4,898 research outputs found
The novelist and Bismarck with special reference to Fontane, Freytag and Ppielhagen
The thesis is an examination of the impact of the personality and policies of Bismarck on three contemporary novelists Pontane, Preytag and Spielhagen and the presentation of Bismarck in their novels. Of the three writers Spielhagen, a radical democrat, was the most sustained critic of Bismarck. Spielhagen believed passionately in individual liberty and held that this would only be fully realised for all members of society in a democratic republic. The political and social order that Bismarck sought to perpetuate was the antithesis of his ideal. Spielhagen's opposition to Bismarck was, thus, fundamental and highly political. He also objected to the demise of humanism and the consolidation of authoritarian attitudes that resulted from Bismarck's despotic regime. In his novels Spielhagen's political commitment is reflected in the considerable space that is given over to the discussion of Bismarck's political aims, methods and influence. Within the detailed panorama of German society that he paints Spielhagen is concerned to gauge the destructive influence of Bismarck on humanist values. Preytag, a moderate constitutional liberal, was also a life-long opponent and critic of Bismarck. He was in the van-guard of the liberal struggle to remove Bismarck and bring down the monarchical system of government in Prussia in the 1860's and he bitterly resented Bismarck's ruthless defence of monarchical and aristocratic power. None of Bismarck's later achievements, not even the unification of Germany, quite reconciled Preytag to the illiberal Bismarck system and he continued to hope that Bismarck and his autocratic regime would in time give way to a truly liberal system of government. There is no discussion of Bismarck in Preytag's novels: on the defensive after 1866 he resorted to the historical novel in order to propagate values and ideals which he saw threatened by Bismarck's influence. Pontane confessed to being an admirer of Bismarck as statesman, orator, humorist and personality. Bismarck's despotism was, in Pontane's view, fully justified by his achievements for Germany. Only later in life - after Bismarck had resigned – did Pontane's dislike of Bismarck's petty autocratic style and growing megalomania escalate into outright rejection of Bismarck, Prom the more radical democratic view-point he assumed in the latter years of his life he judged Bismarck to be a petty autocrat. Even his achievements were devoid of moral significance for the progress of mankind. Pontane's concern with a detailed evocation of the political and intellectual atmosphere that prevailed in the Berlin upper class of his day resulted in a number of memorable portraits of conservative and liberal opponents of Bismarck, but only in the figure of Innstetten in 'Effi Briest' did he begin to explore the implications of Bismarck's despotic regime for human values in German society
Non-linear optimization for parameter estimation for flood forecasting
Floods are the response of a catchment area to
severe rainfall events. Each catchment will have
its unique response which is dependent on its own
characteristics and the temporal and spatial
distribution of the oncoming rainfall event. A non
linear optimization technique has been applied to
historical data for rainfall and river flows of the
Kakanui catchment in North Otago, New Zealand,
to estimate the parameters of a model based on
the transfer function concept. The non linear
optimization is based on Powell algorithm.
Powell algorithm has been widely used in the
literature, and it is more efficient and faster than
the Simplex method (Press et al., 1989)
Observed rainfall events at two locations in the
Kakanui catchment, along with the corresponding
observed flows of the river have been utilized to
estimate the transfer function which represents the
response of the Kakanui catchment to rainfall
events. An adjusted form of Philip’s equation for
infiltration was used to estimate the abstraction of
the rainfall event and obtain the effective rainfall
which will contribute to the river flow. Weighing
factors were assigned to each of the rainfall sites
to obtain the best fit between observed and
forecasted flows. Nine flood events were used for
the calibration process, while two events were
utilized for the validation of the derived model.
The model has 19 parameters for the transfer
function, 2 parameters for the hydrologic
abstractions model, and 2 parameters for the
weighing factors of the rainfall sites. This results
in a total of 23 parameters for the developed
model. The ratio of observed cumulative rainfall
at Clifton Falls to the corresponding rainfall at the
Dasher for historical events is not consistent, and
varies significantly from one event to another.
This indicates the high variability of the spatial
distribution of rainfall events over the Kakanui
catchment. As these rainfall events were used in
the model calibration, it was difficult to obtain the
correct transfer function without proper
accounting for the spatial distribution of rainfall over the whole watershed. However, the model,
in general, performed satisfactory, given the
difficulty in representing the spatial variability of
the rainfall events. The model was capable of
simulating the flood hydrographs of several
events which were incorporated in its calibration,
but did not perform well with others. The model
was able to simulate well the flows of a flood
event which was not included in its calibration.
Moreover, in applying the derived model for a
real case event which occurred most recently on
30 July 2007, the model was able to forecast very
closely the peak flow, but the whole flow
hydrograph was not forecasted as good
Ionized gas at the edge of the Central Molecular Zone
To determine the properties of the ionized gas at the edge of the CMZ near
Sgr E we observed a small portion of the edge of the CMZ near Sgr E with
spectrally resolved [C II] 158 micron and [N II] 205 micron fine structure
lines at six positions with the GREAT instrument on SOFIA and in [C II] using
Herschel HIFI on-the-fly strip maps. We use the [N II] spectra along with a
radiative transfer model to calculate the electron density of the gas and the
[C II] maps to illuminate the morphology of the ionized gas and model the
column density of CO-dark H2. We detect two [C II] and [N II] velocity
components, one along the line of sight to a CO molecular cloud at -207 km/s
associated with Sgr E and the other at -174 km/s outside the edge of another CO
cloud. From the [N II] emission we find that the average electron density is in
the range of about 5 to 25 cm{-3} for these features. This electron density is
much higher than that of the warm ionized medium in the disk. The column
density of the CO-dark H layer in the -207 km/s cloud is about 1-2X10{21}
cm{-2} in agreement with theoretical models. The CMZ extends further out in
Galactic radius by 7 to 14 pc in ionized gas than it does in molecular gas
traced by CO. The edge of the CMZ likely contains dense hot ionized gas
surrounding the neutral molecular material. The high fractional abundance of N+
and high electron density require an intense EUV field with a photon flux of
order 1e6 to 1e7 photons cm{-2} s{-1}, and/or efficient proton charge exchange
with nitrogen, at temperatures of order 1e4 K, and/or a large flux of X-rays.
Sgr E is a region of massive star formation which are a potential sources of
the EUV radiation that can ionize the gas. In addition X-ray sources and the
diffuse X-ray emission in the CMZ are candidates for ionizing nitrogen.Comment: 12 pages, 9 figure
Full characterization and analysis of a terahertz heterodyne receiver based on a NbN hot electron bolometer
We present a complete experimental characterization of a quasioptical twin-slot antenna coupled small area (1.0×0.15 µm^2) NbN hot electron bolometer (HEB) mixer compatible with currently available solid state tunable local oscillator (LO) sources. The required LO power absorbed in the HEB is analyzed in detail and equals only 25 nW. Due to the small HEB volume and wide antenna bandwidth, an unwanted direct detection effect is observed which decreases the apparent sensitivity. Correcting for this effect results in a receiver noise temperature of 700 K at 1.46 THz. The intermediate frequency (IF) gain bandwidth is 2.3 GHz and the IF noise bandwidth is 4 GHz. The single channel receiver stability is limited to 0.2–0.3 s in a 50 MHz bandwidth
A Search for 6.7 GHz Methanol Masers in M33
We report the negative results from a search for 6.7 GHz methanol masers in
the nearby spiral galaxy M33. We observed 14 GMCs in the central 4 kpc of the
Galaxy, and found 3 sigma upper limits to the flux density of ~9 mJy in
spectral channels having a velocity width of 0.069 km/s. By velocity shifting
and combining the spectra from the positions observed, we obtain an effective
3sigma upper limit on the average emission of ~1mJy in a 0.25 km/s channel.
These limits lie significantly below what we would expect based on our
estimates of the methanol maser luminosity function in the Milky Way. The most
likely explanation for the absence of detectable methanol masers appears to be
the metallicity of M33, which is modestly less than that of the Milky Way
Knowledge Rich Natural Language Queries over Structured Biological Databases
Increasingly, keyword, natural language and NoSQL queries are being used for
information retrieval from traditional as well as non-traditional databases
such as web, document, image, GIS, legal, and health databases. While their
popularity are undeniable for obvious reasons, their engineering is far from
simple. In most part, semantics and intent preserving mapping of a well
understood natural language query expressed over a structured database schema
to a structured query language is still a difficult task, and research to tame
the complexity is intense. In this paper, we propose a multi-level
knowledge-based middleware to facilitate such mappings that separate the
conceptual level from the physical level. We augment these multi-level
abstractions with a concept reasoner and a query strategy engine to dynamically
link arbitrary natural language querying to well defined structured queries. We
demonstrate the feasibility of our approach by presenting a Datalog based
prototype system, called BioSmart, that can compute responses to arbitrary
natural language queries over arbitrary databases once a syntactic
classification of the natural language query is made
The Arecibo Methanol Maser Galactic Plane Survey - II: Statistical and Multi-wavelength Counterpart Analysis
We present an analysis of the properties of the 6.7 GHz methanol maser sample
detected in the Arecibo Methanol Maser Galactic Plane Survey. The distribution
of the masers in the Galaxy, and statistics of their multi-wavelength
counterparts is consistent with the hypothesis of 6.7 GHz maser emission being
associated with massive young stellar objects. Using the detection statistics
of our survey, we estimate the minimum number of methanol masers in the Galaxy
to be 1275. The l-v diagram of the sample shows the tangent point of the
Carina-Sagittarius spiral arm to be around 49.6 degrees, and suggests
occurrence of massive star formation along the extension of the Crux-Scutum
arm. A Gaussian component analysis of the maser spectra shows the mean
line-width to be 0.38 km/s which is more than a factor of two larger than what
has been reported in the literature. We also find no evidence that faint
methanol masers have different properties than those of their bright
counterparts.Comment: Accepted by ApJ; Revised footnote number 3 on page 8 based on private
communicatio
Massive Quiescent Cores in Orion. -- II. Core Mass Function
We have surveyed submillimeter continuum emission from relatively quiescent
regions in the Orion molecular cloud to determine how the core mass function in
a high mass star forming region compares to the stellar initial mass function.
Such studies are important for understanding the evolution of cores to stars,
and for comparison to formation processes in high and low mass star forming
regions. We used the SHARC II camera on the Caltech Submillimeter Observatory
telescope to obtain 350 \micron data having angular resolution of about 9
arcsec, which corresponds to 0.02 pc at the distance of Orion. Our analysis
combining dust continuum and spectral line data defines a sample of 51 Orion
molecular cores with masses ranging from 0.1 \Ms to 46 \Ms and a mean mass of
9.8 \Ms, which is one order of magnitude higher than the value found in typical
low mass star forming regions, such as Taurus. The majority of these cores
cannot be supported by thermal pressure or turbulence, and are probably
supercritical.They are thus likely precursors of protostars. The core mass
function for the Orion quiescent cores can be fitted by a power law with an
index equal to -0.850.21. This is significantly flatter than the Salpeter
initial mass function and is also flatter than the core mass function found in
low and intermediate star forming regions. Thus, it is likely that
environmental processes play a role in shaping the stellar IMF later in the
evolution of dense cores and the formation of stars in such regions.Comment: 30 pages, 10 figures, accepted by Ap
Temperature perturbation model of the opto-galvanic effect in CO2-laser discharges
A detailed discharge model of the opto-galvanic effect in molecular laser gas mixtures is developed based on the temperature perturbation or discharge cooling mechanism of Smith and Brooks (1979). Excellent agreement between the model and experimental results in CO2 laser gas mixtures is obtained. The model should be applicable to other molecular systems where the OGE is being used for laser stabilisation and as a spectroscopic tool
Bankers on the Board and CEO Turnover
The governance literature finds that independent directors from lending banks (commercial bank directors or CBDs) bring both financial expertise and conflict of interest between shareholders and debt holders. We examine how the presence of CBDs affects the implicit incentive of CEO turnover. Using BoardEx and DealScan data, we hypothesize and find that CBDs make the CEO turnover more sensitive to both performance and risk. Postâ CEO turnover analysis reveals that firm performance improves and risk decreases in the presence of CBDs.Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/154485/1/ajfs12288_am.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/154485/2/ajfs12288.pd
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