The atmospheric Cherenkov technique in y-ray astronomy: the early days

At this meeting papers were given by Turver & Weekes and Sreekantan about the current status in the detection of ultra-high-energy y-rays in the energy range 10 11 —10 13 eV, by means of the atmospheric Cherenkov technique. There are two objectives of this short contribution. The first is to describe briefly the early history of the subject, and the second to outline the basic physics involved, which will reveal how the technique is essentially quite different from those used in the other energy bands in the y-ray spectrum.

2010 ◽  
pp. 187-204
Author(s):  
Jasmina Grkovic-Major

This paper deals with the the complements of the verbs of visual and auditory perception in Old Church Slavonic: Accusative with participle (AP) and clause. The two types of complements are semantically differentiated by evidentiality: AP serves for the firsthand evidentiality and the clause for the non-firsthand evidentiality. Since AP is attested in Old Russian, Old Czech as well in some other old Slavonic languages, it is evident that it was an indigenous Slavic construction. It belongs to the Indo-European syntactic inheritance - the appositive double accusative. Since in early Indo-European the accusative was a general adverbial case, it expressed both types of evidentiality. With the typological drift of Indo-European and its daughter languages toward a nominative language type, which meant the development of syntactic transitivity, the AP was reanalyzed as an object, but only in the cases of the firsthand evidentiality (where the subject has control over the information). For non-firsthand evidentiality, another strategy, inherited also from the proto-language, was used: a sentence with delimitative connective(s). This process was finished by the end of Proto-Slavonic, as testified by Old Church Slavonic. In the process of the further strengthening of transitivity, which gave a prominent role to the predicate as the centripetal core of the sentence, the other predicative center - the active participle - had to be removed, while the passive participle was reanalyzed as an adjective. This led to the loss of the AP in the early history of Slavic languages and the development of hypotactic structures. It was a long process, marked by the competition of different particles and deictic forms which were on the way to be grammaticalized into conjunctions. It ended with the formation of the two types of conjunctions for the two types of evidentiality, e.g. jak - ze in Czech, da - ce in Bulgarian, kako - da in Serbian, kak - cto in Russian etc. This shows not only the importance of evidentiality in a diachronic perspective but also that its formalization is based on the language type.


Author(s):  
Tony Crilly

The four-colour map problem (to prove that on any map only four colours are needed to separate countries) is celebrated in mathematics. It resisted the attempts of able mathematicians for over a century and when it was successfully proved in 1976 the ‘computer proof’ was controversial: it did not allow scrutiny in the conventional way. At the height of his influence in 1878, Arthur Cayley had drawn attention to the problem at a meeting of the London Mathematical Society and it was duly ‘announced’ in print. He made a short contribution himself and he encouraged the young A. B. Kempe to publish a paper on the subject. Though ultimately unsuccessful, the work of Cayley and Kempe in the late 1870s brought valuable insights. Using previously unpublished historical sources, of letters and manuscripts, this article attempts to piece together Cayley’s contribution against the backcloth of his other deliberations. Francis Galton is revealed as the ‘go-between’ in suggesting Cayley publish his observations in Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society . Of particular interest is that Cayley submitted two manuscripts prior to publication. A detailed comparison of these initial and final manuscripts in this article sheds new light on the early history of this great problem.


1860 ◽  
Vol 17 ◽  
pp. 39-69 ◽  
Author(s):  
I. W. Bosanquet
Keyword(s):  

The origin and duration of the empire of the Medes, which occupied 80 important a position in early Asiatic history, has been the subject of attention to many recent writers. The Lectures of Niebuhr on the Medes and Persians are probably familiar to us all. Dr. Leonard Schmitz, the translator of Niebuhr's works, has recently published his matured views on the same subject. Mr. Johannes Von Gumpach in 1852, Professor Brandis in 1853, and Jacob Kruger in 1856, have also expressed their views upon Median history and chronology; and within the last twelve months, the works of Marcus Von Niebuhr on Assyrian and Babylonian history, and the translation of Herodotus by the Rev. George Rawlinson, have appeared, embracing and commenting upon the early history of the Medes.


1859 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. 381-457 ◽  

The necessity of discussing so great a subject as the Theory of the Vertebrate Skull in the small space of time allotted by custom to a lecture, has its advantages as well as its drawbacks. As, on the present occasion, I shall suffer greatly from the disadvantages of the limitation, I will, with your permission, avail myself to the uttermost of its benefits. It will be necessary for me to assume much that I would rather demonstrate, to suppose known much that I would rather set forth and explain at length; but on the other hand, I may consider myself excused from entering largely either into the history of the subject, or into lengthy and controversial criticisms upon the views which are, or have been, held by others. The biological science of the last half-century is honourably distinguished from that of preceding epochs, by the constantly increasing prominence of the idea, that a community of plan is discernible amidst the manifold diversities of organic structure. That there is nothing really aberrant in nature; that the most widely different organisms are connected by a hidden bond; that an apparently new and isolated structure will prove, when its characters are thoroughly sifted, to be only a modification of something which existed before,—are propositions which are gradually assuming the position of articles of faith in the mind of the investigators of animated nature, and are directly, or by implication, admitted among the axioms of natural history.


2014 ◽  
Vol 107 (3) ◽  
pp. 363-398
Author(s):  
James Carleton Paget

Albert Schweitzer's engagement with Judaism, and with the Jewish community more generally, has never been the subject of substantive discussion. On the one hand this is not surprising—Schweitzer wrote little about Judaism or the Jews during his long life, or at least very little that was devoted principally to those subjects. On the other hand, the lack of a study might be thought odd—Schweitzer's work as a New Testament scholar in particular is taken up to a significant degree with presenting a picture of Jesus, of the earliest Christian communities, and of Paul, and his scholarship emphasizes the need to see these topics against the background of a specific set of Jewish assumptions. It is also noteworthy because Schweitzer married a baptized Jew, whose father's academic career had been disadvantaged because he was a Jew. Moreover, Schweitzer lived at a catastrophic time in the history of the Jews, a time that directly affected his wife's family and others known to him. The extent to which this personal contact with Jews and with Judaism influenced Schweitzer either in his writings on Judaism or in his life will in part be the subject of this article.


1897 ◽  
Vol 17 ◽  
pp. 319-320 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank Calvert

I derive the materials of the present paper from some memoranda which I find amongst my archaeological notes and which relate to certain explorations to which I was not a party, made so long ago as 1887. I have thought that the particulars then obtained may be deemed sufficiently interesting to deserve a record in the history of Trojan archaeological discovery.The subject is one of the four small tumuli dotted about and near the hill of Balli-Dagh, the crest of which according to the now exploded theory of Le Chevalier (1785) was supposed to represent the Pergamos of Troy. In a memoir contributed to the Journal of the Archaeological Institute of 1864, I proved that the site in question was no other than that of the ancient city of Gergis. In the same paper I gave an account of the results of the excavation of one of the group of three tumuli on Balli-Dagh, the so-named Tomb of Priam. The other two, namely Le Chevalier's Tomb of Hector, and an unnamed hillock, were excavated respectively by Sir John Lubbock (about 1878) and Dr. Schliemann (1882) without result. The present relates to the fourth mound on the road between the villages of Bournarbashi and Arablar (as shown in the published maps), which goes by the name of Choban Tepeh (Shepherd's hillock) and the Tomb of Paris, according to Rancklin (1799).


1832 ◽  
Vol 122 ◽  
pp. 539-574 ◽  

I have for some time entertained an opinion, in common with some others who have turned their attention tot he subject, that a good series of observations with a Water-Barometer, accurately constructed, might throw some light upon several important points of physical science: amongst others, upon the tides of the atmosphere; the horary oscillations of the counterpoising column; the ascending and descending rate of its greater oscillations; and the tension of vapour at different atmospheric temperatures. I have sought in vain in various scientific works, and in the Transactions of Philosophical Societies, for the record of any such observations, or for a description of an instrument calculated to afford the required information with anything approaching to precision. In the first volume of the History of the French Academy of Sciences, a cursory reference is made, in the following words, to some experiments of M. Mariotte upon the subject, of which no particulars appear to have been preserved. “Le même M. Mariotte fit aussi à l’observatoire des experiences sur le baromètre ordinaire à mercure comparé au baromètre à eau. Dans l’un le mercure s’eléva à 28 polices, et dans Fautre l’eau fut a 31 pieds Cequi donne le rapport du mercure à l’eau de 13½ à 1.” Histoire de I'Acadérmie, tom. i. p. 234. It also appears that Otto Guricke constructed a philosophical toy for the amusement of himself and friends, upon the principle of the water-barometer; but the column of water probably in this, as in all the other instances which I have met with, was raised by the imperfect rarefaction of the air in the tube above it, or by filling with water a metallic tube, of sufficient length, cemented to a glass one at its upper extremity, and fitted with a stop-cock at each end; so that when full the upper one might be closed and the lower opened, when the water would fall till it afforded an equipoise to the pressure of the atmo­sphere. The imperfections of such an instrument, it is quite clear, would render it totally unfit for the delicate investigations required in the present state of science; as, to render the observations of any value, it is absolutely necessary that the water should be thoroughly purged of air, by boiling, and its insinuation or reabsorption effectually guarded against. I was convinced that the only chance of securing these two necessary ends, was to form the whole length of tube of one piece of glass, and to boil the water in it, as is done with mercury in the common barometer. The practical difficulties which opposed themselves to such a construction long appeared to me insurmount­able; but I at length contrived a plan for the purpose, which, having been honoured with the approval of the late Meteorological Committee of this Society, was ordered to be carried into execution by the President and Council.


2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 155-178
Author(s):  
Leila Chamankhah

Muḥy al-Dīn Ibn ‘Arabī’s theoretical mysticism has been the subject of lively discussion among Iranian Sufis since they first encountered it in the seventh century. ‘Abdul Razzāq Kāshānī was the pioneer and forerunner of the debate, followed by reading and interpreting al-Shaykh al-Akbar’s key texts, particularly Fuṣūṣ al-Ḥikam (Bezels of Wisdom) by future generations of Shī‘ī scholars. Along with commentaries and glosses on his works, every element of ibn ‘Arabī’s mysticism, from his theory of the oneness of existence (waḥdat al-wujūd) to his doctrines of nubuwwa, wilāya, and khatm al-wilāya, was accepted by his Shī‘ī peers, incorporated into their context and adjusted to Shī‘a doctrinal platform. This process of internalization and amalgamation was so complete that after seven centuries, it is difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish between Ibn ‘Arabī’s theory of waḥdat al-wujūd, or his doctrines of wilāya and khatm al-wilāya and those of his Shī‘ī readers. To have a clearer picture of the philosophical and mystical activities and interests of Shī‘ī scholars in Iran under Ilkhanids (1256-1353), I examined the intellectual and historical contexts of seventh century Iran. The findings of my research are indicative of the contribution of mystics such as ‘Abdul Razzāq Kāshānī to both the school of Ibn ‘Arabī in general and of Ṣadr al-Dīn al-Qūnawī in particular on the one hand, and to the correlation between Sufism and Shī‘īsm on the other. What I call the ‘Shī‘ītization of Akbarīan Mysticism’ started with Kāshānī and can be regarded as a new chapter in the history of Iranian Sufism.


Author(s):  
Anthony Grafton

This chapter examines the centrality of early modern ecclesiastical history, written by Catholics as well as Protestants, in the refinement of research techniques and practices anticipatory of modern scholarship. To Christians of all varieties, getting the Church's early history right mattered. Eusebius's fourth-century history of the Church opened a royal road into the subject, but he made mistakes, and it was important to be able to ferret them out. Saint Augustine was recognized as a sure-footed guide to the truth about the Church's original and bedrock beliefs, but some of the Saint's writings were spurious, and it was important to be able to separate the wheat from the chaff. To distinguish true belief from false, teams of religious scholars gathered documents; the documents in turn were subjected to skeptical scrutiny and philological critique; and sources were compared and cited. The practices of humanistic scholarship, it turns out, came from within the Catholic Church itself as it examined its own past.


2019 ◽  
pp. 123-144
Author(s):  
Celeste-Marie Bernier ◽  
Alan Rice ◽  
Lubaina Himid ◽  
Hannah Durkin

“I was trying to write myself, paint myself, and my compatriots, my fellow black artists, if you like, into the history of British painting’, Lubaina Himid writes of the aesthetic, political, ideological and cultural philosophies undergirding her series, Revenge (1992), which is the subject of this chapter. Warring against the iconographic and invisibilising stranglehold exerted by white western male artists in particular, she says, ‘I’m trying to make a comment about how European artists ... have hijacked some of our African and Caribbean imagery, our bodies and all the rest of it’. Staging her own acts and arts of revenge against white western strategies of appropriating and objectifying Blackwomen’s bodies and art-making traditions, she exults in her successes by declaring that ‘I’ve hijacked some stuff back’. ‘The old solutions did not seem to allow for creative imaginings nor did they enable the black woman’s story to take its place amongst the other voices’, she concedes. Himid diagnoses a situation in which ‘old solutions’ or dominant representational modes are responsible for denying as well as distorting ‘the black woman’s story’. Working to do justice not to one but to many Blackwomen’s stories, she cuts to the heart of the matter: ‘Her story is complex and constantly interwoven through the whole, yet is often told simply and by others as that of a silent victim’.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document