British East India Company Chaplains and their Encounters with Hindus and Muslims in India, 1785-1813

This thesis investigates the writings and activities of several chaplains who were employed for the British East India Company (EIC) between 1785 and 1813 by focusing on their encounters with Hindus and Muslims in India. The four chaplains chosen for my research (Revs. David Brown, William Tennant, Claudius Buchanan, and Henry Martyn) sought to spread Protestant Christianity throughout British India. However, instead of evangelizing to Hindus and Muslims, these chaplains more often engaged in alternative forms of interreligious encounter that allowed them to closely interact with and learn about India’s religious culture without going against the EIC’s policy which prohibited missionary activity in its territory prior to its 1813 Charter Renewal. Building on the research of other historians of Christianity and interreligious relations in British India, as well as focused studies of the chaplains, this thesis analyzes primary documents written by these chaplains to understand their thoughts on Christian missions, evangelism, and their encounters with Hindus and Muslims in India. I have categorized their encounters into three of the most prominent kinds that appear in their writings, and also form the focus of this thesis’ body chapters: Anglo-Indian schooling, proto-ethnographic writing about Hinduism, and Bible translation into Indian languages. From these findings, I argue that while the chaplains had little success in their own time converting non-Christian Indian people, their writings still shed helpful light on interreligious relations in British India and British Protestant perceptions of India’s religious culture around the early nineteenth century. These findings remain significant for historians today when critically examining the history of Christianity and interreligious relations more broadly by showing how even though the chaplains’ imperial context shaped and constrained their encounters, it did not ultimately determine the more complex, mutual or occasionally collaborative nature of their interactions with Hindu and Muslim people in British India

On the Origin of the Early Solar System Radioactivities. Problems with the AGB and Massive Star Scenarios

Recent improvements in stellar models for intermediate-mass and massive stars are recalled, together with their expectations for the synthesis of radioactive nuclei of lifetime $\tau \lesssim 25$ Myr, in order to re-examine the origins of now extinct radioactivities, which were alive in the solar nebula. The Galactic inheritance broadly explains most of them, especially if $r$-process nuclei are produced by neutron star merging according to recent models. Instead, $^{26}$Al, $^{41}$Ca, $^{135}$Cs and possibly $^{60}$Fe require nucleosynthesis events close to the solar formation. We outline the persisting difficulties to account for these nuclei by Intermediate Mass Stars (2 $\lesssim$ M/M$_\odot \lesssim 7 - 8$). Models of their final stages now predict the ubiquitous formation of a $^{13}$C reservoir as a neutron capture source; hence, even in presence of $^{26}$Al production from Deep Mixing or Hot Bottom Burning, the ratio $^{26}$Al/$^{107}$Pd remains incompatible with measured data, with a large excess in $^{107}$Pd. This is shown for two recent approaches to Deep Mixing. Even a late contamination by a Massive Star meets problems. In fact, inhomogeneous addition of Supernova debris predicts non-measured excesses on stable isotopes. Revisions invoking specific low-mass supernovae and/or the sequential contamination of the pre-solar molecular cloud might be affected by similar problems, although our conclusions here are weakened by our schematic approach to the addition of SN ejecta. The limited parameter space remaining to be explored for solving this puzzle is discussed.Comment: Accepted for publication on Ap

Efeito da adubação no crescimento de mudas de Eugenia uniflora L.

Eugenia uniflora é uma planta frutífera muito cultivada em pomares domésticos e frequente em seu habitat natural das matas semidecíduas. O objetivo deste trabalho foi verificar qual o efeito da adubação no crescimento de mudas de E. uniflora. Após a coleta e beneficiamento dos frutos, as sementes foram germinadas entre vermiculita e repicadas para tubetes contendo substrato comercial à base de casca de pinus. A adubação foi realizada semanalmente, durante três meses. Foram realizadas quatro avaliações, sendo determinado a altura e o diâmetro do colo das mudas. Na última avaliação as mudas adubadas apresentaram 17,9 cm de altura e 2,3 mm de diâmetro do colo, enquanto que as mudas não adubadas apresentaram 14,7 cm de altura e 1,7 mm de diâmetro do colo, demonstrando que as mudas de pitanga possuem resposta boa à adubação, ao contrário do proposto para espécies secundárias tardias ou climax. Concluiu-se que as mudas de E. uniflora responderam à adubação a partir do segundo mês, apresentando incremento tanto em altura como em diâmetro do colo.Resumo expandido

Elastocapillary network model of inhalation

The seemingly simple process of inhalation relies on a complex interplay between muscular contraction in the thorax, elasto-capillary interactions in individual lung branches, propagation of air between different connected branches, and overall air flow into the lungs. These processes occur over considerably different length and time scales; consequently, linking them to the biomechanical properties of the lungs, and quantifying how they together control the spatiotemporal features of inhalation, remains a challenge. We address this challenge by developing a computational model of the lungs as a hierarchical, branched network of connected liquid-lined flexible cylinders coupled to a viscoelastic thoracic cavity. Each branch opens at a rate and a pressure that is determined by input biomechanical parameters, enabling us to test the influence of changes in the mechanical properties of lung tissues and secretions on inhalation dynamics. By summing the dynamics of all the branches, we quantify the evolution of overall lung pressure and volume during inhalation, reproducing the shape of measured breathing curves. Using this model, we demonstrate how changes in lung muscle contraction, mucus viscosity and surface tension, and airway wall stiffness---characteristic of many respiratory diseases, including those arising from COVID-19, cystic fibrosis, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, asthma, and emphysema---drastically alter inhaled lung capacity and breathing duration. Our work therefore helps to identify the key factors that control breathing dynamics, and provides a way to quantify how disease-induced changes in these factors lead to respiratory distress.Comment: In pres

Closed shells at drip-line nuclei

The shell structure of magic nuclei far from stability is discussed in terms of the self-consistent spherical Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov theory. In particular, the sensitivity of the shell-gap sizes and the two-neutron separation energies to the choice of particle-hole and particle-particle components of the effective interaction is investigated.Comment: 19 pages, LaTeX, 8 uuencoded figures available upon reques

The additional-mode garden of RR Lyrae stars

Space-based photometric missions revealed a surprising abundance of millimagnitude-level additional modes in RR Lyrae stars. The modes that appear in the modulated fundamental-mode (RRab) stars can be ordered into four major categories. Here we present the distribution of these groups in the Petersen diagram, and discuss their characteristics and connections to additional modes observed in other RR Lyrae stars.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, proceedings of the Joint TASC2-KASC9-SPACEINN-HELAS8 Conference "Seismology of the Sun and the Distant Stars 2016", to be published in EPJ Wo

Evaluation of design recommendations for the development of wheelchair rugby sports-wear

Currently, wheelchair rugby athletes face the challenges of playing the sport without specifically designed sports-wear kit. A few designs and recommendations have already been proposed by researchers but none have made it to market yet. The purpose of this study was to evaluate a set of design recommendations for the development of wheelchair rugby sports-wear. This was done so that the products to be created are developed in collaboration with their potential users, responding to their particular needs and requirements. The evaluation was done through an online survey, where the athletes were presented with a visual representation of the design recommendations. The results indicate that the people questioned agree with the majority of the proposed designs and would be happy to have these improvements made to their current sports-wear. The most criticised recommendations were for the gloves, as they are the most important part of the kit, so it is important that they are adequate and allow for a good performance

Relativistic mean field study of the properties of Z=117 nucleus and the decay chains of 293,294^{293,294}117 isotopes

We have calculated the binding energy, root-mean-square radius and quadrupole deformation parameter for the recently synthesized superheavy element Z=117, using the axially deformed relativistic mean field (RMF) model. The calculation is extended to various isotopes of Z=117 element, strarting from A=286 till A=310. We predict almost spherical structures in the ground state for almost all the isotopes. A shape transition appears at about A=292 from prolate to a oblate shape structures of Z=117 nucleus in our mean field approach. The most stable isotope (largest binding energy per nucleon) is found to be the $^{288}$117 nucleus. Also, the Q-value of $\alpha$-decay $Q_\alpha$ and the half-lives $T_{\alpha}$ are calculated for the $\alpha$-decay chains of $^{293}$117 and $^{294}$117, supporting the magic numbers at N=172 and/ or 184.Comment: 6 Pages and 8 Figure