Cast Shadows Research Articles

Escaping the Long Shadow Cast by Agranulocytosis: Reflections on Clozapine Pharmacovigilance Focused on the United Kingdom.

A recent article in this journal presented a US perspective regarding the modernization of clozapine prescription and proposed an escape from the long shadow cast by agranulocytosis. Here, an international group of collaborators discusses a point of view complementary to the US view by focusing on worldwide outcomes of clozapine usage that may be uneven in terms of frequency of clozapine adverse drug reactions. Studies from the Scandinavian national registries (Finland and Denmark) did not find increased mortality in clozapine patients or any clear evidence of the alleged toxicity of clozapine. Data on clozapine-associated fatal outcomes were obtained from 2 recently published pharmacovigilance studies and from the UK pharmacovigilance database. A pharmacovigilance study focused on physician reports to assess worldwide lethality of drugs from 2010 to 2019 found 968 clozapine-associated fatal outcomes in the United Kingdom. Moreover, the United Kingdom accounted for 55% (968 of 1761) of worldwide and 90% (968 of 1073) of European fatal clozapine-associated outcomes. In a pharmacovigilance study from the UK database (from 2008 to 2017), clozapine was associated with 383 fatal outcomes/year including all reports from physicians and nonphysicians. From 2018 to 2021, UK clozapine-associated fatal outcomes increased to 440/year. The interpretation of fatal outcomes in each country using pharmacovigilance databases is limited and only allows gross comparisons; even with those limitations, the UK data seem concerning. Pneumonia and myocarditis may be more important than agranulocytosis in explaining the uneven distribution of fatal outcomes in clozapine patients across countries.

The ALMA view of MP Mus (PDS 66): A protoplanetary disk with no visible gaps down to 4 au scales

Aims. We aim to characterize the protoplanetary disk around the nearby (d ~ 100 pc), young solar analog MP Mus (PDS 66) and to reveal any signs of planets or ongoing planet formation in the system. Methods. We present new ALMA observations of MP Mus at 0.89 mm, 1.3 mm, and 2.2 mm with angular resolutions of ~1″, 0.05″, and 0.25″, respectively. These data probe the dust and gas in the disk with unprecedented detail and sensitivity. Results. The disk appears smooth down to the 4 au resolution of the 1.3 mm observations, in contrast with most disks observed at comparable spatial scales. The dust disk has a radius of 60±5 au, a dust mass of 0.14-0.06+0.11 MJup, and a millimeter spectral index <2 in the inner 30 au, suggesting optically thick emission from grains with a high albedo in this region. Several molecular gas lines are also detected extending up to 130±15 au, similar to small grains traced by scattered light observations. Comparing the fluxes of different CO isotopologues with previous models yields a gas mass of 0.1–1 MJup, implying a gas-to-dust ratio of 1–10. We also measured a dynamical stellar mass of Mdyn = 1.30±0.08 M⊙ and derived an age of 7–10 Myr. Conclusions. The survival of large grains in an evolved disk without gaps or rings is surprising, and it is possible that existing substructures remain undetected due to optically thick emission at 1.3 mm. Alternatively, small structures may still remain unresolved with the current observations. Based on simple scaling relations for gap-opening planets and gap widths, this lack of substructures places upper limits to the masses of planets in the disk as low as 2 M⊕−0.06 MJup at r > 40 au. The lack of millimeter emission at radii r > 60 au also suggests that the gap in scattered light between 30 and 80 au is likely not a gap in the disk density, but a shadow cast by a puffed-up inner disk.

Probing a non-linear electrodynamics black hole with thin accretion disk, shadow, and deflection angle with M87* and Sgr A* from EHT

Non-linear interaction between the electromagnetic fields (EMF) occurs when vacuum polarization in quantum electrodynamics (QED) happens. The field of non-linear electrodynamics, which may result from this interaction, could have important effects on black hole physics. This paper considers the asymptotically flat black hole solution in Einstein-nonlinear electrodynamics (NLE) fields. We study the effect of the NLE parameters on the black hole deflection angle using the Gauss-Bonnet theorem in weak field limits, shadow cast using the null geodesics method, and thin accretion disk using the Novikov-Thorne model. In particular, we studied the time-averaged energy flux, the disk temperature, the differential luminosity, the different emission profiles, and infalling spherical accretion. Then we show how the physical quantities depend on $\beta$ and $C$ parameters of NLE and provide some constraints on the NLE parameters using the observations of M87* and Sgr A* from EHT.

Fast shadow casting algorithm in analytical polygon-based computer-generated holography.

Shadow casting is essential in computer graphics, which can significantly enhance the reality of rendered images. However, shadow casting is rarely studied in polygon-based computer-generated holography (CGH) because state-of-art triangle-based occlusion handling methods are too complicated for shadow casting and unfeasible for complex mutual occlusion handling. We proposed a novel drawing method based on the analytical polygon-based CGH framework and achieved Z-buffer-based occlusion handling instead of the traditional Painter's algorithm. We also achieved shadow casting for parallel and point light sources. Our framework can be generalized to N-edge polygon (N-gon) rendering and accelerated using CUDA hardware, by which the rendering speed can be significantly enhanced.

Particle motion around Schwarzschild-MOG black hole

In this paper, we present an analysis of the circular motion of test particles around a Schwarzschild-MOG black hole. Initially, our focus lies on studying the shadow cast by the spherically symmetric black hole within the framework of MOG gravity. Notably, we observe that the presence of MOG influences both the photon-sphere and the black hole’s shadow, causing them to increase in size. Furthermore, our research reveals that the characteristic radii of massive particles in circular orbits around the Schwarzschild-MOG black hole, specifically the innermost stable circular orbits (ISCO) and marginally bound orbits, are greater than those observed in the Schwarzschild metric alone. Additionally, we examine the electromagnetic field structure when a black hole is subjected to an external uniform magnetic field. Our findings demonstrate that in the vicinity of the Schwarzschild-MOG black hole, the magnetic field exhibits non-uniform behavior, with field lines becoming more densely distributed. Lastly, we delve into the motion of charged particles around the Schwarzschild-MOG black hole in the presence of an external magnetic field. Our investigation highlights that the ISCO position for charged particles is consistently less than that for neutral particles, indicating a significant distinction between the two scenarios.

Theodore Roosevelt and the Unionist Memory of the Civil War: Experience, History, and Politics, 1861–1918

AbstractThe meaning of the Civil War, America’s most violent experience, continued to be debated well into the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. The long shadow cast by David Blight’s influential Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory (2001) has meant that debates about the impact and prevalence of reconciliationist rhetoric dominate the literature. This paper adds to a growing body of scholarship that questions the reconciliationist narrative and stresses instead the partisan understanding of the Civil War still prevalent into the twentieth century. In particular, this article uses Theodore Roosevelt’s “memory” of the Civil War to explore the linkages between the Civil War Era and the Age of Empire. It makes two arguments: 1) that in an era when a “reconciliationist” understanding of the Civil War was becoming more prominent, more often than not Roosevelt used his voice as a historian and political figure to assert a “Unionist” interpretation; and 2) that Roosevelt used this memory of the Civil War to advocate for three specific political causes: American empire, the New Nationalism, and American entry into World War I. The paper’s argument and historiographical intervention help scholars of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era to re-imagine the role of Civil War memory in the half century following Appomattox Courthouse.

The concept of aerial photography using a two-element active optoelectronic complex

The article proposes the concept of obtaining images on the basis of which it is possible to create three-dimensional models of objects. In particular, images contain the data necessary to recreate the three-dimensional form of an object. Such data include: the length, width of the modeled object as well as the lengthening of the shadow cast on the base surface. In accordance with the proposed concept, an important condition for obtaining images suitable for interpretation is the use of spatially separated equipment generating and recording optical radiation. The orientation parameters of the illumination source and the camera are selected, taking into account the requirements for the photogrammetric quality of images. A characteristic of geometric distortions that occur when changing the shooting mode from plan to perspective is presented, which demonstrates the change in the aspect ratio of the image depending on the angle of the camera. A characteristic of the shadow elongation depending on the spatial position of the optical radiation source is presented, which shows the influence of the orientation parameters of the optical illumination means on the length of the shadow cast on the base surface. On the basis of these characteristics, the choice of parameters of relative orientation in space of the source of optical illumination and the equipment that detects optical radiation is substantiated. Predicting the value of geometric distortions of images at the stage of choosing the parameters of relative orientation of the equipment of a two-element active optoelectronic complex allows you to save the photogrammetric quality of images and, as a result, measure the length and width of an object. Predicting the magnitude of the shadow elongation under conditions of artificial optical illumination provides the possibility of transferring features in the image for calculating the applicate and, as a result, recreating the three-dimensional shape of the object. The proposed concept of image registration finds application in topographic and geodetic and engineering work in conditions of insufficient natural light. For example, the use of a two-element active optical-electronic complex makes it possible to obtain three-dimensional photo plans of the terrain of geographic regions with a short daylight hours.

Shadows of black holes with dark matter halo

We investigate the shadow of an exact black hole solution of Einstein's equations recently proposed by Cardoso et al., to describe a supermassive black hole immersed in a dark matter halo. We analyze and discuss the light rings and the gravitational lensing of this spacetime comparing them with an isolated Schwarzschild black hole. Using backward ray-tracing techniques, we study the shadows cast by such black hole when illuminated by a celestial sphere that emits radiation isotropically. We find that when the dark matter distribution concentrates near the event horizon of the black hole, multiple light rings emerge. In this high compactness regime, the shadows and gravitational lensing are significantly different from the Schwarzschild one. We also use the M87* and SgrA* shadow data, obtained by the Event Horizon Telescope collaboration, to constrain the parameters of the dark matter halo.

Shadow thermodynamics of the Hayward-AdS black hole* *Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (12047564), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (2021CDJZYJH-003) and the Postdoctoral Science Foundation of Chongqing (cstc2021jcyj-bsh0124)

In this paper, the phase structure of the Hayward-anti-de Sitter (AdS) black hole (BH) is studied using shadow formalism. It has been found that the shadow radius is a monotonic function of the horizon radius and can therefore play an equivalent role to the horizon radius in characterizing the thermodynamics of the Hayward-AdS BH. The thermodynamic phase transition (PT) of the Hayward-AdS BH is investigated with the shadow radius. It is shown that as the magnetic charge increases, the shadow radius becomes larger, while the coexistence temperature becomes lower. The thermal profile of the Hayward-AdS BH is established by combining the temperature diagram and the shadow cast diagram, which shows that for a fixed magnetic charge, the temperature of the Hayward-AdS BH increases with the pressure whereas the region of the thermal profile decreases with the pressure. In particular, the temperature of the Hayward-AdS BH follows an N-type change trend when it is smaller than the critical temperature. It implies that the BH shadow may be used to investigate the thermodynamics of the Hayward-AdS BH.

Shadow of the 5D Reissner–Nordström AdS black hole

In this paper, we discuss the shadow cast by the charged Reissner–Nordström (RN) anti-de Sitter (AdS) black hole. With the help of the Killing equation and Hamilton–Jacobi equation, we calculate the geodesic equations for null particles. With the help of geodesics of null particle, we then determine the celestial coordinates ([Formula: see text], [Formula: see text]) and the shadow radius of the RN AdS black hole. We present a graphical analysis of the black hole shadow and find that shadow is a perfectly dark circle. The impacts of charge and cosmological constant of the RN AdS black hole on the radius of shadow are also presented. In this connection, the radius of the shadow is a decreasing function of the charge. Furthermore, we study the effects of plasma medium on the RN AdS black hole shadow. Here, we find that radius of circular shadow increases with increasing plasma parameter. We study the shadow radius for the constrained values of charge and cosmological constant from the [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text] black holes. In addition, we also discuss the energy emission the rate of RN black hole. The effects of parameters like charge, cosmological constant and plasma parameter on energy emission rate are analyzed graphically.

Toward Visualizing Genomic DNA Using Electron Microscopy via DNA Metallization

Electron microscopy‐based DNA imaging is a powerful tool that provides a high resolution for observing genomic structures involved in biochemical processes. The first method, heavy metal shadow casting, was developed in 1948. Uranyl acetate has been widely used for DNA electron microscopic imaging since the 1960s. However, for this method, scientists must deal with government regulations for the safety and disposal. Additionally, sample preparation is often complicated and time‐consuming. Recently, nanoparticles and nanowires have emerged as a new way of imaging DNA molecules under both transmission and scanning electron microscopes. However, as this technology is still in its early stages, there is room for further development. In this review, heavy metal staining, nanoparticle staining, and nanowire growth for DNA visualization are introduced. The applications of shadow casting and uranyl acetate staining in the visualization of DNA structures and protein–DNA complexes are discussed. Then, nanomaterial‐based DNA staining methods are covered, including electrostatic interactions, DNA chain modification, reducing‐group‐modified DNA ligands and DNA–peptide/protein interactions. This review provides up‐to‐date information on different DNA staining approaches and their applications in DNA studies. Ultimately, it offers a new direction for genome analysis through DNA visualization.

4D scale-dependent Schwarzschild-AdS/dS black holes: study of shadow and weak deflection angle and greybody bounding

We investigate the shadow, deflection angle, and the greybody bounding of a Schwarzschild-AdS/dS black hole in scale-dependent gravity. We used the EHT data to constrain the parameter epsilon. We have found that within the 1sigma level of uncertainty, epsilon M_0 ranges at 10^{-11} - 10^{-16} orders of magnitude for Sgr. A*, and 10^{-11} - 10^{-17} for M87*. Using these parameters, we explored how the shadow radius behaves as perceived by a static observer. Using the known parameters for Sgr. A* and M87*, we found different shadow cast behavior near the cosmological horizon even if the same scaling parameters were used. We explored the deflection angle {hat{alpha }} in the weak field limit for both massive and null particles, in addition to the effect of finite distances using the non-asymptotically flat version of the Gauss-Bonnet theorem. We have found that the {hat{alpha }} strongly depends on massive particles. Tests on epsilon’s effect using Sgr. A* is only along points of low impact parameters. For M87*, only the scaled BH in AdS type can be tested at high impact parameters at the expense of very low value for {hat{alpha }}. We study the rigorous bound on the greybody factor for scalar field emitted from black holes in the theory and show the bound on the transmission probability. The effects of the scale-dependent gravity on the greybody factors are investigated, and the results indicate that the bound on the greybody factor in this case is less than the bound for the Schwarzschild black hole.

Vertical Transmission: The Patient, the Student, the Teacher

Vertical Transmission:The Patient, the Student, the Teacher Miguel Paniagua He did not ask for this fate, nor did he deserve it, particularly considering the tragic circumstances. Lì presented to the campus health provider one month prior with fatigue, abdominal pain, and jaundice. He and his parents immigrated to the United States from China when he was a child. He was well aware that he had hepatitis B from what is termed "vertical transmission." His mom unknowingly passed on this virus to him during her pregnancy. In most countries with a high prevalence of the virus, prenatal screening is routinely undertaken, and prophylaxis administered. I am not certain this occurred in Lì's case and at this point it did not matter. Lì knew he would live with this for the duration of his life. In fact, he told me he had gone his whole life to this point without any symptoms whatsoever. What is known about chronic hepatitis B infection is that in most people affected, it can be considered a chronic disease where most live a long full life. The risk of advancing to liver cirrhosis or cancer in general is low. This unfortunately was not the case with Lì. What transpired was what they most feared. As he was studying for his final exams, Lì endured days of worsening fatigue, malaise, and nausea. He noticed his skin was a tinge of yellow and he was having some itching that was unusual. He noticed his clothes fitting more loosely and found he had unintentionally lost twenty pounds. He visited the campus health center and after a series of tests and imaging studies, Lì was diagnosed with advanced hepatocellular carcinoma, an unfortunate sequela of this chronic infection. It was then that he put school on hold and returned home to get further care. I first met Lì in the hospital as a consultant for the palliative medicine service. "He won't listen." "He is so difficult." "He is in denial." These were examples of some of the care team's exasperated assessments of his demeanor as a patient. What I did not realize prior to visiting him the first time was that Lì was a pre-clinical medical student. When I first met him, he did not want to talk very much; he was preoccupied and distant. In retrospect, I can see that he was suffering on so many levels. His appearance was gaunt and cachectic. The lights in the room cast shadows in the concave areas of his temples and his collarbones were the most prominent feature of his torso through his hospital gown. He glowed yellow from jaundice. When I examined him on this first visit, I noticed that his liver, a now grossly enlarged hard and nodular structure, occupied most of his abdomen. I found that speaking to him as a colleague, even calling him "doctor," helped him feel respected and enabled me to build rapport with him. At one point, I described to him the findings I felt in his abdomen. "I can palpate the edge of your liver here, what seems to be eight centimeters below your costal margin. There are many palpable nodularities on the ventral surface." It was at this point I invited him to palpate what I was feeling. I gently guided his own hand over his abdomen and noticed him studying the features as if they were not his own, like a skilled diagnostician. Over the course of three weeks, I visited with Lì when I was on service. The last time I saw him, he had declined rapidly, his disease progressing [End Page 17] cruelly, and he was very short of breath and becoming more somnolent. I noticed his mother in the room, standing by his bed, and crying inconsolably as he lay suffering. I felt deep anguish and remorse, wondering if she said these words to herself "It is all my fault," considering the source of his initial illness. I cannot even imagine. As I assisted the team in titrating his comfort medications, I sat with him. He shook my hand with all the strength left that he could muster and said, "you are a good doctor." I...

Cinema’s Cosmic Shifts

Cinema’s Cosmic Shifts

Is a black hole shadow a reliable test of the no-hair theorem?

Capturing the image of the shadow cast by the event horizon of an illuminated black hole is, at the most basic level, an experiment of extreme light deflection in a strongly curved spacetime. As such, the properties of an imaged shadow can be used to probe the general relativistic Kerr nature of astrophysical black holes. As an example of this prospect, it is commonly asserted that a shadow can test the validity of the theory's famous ``no hair theorem'' for the black hole's mass and spin multipole moments. In this paper, we assess this statement by calculating the shadow's equatorial radius in spacetimes with an arbitrary multipolar structure and within a slow rotation approximation. We find that when moments higher than the quadrupole are taken into account, the shadow acquires a high degree of degeneracy as a function of the deviation from the Kerr multipole moments. The results of our analysis suggest that dark objects with strongly non-Kerr multipolar structure could nevertheless produce a Kerr-like shadow with its characteristic quasicircular shape.

Liberalism and the Law in Late Imperial Russia

Liberalism and the Law in Late Imperial Russia Daniel Beer David Feest, Ordnung schaffen: Bäuerliche Selbstverwaltung und Obrigkeit im ausgehenden Zarenreich (1834–1889) (Making Order: Peasant Self-Administration and the Authorities in Late Tsarist Russia). 358 pp. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2018. ISBN-13 978-3447107228. €49.90. Stefan B. Kirmse, The Lawful Empire: Legal Change and Cultural Diversity in Late Tsarist Russia. 341 pp. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. ISBN-13 978-1108499439. $105.00. Vanessa Rampton, Liberal Ideas in Tsarist Russia: From Catherine the Great to the Russian Revolution. 229 pp. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. ISBN-13 978-1108483735. $105.00. No less than by revolution, Russian history is haunted by the specter of roads not taken. Historians of late imperial Russia might seek to avoid teleological shadows cast by 1917, but the denouement of revolutionary collapse and violent civil war inevitably looms on the horizon of all attempts to explain what became of the Great Reforms. Why did the 1860s apparently fail to deliver the promise, cherished by Russian liberals, of a law-bound, constitutional order underpinned by individual rights and representative government, which would integrate the peasantry and the non-Russians into a cohesive and stable society and withstand the dislocations of rapid modernization and ultimately of World War I? And what did liberals themselves make of the opportunities afforded to them during the turbulent decades before 1917? Were they the hapless victims of historical forces beyond their control or the authors of their own political failure? Taken together, David Feest's Ordnung schaffen, Stefan B. Kirmse's [End Page 412] The Lawful Empire, and Vanessa Rampton's Liberal Ideas in Tsarist Russia offer a series of fresh yet interlocking perspectives on the prospects for social and political stability and constitutionalism in late imperial Russia. ________ Feest's Ordnung schaffen traces the impact of attempts by governmental and landowning elites to modernize the Russian countryside by removing practices they saw as "contradictory and irrational" (2). Central to this endeavor was the production of new forms of knowledge about peasant society that would facilitate the integration of the peasantry into the wider administration and economy of the empire. Feest scrutinizes the interplay among peasants, landowners, and state officials in Riazan Province from the 1830s to the 1890s. Tapping an impressive range of regional archives, legal publications, and administrative reports, he paints a somber picture of how the bid to break down intermediary barriers between the peasantry and the state, and to rationalize rural life, failed in the decades that spanned the emancipation of the serfs. At the heart of Feest's account lies the ambiguous nature of the peasant commune itself: part institution of self-governance; part adjunct of state power. While some historians have argued that the village communes remained fundamentally autonomous and resistant to state-led change, others have emphasized that they did acquire the characteristics of state institutions, not least in the ways they were recognized as legal bodies.1 Ordnung schaffen challenges the implied binary posited by these views of the commune and argues for the need to acknowledge that both characteristics and roles of the village commune "existed in parallel, competing with each other or assuming different forms of symbiosis" (34). The result was that the commune in both the pre- and (especially) post-emancipation era was a highly ambiguous institution into which different actors—state officials, landowners, and the peasantry themselves—all inscribed their [End Page 413] own agendas. These agendas conflicted because they were premised on incommensurate ideas of rationality; reformers strove for universal standards and a statistical "capture" of information that would facilitate policy-making. The peasantry, by contrast, prized local knowledge and was wary of emissaries from the central government instructing them how to manage their affairs—and with good reason. Feest argues that elite visions of the peasantry were shot through with fixed assumptions about the peasant commune that paid scant regard to the highly diverse manifestations of the institution. Even within Riazan Province, which Feest takes as a case study broadly representative of European Russia, the communes differed enormously, from the heavily forested regions to the north of the River Oka in which the peasants lived...

The Myth of the Jew: Negating the Negation

The Myth of the Jew:Negating the Negation Nitzan Lebovic (bio) Keywords Myth, Jewish thought, Paul Hanebrink, Elad Lapidot, Ole Jakob Løland Paul Hanebrink, A Specter Haunting Europe: The Myth of Judeo-Bolshevism. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2018. Elad Lapidot, Jews out of the Question: A Critique of Anti-Anti-Semitism. Albany: SUNY Press, 2020. Ole Jakob Løland, Pauline Ugliness: Jacob Taubes and the Turn to Paul. New York: Fordham University Press, 2020. To what degree is jewish studies still engaging with the myth of the Jew? A popular view identifies Jewish monotheism with a consistent opposition to mythological cyclicality and a pantheistic view of nature. In contrast, academic research demonstrated how limited this view is, and how important mythological themes have been to Jewish scripture and commentary.1 Take, for example, the impact of mythological images of nefilim—fallen beings, but also angels or giants—most clearly visible at times of crisis and "political judgments against royal power."2 Three recent books—in political history, critical thought, and political theology—exemplify how vibrant but problematic myth-making still is for our understanding of Jewish culture. Before turning to these recent books, however, it is worth briefly revisiting the history of the problematic relationship between Jews and their myths. If in premodern times Jews were represented in popular imagery as angels and giants, during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the mythic [End Page 327] representation of Jews turned antisemitic and hypernationalist. As a result, after 1945 philosophers and historians in the West adopted a skeptical view of myths and prophetic tropes. The German-Jewish philosopher Ernst Cassirer and the Polish-born Israeli historian Jacob Talmon admired myth as a literary and artistic form, but detested its role in modern politics; myth, they felt, had been at the core of the new language of violence and antisemitism that arose with radical nationalism and racism. "Perhaps the most important and the most alarming feature in this development of modern political thought," Cassirer, then a refugee in the United States, wrote in 1946, "is the appearance of a new power: the power of mythical thought."3 Anchored in the ancient language of death and revival, its political form "is nothing but the dark shadow cast by language on the world of human thought."4 A decade later, Talmon identified a "collective state of permanent excitement" that had turned nineteenth-century national mythic language into twentieth-century "political messianism" and "totalitarian democracy" (1956). For Talmon, as for the political thinker Hannah Arendt, whose Origins of Totalitarianism. (1951, 1954) came out shortly before Talmon's first book, capitalism and fascism had certain characteristics in common, such as the popularity of myth among masters of mass media.5 In the following decades, Arendt, Theodor Adorno, and Hans Blumenberg, among others, analyzed myth both as a form and as an agent of historical change. Considering it as a multivalent phenomenon was necessary to capture its power as a cultural force and a strange political beast. Instead of biblical catastrophes or Homer's creatures and heroes, the modern nation gave birth to a cult of self-aggrandizing "authoritarian personalities" and an unparalleled play of propaganda that fueled new myths. The post-1945 analysis of myth focused on the relationship between politics and language. Historians and theoreticians showed that the new evocation of power relied on a process of "emptying out" of meaning. For example, Viktor Klemperer's Lingua tertii imperii (Language of the Third Reich, 1947), unpacked the Nazi "emptying out of language" and the injection into it of mythic and collective "excitement." In contrast to Cassirer's historical overview, Klemperer's linguistic analysis focused on recent examples such as Alfred Rosenberg's Myth of the Twentieth Century or Josef Goebbels's articles in the Nazi dailies. The emptying out of language was [End Page 328] needed in order to dehumanize the Jew and shape the image of the Hitlerian Übermensch. A decade after Klemperer, Cassirer, and Talmon, Roland Barthes's Mythologies (1957) interpreted myth from the perspective of semiology—the study of symbols and signs—which he contrasted to the power of poetics. While avoiding a direct confrontation with the fascist use of myth...

Optical properties of a non-commutative rotating black hole

This paper explores the shadow cast by a non-commutative rotating Hayward black hole. The apparent shape as well as the size of the shadow depends upon the spin, non-commutative parameter as well as the parameter g of the said black hole. The size of the shadow decreases with g as well as the non-commutative parameter. Also, the shape of the shadow deviates from a perfect circle for the high values of g and the spin. We then discuss the rate of energy emission. Moreover, we study the impact of plasma on the size, shape as well as the rate of energy emission. We found that the plasma reduces the size and deformation of the shadow.

Method for Orientation Determining of the Detail for the Automated Soldering Technological Process

Purpose of reseach. Development of a technique for determining the orientation of parts during automatic soldering of a contact group based on the assembly of a combined image recognition systems.Methods. Analysis of the technological process of assembling a part and evaluating the possibility of using various technologies for orienting workpieces. Development of a consistent technique for orienting a part, including the stage of recognizing a rounded edge using a vision system. Development of an algorithm for recognizing the orientation of the workpiece directly from the image of the part and along the contour of the shadow of the part. Setting up full-scale experiments on a test bench, obtaining numerical values for the accuracy of recognizing the orientation of a part for various algorithms.Methodology. To solve the problem of transportation and positioning of the studied parts, methods of movement are used, due to controlled vibration inside the developed system of guides and cutters. To determine the rounded edge, image processing and recognition methods are used: the k-means method for clustering the original image, the Hough transform for contour search, etc.Results. In the course of the study, two algorithms for extracting details from the original image and the image of the shadows cast by the detail were developed. In the detection of an increased risk, more than 96%, however, when detecting sensitivity along the contour of the shadow, more than 99% were detected.Conclusion. The technique for determining details developed within the framework of the work, including the stages of preliminary sorting according to the task of vibrotransportation, the stage of searching for a round face using a technical perspective system, including the contour of shadow details, makes it possible to obtain high accuracy even when assembling video equipment with a low level of detection.

Application of a satellite-retrieved sheltering parameterization (v1.0) for dust event simulation with WRF-Chem v4.1

Abstract. Roughness features (e.g., rocks, vegetation, furrows) that shelter or attenuate wind flow over the soil surface can considerably affect the magnitude and spatial distribution of sediment transport in active aeolian environments. Existing dust and sediment transport models often rely on vegetation attributes derived from static land use datasets or remotely sensed greenness indicators to incorporate sheltering effects on simulated particle mobilization. However, these overly simplistic approaches do not represent the three-dimensional nature or spatiotemporal changes of roughness element sheltering. They also ignore the sheltering contribution of non-vegetation roughness features and photosynthetically inactive (i.e., brown) vegetation common to dryland environments. Here, we explore the use of a novel albedo-based sheltering parameterization in a dust transport modeling application of the Weather Research and Forecasting model with Chemistry (WRF-Chem). The albedo method estimates sheltering effects on surface wind friction speeds and dust entrainment from the shadows cast by subgrid-scale roughness elements. For this study, we applied the albedo-derived drag partition to the Air Force Weather Agency (AFWA) dust emission module and conducted a sensitivity study on simulated PM10 concentrations using the Georgia Institute of Technology–Goddard Global Ozone Chemistry Aerosol Radiation and Transport (GOCART) model as implemented in WRF-Chem v4.1. Our analysis focused on a convective dust event case study from 3–4 July 2014 for the southwestern United States desert region discussed by other published works. Previous studies have found that WRF-Chem simulations grossly overestimated the dust transport associated with this event. Our results show that removing the default erodibility map and adding the drag parameterization to the AFWA dust module markedly improved the overall magnitude and spatial pattern of simulated dust conditions for this event. Simulated PM10 values near the leading edge of the storm substantially decreased in magnitude (e.g., maximum PM10 values were reduced from 17 151 to 8539 µg m−3), bringing the simulated results into alignment with the observed PM10 measurements. Furthermore, the addition of the drag partition restricted the erroneous widespread dust emission of the original model configuration. We also show that similar model improvements can be achieved by replacing the wind friction speed parameter in the original dust emission module with globally scaled surface wind speeds, suggesting that a well-tuned constant could be used as a substitute for the albedo-based product for short-duration simulations in which surface roughness is not expected to change and for landscapes wherein roughness is constant over years to months. Though this alternative scaling method requires less processing, knowing how to best tune the model winds a priori could be a considerable challenge. Overall, our results demonstrate how dust transport simulation and forecasting with the AFWA dust module can be improved in vegetated drylands by calculating the dust emission flux with surface wind friction speed from a drag partition treatment.