes melanocytic nevi, referred to more colloquially as moles and/or birthmarks. The hand is not a common place for these isolated features to develop and so their presence in this anatomical region has the potential to be useful for issues of identity. The results of this study show that approximately 9 % of individuals in a sample of 476 hands, displayed at least one nevus on the back of their hand and, contrary to the literature, the incidence was found to be greater in females (15 % of female cohort) than males (7 % of male cohort). Almost a third of all nevi identified on the dorsum of the hand were abnormal or dysplastic. The most frequent location for these aggregations of melanocytes was in the central region of the dorsum of the hand or at the base of the index finger. The relevance of nevi identified in the image of a perpetrator’s hand and also on that of a suspect/accused is discussed in relation to the issue of whether the images have originated from the same individual

Adjustable levels of strong turbulence in a positive/negative ion plasma

Positive/negative ion plasmas, composed of Ba+, SF6−, and residual electrons, were observed to display characteristics of strong turbulence.Experiments on the UCI Q machine linked the presence of negative ions (and the depletion of electrons) with large density fluctuations (δn/n≂1), large‐amplitude, low‐frequency electrostatic noise (f≤20 kHz), and rapid transport of ions across magnetic field lines (D⊥≂104 cm2/sec). Ion velocity distributions were heated parallel to and cooled perpendicular to the confining magnetic field. The partial pressure of gaseous SF6 was shown to serve as a regulator of plasma turbulence. Turbulence levels could be smoothly varied from quiescent states (δn/n≂0.01) to strongly turbulent states (δn/n≂1)