803 research outputs found
A study of the issues surrounding the understanding of historic military artefacts as primary source documents with particular emphasis on the sword
No full textLire désespérément… W.G. Sebald
Full text linkDans la foulée d’Évelyne Grossman et de sa réflexion sur « la paradoxale vitalité de la négativité dépressive » (L’angoisse de penser, 2008), cet article envisage l’exploration littéraire de la négativité et de la dépossession de soi, caractéristique d’une certaine modernité que l’on peut faire remonter à Mallarmé, en tant qu’elle peut fonctionner, pour le lecteur, à la manière d’un antidépresseur paradoxal. Questionnant d’abord de façon générale certaines conceptions « sublimantes », réparatrices ou rédemptrices de la littérature (Leo Bersani) et la prégnance des modèles platoniciens et aristotéliciens de la création comme pharmakon, l’auteure tente ensuite de cerner plus spécifiquement, à partir de l’oeuvre de l’écrivain allemand W.G. Sebald, le caractère tout à la fois anxiogène et libérateur de la symbolisation de la perte en littérature.Following Évelyne Grossman and her developments about the “paradoxical vitality of depressive negativity” (L’angoisse de penser, 2008), this article addresses the literary exploration of negativity and self-deprivation, characteristic of a certain modernity one can retrace up to Mallarmé, and proposes that it can function, for the reader, as a paradoxical antidepressant. Questioning at first more generally the current sublimating conceptions of literature and the impregnation of the platonician and aristotelian models of creation as pharmakon, the author seeks then to embrace more precisely, on the basis of the works by German writer W.G. Sebald, the all-together anguishing and liberating effect of the symbolization of loss in literature
Response of granular media near the jamming transition
Full text linkMany disordered materials display a so-called jamming transition between solid-like and fluid-like states. In this thesis, we investigate jamming in granular media by studying granular packings at various distances from the transition. In numerical model systems of spherical particles, the jamming transition has many features of a critical transition. Using the linear response of such packings to external perturbations, we shed new light on their critical behavior. We analyze various scaling relations in terms of the non-affine deformations of the packing, and identify a diverging length scale that determines beyond what scale these systems can be treated as a continuum. This length scale and various other properties are determined primarily by the number of contacts between grains in the system. In the second half of the thesis we investigate force networks in granular media using the recently developed Force Network Ensemble. We discuss the analytical properties of the ensemble, and apply it to study granular media under shear stress, identifying upper bounds on the shear stress that cohesionless granular media can sustain.Stichting voor Fundamenteel Onderzoek der Materie (FOM)UBL - phd migration 201
Rigidity percolation on the square lattice
No full textThe square lattice with central forces between nearest neighbors is isostatic with a subextensive number of floppy modes. It can be made rigid by the random addition of next-nearest-neighbor bonds. This constitutes a rigidity percolation transition which we study analytically by mapping it to a connectivity problem of two-colored random graphs. We derive an exact recurrence equation for the probability of having a rigid percolating cluster and solve it in the infinite volume limit. From this solution we obtain the rigidity threshold as a function of system size, and find that, in the thermodynamic limit, there is a mixed first-order–second-order rigidity percolation transition at the isostatic point
Traces of trauma in W.G. Sebald and Christoph Ransmayr
No full textBoth W.G. Sebald (1944-2001) and the Austrian author Christoph Ransmayr (1954-) were born too late to know directly the violence of the Second World War and the Holocaust, but these traumatic events are a persistent presence in their work. In a series of close readings of key prose texts, Dora Osborne examines the different ways in which the traces of a traumatic past mark their narratives. By focusing on the authors' use of visual and topographical tropes, she shows how blind spots and inhospitable places configure signs of past violence, but, ultimately, resist our understanding. Whilst links between the two authors are well-documented, this book offers the first full-length study of Sebald and Ransmayr and their complicated relation to the traumatic traces of National Socialism. - from book cover
Röntgenografisch onderzoek van aluminiumkristallen, ontstaan door rekristallisatie
No full textApplied Science
Stability of jammed packings I : the rigidity length scale
No full textIn 2005, Wyart et al. (Europhys. Lett., 72 (2005) 486) showed that the low frequency vibrational properties of jammed amorphous sphere packings can be understood in terms of a length scale, called l*, that diverges as the system becomes marginally unstable. Despite the tremendous success of this theory, it has been difficult to connect the counting argument that defines l* to other length scales that diverge near the jamming transition. We present an alternate derivation of l* based on the onset of rigidity. This phenomenological approach reveals the physical mechanism underlying the length scale and is relevant to a range of systems for which the original argument breaks down. It also allows us to present the first direct numerical measurement of l*
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