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High-Temperature Vacuum Furnace Attachment for a Standard Tensile Tester
Get PDFIn this thesis, we outline the development of a low-cost high-temperature vacuum furnace attachment for a standard tensile tester at Santa Clara University. The project aims to expand the material testing capabilities of the university, promoting sustainability and enhancing safety in engineering applications. By focusing on design considerations, manufacturability, and economic viability, the team strives to create an accessible and efficient tool for advancing materials science research.
The initial phase of this multi-year project involves constructing a water-cooled vacuum chamber, which is crucial for the overall furnace system. This phase sets the foundation for subsequent developments, including the integration of a high-temperature heating system capable of reaching up to 2000 °C and the development of a sophisticated control interface for precise temperature regulation and data acquisition. We aim for this attachment to increase accessibility of materials testing under extreme conditions, providing valuable insights into material behavior and advancing research opportunities in material science. The project emphasizes a phased development approach to ensure long-term success and scalability, benefiting researchers, students, and the broader scientific community
Visio Divina with the Art of Fra Angelico as Mental Pilgrimage: A Way of Beauty and Perfection
No full textThroughout Church history, artists have created beautiful works of sacred art that attracted Christians to contemplate the Supreme Beauty who is God himself. Scripture has inspired visual artists to translate these revealed words of God into images that help to enter prayer. This study explores how the steps of lectio divina, a divine reading of scripture, can be applied to visio divina, a divine gazing on sacred art. To my knowledge, this study is the first attempt at an academic and systematic presentation of visio divina based on the traditional steps of lectio divina.
Although this visio divina can be done with many different works of sacred art we focus on how the sacred art of Fra Angelico (1390-1455) can be used as a map on a mental pilgrimage toward contemplation of God and imitation of his holiness. Fra Angelico is a fitting guide on this spiritual journey because of the beauty of his art that draws one into the ineffable beauty of the Christian mystery he strove to depict. As a priest in the Order of Preachers, Fra Angelico was a preacher who traveled often on the path of prayer and translated this contemplation into his paintings. I am interested in showing a historical continuity rather than rupture by finding similarities between how his art was used as an adjunct to meditation and worship in his own time (in a monastic context) and in today’s world. To understand Fra Angelico, we need to understand his context but to present the timeless beauty of the mysteries he depicted we need to make these truths accessible to men and women today. I will do so through an interdisciplinary approach that brings together iconography, theology, and ethnography
Was Job Righteous or Self-Righteous? Job 1 and the Reliability of the Narrator
No full textThe Book of Job has generated pages and pages of discussion over its meaning, ranging from the overall meaning of the book to the meaning of one specific word. New ways and methods to analyze the Book of Job have opened new possibilities to understand and apply the teachings in the contemporary world. Nevertheless, one of the most accepted facts is that Job is innocent.
In literary studies an unreliable narrator is one whose credibility is compromised. An unreliable narrator will lie, deceive or exaggerate the facts of a story to push their own agenda or interpretation. Even though the concept of an unreliable narrator is relatively new, this concept could be applied to older works, especially those - such as Job - that have had a redaction history and that try to provide a unified message after it has been edited from previous sources.
When looking at the dialogues between Job and his friends we find discrepancies in the way Job is described. While Job stands firm that he is innocent and has been blessed by God and been a blessing to all, his friends accuse him of serious crimes. The prologue takes Job’s side and is described by the narrator and God as the epitome of human righteousness. The discrepancies between descriptions open the book to be analyzed using the figure of the unreliable narrator.
I propose that the author of the prologue-epilogue tried to provide a definitive answer to the question of the suffering of the innocent, but ultimately there was no answer in their time other than accepting retributive justice. The author, through brilliant use of literary devices, wrote the prologue-epilogue from an unreliable narrator’s point of view, advocating retribution theology while leaving clues to alert a keen-eyed reader that the “truths” presented by the narrator had to be taken with a grain of salt, thereby preserving the polyphonic voices of the dialogues.
After looking at the evidence that points to the prologue being unreliable, the final section will explore the consequences of an unreliable narrator, as well as conclusions and future avenues of investigation
Looking for Hope in America: Catholic Voices Pilgrimaging Across the Secular Void
Get PDFSecular forces have thoroughly altered the conditions for belief. This thesis explores how three American Catholic novels astutely and soberly reflect how these secularizing forces shape us while offering a hopeful response grounded in Christian wisdom. Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, Walker Percy’s Love in the Ruins, and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, each depicting desperate souls seeking hope on the roads of a pilgrimage, move from loss to discovery, from sin to redemption, from the dying gray ash-heap to life guided by the light of new fires. When read together, their voices share strikingly similar concerns even as they offer fascinatingly contrasting views of how we might move forward in hope.
This project relies heavily on the philosophical work of Charles Taylor, but also incorporates various sociological, historical, and theological voices as a means of fully entering into the world of these novels. Like Taylor, these novels do not count secularity as a total loss, even as each acknowledges that something has ruptured in the culture and in our selves—a modern malaise, a disorientation, a diminishment. Taken together, the novels offer a pluralism of responses to this cultural shift, itself a testament to the many ways of being Catholic in this new secular epoch. And yet each summons a similar story of hope that offers fresh perspectives on ancient faith: a sacramental imagination to break through the altar of rationalism, a plea for true community to counter our rampant, lonely individualism, and a fervent belief in redemption, that is, an expression of our desire for holiness amidst our sin and despair. Each novel also invites us to find our own story in their pages so that we too might recognize how we have been shaped by secularity and still seek a way forward with hopeful hearts
Self-diffusiophoretic propulsion of a spheroidal particle in a shear-thinning fluid
No full textShear-thinning viscosity is a non-Newtonian behaviour that active particles often encounter in biological fluids such as blood and mucus. The fundamental question of how this ubiquitous non-Newtonian rheology affects the propulsion of active particles has attracted substantial interest. In particular, spherical Janus particles driven by self-diffusiophoresis, a major physico-chemical propulsion mechanism of synthetic active particles, were shown to always swim slower in a shear-thinning fluid than in a Newtonian fluid. In this work, we move beyond the spherical limit to examine the effect of particle eccentricity on self-diffusiophoretic propulsion in a shear-thinning fluid. We use a combination of asymptotic analysis and numerical simulations to show that shear-thinning rheology can enhance self-diffusiophoretic propulsion of a spheroidal particle, in stark contrast to previous findings for the spherical case. A systematic characterization of the dependence of the propulsion speed on the particle\u27s active surface coverage has also uncovered an intriguing feature associated with the propulsion speeds of a pair of complementarily coated particles not previously reported. Symmetry arguments are presented to elucidate how this new feature emerges as a combined effect of anisotropy of the spheroidal geometry and nonlinearity in fluid rheology
A Ful Vicious Author: Examining J. K. Rowling\u27s Transphobia through Her Framing of Chaucer\u27s Pardoner\u27s Tale
Get PDFWhen J. K. Rowling uses Chaucer\u27s Pardoner\u27s Tale as her source text for The Tale of the Three Brothers, she also incorporates Chaucer\u27s frame, which questions whether a vicious storyteller can tell a moral tale. Rowling\u27s use of this frame both signals that her characters may not be trustworthy and gives readers a lens for analyzing her transphobic messaging. Moreover, since the Pardoner is a queer (and possibly trans) character, embedding him within her text ultimately undermines her public transphobic statements. Additionally, we should look to the trans and nonbinary communities to guide us as we critically engage with Rowling\u27s work going forward
The Rule of the Association and Related Texts
No full textThis book provides text, translation, and commentary on 1QS (Serekh ha-Yahad), 1QSa (Rule of the Congregation), 1QSb (Scroll of Blessings), and related fragmentary texts: 1Q29a, 4QSa–j, 5Q11, and 11Q29. It also provides introductions to 1QS, 1QSa, 1QSb, and to the related fragments from Caves 1, 4, 5, and 11. Each of the fragmentary manuscripts is presented in full and analyzed in its own right, and not treated simply as variants of 1QS. The entity for which the Rule was written (the yahad) is called an “association” rather than a “community,” because it assumes that members have multiple settlements, not just one at Qumran. The commentary recognizes, however, that a special group is set aside within the association, to go into the desert to pursue a higher degree of holiness. The introduction to 1QS attempts to locate this association in the context of ancient Judaism, and also pays attention to the broader cultural context, by noting the phenomenon of voluntary associations in the Hellenistic world and the influence of Zoroastrian dualism on the doctrine of two spirits of light and darkness in 1QS 3–4. The commentary engages the full range of scholarship on the Rule and provides a comprehensive bibliography.https://scholarcommons.scu.edu/faculty_books/1629/thumbnail.jp
The Palgrave Handbook of Everyday Digital Life
No full textThis comprehensive Handbook explores the multiple ways in which people experience digital life. It maps the transitions in human civilization generated by such digital technologies as the internet, mobile telephony, artificial intelligence, the metaverse, social media platforms and algorithms. It explores how the scarcity or abundance of digital affordances impacts access, governance and livelihoods in various parts of the world. The book’s 27 chapters are organised in five sections: Social Media and Digital Lifeworlds; Digital Affordances and Contestations; Digital Divides and Inclusion Strategies; Work, Culture and Digital Consumption, and New Media and Digital Journalism. The present and future of digital transitions are interrogated in the context of everyday social production and consumption.https://scholarcommons.scu.edu/faculty_books/1638/thumbnail.jp
The Art and Science of Mindfulness: Integrating Mindfulness Into the Helping Professions (3rd Edition)
No full textNow in its third edition, The Art and Science of Mindfulness offers a deeper understanding of the concept of mindfulness and explores its potential as a core clinical skill and a way to increase the well-being of both clients and clinicians.
Mindfulness helps us to see clearly so that we can make choices grounded in reality and respond to life with wisdom. However, seeing clearly is difficult because the lens through which we view the world is blurred by our parents, teachers, relationships, and society, and they influence our perceptions on conscious and subconscious levels. Practicing mindfulness helps us remove the filters, biases, and preconceived ideas that shape our perceptions and cloud our consciousness. At the deepest level, mindfulness is about freedom: freedom from reflexive patterns, freedom from reactivity, and, ultimately, freedom from suffering.
This book navigates how mindful awareness is fundamental to the therapy process, and shows how mindful practice can help therapists and clients cultivate and connect with this deeper awareness. It also aims to present mindfulness as: an important dimension of clinical training with unique contributions toward fostering attention, empathy, presence, and awareness of our own biases and assumptions; an empirically supported clinical intervention effective across a wide range of populations; a means of fostering self-reflection and self-care for clinicians; and a way to expand the profession\u27s focus on pathology to include positive growth and development.
New to this edition is a comprehensive overview of the evidence supporting the neurochemical basis of intention, attention, and attitude; a discussion of implicit bias and how it interferes with connecting mindfully with clients; a discussion of new mindfulness-based interventions and ways to apply mindfulness in therapy, and more.https://scholarcommons.scu.edu/faculty_books/1645/thumbnail.jp
