27 research outputs found
Design and preliminary testing of a rotary internal combustion engine
No full textWith the advent of legislation against pollution, and rising wage, manufacturing, and materials costs, the prime mover industry is presently intent on developing new economical, non-polluting methods of power. It was the hope of the author that the engine described herein would provide an advancement towards meeting the new requirements. The design and resulting prototype is an eight cylinder rotary internal combustion engine, weighing approximately sixty pounds, and operating on the tour stroke principle. Theoretical calculations were made to determine ideal horsepower, mean effective pressure, and efficiency. Ideal horsepower ranged from 38.7 to 62.8. A dynamic analysis of the pistons indicates that, neglecting external loads and friction forces, they caused no net work on the system. Initial testing of the prototype with combustion occurring indicated conceptual feasibility and good cycle characteristics, although poor sealing caused the compression ratio to be too low for sustained operation. With proper seals, the engine\u27s performance should approach the calculated values --Abstract, page ii
Optimal experimental design applied to DC resistivity problems
No full textThesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences, 2008.This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections.Includes bibliographical references (p. 317-323).The systematic design of experiments to optimally query physical systems through manipulation of the data acquisition strategy is termed optimal experimental design (OED). This dissertation introduces the state-of-the-art in OED theory and presents a new design methodology, which is demonstrated by application to DC resistivity problems. The primary goal is to minimize inversion model errors and uncertainties, where the inversion is approached via nonlinear least squares with L1 smoothness constraints. An equally important goal is to find ways to expedite experimental design to make it practical for a wider variety of surveying situations than is currently possible.A fast, sequential ED strategy is introduced that designs surveys accumulatively by an efficient method that maximizes the determinant of the Jacobian matrix. An analysis of electrode geometries for multielectrode data acquisition systems reveals that experiment-space can be usefully decimated by using special subsets of observations, reducing design CPU times. Several techniques for decimating model-space are also considered that reduce design times.A law of diminishing returns is observed; compact, information-dense designed surveys produce smaller model errors than comparably sized random and standard surveys, but as the number of observations increases the utility of designing surveys diminishes. Hence, the prime advantage of OED is its ability to generate small, high-quality surveys whose data are superior for inversion.Designed experiments are examined in a Monte Carlo framework, compared with standard and random experiments on 1D, 2D and borehole DC resistivity problems in both noiseless and noisy data scenarios and for homogeneous and heterogeneous earth models. Adaptive methods are also investigated, where surveys are specifically tailored to a heterogeneous target in real time or in a two-stage process.(cont) The main contributions this thesis makes to geophysical inverse theory are: 1) a fast method of OED that minimizes a measure of total parameter uncertainty; 2) novel techniques of experiment-space and model-space decimation that expedite design times; 3) new methods of adaptive OED that tailor surveys to specific targets; and 4) though the OED method is demonstrated on geoelectrical problems, it can be applied to any inverse problem where the user controls data acquisition.by Darrell A. Coles.Ph.D
When Winter Come: The Ascension of York
No full textA sequel to the award-winning Buffalo Dance, Frank X Walker’s When Winter Come: The Ascension of York is a dramatic reimagining of Lewis and Clark’s legendary exploration of the American West. By focusing on the humanity and struggles of York, Clark’s slave, When Winter Come challenges conventional views of the journey’s heroes and exposes the deeds, both great and ghastly, of the men behind the myth.
Grounded in the history of the famous trip, Walker’s vibrant account allows York—little more than a forgotten footnote in traditional narratives—to embody the full range of human ability, knowledge, emotion, and experience. He is a skillful hunter who kills his prey with both grace and reverence, and he thinks deeply about the proper place of humans in the natural world. York knows the seasons “like a book,” and he “can read moss, sunsets, the moon, and a mare’s foaling time with a touch.” The Native peoples understand and honor York’s innate bond with the earth. Though his expertise is integral to the journey’s success, York’s masters do not reward him; they know only the way of the lash.
The alternately heartbreaking and uplifting poems in When Winter Come are told from multiple perspectives and rendered in vivid detail. On the journey, York forges a spiritual connection and shares sensual delights with a Nez Perce woman, and he aches when he is forced to leave her and their unborn son. Walker’s poems capture the profound feelings of love and loss on each side of this ill-fated meeting of souls. When the trek ends and York is sent back to his former home, his wife and stepmother air their joys and grievances.
As the perspectives of Lewis, Clark, Sacagawea, and others in the party emerge, Walker also gives voice to York’s knife, his hunting shirt, and the river waters that have borne the labors and travels of thousands before and after the Lewis and Clark expedition. Despite fleeting hints that escape is possible, slavery continues to bind York and quell the joyful noise in his spirit until his death. Walker’s poems, however, give York his voice after centuries of silence. When Winter Come exalts the historical persona of a slave and lifts the soul of a man. York ascends out of his chains, out of oblivion, and into flight.
Frank X Walker is the author of Black Box, Buffalo Dance: The Journey of York, and Affrilachia. The recipient of a 2005 Lannan Literary Fellowship, the Lillian Smith Book Award, and the Thomas D. Clark Award for Literary Excellence, Walker is Writer-in-Residence at Northern Kentucky University and associate professor of English at the University of Kentucky.
“When Winter Come is an astonishing collection of poems that ushers Frank X Walker into the company of other memorable poets like Roethke, Hugo, Clifton, and Dove but he also recollects the powerful narrative voice of Michael Ondaatje’s Coming Through Slaughter or Alice Walker’s The Color Purple. Frank X Walker magically captures York, not the flat historical figure represented in Lewis & Clark’s journals—Walker has tapped into the true voice of York and conjured him on the page. This is not just a book of poems—this is a book of spirits and shimmering apparitions.”--Debra Magpie Earling, author of Perma Red
“Beginning with Buffalo Dance and continuing with the groundbreaking When Winter Come, Frank X. Walker\u27s lyrical and stunning resurrection of York is an unparalleled creative discourse. The poet, in stanzas probing and revelatory, opens the slave\u27s life wide, not examining York as much as inhabiting him, laying bare the complications, frailties and triumphs that history dims and denies. There is much here that we do not know, and we are blessed that it is Walker who has taken on this chronicle of York\u27s \u27other life\u27--with the same unflinching passion, the same deft characterization and the same undeniable courage.”—Patricia Smith, author of Teahouse of the Almighty, winner of the National Poetry Series
“I heard Walker read these poems. Now there is the delight of reading them yourself with this book. They are honest, true, raw, brilliantly conceived. An important contribution to illuminating our past and making it alive.”—Natalie Goldberg, author of Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within
The lyrical and moving poetry of Frank Walker has given York a voice and brought to life his world of slavery, adventure, love, nature, and African and Native American mythology. --James J. Holmberg, Curator of Special Collections, The Filson Historical Society
“Frank X Walker has re-imagined the story of the Lewis and Clark expedition in a way no one else has. This powerful and insightful book is more than an admirable sequel to Buffalo Dance. It is a careful re-examination of historical records, re-imagined and conjured into a concert of voices whose aim is truth. One can read When Winter Come through from beginning to end like a good novel, and then go back and savor it one poem at time. Walker has given all of us who care about American literature a lasting gift.”—Greg Pape, Montana Poet Laureate (2007-2009) and author of Sunflower Facing the Sun and Border Crossings
With characteristically fierce, driven energy, prize-winning poet Frank Walker seems to channel the powerful voice of York, a slave owned by William Clark, as well as the compelling voices of York’s Nez Perce wife, York’s brother, and Clark himself. Walker becomes a contemporary bard – thrilling us, moving us, filling us with discoveries as his remarkable poems follow the Lewis and Clark expedition from its underside. When Winter Come: The Ascension of York is Walker’s finest achievement so far.--Molly Peacock, author of Cornucopia
“This collection is a sequel to Walker’s award-winning “Buffalo Dance,” and like its predecessor is a masterful blending of history, folk narrative, myth and explorations into the mysterious nature of man and his relationship to his environment, his human pilgrimage, and even the Divine. The Lewis and Clark expedition becomes only one facet (less important at the end than at the beginning) of the journey each man and woman—and the natural worlds through which they traverse—must undergo in order to reach conclusions that lead to important ultimate truths of the heart.” --James Darrell, Bowling Green Daily News
“Walker follows the acclaimed Buffalo Dance: The Journey of York with an even more engaging account of a woefully neglected historical figure whose indispensible work with Lewis and Clark’s Expedition of Discovery wasn’t compensated at all.” --Todd Mercer,Foreword Magazine
“Affrilachian innovator and Lannan Fellow Frank X. Walker follows the acclaimed Boffalo Dance: The Journey of York with an even more engaging account of a woefully neglected historical figure whose indispensable work with Lewis and Clark’s Expedition of Discovery wasn’t compensated at all. When Winter Come: The Ascension of York again divines the thoughts of Captain William Clark’s body servant, fleshing out the picture with the voices of York’s Nez Perce and slave wives, Sacagewea, and a deeply flawed Captain Clark who breaks an implied promise of manumission.” --Foreword Magazine
By making the erased visible, and the silenced audible, When Winter Come leads us to reconsider not only the history of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, but also how the story of geography and exploration as racialised practices can be told. --Innes M. Keighren,Scottish Geographical Journal
This is a beautiful collection of poetry and is highly recommended. --Margaret Bashaar,www.mcreview.com
“Although clearly a sequel, When Winter Come: The Ascension of York is quite a different kind of book. Obviously, it has the same subject, but it does more than extend the story of York’s life. . . . Singly and together, [Buffalo Dance and When Winter Come] are a great success: they portray the complex character of York, they enrich our understanding of an important chapter in American history, and they demonstrate the evolving art of Frank X Walker.” --William Jolliff, Appalachian Journal
Few artists from the mountains have used the hills as successfully as a springboard to something as important as poetry as Frank X Walker. --troybodyculture.blogspot.com
What Walker gives readers in this new book is not simply the voice of York . . . but a profusion of individualized voices, more then a dozen, which range fro York and William Clark to York’s father, to his father’s wife, Rose, York’s unnamed slave wife, and his Nez Perce wife, but which include inanimate objects like York’s hunting shirt, his hatchet, and his knife. -- -- John Lang -- Emory and Henry College
Frank X Walker is one of the most important voices in contemporary Appalachian poetry. --John Lang, Emory and Henry College
In his newest work, Frank X Walker not only produces a fresh harvest of voices: he does so in eloquent, poetic form. Walker gives voice to other equally important historical voices, thereby sharpens the focus on the goodness and failings of all humans, and all the while widening the lens of truth known as history. --Big Muddy
Frank X. Walker is one of the most important voice in contemporary Appalachian poetry, someone who, like the medicine man in this new volume’s “Real Medicine,” “sing[s] a healing song.” --Southern Quarterly
Walter\u27s poetry is intelligent, relatable, emotional, and engaging all at the same time. He takes regional stereotypes and shatters them, showing readers through literary devices that the Appalachian region has much more to offer than what stereotypes lead those outside the region to believe. -- The Sentinel-Echo -- Rob McDaniel -- The Sentinel-Echohttps://uknowledge.uky.edu/upk_creative_writing/1009/thumbnail.jp
Apocalypticisim in the fiction of William S. Burroughs, J.G. Ballard, and Thomas Pynchon.
No full textApocalypse should not be thought of as merely a synonym for chaos or disaster or cataclysmic upheaval; more properly we should think of disclosure, unveiling and revelation. The exact status of literary apocalyptic is the subject of some debate, and in an attempt to help clarify matters an introductory historical survey examines both the formal characteristics of apocalypse and the various critical positions taken in regard to the genre's social influence. Texts considered in the chapter include the Revelation of John and Thomas Pynchon's short story Entropy (1959); theoretical works by Frank Kermode, John Barth, and Jean Baudrillard (amongst others) are also discussed. Chapter One traces the development of William S. Burroughs's apocalyptic sensibility through readings of his correspondence with Allen Ginsberg and the novel The Naked Lunch (1959); the latter's apocalyptic title referring to the "frozen moment when everyone sees what is on the end of every fork". Chapter Two considers Burroughs's experiments with the "cut-ups" and their application in a number of texts, most notably Nova Express (1964). Chapter Three is concerned with Burroughs's work in the 1970s and 80s, and specifically his concept of Here to Go, a theory of mutability presented as a transcendental antidote to the threat of nuclear annihilation (the author's alleged misogyny and the views of radical US feminists are also taken into account). Chapters Four and Five explore the apocalyptic fiction of J. G. Ballard; topics covered include Ballard's concept of inner space, his debt to Surrealism, and the coded landscapes of his more experimental texts; in particular the "condensed novels" which comprise The Atrocity Exhibition (1970). A concluding chapter returns to the work of Thomas Pynchon, offering a reading of Gravity's Rainbow (1973) which allows us to consider his treatment of such related themes as Paranoia, Holocaust, Apocalypse, and finally, Counterforce
Preliminary Research on a COVID-19 Test Strategy to Guide Quarantine Interval in University Students
No full textFollowing COVID-19 exposure, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) recommends a 10–14-day quarantine for asymptomatic individuals and more recently a 7-day quarantine with a negative PCR test. A university-based prospective cohort study to determine if early polymerase chain reaction (PCR) negativity predicts day 14 negativity was performed. A total of 741 asymptomatic students in quarantine was screened and 101 enrolled. Nasopharyngeal swabs were tested on days 3 or 4, 5, 7, 10, and 14, and the proportion of concordant negative results for each day versus day 14 with a two-sided 95% exact binomial confidence interval was determined. Rates of concordant negative test results were as follows: day 5 vs. day 14 = 45/50 (90%, 95% CI: 78–97%); day 7 vs. day 14 = 47/52 (90%, 95% CI: 79–97%); day 10 vs. day 14 = 48/53 (91%, 95% CI:79–97%), with no evidence of different negative rates between earlier days and day 14 by McNemar’s test, p \u3e 0.05. Overall, 14 of 90 (16%, 95% CI: 9–25%) tested positive while in quarantine, with seven initial positive tests on day 3 or 4, 5 on day 5, 2 on day 7, and none on day 10 or 14. Based on concordance rates between day 7 and 14, we anticipate that 90% (range: 79–97%) of individuals who are negative on day 7 will remain negative on day 14, providing the first direct evidence that exposed asymptomatic students ages 18–44 years in a university setting are at low risk if released from quarantine at 7 days if they have a negative PCR test prior to release. In addition, the 16% positive rate supports the ongoing need to quarantine close contacts of COVID-19 cases
Bands and statistical properties of EMS exchange rates: A Monte Carlo investigation of three target zone model
No full textModels;EMS
Iowa History and Culture : A Bibliography of Materials Published Between 1952 and 1986, 1989
No full textThis bibliography was compiled by two reference librarians, Patricia Dawson and David Hudson with the goal of making it easier of tracking down material on Iowa history and culture. This supplements the Iowa History Reference Guide published in 1952 by William Petersen
Laughter and madness in post-war American fiction
No full textTwo philosophical positions seem evident in post-war American fiction: one
realist, one anti-realist. Using the terms 'revelation' and 'apocalypse' to reflect the
former, and 'entropy' the latter, this thesis proposes that distinctions between the two
can be made by analysis of a text's treatment of the nexus between laughter and
madness.
After an Overview that identifies and defines key terms, the Introduction
considers various theoretical treatments of laughter from which its function can be
ascertained as being both to reinforce stability within social groups and to explore
new alternatives to existing modes of thought. Madness being defined as an inability
to balance the opposing forces of system and anti-system, laughter is therefore vital
to maintain sanity. The Fool emerges as a crucial figure in this process.
Chapter One explores, with reference to Heller's Catch-22, Kesey's One Flew
Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Kerouac's On The Road, the Laughter of Revelation: a
laughing relationship between a Protagonist who is trapped within the system of an
Institution and a Fool who communicates to the Protagonist (through laughter) a
means of escape. Chapter Two then discusses, with reference to Blatty's The
Exorcist, King's It, Morrison's Sula, and Nabokov's Lolita, the Laughter of
Apocalypse: a laughing relationship in which the Fool's laughter (as mockery) is
potentially destructive of both the Protagonist's sanity and the stability of the
Institution. Chapter Three explores, with reference to Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-5,
Ellis's American Psycho, and Heller's Closing Time, the Laughter of Entropy: the
failure of the laughing relationship that obtains when the dialectic between Institution
(as system) and Fool (as anti-system) collapses.
The concluding remarks reflect the metafictional implications of the foregoing
analyses. It is suggested that, with the collapse of this dialectic (expressed by the
Laughter of Entropy), the traditional relationship between Author and Reader
becomes problematic
The reception of Qoheleth in a selection of rabbinic, patristic and nonconformist texts
No full textThe purpose of this thesis is to examine the reception of the text of Qoheleth in a selection of rabbinic, patristic and nonconformist literature. The differences in the act of reading, reception and response to this text in discrete
Judaic and Christian locations is examined. The source texts that are considered are Qoheleth Rabbah, Targum Qoheleth, Gregory of Nyssa's homilies and Matthew Henry's exposition on Ecclesiastes. The thesis further investigates historical and theological experiential influences on the reception of Qoheleth as portrayed by the source texts. The text of Qoheleth and its history of interpretation, and the value of
examining the reception of the text by specific readers from a variety of contexts are discussed in the first chapter. In the consecutive chapters the reception of Qoheleth by each source text is examined individually. The historical and
theological contexts of each source text are described, including literary traditions and exegetical principles.
In the detailed examination of the source texts, the textual structural challenges that Qoheleth poses and how and why
they are responded to by the author(s) of the source texts are analysed. The final chapter compares and contrasts the main issues raised by the differing readings of Qoheleth, including the identity of Solomon and the view of God, and also, the differing contextual perspectives in which the reception process took place. Finally, a brief examination of a modem reader's (Michael V Fox') reception of Qoheleth is contrasted with that of earlier readers of the text. The manner in which the potential effects of Qoheleth are actualised and the process of meaning production varies between readers, being conditioned by their historical horizon
Incomprehension or resistance? : the Markan disciples and the narrative logic of Mark 4:1—8:30
No full textThe characterization of the Markan disciples has been and continues to be the object of much scholarly reflection and speculation. For many, the Markan author’s presentation of Jesus’ disciples holds a key, if not the key, to unlocking the purpose and function of the gospel as a whole. Commentators differ as to whether the Markan disciples ultimately serve a pedagogical or polemical function, yet they are generally agreed that the disciples in Mark come off rather badly, especially when compared to their literary counterparts in Matthew, Luke, and John.
This narrative-critical study considers the characterization of the Markan disciples within the Sea Crossing movement (Mark 4:1–8:30). While commentators have, on the whole, interpreted the disciples’ negative characterization in this movement in terms of lack of faith and/or incomprehension, neither of these, nor a combination of the two, fully accounts for the severity of language leveled against the disciples by the narrator (6:52) and Jesus (8:17–18). Taking as its starting point an argument by Jeffrey B. Gibson (1986) that the harshness of Jesus’ rebuke in Mark 8:14–21 is occasioned not by the disciples’ lack of faith or incomprehension but by their active resistance to his Gentile mission, this investigation uncovers additional examples of the disciples’ resistance to Gentile mission, offering a better account of their negative portrayal within the Sea Crossing movement and helping explain many of their other failures.
In short, this study argues that in Mark 4:1–8:26, the disciples are characterized as resistant to Jesus’ Gentile mission and to their participation in that mission, the chief consequence being that they are rendered incapable of recognizing Jesus’ vocational identity as Israel’s Messiah (Thesis A). This leads to a secondary thesis, namely, that in Mark 8:27–30, Peter’s recognition of Jesus’ messianic identity indicates that the disciples have finally come to accept Jesus’ Gentile mission and their participation in it (Thesis B).
“Chapter One: Introduction” offers a selective review of scholarly treatments of the Markan disciples, which shows that few scholars attribute resistance, let alone purposeful resistance, to the disciples.
“Chapter Two: The Rhetoric of Repetition” introduces the methodological tools, concepts, and perspectives employed in the study. It includes a section on narrative criticism, which focuses upon the story-as-discoursed and the implied author and reader, and a section on Construction Grammar, a branch of cognitive linguistics founded by Charles Fillmore and further developed by Paul Danove, which focuses upon semantic and narrative frames and case frame analysis.
“Chapter Three: The Sea Crossing Movement, Mark 4:1–8:30” addresses the question of Markan structure and argues that Mark 4:1–8:30 comprises a single, unified, narrative movement, whose action and plot is oriented to the Sea of Galilee and whose most distinctive feature is the network of sea crossings that transport Jesus and his disciples back and forth between Jewish and Gentile geopolitical spaces.
Following William Freedman, “Chapter Four: The Literary Motif” introduces two criteria (frequency and avoidability) for determining objectively what constitutes a literary motif and provides the methodological basis and starting point for the analyses performed in chapters five and six.
“Chapter Five: The Sea Crossing Motif” establishes and then carries out a lengthy narrative analysis of the Sea Crossing motif, which is oriented around Mark’s use of θάλασσα (thalassa) and πλοῖον (ploion), and “Chapter Six: The Loaves Motif” does the same for The Loaves motif, oriented around Mark’s use of ἄρτος (artos).
Finally, “Chapter Seven: The Narrative Logic of the Disciples (In)comprehension” draws together all narrative, linguistic, and exegetical insights of the previous chapters and offers a single coherent reading of the Sea Crossing movement that establishes Theses A and B.
