1,052 research outputs found
A Living Faith: Christianity’s Pre-Constantine Survival
Précis
In my thesis, I argue that the beliefs and practices of Christianity helped it to not only coexist with but survive beyond the cults that were prevalent and more established. To demonstrate this, I compare Christianity with said cults. In my first chapter, I examine three mystery cults, looking at the factors that gave them their popularity. In the second chapter, I discuss Christianity. Citing authors such as Tacitus and Pliny, I reveal the ill reception given to Christianity. I then use sources, such as Saint Justin Martyr, Saint Cyprian, and Saint Dionysius, to explain what exactly Christians believed and how they put those beliefs into practice. I then conclude with a final summary
Effective Confinement as Origin of the Equivalence of Kinetic Temperature and Fluctuation-Dissipation Ratio in a Dense Shear Driven Suspension
We study response and velocity autocorrelation functions for a tagged
particle in a shear driven suspension governed by underdamped stochastic
dynamics. We follow the idea of an effective confinement in dense suspensions
and exploit a time-scale separation between particle reorganization and
vibrational motion. This allows us to approximately derive the
fluctuation-dissipation theorem in a "hybrid" form involving the kinetic
temperature as an effective temperature and an additive correction term. We
show numerically that even in a moderately dense suspension the latter is
negligible. We discuss similarities and differences with a simple toy model, a
single trapped particle in shear flow
Numerical simulation of the stochastic dynamics of inclusions in biomembranes in presence of surface tension
The stochastic dynamics of inclusions in a randomly fluctuating biomembrane
is simulated. These inclusions can represent the embedded proteins and the
external particles arriving at a cell membrane. The energetics of the
biomembrane is modelled via the Canham-Helfrich Hamiltonian. The contributions
of both the bending elastic-curvature energy and the surface tension of the
biomembrane are taken into account. The biomembrane is treated as a
two-dimensional sheet whose height variations from a reference frame is treated
as a stochastic Wiener process. The lateral diffusion parameter associated with
this Wiener process coupled with the longitudinal diffusion parameter obtained
from the standard Einsteinian diffusion theory completely determine the
stochastic motion of the inclusions. It is shown that the presence of surface
tension significantly affects the overall dynamics of the inclusions,
particularly the rate of capture of the external inclusions, such as drug
particles, at the site of the embedded inclusions, such as the embedded
proteins.Comment: 17 pages, 4 figures, to appear in physica
Transient Gamma Ray Spectrometer Measurements of Gamma-Ray Lines from Novae. II. Constraining the Galactic Nova Rate from a Survey of the Southern Sky during 1995-1997
The good energy resolution (3--4 keV FWHM) of the Transient Gamma Ray
Spectrometer (TGRS) on board the WIND spacecraft makes it sensitive to
Doppler-shifted outbursts of 511 keV electron-positron annihilation radiation,
the reason being that the Doppler shift causes the cosmic line to be slightly
offset from a strong instrumental background 511 keV line at rest, which is
ubiquitous in space environments. Such a cosmic line (blueshifted) is predicted
to arise in classical novae due to the annihilation of positrons from
-decay on a timescale of a few hours in an expanding envelope. A further
advantage of TGRS - its broad field of view, containing the entire southern
ecliptic hemisphere - has enabled us to make a virtually complete and unbiased
3-year search for classical novae at distances up to ~1 kpc. We present
negative results of this search, and estimate its implications for the
highly-uncertain Galactic classical nova rate and for future space missions.Comment: 22 pp. + 3 fig
Low-Intrusion Techniques and Sensitive Information Management for Warhead Counting and Verification: FY2012 Annual Report
Progress in the second year of this project is described by the series of technical reports and manuscripts that make up the content of this report. These documents summarize successes in our goals to develop our robust image-hash templating and material-discrimination techniques and apply them to test image data
Point defect formation in optical materials expos ed to the space environment
Point defect formation associated with early stages of optical damage was observed unexpectedly in two, and possibly three, different optical materials subjected to short-duration space exposure. Three calcium fluoride, two lithium fluoride, and three magnesium fluoride samples were flown on Space Shuttle flight STS-46 as part of the Evaluation of Oxygen Interactions with Materials - Third Phase experiment. One each of the calcium and magnesium fluoride samples was held at a fixed temperature of 60 C during the space exposure, while the temperatures of the other samples were allowed to vary with the ambient temperature of the shuttle cargo bay. Pre-flight and post-flight optical absorption measurements were performed on all of the samples. With the possible exception of the magnesium fluoride samples, every sample clearly showed the formation of F-centers in that section of the sample that was exposed to the low earth orbit environment. Solar vacuum ultraviolet radiation is the most probable primary cause of the defect formation; however, the resulting surface metallization may be synergistically altered by the atomic oxygen environment
An adaptive finite element method for the modeling of the equilibrium of red blood cells
International audienceThis contribution is concerned with a the numerical modeling of an isolated red blood cell (RBC), and more generally of phospholipid membranes. We propose an adaptive Eulerian finite element approximation, based on the level set method, of a shape optimization problem arising in the study of RBC's equilibrium. We simulate the equilibrium shapes that minimize the elastic bending energy under prescribed constraints of fixed volume and surface area. An anisotropic mesh adaptation technique is used in the vicinity of the cell's membrane to enhance the robustness of the method. Efficient time and spatial discretizations are considered and implemented. We address in detail the main features of the proposed method and finally we report several numerical experiments in the two-dimensional and the three-dimensional axisymmetric cases. The effectiveness of the numerical method is further demonstrated through numerical comparisons with semi-analytical solutions provided by a reduced order model
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Opportunities for Decay Counting of Environmental Radioisotopes Using Ultra-low-background Detection Systems
Executive Summary We present results from a scoping study whose intent was to define challenge measurements to be pursued on the Ultra-Sensitive Nuclear Measurements Initiative. Potential challenge measurements using new radiation detection technology in the shallow underground laboratory that would have substantial impact in environmental science were the focus of this study
Opportunities for Decay Counting of Environmental Radioisotopes Using Ultra-low-background Detection Systems
Executive Summary We present results from a scoping study whose intent was to define challenge measurements to be pursued on the Ultra-Sensitive Nuclear Measurements Initiative. Potential challenge measurements using new radiation detection technology in the shallow underground laboratory that would have substantial impact in environmental science were the focus of this study
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