Uncontrollable Force Research Articles

Romanticization and Demonization: Galician Landscapes in Russian Combatants’ Narratives During the Great War

In terms of environmental history, the First World War represents one of the most significant information gaps of the Anthropocene, where the type of warfare and the fall of empires intensified the destructiveness of the interaction between people and nature, changing the geological and cultural characteristics of Central and Eastern European landscapes. The collision of mass armies with foreign landscapes and militarized natural environments left an indelible stamp on personal accounts of the Great War. The imagery of nature, both as an uncontrollable force and as an object of impact, abounds in a broad diversity of textual and visual sources, which range from official documentation to private correspondence and from propaganda newsreels to personal photographs. It appears that pictures of landscapes destroyed or transformed by war (as well as the related epidemiological and climatic threats) contributed to shaping combatants’ existential experience to the same degree as short military operations. Unlike the universalized experience of the Western Front countries in the available literature on the environmental and spatial history of the First World War, the multiple ways in which mobile belligerent landscapes of the Eastern Front were experienced and perceived are yet to be addressed documentarily as well as methodologically. The article aims to reconstruct the horizons of expectation and environment construction strategies in combatants’ individual narratives and to identify the meaning of belligerent landscapes in the formation of specific behavioral strategies and practices on the Eastern Front of the world’s first industrial war. The analysis of ego-documents (letters, diaries, and memoirs) left by participants of WWI has identified a diversity of models for anthropomorphizing environmental objects and phenomena on the Eastern Front, which range from romanticization to demonization. The author aims to establish the way the perception of belligerent landscapes depends on the cultural baggage, prior experience of warfare, military branch, and the density of contacts with civilians populating the militarized spaces. One of the key messages of this study is the suggestion that the militarised environment’s signification through religious, literary, epidemiological anti-Semitic and other lenses contributed to the normalization of combatants’ mortal terror of war, their negative military experience, mourning, and nostalgia for the lost life-worlds.

Love, Power, and Gender in Seventeenth-Century French Fairy Tales

Love, Power, and Gender in Seventeenth-Century French Fairy Tales

Wearable Physiological Monitoring System Based on Electrocardiography and Electromyography for Upper Limb Rehabilitation Training.

Secondary injuries are common during upper limb rehabilitation training because of uncontrollable physical force and overexciting activities, and long-time training may cause fatigue and reduce the training effect. This study proposes a wearable monitoring device for upper limb rehabilitation by integrating electrocardiogram and electromyogram (ECG/EMG) sensors and using data acquisition boards to obtain accurate signals during robotic glove assisting training. The collected ECG/EMG signals were filtered, amplified, digitized, and then transmitted to a remote receiver (smart phone or laptop) via a low-energy Bluetooth module. A software platform was developed for data analysis to visualize ECG/EMG information, and integrated into the robotic glove control module. In the training progress, various hand activities (i.e., hand closing, forearm pronation, finger flexion, and wrist extension) were monitored by the EMG sensor, and the changes in the physiological status of people (from excited to fatigue) were monitored by the ECG sensor. The functionality and feasibility of the developed physiological monitoring system was demonstrated by the assisting robotic glove with an adaptive strategy for upper limb rehabilitation training improvement. The feasible results provided a novel technique to monitor individual ECG and EMG information holistically and practically, and a technical reference to improve upper limb rehabilitation according to specific treatment conditions and the users’ demands. On the basis of this wearable monitoring system prototype for upper limb rehabilitation, many ECG-/EMG-based mobile healthcare applications could be built avoiding some complicated implementation issues such as sensors management and feature extraction.

Principles and thoughts of magnetic surgical instrument structure planning

<p indent=0mm>Since the first magnetic surgical instrument appeared in the 1970s, magnetic surgical instruments have made great progress in the following <sc>50 years.</sc> They solved a series of complex clinical problems, and optimized traditional surgical methods. The master works of magnetic surgical instruments, such as Levita and LINX, were published in the top journals, and made a profound impact on the surgical and scientific communities. After the magnetic surgery theories and its application systems raised by experts in surgical and engineering fields, magnetic surgery gradually becomes an important branch of surgery. In recent years, under the guidance of the magnetic surgery theory system, magnetic surgery has achieved vigorous development. A variety of highly innovative magnetic surgical instruments have emerged endlessly. However, it cannot be ignored that with the development of magnetic surgery, there will still be many obstacles in the future. Because magnetic surgery is an interdisciplinary discipline, it requires a deep integration of surgery and engineering. The most representative problem is how to make reasonable and effective structural planning of magnetic instruments. This is the most basic problem of magnetic surgery. Therefore, this article will discuss the principles of magnetic surgical instrument structure planning, summarize the problems encountered in the past, and propose potential solutions to the corresponding problems. In the early stage of the development of magnetic surgery, due to lack of experience and theoretical guidance, the irrational design of magnetic surgical instruments was common. The following four principles of structural design of magnetic surgical instruments could not be followed: Magnetic force to meet the function, safety without damage, minimum volume, and optimized shape. As a result, some magnetic surgical instruments failed to fully utilize their unique advantages, and even caused damage to patients, which greatly limits the promotion of magnetic surgery. The author concluded that there were four problems in the design of the magnetic surgical mechanical structure in the past: The magnetic force of the magnet was uncontrollable, the magnetic force of the magnet was irreversible, the magnetic force of the magnet was unknown, and the shape of the magnet was immutable. In response to the above problems, global surgical and scientific experts are also actively responding. At present, preliminary solutions have been proposed for this purpose, and success in experimental verification has been achieved. The authors put forward some solutions for peer reference and verification. Magnetic surgical instruments are mostly made of permanent magnet materials. The permanent magnet has the defect of uncontrollable magnetic force, and electromagnetic and electronically controlled permanent magnets can completely solve this problem. The characteristics of a soft magnetic material determine that it can be rapidly saturated and magnetized, and it can be quickly demagnetized after the magnetic field is removed. With this feature, hard magnet and soft magnet can be used together during magnetic surgery. In addition, if a miniature distance sensor can be loaded on both ends of the magnetic rings, and the distance is converted into a signal through wireless transmission technology, and interpreted by an external receiver, the distance between the magnetic staplers can be finally obtained, so as to achieve an intelligent magnetic anastomosis. In addition, the magnetic structure can be deformed through fluid magnetism or self-assembly magnetism to meet clinical needs.

Iz ljubezni in zaradi ljubezni. Čustva kot vzroki človekovih odzivov v luči konstrukcij s predlogi

The article examines Slovenian constructions with the causal preposition zaradi ‘because of’ and the spatial prepositions od ‘from’, iz ‘out of’, and v ‘in’ that portray emotions as an inner cause of human behaviour. It is argued that the choice of preposition is not arbitrary but determined by conceptual and pragmatic factors. The study shows that the choice of a spatial preposition depends on whether the emotion is perceived as a controllable or uncontrollable force. In contrast, the preposition zaradi ‘because of’ provides an explanation of the causal relation between the emotion and the resulting event, and can therefore be used regardless of whether the emotion is perceived as controlled or not.

A Loaded Gun: Emily Dickinson for the 21st Century by Jerome Charyn

Reviewed by: A Loaded Gun: Emily Dickinson for the 21st Century by Jerome Charyn Jane Donahue Eberwein (bio) Charyn, Jerome. A Loaded Gun: Emily Dickinson for the 21st Century. New York: Bellevue Literary Press, 2016. 256 pp. $19.95. When Jerome Charyn undertakes to write about Emily Dickinson, multiple possibilities emerge for so versatile a writer. If not for subtitles, a reader might easily mistake the genres of two books, The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson: A Novel (2010) and now A Loaded Gun: Emily Dickinson for the 21st Century. Charyn's motive for trying again to capture the poet, this time in a sequence of non-fictional explorations, can be readily grasped by everyone captivated by Emily Dickinson: "I knew less and less the more I learned about her," "I couldn't let go." Charyn brings to this writing a scorn for familiar distortions of his subject, openness to possibilities, a resourceful approach to inquiry, and a determination to let both poetry and poet confront us with contradictions: "She was an agoraphobic who could dance anywhere on her toes, a reclusive nun who wrote the sexiest love letters, a mermaid who swam in her own interior sea, a shy mouse who could pillage and plunder in her poems. All her life she was a Loaded Gun." In keeping with these contradictions, we have a book that comes to us recommended by both Oprah Winfrey and Phi Beta Kappa – intended for general readers but anchored in current scholarship and of engaging interest to the poet's many admirers. Although the book's aim is to introduce a Dickinson for our still-new century, readers of this journal will find nothing revolutionary in Charyn's dismissal of William Luce's characterization in The Belle of Amherst nor in yet another rediscovery of the "loaded gun" of poetic genius well remembered from Adrienne Rich and other feminist scholars. Yet few writers have so brilliantly captured that explosive, threatening, uncontrollable force. Charyn's Emily Dickinson menaces. He describes her as "like a monster in her lair," "seductive, spiteful, cruel, with the reckless anger and eruptions of a volcano," "a woman with volcanic powers–whose [End Page 172] lightning rhythms and ragged rhymes seem to mirror our postapocalyptic age," and "an enchantress, whose intellect and imagination had utterly isolated her." In his version of the familiar story about Thomas Wentworth Higginson's first visit to the Homestead, "a gentle soul who swore he loved danger walked right into Emily Dickinson's lair and met the Satanic, catlike sibyl." Higginson doesn't play a major role in this book, nor do other figures typically foregrounded by Dickinson's biographers. Although Charyn acknowledges Edward Dickinson as the dominant force in his daughter's life, the father stands out on these pages chiefly as a beater of horses. Austin is remembered for his wig. Susan, though perhaps the strongest romantic force among many in her sister-in-law's life, was "a greater riddle than Emily or Kate . . . a 'dead spot.'" The attachments on which Charyn projects his closest focus have left least evidence for biographers. Emily Norcross Dickinson receives sympathetic attention for her reticence, her domestic skills, her complicated relationship with her namesake daughter, and the muteness that reflected her own sufferings as daughter, wife, and mother. Charyn distills her life story into a general indictment of nineteenth-century marriage from a woman's perspective. "Emily Sr.," he writes, "suffered the way most other women suffered in nineteenth-century New England, however rich or poor. If she wanted to marry, she had to leave her parents' home like a vagabond in a bridal gown, shelve herself inside her husband's surname, learn to live with this man who was little more than a stranger, no matter what courtship rites were followed, and become subservient to this stranger's kin and to all his sexual needs and desires." Yet her daughters, having dodged this fate, are represented as their father's domestic pets. Speaking of pets, though, Charyn treats us to a delightful chapter focused on Carlo, the "walking mountain," Dickinson's "Daemon Dog" who provided her with companionship, protection, and a buffer for...

Vasily V. Vereshchagin (1842–1904): Vae victis in Asia and in Europe

Vasily Vereshchagin (1842–1904) was one of the most well-known Russian artists of the second half of the nineteenth-century and the beginning of the twentieth century. Strongly influenced by the popular French Neo-Classicist and Orientalist Jean-Léon Gérome, Vereshchagin's was constantly in pursuit of new subjects for his art. Instead of construing the east as a place of backwardness, lawlessness or barbarism, enlightened and tamed by Occidental rule, Vereshchagin's engagement with progress and humanism evolved in the course of his numerous expeditions and travels, shaping themes and images of human pathos, uncontrollable force and emotional extremes engendered by the war violence unfolding before his eyes. This article will trace Vereshchagin's life and works and their place in the development of the arts in the nineteenth century, when genre painting, the prevalent form of Orientalist art, gradually evolved into battle scenes. Vereshchagin selected the facts of human existence to transfer them to his drafts and studies as if he were attempting to discover the roots of cultural contradictions between the beauty and diversity of human creativity and the poverty, cruelty and barbarity of human life. His method of juxtaposing the traditional form of battle painting and the real tragedy of war whose victims had neither voice nor identity would challenge generals, tsars, governments and the orthodoxies of his time but would also bring him fame and respect.

"It aint nothing but jest another Snopes": White Trash in Faulkner's Snopes Trilogy

"It aint nothing but jest another Snopes":White Trash in Faulkner's Snopes Trilogy Justin Mellette In spite of its noticeable absence of major black characters, William Faulkner's Snopes trilogy offers fertile ground for expanding critical conversations on the racial concerns that Faulkner interrogated throughout his career. Thadious M. Davis suggests that Faulkner's "treatment of white people, within the normalizing, universalizing elision of racial identity, but with the complexity of the burden of racial subjectivity is an extraordinary achievement" and that As I Lay Dying and the Snopes trilogy, novels with "no visible black presence at all," are the "most racialized of Faulkner's work" (254). Rather than confronting the lingering specters of slavery or society's inherent fear and inability to stomach the idea of miscegenation, The Hamlet, The Town, and The Mansion bring to light anxieties over whiteness, specifically, the rise of white trash in Yoknapatawpha. In contrast to the old aristocratic families in Faulkner's fictional world—the Sartorises, McCaslins, Compsons, Greniers, and de Spains—the Snopes family seemingly arrives out of nowhere in the ruined vestiges of the post-Civil War South. Even Ab Snopes, the pater familias, is described as "never anything but a jackal" by Faulkner in a discussion of his mercenary actions during the Civil War (University 250). As opposed to, say, the lineage of the Compson family, which stems from 1699 and includes both a general and a governor, the Snopeses are introduced to readers as having no relevant ancestry, descending on Yoknapatawpha as little better than pests invading a fallen land. While many Snopeses do act perniciously in the stories in which they appear, their presence is most notable in that it triggers the bigoted mindset of the more middle-class, urban community at large that regards them as not merely class but also racial inferiors. Critical discussion on the Snopes trilogy tends to focus on Flem Snopes's inhumanity or the multiplicity of narrators Faulkner employs, from the chivalric grandiloquence of Gavin Stevens to the rustic wisdom of V. K. Ratliff; less critical attention has been paid to the novels' complex treatment of racial anxiety leveled against poor whites, which [End Page 41] complements and at some point even mirrors other forms of racism examined by Faulkner over his career. Flem's nefariousness has been of critical concern for decades: in James Gray Watson's important early work on the trilogy, he refers to Flem as "a character so completely resistant to moral definition as to be literally inhuman" (12). Similarly, Joseph Gold writes that to the villagers of Frenchman's Bend, Flem represents "an uncontrollable and incomprehensible force" (27) and Donald Greiner notes that Flem's shrewdness marks him as fully capable of manipulating human behavior, calling him "the better man when it comes to greed," as Flem easily outmaneuvers the townsfolk in the spotted horses deal (1135). Flem's villainy and shrewdness, then, have been well dissected by critics; what has gone somewhat understudied to this point is not Flem's immorality but rather the appropriateness of the town's response to him and his family. While Flem's actions are often self-serving, the language meted out against not only him in particular but also to the Snopeses in general is unbalanced in relation to their purported actions, which we will come to see as emblematic of the prejudice targeted against the family. As Richard Godden notes, because Flem is the son of an "unconvicted barn burner," the residents of Frenchman's Bend "suspect [him] of harboring purposes both criminal and political," long before he has made a name for himself ("Earthing" 79). Such criticisms are often leveled against the family before they have acted maliciously or selfishly: Yoknapatawpha's judgments of the Snopes family are based not on their actions but rather on a racist ideology that regards white trash as a fundamentally inferior and degraded group of people. Studying how Faulkner utilizes and depicts whiteness in myriad ways has emerged as a fruitful addition to Faulkner studies, thanks in large part to the publication of Jay Watson's Faulkner and Whiteness, an edited collection that originated as a 2006–2007 special issue...

Advances and Patents about Medical Surgical Operation Bone Drilling Equipment

With the increasing application of mechanical engineering in medical areas, bone drilling has become one essential part of orthopedic surgery. Recently, there are more and more researches and developments on bone drilling for fixing implants or widening operative field and related equipments. However, the uncontrollable axial force and over high drilling temperature during bone drilling not only influence drilling quality and loose the prosthesis implants, but also are easy to cause fracture nonunion and various operative complications, thus prolonging the recovery time. All existing drilling equipments employ manual feed and depend to a greater extent on the experiences of doctors. Doctors could judge whether bone has been drilled through precise judgment. Excessive feeding because of lack of clinical experiences or misjudgment during operation will cause secondary injuries to patients. Therefore, the author designed a surgical bone drill with controllable axial force. It uses abrasive particle drill, brazed PCBN superhard material drill, step drill and brazed twist drill. It could judge whether the bone has been cut through according to voltage signal collected by the intelligent integrated control system and thereby stop feeding automatically. Moreover, a theoretical analysis and experimental research on influencing factors of drilling temperature have been conducted to provide references for clinical practice. This paper analyzed advances and patents about medical surgical operation bone drilling equipment in recent years, including cranial drills, bone drills with drillings cleaner, drilling depth adjustable bone drills, automatic stop bone drills and other bone drills. Keywords: Automatic stop bone drills, bone drills, bone drills with drillings cleaner, cranial drills, drilling depth adjustable bone drills, drilling temperature, secondary injuries, uncontrollable axial force.

The Alien Within

Cancer is a disease for which the English language reserves some of its most sinister epithets: cancer is said to ‘devour’, ‘ruin’, ‘ravage’ and ‘deform’, and relentlessly to consume flesh with insatiable rapacity. Conceived of as an unknowable and uncontrollable force from the outside, cancer is paradoxically created within the cancer subject’s own body, a body which profoundly questions the comfortable separation of the human from the animal. For many writing about their experiences of the disease, the ramifications can be multifaceted: robbed of faith in the body’s willingness to bend to regulation, objectified by economically straitened health bureaucracies, trapped in the headlights of mortality, unable to find adequate means for conveying contradictory emotional registers and disabled by others’ fear of the abject, these individuals often understand their subjectivity as inhabiting the liminal space between the human and the creaturely. This essay explores the ways in which cancer subjects represent the processes of defamiliarisation that diagnosis often initiates through three recent autobiographical accounts of men coming to terms with their incurable cancers. Philip Gould’s When I Die: Lessons from the Death Zone (2012), Christopher Hitchens’ Mortality (2012) and Tom Lubbock’s Until Further Notice, I Am Alive (2012) are autopathographies that give utterance to experiences of subjectivity that are increasingly compromised owing to the effects of illness and the knowledge of the irreversibility of the cancer subject’s condition. Through examining the writers’ use of creaturely metaphors to describe both the nature and the effects of their cancers, this essay argues that in an age of advanced medical intervention, the language we use to describe cancer still reveals potent anxieties about the exceptionality of the human and the proximity of the animal.

Политические и национально – культурные аспекты прусского мифа в контексте российско – германских отношений XX в.

Referring to a large number of Soviet, Russian and German memoirs, fiction and journalistic texts, the author studies the main ways of formation and development of the Prussian myth that is connected with the German province of East Prussia and its people during World War II and the postwar period. The author explores the historical, national and psychological reasons that underlie the idea of Prussia and Prussians as the most vivid image of the Alien or the Enemy in Soviet people’s consciousness during the Great Patriotic War. Heavily relying on propaganda, the negative mythology of Prussia imposed that it be perceived as the den of the fascist beast, a place that generated antihuman theories and annexationist plans, and, secondly, a land that was originally Russian and then occupied by the Livonian Order. It is such ideas that formed the official state policy of the expulsion of the Prussian spirit that took place during the first three post-war decades in Kaliningrad Region. Additionally, Soviet and post-Soviet memoir or autobiographical literature (D. Shcheglov, A. Nevsky, P. Mikhin, Yu. Zhukova) formed the idea of a close connection of a number of nation-specific traits of the Germans with centuries-old Prussian militarism. This is how the Russia-Germany relations conflict was formed between Russian chaos and German cosmos, and was reflected not only in the Russian but also German egodocuments of the World War II. Among the main variations of the Prussian myth, there is one that consists in the idea of Prussia as of German Arcadia, an agricultural paradise (M. Muller, H. Rauschenbach, A. Surminski) lost as a result of the War. Another – German – variation of the Prussian myth is the idea of Prussia and its dwellers as the main loss Germany had to go through in the course of World War II. The authors of egodocuments that reflect this point of view (H. Gerlach, G. Kopp, M. Wieck) describe their lives as part of the historical tragedy of East Prussia and Germany as a whole. It is such memoirs that are most frequently used by Western European historians (M. Hastings, G. Boddeker, N. M. Naimark) to create an impression of the Soviet Army’s extremely violent behaviour in East Prussia. A third variation of the Prussian myth created by Germans may be called soteriological and depicts this eastern German land as a saviour bearing the brunt from the East and granting its inhabitants a chance to find a way out of the country and go to the West over the Baltic Sea. In these ideas formulated both by professional writers (G. Grass, E. Junger) and memoirists (E. Tannehill, G. Nitsch) the image of the Red Army and Russians often regarded as an uncontrollable force, the personification of chaos plays an important role. At the end of the article, referring to a vast number of egodocuments written by both Russians (Ya. Terentyev, E. F. Agapov, G. A. Melikhov, A. E. Kashpur, P. Kh. Kharitonov) and Germans (R. Klaussen), the author outlines ways out of the space of war and into the space of multicultural European consciousness that includes both Germany and Russia.

LO ANIMAL: FIGURA DE LA FATALIDAD EN EL WOYZECK DE BÜCHNER

The essay offers a reading of the Woyzeck tragedy, by the XIX century German playwright Georg Buchner. It intends to portray that the fictional work constitutes a sort of antipodes in relation to its source of inspiration: the psychiatric report that precipitated the sentence of the historical subject, which gives the title to the drama. On this point of view, a reading codeis proposed from the set of variations that the play contributes to the subject or the figure of animality. As a neutral, inconceivable, and uncontrollable force, which not only pulls the protagonist towards tragedy, but also functions as a dynamic principle of the complete rangeof characters.

Statistical analysis, modeling, and optimization of thrust force and surface roughness in high-speed drilling of Al–Si alloy

The needs to rapid manufacture of automotive components have led to the extensive uses of high-speed drilling in hole-making operation. However, issues such as uncontrollable thrust force and hole quality need to be addressed effectively in order to have full benefit of high-speed machining. Modeling the effect of drilling parameters on the machining responses can be a useful approach in controlling the thrust force and surface quality of the hole. This article reports on the development of mathematical models for thrust force ( Ft) and surface roughness ( Ra) during high-speed drilling of Al–Si alloy using uncoated carbide tools. Central composite design coupled with response surface methodology was used to predict the Ft and Ra values in relation to the primary machining variables such as cutting speed and feed rate. Second-order polynomial models were developed for both responses, and the adequacy of models was verified by analysis of variance. Results show the goodness of response surface methodology in the development of mathematical models in explaining the variation of thrust force and surface roughness by relating them to the variations of cutting parameters. In the developed models, linear effects of cutting parameters have the highest contribution to the thrust force model, while their quadratic effects are the significant terms influencing the surface roughness. Consequently, the optimum cutting condition was predicted at the high and low levels of cutting speed and feed rate, respectively.

Study on a Control Method Used in the Semi-Active Suspension

A new control method used in the semi-active suspension is studied. The force generated by the semi-active damper can be divided into two parts, one is the uncontrollable force, and the other is the controllable force. In order to make the sprung mass have the ideal isolation effect, the controllable force should be equal to the sum of the uncontrollable force and the force generated by the suspension spring. But the controllable force is limited by many constraints. Therefore, the control strategy can be concluded. The simulation results show that the ride comfort and handling stability are both improved by the control method.

Das Wildgewordene Subjekt. Christian Moosbrugger und Die Imagination des Wilden in Musils MANN OHNE EIGENSCHAFTEN

Since Rousseau the noble savage and the imagination of wildness have become ideals that serve as harmonic counterparts to the experience of alienation in modern life. In Robert Musil’s great novel Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften (The man without qualities), which was written in view of the catastrophe of World War I with it’s breakdown of all traditional values, the situation has changed radically. Wildness has lost its utopian qualities and is characterized now as an uncontrollable and irreducible force that appears in crime, madness, and (common) ecstasy. Since it is able to destroy the structures of personal identity just as those of social life when ignored and repressed, Musil also looks for possibilities to integrate it into life. The essay describes several aspects of wildness in Musil’s novel while focussing on the psychotic murderer Christian Moosbrugger, who can be understood as a modern successor of the noble savage.

Viral Noise and the (Dis)Order of the Digital Culture

Viral Noise and the (Dis)Order of the Digital Culture

Race and the construction of Jewish identity in French and American Jewish fiction of the 1920s

In both the United States and France, Jewish-fiction writers of the 1920s often invoked the idea of Jewish racial unity as a non-rational, uncontrollable force separating Jews from mainstream society irrespective of their desire for integration. This genre of fiction reveals an ambivalent attitude towards race-thinking. The notion that there are intractable physical differences between groups threatened the Jews’ status as fully privileged co-citizens. Yet a racialized self-understanding provided them with a way to articulate the intangible bonds of community, which their official status as a purely “religious” group normally held them back from expressing openly. The common trope of the failed Jewish-Gentile romance best expresses the dual desire of French and American Jews for acceptance and distinctiveness. A sense of racial identity often leads protagonists to reject a non-Jewish lover or spouse and draw strength from a renewed sense of connection with the Jewish people. More often than not, however, these figures are left with feelings of ambivalence and regret, as they realize that their universalist dream of uniting with someone from a different “racial” background is not possible in the real world, where their Jewish particularism inevitably dooms such relationships to failure.

Lessons Learned in Eight Years of Seismology Outreach in Arizona Schools

One of the most exciting moments after installing a new seismic station in a high school classroom is recording an earthquake. Students leave their desks; teachers stop midsentence, as if the classroom beneath their feet were shaking! Earthquakes are a fascinating, powerful, and uncontrollable force that capture the attention of people young and old and naturally lend themselves to engaging students in the classroom. Focusing on earthquakes in schools creates unique opportunities for seismologists to share their knowledge, tools, and excitement for the study of the Earth and to become involved in kindergarten through high school (K-12, ages 5-18) education. However, the steps from conducting seismology research in a university laboratory to using seismology as a teacher in a K-12 classroom are not always clear or easy to take. After nearly a decade of promoting educational seismology, the seismology community has made critical advances in identifying what is effective and what is needed for success (USESN, 2001). Much credit must be given to the pioneers in educational seismology and programs such as PEPP (Princeton Earth Physics Project) and PSN (Public Seismic Network) which first wrestled with these challenges. Their efforts sparked interest within the seismological community, so that today a classroom teacher has many options and opportunities for incorporating seismic data into the daily instruction. While the tools and educational resources available have improved substantially, challenges still remain. Two philosophical branches of educational seismology are emerging that offer similar learning opportunities with somewhat different goals. One branch uses higher quality instrumentation and sophisticated networking software for automated data gathering and archiving. The seismometer can serve the dual purposes of education and extending local or regional research seismic networks. The other branch focuses on simpler instrumentation with opportunities for greater interactivity and classroom experimentation. This branch has a secondary purpose of …

A new macro/micro robotic probing system for the in-circuit test of PCBs

This paper presents a new macro/micro robotic probing system developed for the in-circuit test of printed circuit boards (PCBs). Commercially available robotic probing devices are likely to generate excessive contact force due to their uncontrollability, as a rigid probe makes a contact with a less rigid, plastically deformable solder joint at high speed. Since the conventional probing mechanism has only passive compliance, it cannot effectively control such a large contact force. This uncontrollable excessive contact force often makes some defects on the surface of the solder joint and oscillatory motions of the probe, resulting in unreliable test data. In addition, contact with a steep surface of the solder joint makes slip motion of the probe tip onto the surface. To overcome these problems, we propose a serially connected macro and micro robotic probing device equipped with active compliance capability and sensing ability of surface conditions of the solder joint in real-time. This paper describes its design characteristics and control scheme of the newly proposed device. The effectiveness of the proposed probing system is verified through a series of experiments.

The incorporation of an interactive external environment: an extended model of marketing relationships

Traditional marketing theory has largely considered the external environment as an uncontrollable fixed constraint. This deterministic approach fails to consider the often interdependent nature of the firm and its external environment. It is suggested that there are many components of the business environment that can be influenced, to the overall benefit of the firm, yet traditional models tend to suggest that the external environment is mainly an uncontrollable force. The incorporation of stakeholder theory into a model of marketing interactions can be used to integrate a wider set of relationships into a firm's activities and, by incorporating this more explicitly into the planning process, can create greater value for the firm. This paper examines how stakeholder theory can be incorporated into a model of marketing so as to promote the inclusion of an interactive business environment into strategy formation.