Southern-Netherlandish observations and knowledge production of naturalia on the seas : the writings of Michael de Febure (1721)

Just as was the case for other European sea voyages, maritime expeditions from the Southern-Netherlandish port of Ostend to Asia presented opportunities for the bringing of naturalia to Europe, and with it the production of knowledge on the natural world in the early eighteenth century. While this exchange took place alongside the more commercial aspect of these expeditions, and mostly comprised gift objects being brought back for the curiosity cabinets of Austrian-Netherlandish dignitaries, the journal of chaplain Michael de Febure – sailing in 1721 on the ship Sint-Pieter from the port of Ostend to the Indian Malabar coast – presents a different type of the production of natural historical knowledge. This source offers us a unique insight into the ways in which marine life and naturalia were approached from a shipboard perspective. This fits within an ecological perspective on the ways in which the sea and the shipboard formed a space for knowledge production on naturalia for Southern Netherlandish sailors and sea-going passengers

What would it take to determine the neutrino mass hierarchy if θ13\theta_{13} were too small?

We discuss the experimental requirements for a mass hierarchy measurement for $\theta_{13}=0$ using muon neutrino disappearance. We find that a specially optimized neutrino factory at $L \simeq 6 \,000 \, \mathrm{km}$ could do this measurement using extreme luminosities. In particular, we do not require charge identification for this purpose. In order to measure the mass hierarchy for more adequate luminosities, we explore the capabilities of low energy narrow band off-axis beams, which have relatively more events at low energies. We find that, in this case, the energy resolution of the detector quickly becomes the limiting factor of the measurement, and significantly affects the baseline optimization for determining the mass hierarchy.Comment: 22 pages, 10 color figure

A geometric approach to Mathon maximal arcs

In 1969 Denniston gave a construction of maximal arcs of degree d in Desarguesian projective planes of even order q, for all d dividing q. In 2002 Mathon gave a construction method generalizing the one of Denniston. We will give a new geometric approach to these maximal arcs. This will allow us to count the number of isomorphism classes of Mathon maximal arcs of degree 8 in PG(2,2^h), h prime.Comment: 20 page

A Raman anemometer for component-selective velocity measurements of particles in a flow

An anemometer for the measurement of the velocity of particles of different components in a flow, separate and apart from that of the flow itself, is described. As a component-selective mechanism Raman scattering is used. The velocity is measured by relating the autocorrelated scattering signal to the known laser beam profile