Santo Toribio: The Rise of a Saint

Santo Toribio (1900-28) was canonized by the Roman Catholic Church in 2000 as a martyr of Mexico\u27s bloody Cristero Rebellion. He enjoyed a modest local following for decades after the Rebellion as many of the other Cristero martyr-saints did. However, around the time of his canonization, a new identity began to emerge different from that of martyr; he became the patron saint of immigration. For believers, Santo Toribio helps mitigate the criminal nature of this act by showing God\u27s approval and blessing. He places the pain and social distortion of Border crossing in Roman Catholic contexts of holiness and divine intervention. This thesis begins to catalog and analyze the nature of Santo Toribio\u27s unofficial patronage

Steady-state conduction in self-similar billiards

The self-similar Lorentz billiard channel is a spatially extended deterministic dynamical system which consists of an infinite one-dimensional sequence of cells whose sizes increase monotonically according to their indices. This special geometry induces a nonequilibrium stationary state with particles flowing steadily from the small to the large scales. The corresponding invariant measure has fractal properties reflected by the phase-space contraction rate of the dynamics restricted to a single cell with appropriate boundary conditions. In the near-equilibrium limit, we find numerical agreement between this quantity and the entropy production rate as specified by thermodynamics

Non-equilibrium Lorentz gas on a curved space

The periodic Lorentz gas with external field and iso-kinetic thermostat is equivalent, by conformal transformation, to a billiard with expanding phase-space and slightly distorted scatterers, for which the trajectories are straight lines. A further time rescaling allows to keep the speed constant in that new geometry. In the hyperbolic regime, the stationary state of this billiard is characterized by a phase-space contraction rate, equal to that of the iso-kinetic Lorentz gas. In contrast to the iso-kinetic Lorentz gas where phase-space contraction occurs in the bulk, the phase-space contraction rate here takes place at the periodic boundaries

Spontaneous Breaking of Translational Invariance in One-Dimensional Stationary States on a Ring

We consider a model in which positive and negative particles diffuse in an asymmetric, CP-invariant way on a ring. The positive particles hop clockwise, the negative counterclockwise and oppositely-charged adjacent particles may swap positions. Monte-Carlo simulations and analytic calculations suggest that the model has three phases; a "pure" phase in which one has three pinned blocks of only positive, negative particles and vacancies, and in which translational invariance is spontaneously broken, a "mixed" phase with a non-vanishing current in which the three blocks are positive, negative and neutral, and a disordered phase without blocks.Comment: 7 pages, LaTeX, needs epsf.st

Atomistic study on the pressure dependence of the melting point of NdFe12

We investigated, using molecular dynamics, how pressure affects the melting point of the recently theorised and epitaxially grown structure NdFe12. We modified Morse potentials using experimental constants and a genetic algorithm code, before running two-phase solid-liquid coexistence simulations of NdFe12 at various temperatures and pressures. The refitting of the Morse potentials allowed us to significantly improve the accuracy in predicting the melting temperature of the constituent elements

Analytic structure of solutions to multiconfiguration equations

We study the regularity at the positions of the (fixed) nuclei of solutions to (non-relativistic) multiconfiguration equations (including Hartree--Fock) of Coulomb systems. We prove the following: Let {phi_1,...,phi_M} be any solution to the rank--M multiconfiguration equations for a molecule with L fixed nuclei at R_1,...,R_L in R^3. Then, for any j in {1,...,M} and k in {1,...,L}, there exists a neighbourhood U_{j,k} in R^3 of R_k, and functions phi^{(1)}_{j,k}, phi^{(2)}_{j,k}, real analytic in U_{j,k}, such that phi_j(x) = phi^{(1)}_{j,k}(x) + |x - R_k| phi^{(2)}_{j,k}(x), x in U_{j,k} A similar result holds for the corresponding electron density. The proof uses the Kustaanheimo--Stiefel transformation, as applied earlier by the authors to the study of the eigenfunctions of the Schr"odinger operator of atoms and molecules near two-particle coalescence points.Comment: 15 page

The Chemical Compositions of the Type II Cepheids -- The BL Her and W Vir Variables

Abundance analyses from high-resolution optical spectra are presented for 19 Type II Cepheids in the Galactic field. The sample includes both short-period (BL Her) and long-period (W Vir) stars. This is the first extensive abundance analysis of these variables. The C, N, and O abundances with similar spreads for the BL Her and W Vir show evidence for an atmosphere contaminated with $3\alpha$-process and CN-cycling products. A notable anomaly of the BL Her stars is an overabundance of Na by a factor of about five relative to their presumed initial abundances. This overabundance is not seen in the W Vir stars. The abundance anomalies running from mild to extreme in W Vir stars but not seen in the BL Her stars are attributed to dust-gas separation that provides an atmosphere deficient in elements of high condensation temperature, notably Al, Ca, Sc, Ti, and $s$-process elements. Such anomalies have previously been seen among RV Tau stars which represent a long-period extension of the variability enjoyed by the Type II Cepheids. Comments are offered on how the contrasting abundance anomalies of BL Her and W Vir stars may be explained in terms of the stars' evolution from the blue horizontal branch.Comment: 41 pages including 11 figures and 4 tables; Accepted for publication in Ap