Eshem-Bethel and Herem-Bethel:New Evidence from Amherst Papyrus 63

The pluralism that characterized the religious life of the Jewish community at Elephantine (5th century BCE) included the veneration of Eshem-Bethel and Herem-Bethel. This contribution seeks to illuminate the identity of these gods on the basis of new evidence from the Aramaic texts in Demotic script known as papyrus Amherst 63. It shows that Eshem-Bethel and Herem-Bethel are particular manifestations of Bethel; the one in his role as fiery storm-god; the other in his capacity as sexual mate of a divine consort

The protection of high-voltage shunt capacitor banks

Bibliography: pages 86-88.The use of shunt capacitor bank equipment is essential if a utility wishes to control the flow of reactive power effectively. The most significant results stemming from this will be lower losses on the system and an increased power transfer capability. Thus it is important that the methods used to protect a shunt capacitor bank will ensure that the bank is available when required. While the more common shunt capacitor problems are related to capacitor unit failures, conditions such as bank over currents, surge voltages and harmonics can cause extended undesired conditions. Today's protection methods are able to remove a shunt capacitor bank from service before extensive damage is done, although the location of the faulty capacitor units will not be known (if this was in fact the reason for the protection tripping the bank). This thesis explores the subject of improving the protection of high-voltage shunt capacitor banks, specifically with respect to the detection of unhealthy fuseless capacitor units. An extensive literature search was carried out on the theory pertaining to the protection of shunt capacitor banks, and a model of a fuse less shunt capacitor bank was built in the laboratory to better understand the failing process of an element within a capacitor unit. The changes in the capacitor unit's current and voltage profiles, as well as those of the remaining healthy capacitor units, were monitored as an element failure was simulated (whereby the element forms a solid weld, or short circuit).Stemming from these experiments, it was found that where a bank consists of strings of units with no interconnection between the units of different strings, an element failure in a capacitor unit would cause a significant decrease in voltage across the affected unit. This voltage change could be used to identify when elements are failing in capacitor units, and the location of the unhealthy unit could also be determined. One potential method would be to have capacitor units with built-in voltage transformers attached across each element section in the unit. As element failures occur either send this information to ground level, where it can be read by a microprocessor relay device, or have a display on the outside of the capacitor unit. In the case of the change in unit current, it was found to be very small and thus had no function for detecting unhealthy capacitor units

Nanophotonics for dark materials, filters, and optical magnetism

Research on nanophotonic structures for three application areas is described, a near perfect optical absorber based on a graphene/dielectric stack, an ultraviolet bandpass filter formed with an aluminum/dielectric stack, and structures exhibiting homogenizable magnetic properties at infrared frequencies. The graphene stack can be treated as a effective, homogenized medium that can be designed to reflect little light and absorb an astoundingly high amount per unit thickness, making it an ideal dark material and providing a new avenue for photonic devices based on two-dimensional materials. Another material stack arrangement with thin layers of metal and insulator forms a multi-cavity filter that can effectively act as an ultraviolet filter without the usual sensitivity of the incident angle of the light. This is important in sensing applications where the visible part of the spectrum is to be removed, allowing detection of ultraviolet signals. Finally, achieving a magnetic material that functions at optical frequencies would be of enormous scientific and technological impact, including for imaging, sensing and optical storage applications. The challenge has been to find a guiding principle and a suitable arrangement of constituent materials. A lattice of dielectric spheres is shown to provide a legitimately homogenized material with a magnetic response. This should pave the way for experimental studies. More specifically, a graphene stack is designed, fabricated and characterized. The structure shows strong absorption of light. Spectroscopic ellipsometry is used to obtain the complex sheet conductivity of graphene. Further modeling results establish the graphene stack as the darkest optical material, with lower reflectivity and higher per-unit-length absorption than alternative light-absorbing materials. An optical bandpass filter based on a metal/dielectric structure is modeled, showing performance that is largely independent of the angle of incidence. Parametric evaluations of the reflection phase shift at the metal-dielectric interface provide insight and design information. Filter passbands in the ultraviolet (UV) through visible or longer wavelengths can be achieved by engineering the dielectric thickness and selecting a metal with an appropriate plasma frequency, as demonstrated in simulations. A lattice of suitable dielectric particles is shown to fulfill the requirements for a magnetic optical material. Using Mie theory, the microscopic origin of the magnetic response is explicitly identified as being due to the magnetic dipole resonance of an isolated sphere. This provides a design basis, and dielectric and lattice requirements with candidate dielectrics that will allow magnetic materials to be designed and fabricated for optical applications are presented