Paradoxical Fact Research Articles

On reduced models for gravity waves generated by moving bodies

In 1983, Tulin published a report proposing a framework for reducing the equations for gravity waves generated by moving bodies into a single nonlinear differential equation solvable in closed form (Proceedings of the 14th Symposium on Naval Hydrodynamics, 1983, pp. 19–51). Several new and puzzling issues were highlighted by Tulin, notably the existence of weak and strong wave-making regimes, and the paradoxical fact that the theory seemed to be applicable to flows at low speeds, ‘but not too low speeds’. These important issues were left unanswered, and despite the novelty of the ideas, Tulin’s report fell into relative obscurity. Now, 30 years later, we will revive Tulin’s observations, and explain how an asymptotically consistent framework allows us to address these concerns. Most notably, we demonstrate, using the asymptotic method of steepest descents, how the production of free-surface waves can be related to the arrangement of integration contours connected to the shape of the moving body. This approach provides a new and powerful methodology for the study of geometrically nonlinear wave–body interactions.

Atheroma Burden and Morphology in Women.

Ischemic heart disease is the major cause of death in women. Men and women have many similarities in relation to cardiovascular risk factors, but they differ in the pathophysiology, clinical presentation and outcomes in the setting of coronary artery disease and myocardial ischemia. Over the last years, due to innovative imaging technologies and more specific diagnostic strategies, increasing number of clinical studies report on specific-gender characteristics on plaque composition and burden, associated to acute coronary syndromes, and also on coronary vascular dysfunction as a major cause of clinical symptoms in women with apparently normal arteries. Here we performed a review of the literature focused on atheroma burden in women that includes information provided in original articles (basic and clinical oriented), cohort studies, trial and registry data, metaanalysis and other systematic reviews. The Studies published over the last 30 years provide a new view about the pathophysiology and presentation of ischemic heart disease in women. However, many questions remain to be addressed by future research. The mechanisms behind the delay on disease presentation in women over the fertile period and the paradoxical fact that young women have more adverse outcomes after an ischemic event need to be identified. A better understanding of these issues is expected to derive in better strategies for prevention and management of ischemic heart disease in women.

Visio artis, Simbolismo, Analogía y Ontología en el Arte de Ramon Llull / Visio artis, Symbolism, Analogy and Ontology in the Art of Ramon Llull

This article analyses the original core of the ‘Art’ of Ramon Llull, which, according to the author, was the result of a vision on Mount Randa. We start from the paradoxical fact that Llull describes his Art as a result of an immediate revelation, but throughout his life constantly reworked the artistic structure, in both formal and procedural aspects. We thus take a hermeneutical approach to the ontology, logic and symbolism of Llull’s Art to define as precisely as possible what remained constant through the changes. We conclude that the so-called ‘illumination of Randa’ was actually a mystical vision of the cosmos and its internal relations, but not the argumentative process of the Art, which Llull clarified over the course of his life.

Beowulf ’s Poetics of Absorption: Narrative Syntax and the Illusion of Stability in the Fight with Grendel’s Mother

Beowulf ’s Poetics of Absorption: Narrative Syntax and the Illusion of Stability in the Fight with Grendel’s Mother Evelyn Reynolds In Beowulf, the last survivor stands before the barrow in which he has just interred his kin (lines 2236–2246).1 Absorbed in grief, he then speaks his famous lament for his lost people. The poem allows us partly to imagine the survivor and his world as his lament unfolds, but it also bars us from becoming fully affectively engaged with him by positioning him as alone (he has no audience, and he does not address us; we only overhear him) and by setting his elegy in syntactically negative, imagistically sketchy forms (lines 2247–2254). “Heald þū nū, hrūse, nū hæleð ne m(ō)stan, / eorla ǣhte” [Earth, hold now the possessions of earls, what heroes cannot] (lines 2247–2248), the survivor opens, but in this sentence he gives no more precise direct object than “eorla ǣhte” [possessions of earls]. Instead of describing his people’s treasure, he says that “hyt ǣr . . . / gōde begēaton” [good men earlier obtained it] (lines 2248–2249). Beowulf does not allow its audience to picture the treasures or the survivor or his people, and by preventing a full mental picturing, it lessens affective engagement.2 We are thus barred from sympathy with the survivor’s grief at the same time as we hear his expression of grief. The poem focuses the audience’s attention on the survivor, yet denies them their full ability to sympathize with him. This state of imaginative and affective suspension I call the absorption-denial dynamic.3 The absorption-denial dynamic exemplified by the lay of the last survivor characterizes several passages in Beowulf and provides a useful means of understanding how Beowulf ’s formal elements operate on the imaginative and affective states of the poem’s audience.4 As I define it, the absorption-denial dynamic is the way in which a poem immerses its audience while at the same time distancing that audience. We are familiar with the sense of being absorbed in a text—that sense of having our imaginations filled with imagery and emotion. Yet the absorption-denial dynamic makes explicit the paradoxical fact that the artwork also forces its audience [End Page 43] to realize that they are outside its world, ultimately not able to sympathize with or picture its characters fully. One effect of the absorption-denial dynamic is a stilling of time: the audience finds itself suspended between immersion in and separation from the artwork. Often, absorptive pieces represent moments in which something is about to change but has not yet done so—the survivor is about to die from heartbreak; Heorot is about to burn—to enhance the audience’s sense of imaginative or affective suspension with a sense of temporal suspension. In this article, I will focus on a passage in Beowulf that embodies this liminal temporality in a surprising way. This passage is Beowulf’s fight with Grendel’s mother, which runs from line 1399 to line 1569. Depicting Beowulf’s encounter with Grendel’s mother in her underwater cave, the fight scene is an example of an epic set piece. It is an unusual example of an absorptive scene since it is not contemplative or explicitly affective, as is the lay of the last survivor or the poem’s concluding depiction of Beowulf’s funeral pyre. Beowulf and the monster are absorbed in fighting each other; the audience expects a dynamic, quickly moving battle narrative, a narrative that invites complete imaginative immersion in the action. Beowulf’s fight with Grendel’s mother contains syntactic structures that are not present during Beowulf’s fight with Grendel, syntactic structures that might seem aesthetically counterintuitive to a modern audience. Indeed, whereas Beowulf’s fight with Grendel often receives scholarly attention because the poet renders the fight in gripping synesthetic detail, his fight with Grendel’s mother has seldom been discussed in aesthetic terms.5 However, the poem’s linguistic structures here actually slow the narrative’s pace and prevent audience immersion. A reexamination of Beowulf ’s formal elements in light of the way they position the poem’s audience, particularly...

HOMONÍMIA E IRONIA DO NOME EM RESSURREIÇÃO

No século XIX, o nome próprio tornou-se uma "questão capital" para os romancistas. Machado de Assis não deixou de subscrever a esse lugar-comum de sua época; não obstante, desde seu primeiro romance, Ressurreição(1872), ele procurou singularizar sua poética da nomeação, assentando-a em preceitos distintos daqueles em voga no Romantismo. Além de ter criado um narrador que não se pronuncia sobre os antropônimos das personagens, Machado de Assis lançou mão da homonímia e da nomeação irônica. Trata-se aqui de analisar o funcionamento desses dois dispositivos de nomeação em Ressurreição, destacando-se ainda o fato paradoxal de que, a exemplo dos românticos, o escritor fez do problema do amor e do casamento o lugar de regulação do nome próprio dos protagonistas.

An Ellipsis Approach to Contrastive Left-Dislocation

This article proposes a novel analysis of contrastive left-dislocation (CLD), according to which the left-dislocated XP is a remnant of clausal ellipsis. This analysis makes sense of the otherwise paradoxical fact that the dislocated XP shows connectivity into the clause it precedes, while other properties betray its clause-external status. The paradox is resolved by analyzing CLD as a juxtaposition of two parallel clauses, the first of which is reduced by deletion at PF. Akin to recent treatments of sluicing, fragment answers, split questions, and other phenomena, the analysis reduces CLD to an interplay of Ā-movement and ellipsis, thereby removing constructional residue from the theory of Universal Grammar.

Himba in the Mix: The "Catwalk Politics" of Culture in Namibia

runway show has become paradigmatic of late twentieth- centuryspectacle; it has the potential project imaginary worlds and aesthetic ideals, set standards of taste and of distinction, and simultaneously incite desire and controversy various degrees. term catwalk often calls mind the extravagant productions associated with the semiannual fashion weeks of New York, Paris, London, and Milan. In these settings, the runway show is arguably inextricable from the commercial realm and functions as a tool with which designers seek the favorable attention of buyers, editors, trendsetters, and bloggers, all toward a common underlying goal: sell clothing. In this essay, however, aim address how the deployment of the fashion show in a different context can involve a multiplicity of ambitions and outcomes. Specifically, look at the politics of value that underlie the commodification of culture vis-a-vis a fashion show attended in Windhoek, the capital city of postapartheid Namibia.In 2010, the year marking Namibia's twentieth as a nation independent from South Africa, the Franco Namibian Cultural Center (FNCC) and the National Arts Council of Namibia (NACN) sponsored a fashion and photography event titled Himba in the Mix. main attraction was a fashion show featuring the work of seven young female Namibian designers, who created eighteen explicitly contemporary ensembles inspired by the culture of the Ovahimba people, who are one of at least ten recognized ethnic groups in Namibia today. A local newspaper described the event as the first of its kind in the country. Its kind refers the somewhat paradoxical fact that its organizers chose the definitively modern mediums of fashion and the catwalk celebrate traditional culture (Kapitako 2010). present-day Himba are the descendants of Herero pastoralists who remained in northwest Namibia while others migrated southward in the eighteenth century. They have maintained relations with external (that is, non-native African) influences at least since the middle of the nineteenth century, when the first hunters and traders from Cape Town arrived in northern Namibia. It is believed that the Herero had originally migrated what is now southern Angola and northern Namibia in the sixteenth century (Katjavivi 1988). Those who continued southward encountered European settlers and began working in their homes. Converted Christianity and taught sew by German settlers, Herero women adopted Victorian-style dresses made from local cloth, which are today worn with pride as the traditional clothing of the Herero people. Still, the Herero maintained contact with the Himba through the centuries, either through marriage, for example, or by providing aid with cattle grazing (Warnlof 2000, 182). For the most part, the Himba of Namibia remained in the northwestern of the country, which came be called Kaokoland, under the apartheid legislation that designated it the homeland of the Himba.In all the press leading up Himba in the Mix, as well as that which followed and praised its success, a clear purpose for its production was articulated, one that - on the surface at least - had little do with commercial pursuits. Those who organized the event intended for it to counter the consistent life threatening pressure exerted by forces of globalization on the Ovahimba people (Franco Namibia Cultural Center). A cultural officer in the Ministry of Youth, National Service, Sport, and Culture claimed, I can't agree more with the fact that the inevitable exposure Western identity and lifestyle gives young Namibians leeway detach themselves from their own local culture, such an extent that even association with activities of this nature become less significant (Kapitako 2010). He therefore found the endeavor be a much-needed corrective popular attitudes toward Namibia's indigenous groups. Meanwhile, a representative from the FNCC announced its intention, which was resurrect indigenous fashion and make it part and parcel of modern-day fashion, claiming, The overall objective of this project is re-instate that indigenous people's culture and fashion are not as dull and boring as they are perceived be, but instead rich, fascinating, and admirable (Nashuuta 2010). …

Instrumentalized History and the Motif of Repetition in News Coverage of Japan-Taiwan Relations

Examining the coverage in seven major Japanese and Taiwanese daily newspapers of a selection of events involving both societies in the first decade of the twenty-first century, this paper investigates the phenomenon of rhetorical instrumentalization of the past for present ideological purposes. The concerns of this study are the processes of dehistorization in Japanese and Taiwanese news and public debate, and through a critical thematic reading of the sources I argue that a motif of Taiwanese repetition and imitation of Japan runs through all the studied cases as a basic narrative formula. Analyzed cases include news presentations of Taiwanese politicians visiting Japan, controversial statements on Taiwan by a Japanese cabinet minister, infrastructure developments in present-day Taiwan and the controversy surrounding a Japanese guidebook to Taiwanese prostitution. Throughout the material, Taiwan is pictured as ideally progressing along a trajectory marked out by Japan and the two are cast in fixed roles that recall their relative positions in the half-century of Japanese colonization of Taiwan: Japan teaches Taiwan order, unity and modern development and Taiwan studies Japan’s past to overcome the challenges of its own present. Or Taiwan spontaneously imitates Japanese precedence as a consequence of its own development. This paper fundamentally challenges the rationale underlying strategic instrumentalization of the past and draws critical attention to the paradoxical fact that the use of the repetition formula positions the covered news events in a thematic field of time-lag and retrospection. (Less)

Coping with the unknown – time and technology in formal organizations searching for safety

The article deals with the paradoxical fact that, while living in a safer society, we feel that we live in a more vulnerable society than before. To explain this paradox a socio-systemic analysis of formal organizations searching for safety is undertaken. The use of technology as structural coupling between social systems and environment is first of all focalized in order to study the hypothesis according to which technology not only saves time, but also makes time scarcer than before. As a result technical plants not only solve but also produce prevention problems. That is, any technical control of dangers is a risk. Two related problems are taken into consideration: the scarcity of time and the scarcity of attention. This leads to the conclusion that formal organizations searching for safety are anticipatory systems which usually cope with the temporal paradox of normalizing rare events. Two forms of unfoldment of such a paradox are finally discussed, namely strategic planning and insurance.

Singularities in the Expression of the Kinetic Energy of a System of Particles Subject to Holonomous Constraints

In the textbooks on classical mechanics normally adopted for courses on mechanical engineering, there is no mention of the paradoxical fact that a material system subject to holonomous constraints can exhibit singular configurations for which the cross-products of their generalized velocities, not all identically nil, give rise to a zero value for the kinetic energy. Given the importance of this subject for the analysis of dynamic systems, and as a contribution to education in mechanics, we analyse in this article a material system composed of discrete masses subject to holonomous constraints and exhibiting the mentioned behaviour. After deriving an analytical expression for the kinetic energy of the system, numerical simulations permit the identification of some singular material configurations for which the initial statement holds.

Heterogeneity of the state and functionality of water molecules sorbed in an amorphous sugar matrix

An amorphous matrix, comprised of sugar molecules, is frequently used in the pharmaceutical industry. An amorphous sugar matrix exhibits high hygroscopicity, and it has been established that the sorbed water lowers the glass transition temperature Tg of the amorphous sugar matrix. It is naturally expected that the random allocation and configuration of sugar molecules would result in heterogeneity of states for sorbed water. However, most analyses of the behavior of water, when sorbed to an amorphous sugar matrix, have implicitly assumed that all of the sorbed water molecules are in a single state. In this study, the states of water molecules sorbed in an amorphous sugar matrix were analyzed by Fourier-transform IR spectroscopy and a Fourier self-deconvolution technique. When sorbed water molecules were classified into five states, according to the extent to which they are restricted, three of the states resulted in a lowering of Tg of an amorphous sugar matrix, while the other two were independent of the plasticization of the matrix. This finding provides an explanation for the paradoxical fact that compression at several hundreds of MPa significantly decreases the equilibrium water content at a given RH, while the Tg remains unchanged.

The Islamic Republic of Iran and Its Opposition

This essay takes a stylized paradoxical fact of Iranian politics under the Islamic Republic of Iran as its starting point: the stark confusion between the position and a good portion of the opposition. Such a blurred frontier between “position” and “opposition” did not exist during the shah's regime. Without the decisive support of non-Islamic organizations, secular intellectuals, and political forces on the ground, the creation of a theocratic regime in Iran and its consolidation could not be realized. Now on the thirtieth anniversary of the Islamic Republic, the open opposition of many influential clerics toward how the government is run under the present supreme leader and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad provides a new episode of “opposition” within the theocrats' circles. To put this paradoxical fact differently, it should be emphasized that no regime in Iran's modern history has produced so much opposition within its own ranks and enjoyed the loyalty of its oppositions at the same time. How could this paradox be explained? Our essay tackles this issue by describing the peculiar type of social order under the Islamic Republic of Iran as ordered anarchy or “destructive coordination.” Analyzing the sources of this type of coordination, we proceed in two steps. The first is to question whether there has ever been a laic or secular movement in Iran's recent history. The second consists in defining the institutional setup and recent dynamics of the Islamic Republic of Iran as a strange, if not unique, mutant of Samuel P. Huntington's praetorian state, led by “priests” and armed religious militants.

The Ghost in Hamlet and Derrida

By drawing on Derrida’s Specters of Marx, a book in which he meticulously reads Shakespearean creativity into the critique of the capitalist world of today, this essay addresses what the Ghost in Hamlet signifies, as it relates to the question of justice and language. The first part of the essay, following and reconstructing Derrida’s both explicit and implicit supposition on the Ghost, argues for the inextricable interdependence between the apparition of the Ghost and the idea of justice, while the second part examines the ways in which the Ghost’s statement of his own identity implicates the ghostly nature of language. All in all, the essay makes two major points. First, Hamlet's fundamental problem is structured by the originary and necessary spacing between his idea of justice prompted by the Ghost and justice itself. Hamlet is the one that thinks over the ultimate impossibility of bringing justice to the world of corruption due to the paradoxical fact that he can justly act only by acting unjustly. He thinks and acts only in anguish, which stems from the fact that he is born homo ethicus. Second, language, especially in its function of calling for something or somebody into an identifiable being, sets the stage for the interplay between the present and the absent. Put another way, the difference between beings and non-beings begins to collapse, insofar as the mediation of language comes into play. It is in this aporetic moment that any statement, including the one that made by the Ghost, becomes ghostly; one ought to come up with meanings out of it in his or her own terms. This is what precisely Hamlet does, as he accepts the Ghost as his father’s spirit, and subsequently verifies his statement. The ghost, something that always already exceeds any ontological determination, in other words, is what Hamlet lives and dies for. Hamlet is a tragedy of language-so much so that it is the one that simultaneously dramatizes the triumph and scandal of reason.

The moral status of the embryo: an attempt at an analysis with the aid of David Hume’s ethics

This article applies the moral sentimentalism founded by David Hume to the moral status of the embryo. It will attempt to explain the paradoxical fact that in Germany abortion is common and socially accepted while preimplantation genetic diagnosis is banned with the aid of an approach based on moral sentimentalism. David Hume established the thesis that the human being is guided by the emotions and not by reason when making moral decisions. Scientific innovations often create a feeling of anxiety. Consequently, the initial moral judgment about it is negative. Due to this habit, the innovation is often accepted after a phase of indifference. This phenomenon has been observed in the case of heart transplantation, as well as for IVF. Consequently, the apparent contradiction in the varying degrees of the embryo's worthiness of protection in the womb and in the Petri dish is due to the simple fact that these are different stages of habituation. Therefore, the ethics of Hume cannot stipulate the embryo's moral status for once and for all; however, they can paradoxically raise the ongoing current debate to a more rational level through the insight that the underlying moral concepts are not based on reason alone.

World TB Day 2010: Eradicating tuberculosis in sub-Saharan Africa needs effective and committed north-south partnerships

The World Health Organization (WHO) has designated 24 March of each year as ‘World TB Day’, to mark the anniversary of Robert Koch’s discovery in 1882 of the cause of tuberculosis (TB), Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Regrettably, this is not a day for celebration. Instead, governments, policy makers, scientists and funders must reflect on the paradoxical fact that, although effective and cheap therapy has been available for over 60 years, TB kills nearly 1.8 million people every year, that is, 5 000 people every day! Together with HIV/AIDS and malaria, TB remains one of the most important causes of death from infectious diseases worldwide. World TB Day provides an opportunity to reflect on the poor state of TB control globally, particularly in sub-Saharan African countries (SSA).

Successful aging as an oxymoron

Notions of what it means to age well or successfully are central to social gerontological research and practice. As such, one would expect that there would be consensus as to what the construct of successful aging means and/or how aging well is achieved. This is not, however, the case which is why this study explores the meanings that a group of older people (i.e. some with home-help care and some without) attach to this construct. The empirical material is constituted of 16 semi-structured interviews. The findings bring to fore the different resources (such as physical, mental, psycho-social, spiritual, and financial ones) that are associated with successful aging and the kind of outlook on life that is regarded as useful if one wants to age well. Differences between home-help care recipients and those that do not receive this type of care were found. Those that are managing without the help offered by home-help care services listed more resources and offered more nuanced descriptions of what successful aging means than those that receive home- help care. This suggests that receiving home-help care and/or not being able to manage primarily on one’s own might shape the manner in which older people think about what constitutes a good old age. The in-depth analysis of the notions of successful aging that were brought to the fore suggests also the paradoxical fact that the title of this article attests to; namely that some associate aging well with not aging at all and deem, in fact, the term successful aging to be an oxymoron.

Feminism Encounters Traditional Judaism: Resistance and Accommodation (review)

Reviewed by: Feminism Encounters Traditional Judaism: Resistance and Accommodation Sylvia Barack Fishman Feminism Encounters Traditional Judaism: Resistance and Accommodation, by Tova Hartman. Hadassah Brandeis Institute Series on Jewish Women. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England/Brandeis University Press, 2008. 162 pp. $19.95. "Orthodox feminism" is viewed by some as an oxymoron, but the paradoxical fact is that contemporary Orthodox feminism has created a whole landscape of new facts on the ground in Israel, the United States, and elsewhere. In her lively and appealing new book, Feminism Encounters Traditional Judaism: Resistance and Accommodation, Tova Hartman explores transformations in Orthodox women's relationship to Judaism, especially around their roles in public Judaism and synagogue life. Building on her own personal experiences in the creation of new styles of Orthodox worship, as well as scholarship in gender studies and sociology of the Orthodox community, Bar Ilan Professor Hartman brings the reader into a dynamic new chapter in Jewish life. The Jewish male-female binary was an important component of the matrix into which Jewish life was historically embedded. Traditional Jewish societies from medieval times onward have defined public Jewish prayer, advanced education, numerous holiday and life cycle rituals and ceremonies, and most leadership activities as male responsibilities. Judaism within its religious culture clearly distinguished between religious "performers," who were almost always men, and religious "facilitators," who were typically women. As Hartman powerfully explains, "In this society, the exclusion of women from Torah study, more than anything else, meant the marginalization of women. Because this culture was so immersed and influenced by the ongoing interpretation of canonical texts, the institutional exclusion of women from yeshiva life and Torah study prevented women from becoming full and active partners in the life of the community." Today, in contrast, Hartman's compelling story reveals that women within the Orthodox world often function as the brokers of Western values. Orthodox women have struggled to combined feminist ideals, such as individualism and self-determination, with traditional Jewish expectations, such as modest dress and family "purity" laws. Orthodox feminist innovations have been facilitated by women's new access to rabbinic scholarship. Hartman and other Orthodox feminists have rejected the concept that their behavior should be dictated by "the male gaze." They study rabbinic texts so that they can determine for themselves the full range of standards that their religious tradition can be understood to offer them. For Hartman, access to public expressions of Jewish spirituality was equally important as acquiring the intellectual tools of Jewish learning. Her [End Page 169] determination to construct a different kind of halakhic prayer environment led to one of the most celebrated changes in recent years: the creation of "partnership minyanim," traditional services that retain a mechitsah (visual separation between male and female worshipers) but that nonetheless allow women to perform all prayer functions from which they are not specifically prohibited by Jewish law. As Hartman explains in her account of the formation of congregation Shirah Hadashah in Jerusalem, women lead in many portions of the service as well as read from and are called up to aliyah Torah honors. (They do not lead during the Amidah services.) Within Orthodox communities in Israel and the United States, Shirah Hadashah and its founders have come under rabbinic fire from some segments of the community for putatively breaking the rules of men's and women's respective roles in the synagogue. The amount of the animus directed against this author and the congregation she helped to found suggests that even their enemies find the partnership minyan a powerful concept. Shirah Hadashah has influenced many outside the Orthodox community as well. Partnership minyanim, sometimes called "Orthodox egalitarian" services, have proliferated. They typically attract surprisingly large numbers of Jewish singles from Conservative and Reform backgrounds, as well as the core of Orthodox men and women who tend to create and maintain them. It is notable that Shirah Hadashah is often attended by Reform rabbinical students studying in Israel for the year. Many assert that they come because they experience the environment to be deeply joyous, moving and spiritual. Feminism Encounters Traditional Judaism is a "good read," as well as an inside look at an innovative phenomenon in...

Particle in a uniform magnetic field under the symmetric gauge: the eigenfunctions and the time evolution of wave packets

In the present work we treat the problem of a particle in a uniform magnetic field along the symmetric gauge, so chosen since the wavefunctions present the required cylindrical symmetry. It is our understanding that by means of this work we can make a contribution to the teaching of the present subject, as well as encourage students to use computer algebra systems in solving problems of quantum mechanics. We obtained the degeneracy of the spectrum of eigenvalues in a very clear way. Through the use of a computer algebra system we show graphs of the probability density associated with different eigenvalues as well as compare such functions for some degenerate states, which helps us to visualize the physics of the problem. We also present a semiclassical model which gives a physical insight regarding the paradoxical fact that eigenfunctions associated with opposite angular momenta and different energy eigenvalues have the same probability density. Finally, by solving the time-dependent Schrödinger equation we obtain the time evolution of a wave packet that at time zero was considered to be localized in a definite region of the lattice. The centroid of such a packet performs an orbit similar to that obtained in the classical treatment of a particle in a magnetic field.

Magma mingling: Tectonic and geodynamic implications

cesses in many geodynamic settings. It is a paradoxical fact that the idea of mixing of magmas differing in composition was put forward for the first time in the midst of the 19th century by a specialist in analytical chemistry rather than in geology, Robert Bunsen [42]. Having sampled volcanic rocks in an area with geysers in Iceland, Bunsen revealed substantial compositional differences in the sampled basalts and suggested that a layer of basaltic magma was overlapped by a layer of rhyolitic melt and the entire range of igneous rocks was formed owing to various degrees of basalt‐rhyolite mixing. It came as no surprise that this idea was immediately heavily criticized by the geologists who studied Iceland and afterwards was adopted but with a geological priority. Towards the turn of the 19th century, additional evidence for the mingling of magmas contrasting in composition was provided [42] concerning primarily composite dikes and sills and granitic plutons with numerous mafic inclusions. The effects of mingling have been described in other volcanic provinces in addition to Iceland. The idea of contemporaneous emplacement and crystallization of magmas of contrasting compositions became popular. However, in the beginning of the 20th century, this idea was displaced by the concept of crystal fractionation stated comprehensively by N. Bowen in his book The Evolution of Igneous Rocks [24], which became a guidebook for

Hématomes intra-crâniens extra-duraux : à propos de 100 cas récents: Notre expérience et considérations pratiques

We present a retrospective study on the management of 100 patients who presented epidural hematoma over a four-year period. Our goal was to provide an update on management of this injury. Computed tomography was performed because of the clinical presentation. Results provided information on the type of injury and appropriate treatment. A three-phase clinical progression was observed in only 6% of the patients. Despite state-of-the-art management, mortality remained high in these brain-injured patients (21%). No progress appears to have been achieved in the last ten years. This paradoxical fact probably results from the enhanced severity observed in our patients, who often suffered from associated intracranial injuries as well as multiple trauma (thoracic, abdominal trauma). Analysis study of the results confirms an improvement in mortality among patients with isolated epidural hematoma (6.6%), but great concern remains about the high mortality among patients with associated intracranial lesions (33.3%) or multiple trauma (32%).