2,845 research outputs found
The cult of St Nicholas in medieval Italy
No full textSt Nicholas was one of the most popular saints in medieval Italy. His cult attracted the attention
of popes, kings and emperors, and his shrine at Bari became an important international pilgrimage
destination. This thesis asks how the cult of St Nicholas came to be so widespread and popular in
Italy, and why the saint attracted the attention of diverse groups and individuals.
This thesis is structured around four chapters. The first demonstrates that through a
process of Latinisation the cult of St Nicholas became integrated within Italian literary traditions
and within a new spiritual era. Chapter Two reveals that this Latinisation also occurred within the
saint’s iconography. Chapters Three and Four are case studies of the cult in Puglia and Venice,
locations which claimed possession of the saint’s relics. These case studies show that the general
developments that the cult of St Nicholas underwent in Italy, identified in Chapters One and Two,
did not apply universally. Instead, the presence of the saint’s relics resulted in a different profile
of the saint in Bari and Venice. Through the process of Latinisation, the cult of St Nicholas
became updated and remained relevant for its new Italian audience; Chapters Three and Four
show alternative ways that the cult of St Nicholas gained widespread popularity.
This thesis presents for the first time an iconographical study of St Nicholas in Italian art,
which develops existing research of the saint’s Byzantine iconography. Chapter Four presents a
profile of the cult of St Nicholas in Venice in the Middle Ages, which is a significant oversight in
the literature. The thesis uses a variety of visual and textual sources, in particular fresco and
altarpiece representations, archival documents from Venice and Rome (including the Apostolic
Visitations), and under-exploited contemporary and antiquarian Venetian sources
Rapid growth of Coalescing Droplets and Observation of Fine Structures in Turbulent Flow
No full textI will present our results on size-growth dynamics of coalescing droplets in simulation of isotropic turbulent flow. In the short time limit, we observe very fast growth due to correlations of these droplets which can be related to the interaction between their inertia to turbulent advection (this work is done with colleagues at affiliations 1 \& 2). In a later part, I will describe our attempt to experimentally observe the intermittent fine structures of turbulence flow using high resolution Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) technique (this work is done with colleagues at affiliation 3)
Algebraic dynamic multilevel method for embedded discrete fracture model (F-ADM)
No full textWe present an algebraic dynamic multilevel method for multiphase flow in heterogeneous fractured porous media (F-ADM), where fractures are resolved at fine scale with an embedded discrete modelling approach. This fine-scale discrete system employs independent fine-scale computational grids for heterogeneous matrix and discrete fractures, which results in linear system sizes out of the scope of the classical simulation approaches. To reduce the computational costs, yet provide accurate solutions, on this highly resolved fine-scale mesh, F-ADM imposes independent dynamic multilevel coarse grids for both matrix and lower-dimensional discrete fractures. The fully-implicit discrete system is then mapped into this adaptive dynamic multilevel resolution for all unknowns (i.e., pressure and phase saturation). The dynamic resolution aims for resolving sharp fronts for the transport unknowns, thus constant interpolators are used to map the saturation from coarse to fine grids both in matrix and fractures. However, due to the global nature of the pressure unknowns, local multilevel basis functions for both matrix and fractures with flexible matrix-fracture coupling treatment are introduced for the pressure. The assembly of the full sets of basis functions allows for mapping the solutions up and down between any resolutions. Due to its adaptive multilevel resolution, F-ADM develops an automatic integrated framework to homogenise or explicitly represent a fracture network at a coarser level by selection of the multilevel coarse nodes in each sub-domain. Various test cases, including multiphase flow in 2D and 3D media, are studied, where only a fraction of the fine-scale grids is employed to obtain accurate nonlinear multiphase solutions. F-ADM casts a promising approach for large-scale simulation of multiphase flow in fractured media.Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.Numerical AnalysisReservoir Engineerin
Population differences in immune responses to Bacille Calmette-Guérin vaccination in infancy.
No full textBacille Calmette-Guérin (BCG) vaccination induces a marked increase in the interferon (IFN)-gamma response to Mycobacterium tuberculosis purified protein derivative (Mtb PPD) in UK adolescents, but not in Malawian adolescents. We hypothesized that Mtb PPD-induced IFN-gamma after BCG vaccination would be similar in infants from these 2 countries. Infants were vaccinated with BCG during the first 3-13 weeks of life. Three months after BCG vaccination, 51 (100%) of 51 UK infants had an IFN-gamma response to Mtb PPD, compared to 41 (53%) of 78 of Malawian infants, in whom responses varied according to their season of birth. We conclude that population differences in immune responses after BCG vaccination are observed among infants, as well as among young adults
Analysis of immune-related loci identifies 48 new susceptibility variants for multiple sclerosis
No full textUsing the ImmunoChip custom genotyping array, we analyzed 14,498 subjects with multiple sclerosis and 24,091 healthy controls for 161,311 autosomal variants and identified 135 potentially associated regions (P < 1.0 × 10−4). In a replication phase, we combined these data with previous genome-wide association study (GWAS) data from an independent 14,802 subjects with multiple sclerosis and 26,703 healthy controls. In these 80,094 individuals of European ancestry, we identified 48 new susceptibility variants (P < 5.0 × 10−8), 3 of which we found after conditioning on previously identified variants. Thus, there are now 110 established multiple sclerosis risk variants at 103 discrete loci outside of the major histocompatibility complex. With high-resolution Bayesian fine mapping, we identified five regions where one variant accounted for more than 50% of the posterior probability of association. This study enhances the catalog of multiple sclerosis risk variants and illustrates the value of fine mapping in the resolution of GWAS signals
C--H... and C--F...H--C INTERACTIONS IN THE ACETYLENE--FLUOROFORM DIMER
No full textAuthor Institution: Department of Chemistry, Eastern Illinois University, 600 Lincoln Ave.,; Charleston, IL 61920 USARotational spectra for four isotopomers of the HCCH--HCF complex have been identified by Fourier-transform microwave spectroscopy. The spectra exhibit considerable fine splittings, presumably arising from the internal motion of one or both subunits; both first- and second-order Stark effects have been observed. A fit of selected =0 and 1 components for the normal isotopomer (assigned using second-order Stark effect data) gave an rms of around 4 kHz and provided rotational constants MHz, MHz, MHz. These rotational constants and the planar moments are consistent with a structure of symmetry exhibiting C--H... and C--F...H--C interactions and are in excellent agreement with a structure obtained from optimizations at the MP2/6-311++G(2d,2p) level
The alternative within the mainstream: a critical analysis of some recent Irish films
No full textCentral to this thesis is the argument, espoused by a number o f our contemporary critics, that the success o f Angel (Neil Jordan, 1982) and My Left Foot (Jim Sheridan, 1989) resulted in a climate in which Irish filmmakers attempted to appeal to a more global market by adopting mainstream Hollywood formats at the expense o f the more experimental and socially critical cinema which had existed prior to 1987.
While primarily concerned with Irish cinema since the re-establishment o f the Film Board in 1993, the thesis sets out to investigate a number o f different strategies which Irish filmmakers have adopted in an attempt to infiltrate a market which has become totally dominated by mainstream American studio films. Its main concern is the extent to which they may be said to have successfully achieved a balance o f American style and Irish substance, in such a way that these films can be read as less definably “American” and more specifically “Irish”. Each o f the films proposed for examination is alternative, not in the classic sense o f "alternative’ or ‘counter-cinema’, but in the sense that they deviate from the more standardised approach o f much Irish cinema. The thesis is divided into two main sections
Multilevel Multiscale Method for Embedded Discrete Fracture Modeling Approach (F-MLMS)
No full textAccurate numerical simulations of multiphase flow in fractured porous media require high resolution grids to explicitly capture the effect of fractures on the flow field without using excessively up-scaled quantities (e.g., modified rock permeabilities). For field-scale applications, as the consequence of large-scale domains and many explicit fractures, the size of the (non)linear systems becomes out of the scope of the classical numerical methods. Thus, various advanced numerical methods have been introduced to reduce this computational challenge. The Embedded Discrete Fracture Model (EDFM) which employs sets of independent grids for the rock matrix and the fractures (represented as lower dimensional domains). By employing two separate grids, coupled by a transfer function, EDFM allows to avoid adapting the matrix grid to accommodate the presence of fractures. Therefore, computational complexities with respect to the fracture geometries are significantly reduced. Even after employing EDFM, the size of the systems for real-field applications is still too large to be solved accurately with classical solvers. This challenge motivates the development of Multiscale Finite Volume (MSFV) method, which is the focus of this work, as well. The MSFV method efficiently solves the pressure (flow) equations by solving it at a coarser resolution, while honoring the fine-scale heterogeneous data. Recently, an efficient MSFV method for EDFM approach (F-AMS) was developed and tested for many cases of practical interests. Even though the F-AMS was found efficient for many scenarios, its applicability is limited to only the use of 2 levels of grids (fine and coarse). For real-field applications, where there exist several millions (or billions) degrees of freedom, the construction of only 1 level of coarse grid resolution may not be sufficient. Of high interest to the community is the development of a multiscale method which allows for arbitrary number of accurate coarse resolutions. In this work, for the first time in the multiscale community, a novel multilevel multiscale finite volume method for fractured porous media (F-MLMS) is developed. F-MLMS is successfully applied to a set of synthetic 2D test cases and its performance is carefully studied. Employing a multilevel strategy becomes crucial for field-scale applications, where a single level of coarsening is not enough to reduce significantly the size of the linear systems to be solved. The use of two independent grids allows to employ different coarsening strategies for the two media. Consequently, F-MLMS represents an important step forward for the application of multiscale methods to naturally and induced fractured reservoirs, with complex fracture networks.Civil Engineering and GeosciencesGeoscience & EngineeringPetroleum Engineering and Geo-science
Towards optimal solar tracking: a dynamic programming approach
No full textThe power output of photovoltaic systems (PVS) increases with the use of effective and efficient solar tracking techniques. However, current techniques suffer from several drawbacks in their tracking policy: (i) they usually do not consider the forecasted or prevailing weather conditions; even when they do, they (ii) rely on complex closed-loop controllers and sophisticated instruments; and (iii) typically, they do not take the energy consumption of the trackers into account. In this paper, we propose a policy iteration method (along with specialized variants), which is able to calculate near-optimal trajectories for effective and efficient day-ahead solar tracking, based on weather forecasts coming from online providers. To account for the energy needs of the tracking system, the technique employs a novel and generic consumption model. Our simulations show that the proposed methods can increase the power output of a PVS considerably, when compared to standard solar tracking techniques
- …
