Infrared Surface Brightness Analysis of Galaxies in Compact Groups

Images of 7 Compact groups of galaxies (CG) were obtained using the 2.1m telescope in San Pedro Martir (B.C. Mexico) equipped with the NIR camera CAMILA. The NIR images trace the mass of the galaxies, through the oldest and more evolved stellar populations. The goal of this project is to search for evidence of morphological perturbations correlated with the level of activity (AGN or star formation) of the galaxies. We find that the level of perturbation is well correlated with activity observed in optical spectrocopy (Coziol et al. 2004). Evidence for perturbations decreases from more active groups to less active groups, confirming the classification. Our analysis suggests that galaxies in more active groups are undergoing important transformations due to interaction and merging and that the whole groups is on a merger path. Galaxies in less active CG have gone through similar processes in the recent past and are either in a final merging phase or in equilibrium due to a more massive halo of dark matter.Comment: 2 pages, 1 figure, Proc. ESO Workshop "Groups of galaxies in the nearby Universe", Santiago, Chile, 5-9 Dec. 2005, ESO Astrophysics Symposia, eds. I. Saviane, V. Ivanov & J. Borissova, Springer-Verla

Planned construction as a leading indicator of commercial real estate price appreciation

Includes bibliographical references.I analyze the viability of planned construction as a leading indicator to commercial price appreciation through application of fundamental economic principles, and linear regression. My experience as a commercial real estate appraiser has brought me to suspect that the commercial real estate market is a thinly traded market where information asymmetries are common, and exploitation opportunities may exist. The potential leading indicators that I analyze are the Architectural Billing Index (ABI), building permits, housing starts, and the combination of all three. The regression analysis results in strong correlations between each leading indicator and commercial appreciation. The strong correlations lead me to believe that the current commercial real estate market is not a perfectly competitive market, and arbitrage opportunities may currently exist for investors who are able to analyze the market using leading indicators, and quickly enter or exit the market.B.S. (Bachelor of Science

Noises Off: a play in three parts

Noises Off was presented at John Carroll University April 15-23, 2005.https://collected.jcu.edu/plays/1141/thumbnail.jp

Noises Off

Noises Off is Michael Frayn\u27s farce from behind, told through the first act of the play within the play, Nothing On. Presented in April of 2005.https://collected.jcu.edu/plays/1033/thumbnail.jp

Roman Apollo and kindred deities

At this point it may be well to review the Roman cult of Apollo as we have found it, and its development throughout the Roman period, comparing it briefly with the cult as it came to them from the Greeks. As a background to this study we shall bear in mind the fact that the Greeks being closer to their :Eastern origins than the Romans, their religion often shows a tendency to mysticism and to a childlike reverence which rather avoids than seeks complete explanation or application.We have seen that, when at the height of its popularity and influence in Rome, the cult of Apollo was an important part of the state religion. It was in fact at no time, except perhaps for less than fifty years before our records begin, entirely outside the national religion, and it was never to any extent a matter of personal belief or private emotion. This in itself, however, does not mean that it lacked either sincerity or influence. If we would find a parallel, the feelings ,of the Romans about their official religious ceremonies and institutions, and therefore about almost all their religion, must have been similar to ours as we stand with the crowd to sing a solemn traditional hymn at a time of national emergency, or listen to the speech of an archbishop or king which ends with a sort of patriarchal blessing. In both cases the religious act represents the lowest common multiple of the spiritual experience of a people. But there is an instructive difference. In the case of the Romans, there were not many people of very high spiritual development and in fact the loftier souls did not rise very far above the general level. Likewise, the general level being low, few would fall far below it. This would be true, at any rate, until Christianity arrived to upset the balance, Under such conditions it was comparatively easy to find and use the common factor, and only too easy for religion to be stabilized at the most convenient level. Polytheism has also great advantages as the type of a national religion, because deities and cults can be retained to meet the needs of those who fall short of or surpass the general level of spiritual development.We have here some of the reasons why the religions of ancient Greece and Rome seldom received the impetus and challenge of religious leaders, reformers or "prophets ". This has been remarked by A.B. Drachmann ( Atheism in Pagan Antiquity) who, incidentally, in his study of atheism has revealed rather more about religion than irreligion. He writes (p. 15): "But what is characteristic of the whole process is the fact that it went on without breaks or sudden bounds. Nowhere in ancient religion, as far as we can trace it, did a powerful religious personality strike in with a radical transformation, with a direct rejection of old ideas and dogmatic accentuation of new ones."As we have found, however, in tracing the history of the Roman cult of Apollo, there was, especially in that cult, a continual demand for such a religious leader. We have called him an "Apolline prophet" and have tried to indicate some of those who from time to time, for a smaller or larger section of Apollo's worshippers, fulfilled this function. It is probably in the context of this hope that we should place such literature as Virgil's Fourth Eclogue. This poem has recently been discussed by Professor H.J. Rose, in "The Eclogues of Vergil" where he rejects the suggestion of Norden and others that the "child" is merely allegorical. The grounds of this rejection are that the concluding lines of the poem seem to refer vividly to a human mother, and that the personification of a period of time does not occur elsewhere in classical literature. The latter objection is certainly very strong in relation to the argument of Norden which is quoted (H.J. Rose, op, cit. p. 208 -9). The former, however, is applicable to Prof. Rose's own theory almost as much as to that of Norden. For Prof. Rose suggests that the father of the "wonder -child" is Octavian, who, though not actually a father when the poem was written, is regarded by the poet as inaugurating a Golden Age for the continuance of which he would certainly require an heir. The mother of the child, however, would as yet be unknown, though she would not be the abstract figure required by the other theory.We would therefore suggest that the child in the Fourth Eclogue of Virgil is, primarily, the Apolline prophet whom we have traced through about seven centuries. In so far as Virgil envisaged the earthly parentage of this child it may be readily admitted that he thought of Octavian, to whom might be attributed the very possibility of this Golden Age. The address to Follio may, as has often been suggested, refer to the hope of a rapprochement between Octavian and Antony during his time of office, and so to a further union of Apolline and Dionysiac religion. Most of the other features of the poem, and its general stru.ture, require no further explanation than that given by ProfeBsor Rose (op.cit. p. 167ff.) who would connect it with rhetorical or poetical forms of birthday or marriage tributes.In the Roman cult of Apollo, therefore, we have traced the continuation of the search for an Apolline prophet, and also, the development among the Romans of the idea of prophecy and of the providential government of the world. Through the Sibylline Books and the ideas therewith associated, the Romans grew to recognise not merely the idea of Spontaneous and casual prophecy, but of a controlled and controlling "fatum" in relation to which their own efforts had their place.In the cult of Apollo Medicus and Aesculapius we have discerned some of the Romans' own progress in the understanding of health and healing. It has also become clear that they did not receive in this respect all that the Greek civilisation could offer, and that we have been the poorer for what they could not transmit. The influence, however, of the traditions of religious healing which the Romans were able to accept has been traced asfaras the Christian era, and some estimate of its contribution tt Christian thought and action has been attempted.It would appear that, in general, the history of Apolline religion was that of a constant striving to express in practice a spiritual ideal, or to find someone capable of such expression. Most, however, of Roman, if not of Greek, religion was in essentials the reverse of this, namely an attempt to spiritualize practical expedients. If Christianity finally proved to have a greater appeal in the ancient world than the religion of Apollo, it was mainly because it seemed able to provide this long -sought expression of spiritual values. Apolline religion pre- :pared the way, however feebly, for this development in the Hellenistic and Roman world, but, as we have tried to show, there were two conflicting lines of influence operative upon the development of the Roman cult of Apollo. These we have called the Etruscan and the Greek spirit in religion, realising, however, that they cannot be completely dis- :tinguished at any period. The influence and effects which we are concerned to trace here, and those which have proved their validity in relation to subsequent religious progress, belong mainly to the heritage derived by the Romans from the Greek world.It seems that the spiritual quest which we have detected in Apolline religion is, in some form, an essential preparation for the acceptance of Christianity. In so far as later generations have missed such necessary preparation, their understanding of Christian doctrine has been the weaker. .ë:aui the time of the early Christian Fathers, the Church has also borrowed freely from the other side of Roman religious tradition which we have traced ul- :timately to Etruria. ':There this has taken place, it has often resulted in obscuring, perhaps only temporarily, the broader, freer enlightenment associated with Apollo. To that extent have we, like many former generations, been deprived of one of the fundamental conditions of a higher spiritual development, a condition which, with our present meagre spiritual equipment, it is difficult otherwise to attain

William, an Englishman (1919) and the Collapse of Cicely Hamilton’s Pre-war Meliorism

William, an Englishman is a novel written in a tent near the French front by a ‘non-combatant’: the wartime volunteer nurse, postal overseer and theatrical performer Cicely Hamilton. A well-known playwright, actress, suffrage militant, polemical essayist before the conflict, Hamilton, nowadays largely overlooked, performed here a post-mortem exploration of some influential attitudes which were transformed by the experience of war. Coming from someone who had been particularly active on the British radical scene, the text’s denunciation of social progress, pacifism, internationalism, and even votes for women as naive ideals may appear unexpected. She drew from long personal knowledge as well as contemporary documentation to write a novel that, while not untouched by sympathy for her characters, is often brutal. The collapse of Hamilton’s previous political optimism, her (self-ironical) criticism of any belief in the perfectibility of human beings may come as a shock even today. But those familiar with Senlis (1917) might have anticipated Hamilton’s sombre 1919 text. ‘Modern warfare is so monstrous, allengrossing and complex, that there is a sense, and a very real sense, in which hardly a civilian stands outside it; where the strife is to the death with an equal opponent the non-combatant ceases to exist.’ The abuse and strategic bombing of civilian populations, the collapse of former distinctions between combatants and non-combatants, the mobilization of almost entire nations were early on denounced by the writer. ‘No modern nation could fight for its life with its men in uniform only; it must mobilize, nominally or not, every class of its population for a struggle, too great and too deadly for the combatant to carry alone.’ (Senlis 34) Her discerning eye read the Great War for what it was: a conflict which was leaving no domain of social, economic and political life unsullied, a total war.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

Comparative Study of Asymmetry Origin of Galaxies in Different Environments. II. Near-Infrared observations

In this second paper of two analyses, we present near-infrared (NIR) morphological and asymmetry studies performed in sample of 92 galaxies found in different density environments: galaxies in Compact Groups (HCGs), Isolated Pairs of Galaxies (KPGs), and Isolated Galaxies (KIGs). Both studies have proved useful for identifying the effect of interactions on galaxies. In the NIR, the properties of the galaxies in HCGs, KPGs, and KIGs are more similar than they are in the optical. This is because the NIR band traces the older stellar populations, which formed earlier and are more relaxed than the younger populations. However, we found asymmetries related to interactions in both KPG and HCG samples. In HCGs, the fraction of asymmetric galaxies is even higher than what we found in the optical. In the KPGs the interactions look like very recent events, while in the HCGs galaxies are more morphologically evolved and show properties suggesting they suffered more frequent interactions. The key difference seems to be the absence of star formation in the HCGs; while interactions produce intense star formation in the KPGs, we do not see this effect in the HCGs. This is consistent with the dry merger hypothesis (Coziol & Plauchu-Frayn 2007); the interaction between galaxies in compact groups, (CGs), is happening without the presence of gas. If the gas was spent in stellar formation (to build the bulge of the numerous early-type galaxies), then the HCGs possibly started interacting sometime before the KPGs. On the other hand, the dry interaction condition in CGs suggests that the galaxies are on merging orbits, and consequently such system cannot be that much older either. [abridge]Comment: 36 pages, 16 figures. Accepted for publication in AJ: corrected typos and reference