Music in the Digital World

Digital technologies have impacted and reshaped almost every aspect of 21st-century life, from communication and commerce, to work and leisure, to education and politics. This bibliography represents a collection of scholarship that seeks to detail how varied and ubiquitous digital technologies have reshaped music, and how music has in turn shaped the digital world. Since the first years of the 21st century, widespread access to digital technologies, including social media, smartphones, and Web 2.0 have fundamentally transformed musical aesthetics, creation, performance, consumption, and reception on a global scale. As of October 2020, there are around 4.66 billion active internet users around the globe, nearly all of whom interact with music in one way or another. This bibliography addresses how this “digital world” is implicated in 21st-century digital regimes, and in the global flows and local assemblages of music’s production, circulation, and consumption. Like the technologies themselves, scholarship on music in the digital world is a rapidly shifting field. Readers are encouraged to understand this bibliography as a fluid network of related topics, with substantial thematic overlap between sections. Except when a subject touches on topics unique to this bibliography, the authors have omitted topics covered extensively in other Oxford Bibliographies, including “Film Music,” “Video Game Music,” “Electronic and Computer Music Instruments,” and “Music Technology.”

Dynamic Modeling and Flow Distribution of Complex Micron Scale Pipe Network

A fluid simulation calculation method of the microfluidic network is proposed as a means to achieve the flow distribution of the microfluidic network. This paper quantitatively analyzes the influence of flow distribution in microfluidic devices impacted by pressure variation in the pressure source and channel length. The flow distribution in microfluidic devices with three types of channel lengths under three different pressure conditions is studied and shows that the results obtained by the simulation calculation method on the basis of the fluid network are close to those given by the calculation method of the conventional electrical method. The simulation calculation method on the basis of the fluid network studied in this paper has computational reliability and can respond to the influence of microfluidic network length changes to the fluid system, which plays an active role in Lab-on-a-chip design and microchannel flow prediction.

Incompatible Boundary Conditions in Heat Equation Coupled With Air System Models

Heat transfer problem is one of the main challenges in the design process of turbomachinery components for aeronautic applications. Good prediction capabilities are required to estimate metal temperatures, specially in those regions where the working fluid reaches temperatures near to the material melting point. In this context, it is common to perform multi-physics simulations involving different solvers. Special care must be taken at the interfaces between the several domains to avoid non-physical solutions. Concretely speaking, the coupling process between a thermal code (discretized heat diffusion equation solver) and a fluid network (low fidelity models representing air flows) is studied. Several non-physical boundary conditions examples are provided. The models are solved using an in-house thermal code called Saturn. The effects both in the results and in the convergence process are described. Non-physical boundary conditions provoke instabilities in the flow direction at some parts of the fluid network. A method to analyze the compatibility and convergence of the coupled problem is described and used in the examples. Also, some heuristics to achieve converge in the ill-posed models are commented.

An Approach to Model a Lossless Junction for Fluid Network Calculations in Turbomachinery

Turbine secondary flow system calculations are usually performed by utilizing the thermal-fluid network approach. The network consists of branches and nodes. Fluid branches usually describe the flow resistance of the correspondent fluid path section, while fluid nodes are used to connect fluid branches between each other. Fluid flow in branches and nodes is described by the set of conservation equations such as mass and momentum equations. For fluid nodes, usually total or static pressure is used as a variable in these equations. However, such an approach may yield a system of equations that cannot be solved (for theoretical cases where zero resistance branches are present) or may produce significant differences in results compared to the more precise CFD solution (for real cases with resistances). This paper provides an approach on how to create a model of a fluid lossless junction in order to solve the mentioned problems. Such a junction enables the connection of any number of inflow and outflow fluid branches without bringing any flow resistance, which allows fluid branches to handle flow resistance influence by themselves. The proposed model is based on the idea, that each node should contain not just one pressure (static or total) as a variable, but two variables — both static and total pressures. Such a node can be used to model junctions of different types with flow mixing, as well as separation and sudden cross-sectional area changes. With this approach it is also possible to model chambers by modifying just one equation. Also, this new method can be applied for both compressible and incompressible calculation types and can handle chocked flows as well.

The Architecture of Illicit Nuclear Trafficking

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, nuclear trafficking in Russia and the former Soviet Republics has become an ever-prevalent threat for international security. This essay provides an assessment of the organisational structure of this transnational organised crime (TOC). Using the instrumental approach to network analysis and Bourdieu’s concept of social and human capital as a methodological framework, this essay investigates the nature of connections maintained among criminals during the various stages of the nuclear trafficking process – acquisition, transportation, sale – and contends that nuclear trafficking displays characteristics both of a stable hierarchy and a fluid network. Thus, it reaches the conclusion that TOC groups involved in this illicit activity present a hybrid form of organisational structure which is best described as a directed network – that is, a criminal entity with a stable group of organisers located at its core, and fluid nodes of individuals in charge of executing the different phases of the trafficking process at its periphery.

Thermal Efficiency Optimization of a Modular High Temperature Gas-Cooled Reactor Plant by Extraction Steam Distribution

Modular high temperature gas-cooled reactor (MHTGR) is a small modular reactor (SMR) with inherent safety, which is suitable for load following to improve economic competitiveness. The heat regenerative system for MHTGR nuclear power plant, is crucial for the improvement of thermal efficiency. Traditionally, the enthalpy drop distribution method (EDM) is used to study the relationships between thermal efficiency and distribution of extraction steam. However, this strategy is mainly used for off-line design of steam turbine under rated conditions. For load following operation, it is hard to guarantee the extraction steam distribution of EDM due to the highly nonlinear “flowrate-pressure-temperature” coupling of the fluid network. Thus, in this paper, the thermal efficiency is derived analytically based on the steady state model of fluid network. Then the thermal efficiency optimization is cast into a nonlinear programming problem, in which physical constraints can be considered explicitly. The proposed method for extraction steam distribution is of significance for improving the thermal efficiency of normal operation of nuclear power plant.