High-temperature tensile tester for ceramics

Apparatus measures tensile strength of rigid, low-density ceramic materials at temperatures up to 1375 K. Tensile grips mate with tensile specimen and form top and bottom of lightweight furnace. Apparatus can only be used with rigid materials and grips must be stronger than material under test

Voldemort Tyrannos: Plato’s Tyrant in the Republic and the Wizarding World

In the Harry Potter novel series, by J. K. Rowling, the character of Lord Voldemort is the dictatorial ruler of the Death Eaters and aspiring despot of the entire wizarding community. As such, he serves as an apt subject for the application of Plato’s portrait of the tyrant in Republic IX. The process of applying Plato to Voldemort, however, leads to an apparent anomaly, the resolution of which requires that we move beyond the Republic to the account of beauty presented by Plato in the Symposium. In doing so, we shall find that while Plato can help us to understand Voldemort, Voldemort can also help us to attain a deeper understanding of Plato

Pragmatism and Meaning: Assessing the Message of Star Trek: The Original Series

The original Star Trek television series purported to depict a future in which such evils as sexism and racism do not exist, and intelligent beings from numerous planets live in a condition of peace and mutual benefit. As many scholars have observed, from a standpoint of contemporary theoretical analysis, Star Trek: The Original Series contains many elements that are inimical to the utopia it claims to depict and thus undermine its supposed message. A different perspective may be gained by drawing on the American pragmatist movement, in which the value of an idea is judged by its effectiveness, how it ‘cashes out’ in terms of its impact in real life. Thus, the meaning and value of Star Trek: TOS can be assessed by observing its effects on its audience. This perspective coordinates well with Taylor’s discussion of the necessary conditions for the realization of a protreptic moral order in the social imaginary, as well as a pragmatist understanding of audience engagement and education

Transducer measures embedment stresses in electronic modules

Strain gage load transducer measures axial embedment stresses in resins used for encapsulation of welded electronic modules. It simulates the geometry of an actual electronic component and can be modified in size, shape, and operating temperature

Subdegree growth rates of infinite primitive permutation groups

A transitive group $G$ of permutations of a set $\Omega$ is primitive if the only $G$-invariant equivalence relations on $\Omega$ are the trivial and universal relations. If $\alpha \in \Omega$, then the orbits of the stabiliser $G_\alpha$ on $\Omega$ are called the $\alpha$-suborbits of $G$; when $G$ acts transitively the cardinalities of these $\alpha$-suborbits are the subdegrees of $G$. If $G$ acts primitively on an infinite set $\Omega$, and all the suborbits of $G$ are finite, Adeleke and Neumann asked if, after enumerating the subdegrees of $G$ as a non-decreasing sequence $1 = m_0 \leq m_1 \leq ...$, the subdegree growth rates of infinite primitive groups that act distance-transitively on locally finite distance-transitive graphs are extremal, and conjecture there might exist a number $c$ which perhaps depends upon $G$, perhaps only on $m$, such that $m_r \leq c(m-2)^{r-1}$. In this paper it is shown that such an enumeration is not desirable, as there exist infinite primitive permutation groups possessing no infinite subdegree, in which two distinct subdegrees are each equal to the cardinality of infinitely many suborbits. The examples used to show this provide several novel methods for constructing infinite primitive graphs. A revised enumeration method is then proposed, and it is shown that, under this, Adeleke and Neumann's question may be answered, at least for groups exhibiting suitable rates of growth.Comment: 41 page

The Use of an Anthrone Reagent to Detect Sugar Meals and Their Persistence in the Mosquito \u3ci\u3eAedes Triseriatus\u3c/i\u3e (Diptera: Culicidae)

Adults of Aedes triseriatus were fed water, blood, and 10% pure and mixed solutions of glucose, fructose and sucrose. Adults were tested for fructose by the cold-anthrone test 0, 1, 4, 12, and 24 h after feeding. Water-fed males and females and blood-fed females were anthrone negative. Glucose-fed males were anthrone negative but some glucose-fed females were weakly anthrone positive immediately after feeding. Many adults fed a mixture of glucose, fructose and sucrose were anthrone negative 12 h after feeding and all were anthrone negative after 24 h. The interpretation of negatives in the anthrone test is discussed with respect to the dynamics of nectar feeding, metabolic rates and sampling regimes