Thomas Pynchon’s Against the Day: Adeleuzian Reading of Pynchon’s Language

his study explores Pynchon’s mammoth novel, Against the Day, in terms of the minor practice of language as proposed by Deleuze and Guattari in their book Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature, which opens up new possibilities for literary criticism. With his idiosyncratic, intensive, and inventive practice of language, Pynchon shatters the already existing notions of appropriate and homogenizing forms of major language. The novel demystifies the language’s institutionalized system of signification and defies identifiable decipherable meaning in many ways, such as covert and overt deterritorialization of language, escape from “territorial” and “representational” language, defiance of signification, neutralization of sense, asyntactical language, phantasmagorical and absurd tales, quizzical jokes, silly songs, and asubjective free indirect narration. Against the Day’s practice of language prefers the territory of asubjective insignification to subjective, symbolic, and signifying usage of language so as to dismantle the territory of representation; thus, it pushes the major language towards or even out of its limits

Pynchon’s Against the Day: Bilocation, Duplication, and Differential Repetition

In Against the Day, Pynchon is obsessed with twoness, double worlds, as well as dual realities, and like Deleuze’s concept of repetition, these duplications and twinships are not merely repetition of the same, rather they allow for creativity, reinvention, and becoming. Pynchon’s duplication of fictional and spectral characters intends to critique the notion of identity as does Deleuzian concept of repetition. Not attached to the representational concept of identity as the recurrence of the same, Pynchon’s duplications decenter the transcendental concept in favor of a perpetual becoming and reproduces difference and singularity. Like Deleuze, Pynchon eschews an identity that is always guaranteed, and shows that the repetition of an object or a subject is not the recurrence of the original self-identical object or person. Moreover, Iceland spar, the mystifying calcite, with its doubling effect provides the reader with a view of a world beyond the ordinary, actual world, which is quite similar to what Pynchon’s novel does per se

The Landau–Levich Problem for a Uniaxial Nematic Liquid Crystal

Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate UniversityDoctor of PhilosophyThis thesis considers numerical simulation and experimental measurement of a dipcoating process with nematic liquid crystals. In the first part of the thesis, we consider the specialization of Ericksen–Leslie theory for dip-coating of a plate withdrawn from a liquid crystal reservoir and introduce a numerical algorithm for solving the free surface flow of nematic liquid crystals. We study the most significant features of the flow, such as the stagnation point location and the liquid crystal film thickness systematically against the controlling parameters. Our results give significant insight into the role of bulk elasticity and surface anchoring energy on the nematic liquid crystal film thickness in the dip-coating process. Depending on the interplay between bulk elasticity and viscous forces viscoelastic and viscous regimes are identified. At low plate velocities where the viscous and elastic forces remain in the same order of magnitude, both viscous stresses and bulk elasticity control the nematic liquid crystal film thickness. In this regime, the elastic forces in bulk result in a film-thinning behavior and resist the entrainment of the liquid with the plate. On the other hand, increasing the plate velocity results in the domination of viscous forces over the elastic and capillary forces. In this regime, the liquid crystal film thickness converges to the predictions for Newtonian liquids. In the second part of the thesis, we experimentally measure the liquid crystal film thickness to validate the predictions from the numerical simulations. The experimental measurements confirm the predicted viscoelastic and viscous regimes and the threshold for the plate velocity where the transition occurs.doctoral thesi

The Effect of Stress Management Teaching Skills to Reduce Student’s Avoidance Coping Style

This study determined the effectiveness of stress management teaching skills in order to reduce student’s avoidance coping style and negative attribution, as well as promotion of mental health among female students in Arak city during 2011-2012school years. This research applied quasi-experimental– descriptive method and a pre-test - post-test with control group. Statistics population included high school girls in Arak city. Among them, 16 students who obtained optimum score from general health questionnaire(GHQ 28) were selected as the sample and then they were randomly divided into two experimental and control groups with 8students.Experimental group learnt skills of stress management during 10 sessions (90 minutes for each session) and at the end of the sessions, the post-test was conducted on both groups. Results were analyzed by ANCOVA and it showed that skills of stress management teaching could be effective in reducing the students’ avoidance coping styles and negative attribution, as well as promotion of mental health among female students

The Effect of Stress Management Teaching Skills to Reduce Student’s Avoidance Coping Style

This study determined the effectiveness of stress management teaching skills in order to reduce student’s avoidance coping style and negative attribution, as well as promotion of mental health among female students in Arak city during 2011-2012school years. This research applied quasi-experimental– descriptive method and a pre-test - post-test with control group. Statistics population included high school girls in Arak city. Among them, 16 students who obtained optimum score from general health questionnaire(GHQ 28) were selected as the sample and then they were randomly divided into two experimental and control groups with 8students.Experimental group learnt skills of stress management during 10 sessions (90 minutes for each session) and at the end of the sessions, the post-test was conducted on both groups. Results were analyzed by ANCOVA and it showed that skills of stress management teaching could be effective in reducing the students’ avoidance coping styles and negative attribution, as well as promotion of mental health among female students

A statistical study of the luminosity gap in galaxy groups

The luminosity gap between the two brightest members of galaxy groups and clusters is thought to offer a strong test for the models of galaxy formation and evolution. This study focuses on the statistics of the luminosity gap in galaxy groups, in particular fossil groups, e.g. large luminosity gap, in an analogy with the same in a cosmological simulation. We use spectroscopic legacy data of seventh data release (DR7) of SDSS, to extract a volume limited sample of galaxy groups utilizing modified friends-of-friends (mFoF) algorithm. Attention is paid to galaxy groups with the brightest group galaxy (BGG) more luminous than \Mr = -22. An initial sample of 620 groups in which 109 optical fossil groups, where the luminosity gap exceeds 2 magnitude, were identified. We compare the statistics of the luminosity gap in galaxy groups at low mass range from the SDSS with the same in the Millennium simulations where galaxies are modeled semi-analytically. We show that the BGGs residing in galaxy groups with large luminosity gap, i.e. fossil groups, are on average brighter and live in lower mass halos with respect to their counter parts in non-fossil systems. Although low mass galaxy groups are thought to have recently formed, we show that in galaxy groups with 15 galaxies brighter than $M_r\ge -19.5$, evolutionary process are most likely to be responsible for the large luminosity gap. We also examine a new probe of finding fossil group. In addition we extend the recently introduced observational probe based on the luminosity gap, the butterfly diagram, to galaxy groups and study the probe as a function of halo mass. This probe can, in conjunction with the luminosity function, help to fine tune the semi-analytic models of galaxies employed in the cosmological simulations.Comment: 11 pages, 11 figures, accepted to PASP journa

AN ANALYSIS OF THE CAUSES OF MARKET DEMAND IN THE IRANIAN VOLLEYBALL SUPER LEAGUE, OF THE AUDIENCE AND EXPERTS IN SPORTS MANAGEMENT

The purpose of this study was to analyse the causes of market demand in the Iranian Volleyball Super League, of the audience and experts in sports management. The study, in terms of how to collect data was a descriptive survey done in terms of purpose that field. The sample consisted of Premier League crowd of 340 is volleyball and sports management experts. To collect data a standard questionnaire Bion and colleagues (2010) was used. The questionnaire comprised 17 questions on a Likert scale of five components market demand. For data analysis was used LISREL, a structural equation modelling software. The results showed that, in order to promote factors, the opposing team, economic considerations, planning and other team in the Premier League volleyball are the most important factors of demand. It is suggested planners and organizers policies and actions based on the priorities set, to see the audience's presence increasing in our Volleyball League.  Article visualizations

IDENTIFYING PRIORITIZATION AND COMPARING THE FACTORS OF CREATING DEMAND IN THE PREMIER LEAGUE OF VOLLEYBALL

The aim of this study is to identify Prioritization and compare the factors of creating demand in the Premier League volleyball. The study, in terms of how data were collected, was a descriptive survey. The sample consisted on 340 members of Premier League of volleyball and sports management experts. To collect data from field, a standard questionnaire Bion and colleagues (2010) was used, questionnaire with 17 questions on a Likert scale of five components that measures market demand. For data analysis, descriptive and inferential statistics (Kolmogorov-Smirnov test, Friedman test and independent t-test) with the help of software SPSS (version 18) was used. The results showed that, in order to promote factors, the opposing team, economic considerations, planning and other team are the most important factors of demand in the Premier League volleyball. It is recommended a planning of organizing policies and an adjustment of their actions based on the Prioritization of volleyball using marketing efforts of qualified personnel or consultants in order to see a growing presence of spectators in the Premier League Volleyball.  Article visualizations