Archive for March, 2008
Tongues on Fire: Alternative Ways of Voicing Resistance to Normative Femininity in Nineteenth Century Victorian Literature
An important aspect of the role womanhood in the nineteenth century is voicelessness: speaking out against or communicating dissatisfaction with the patriarchal ideology which dominated womens cultural reality was not simple or easy to do. Literature by women in this era seems to respond to oppressive norms of gender by creating female characters who redirect their suppressed voices in creative and often grating but subversive ways. Jane Austens Persuasion and Charlotte Brontes Villette characterize the unappealing woman as Mary Musgrove, the whining and weak sister, and Lucy Snowe, the judgmental and standoffish school teacher. What these women characters share is a reaction to patriarchal constraints that is subversive even while it seems perverse (or, perhaps, not feminist). In fact, it is the perversity of these womens methods of resisting norms of femininity which speaks most greatly to their marginal space and their feminist impulses.
Adsorption and Reaction of Cyclohexanone (C6H10O) on Pt(111)
Adsorption of oxygen-containing cyclic hydrocarbons on transition-metal single-crystal surfaces is of considerable interest to practical heterogeneous catalytic reactions including hydrogenation/dehydrogenation, as well as hydrodeoxygenation reactions. We have investigated adsorption and reaction of cyclohexanone (C6H10O) on Pt(111) by using TPD, HREELS, AES, and LEED. The Pt(111) surface was very reactive towards chemisorbed cyclohexanone; adsorption in the monolayer was completely irreversible. We concluded that C6H10O had a barrier to decomposition below 11 kcal/mol; C6H10O decomposed to yield CO, H2O, H2 and CH4. At least some C-O bond breaking occurred during decomposition to form H2O and leave some amount of carbon on the surface after TPD. HREELS data showed that some cyclohexanone decomposition occurred below 90 K; all cyclohexanone decomposition in the monolayer occurred by 200 K. Studies of the chemistry of C6H10O on the (2×2) and (√3x√3)R30˚-Sn/Pt(111) surface alloys have been carried out and offer additional information about the adsorption and reaction of this molecule on alloyed surfaces.
Comparison of GLF23 and Weiland Models for Turbulent-Driven Toroidal Momentum Transport
Integrated modeling simulations using the GLF23 model indicate that the EB shear driven by toroidal rotation can have a significant impact upon the fusion performance of ITER [1]. The focus of this work is to advance the understanding of toroidal momentum transport by carrying out a systematic comparison of the toroidal momentum diffusivity computed by the GLF23 [2] and Weiland [3] models. The GLF23 model is used to compute toroidal momentum transport driven by ion temperature gradient (ITG) and trapped electron mode (TEM) in the quasilinear approximatin. The Weiland model, in addition to ITG/TEM toroidal momentum transport in the quasilinear approximation, includes non-linear contributions to transport such as a momentum pinch effect that is driven by the Reynolds stress. Benchmarking of both momentum transport models against experimental data is carried out with the PTRANSP code. Also, a direct comparison between GLF23 and the Weiland model is also carried out using a stand-alone code, where the parametric dependence of the momentum diffusivities can be determined in a straightforward manner. The variation of toroidal momentum transport with respect to plasma parameters such as temperature gradient, radial gradient of toroidal velocity, plasma beta, collisionality, and magnetic shear is examined. The EB flow shear that is needed to stabilize anomalous transport depends on the threshold and stiffness of the transport models.
[1] G.M. Staebler and H.E. St. John, Nucl. Fusion 46 (2006) L6.
[2] R.E. Waltz el al., Physics of Plasmas 4 (1997) 2482.
[3] J. Weiland and H. Nordman, Proc. 33rd EPS Conf. on Plasmas Physics, ECA Vol 30I, P2.186 (2006).
Ingroup Identity Moderates the Impact of Social Explanations on Prejudice: External Explanations for the Low Status of an Outgroup are not Necessarily a Good Thing
Whereas the Social Explanations Framework (Gill & Andreychik, 2007a) suggests that external explanations regarding a low status group (e.g., discrimination) will foster positive attitudes, Social Identity Theory (Tajfel & Turner, 1986) suggests that such explanations can increase prejudice. Two studies suggest that the Social Explanations Framework captures the psychology of dominant group members who are weakly identified with the dominant ingroup, whereas Social Identity Theory captures the psychology of high identifiers.
Investigation of colloidal interactions in nanoparticle
Colloidal interaction parameters such as virial coefficients or bulk modulus are traditionally measured by scattering methods. However, experimental difficulties often limit the range of applications of these methods to idealized systems. Multiple optical tweezers have also been used to study interparticle forces, but this has been limited to micron size individual particles at infinite dilution. We propose a new approach to investigate many body interactions of sub-micron colloidal particles in native suspensions with a single optical trap. Using a blinking optical trap and confocal detection of optical signals, this approach can be used to measure many body interactions in suspensions of colloidal particles in the range of tens to hundreds nanometers in size.