Micro-scale opto-thermo-mechanical actuation in the dry adhesive regime

Realizing optical manipulation of microscopic objects is crucial in the research fields of life science, condensed matter physics, and physical chemistry. In non-liquid environments, this task is commonly regarded as difficult due to strong adhesive surface force (~µN) attached to solid interfaces that makes tiny optical driven force (~pN) insignificant. Here, by recognizing the microscopic interaction mechanism between friction force—the parallel component of surface force on a contact surface—and thermoelastic waves induced by pulsed optical absorption, we establish a general principle enabling the actuation of micro-objects on dry frictional surfaces based on the opto-thermo-mechanical effects. Theoretically, we predict that nanosecond pulsed optical absorption with mW-scale peak power is sufficient to tame µN-scale friction force. Experimentally, we demonstrate the two-dimensional spiral motion of gold plates on micro-fibers driven by nanosecond laser pulses, and reveal the rules of motion control. Our results pave the way for the future development of micro-scale actuators in non-liquid environments.

A gemmological study of the reliquary crown of Namur, Belgium

The reliquary crown, hosted in the diocesan museum of Namur, was produced during the beginning of the 13th century to shelter a fragment of the holy crown of thorns. This beautiful piece of goldsmithery is made of eight gold plates, topped by round lobes, and connected to each other by hinges blocked with a pin decorated by a pearl. The crown is decorated by filigrees, flowers, and approximately 400 pearls and coloured (green, reddish pink, turquoise, red, blue) stones showing simple cutting with various sizes and shapes. Raman and portable X-ray fluorescence spectrometer (pXRF) techniques have been used to determine the nature and sources of all samples, as well as the composition of filigrees. Analyses have identified emeralds from Pakistan, reddish pink spinels from Tajikistan, red almandine garnets from India, turquoise from Iran, blue sapphires from Sri Lanka or Myanmar, and European pearls. The filigrees contain approximately 86 wt % Au, 7 wt % Ag, and 7 wt % Cu, thus confirming a gold-rich composition. The gemstones, contemporary with the crown, probably arrived in Europe by the silk trade road.

Inicjały iluminatorskie w inkunabułach z oficyny Antona Kobergera

In the article the author analyses a set of incunabula from the collection of the Raczyński Library in Poznań, characterised by a uniformity of illuminated initials. Formal features of the initials point to the so-called Koberger type developed by illuminators collaborating with the famous Nuremberg printer Anton Koberger. The Koberger initials, which have been studied by very few German scholars, are characterised by stems filled with colourful acanthus leaves or gold plates. The letters are presented on an ornamental fleuronné or golden background. They are usually surrounded by characteristic frames made up of alternating — usually green and red — sections. The initials from the Poznań books, which display such features, are divided in the article into three groups and compared with illuminations from Koberger books from other European libraries. A formal and stylistic comparison makes it possible to date the illumination in the Poznań books fairly precisely, and to attribute it hypothetically to Koberger’s workshop or illuminators imitating the Koberger style.

How Joseph Smith Encountered Printing Plates and Founded Mormonism

ABSTRACTDid Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, really find gold plates? This article considers that basic question from a new materialist perspective. Drawing on textual and material-bibliographical evidence, it argues that Smith, and possibly also a group of witnesses, may have had a formative physical encounter with a set of plates and that this encounter was partly responsible for provoking the events and interpretations that followed. These plates could have been either stereotype plates or copper plates, both commonly used for industrial printing in the nineteenth-century United States. This article also takes the empirical investigation into what Smith may have encountered as an occasion to reflect, methodologically and theoretically, on the role of ordinary material objects in processes of religious and historical change.

Elite Military Belts of the 8th – 9th Centuries from the Stavropol State Museum Reserve Funds

Introduction. The article is devoted to the typological and chronological analysis of the details of three prestigious belt sets stored in the funds of the G.N. Prozritelev and G.K. Prave Stavropol State History, Culture and Natural Landscape Reserve Museum. Methods and materials. The comparative typological method is used as a working one. It is based on the classification by material, processing method, shape, ornament, as well as on the selection and study of the types of buckles and waist plaques. The comparative analysis of the decor of belt parts from the Stavropol Museum and the like found in the Don region, Prikamye and on the territory of Hungary allows us to characterize the technology for producing a belt headset in the region in the 8th – 9th centuries. Analysis. The composition of the belt headset of the first belt found in a rich burial in Sadovoye, Arzgirsky District, Stavropol Krai, includes an iron buckle with an oval-triangular frame and a rectangular shield with a zavovanny edge, a belt tip, a clip, and a buckle. Every item is inlaid with thin gold plates. On the flap buckle and clip they are laid out in the form of a spiral. On every detail of the girdle, the gold foil is decorated with floral ornaments: five-beam rosettes, heraldic lilies (they even adorn the buckle frame), shoots with buds and leaves. Belt no. 2 found in 1969 in the rich burial 2 of Eshkakon burial ground no. 3, most likely, consisted of a belt and harness belts. The girdle set includes 10 heart-shaped patches (plaques), 4 elongated pads with rectangular slots, 9 round-triangular plaques with suspended movable rings (three rings are missing) and an oval-triangular buckle (rectangular shield is lost). Every listed item is made of white metal (silver). A floral ornament consisting of shamrocks (lotuses) is applied on the front side of all the buckles. Belt no. 3, which is also found in one of the Eshkakon burial grounds, consists of a buckle with a triangular frame and a pentagonal shield and 10 plaques of rounded triangular shape with suspended movable rings. Every item is made of bronze. Results. The rich funerary inventory of the burials in which the belts were found and their comparison with complexes that include a similar belt headset from other regions, indicate that all three belts from the Stavropol State Museum-Reserve are attributes of the military aristocracy of the second half of the 8th – 9th centuries. Chronologically, belt no. 1 is the earliest. Belt no. 2 should be considered close in time. The latest is belt no. 3.

Sermon Culture in the Book of Mormon

Chapter Five demonstrates how the Book of Mormon prophets delivered their sermons using the same patterns and techniques as nineteenth-century evangelical preachers. Two of the prophets, Nephi and Jacob, explicitly refer to the modern technique of "laying down heads" when Jacob relates that his brother, Nephi, admonished him to record the "heads" of sermons and prophecies on the gold plates and to "touch upon them" as much as possible (Jacob 1:4). Jacob further delivers his sermons using the "doctrine and use" sermon pattern that specifically arose from the sermo modernus of medieval scholasticism. The chapter further addresses the topics, techniques, and language styles in Book of Mormon sermons, including nineteenth-century gospel controversies, common subject matter for new preachers, the use of biblical language, and the presence of nineteenth-century revival language. A detailed analysis of the Book of Mormon reveals that over forty percent of the entire text, or approximately 108,099 words, consists of sermons, orations, scriptural commentaries, and exhortations. Such semi-extemporaneous oral productions would require little or no advanced preparation.

THE DROMOS BURIAL OF THE FOURTH CENTURY BCFROM KURGAN 12 AT THE PEREVOLOCHAN I CEMETERYIN THE SOUTH URALSREGION

В статье представлен погребальный комплекс эпохи ранних кочевников IV в. до н. э. из некрополя Переволочан I на Южном Урале. Рассматриваемое погребение было устроено в центре подкурганной площадки кургана 12. Погребение относится к сооружениям дромосного типа. Обращает на себя внимание найденный инвентарь: предметы вооружения, элементы конской сбруи, ювелирные украшения, золотые обкладки деревянных чаш. Конструктивные особенности курганной насыпи, дромосное устройство могильной ямы, богатый сопроводительный материал позволяют отнести данный комплекс к погребениям кочевой элиты. В публикации дается анализ погребального обряда, инвентаря, а также хронология погребения. The paper reports on a burial assemblage dating to the period of the early nomads of the 4th century BC from Perevolochan I, which is a cemetery located in the South Urals region. The grave in question was made in the center of the area under kurgan 12. The kurgan is attributed to the dromos type of constructions. The discovered funerary offerings, including weaponry, elements of horse trappings, jewelry pieces, gold plates of wooden cups, are worth mentioning. The construction features of the kurgan mound, the dromos type of the burial pit structure, rich offerings suggest that this is a grave of the nomadic elite. The paper analyzes the funerary rite, the funerary offerings and the grave chronology.

Bosporus. Polychromic Styles of the Late Roman Period

The polychromic style of the Late Roman period is characterized by a combination of the following traits: a stable set of ornamental motifs, specific ornamentation techniques (embossing, stamping, granulating and filigree techniques) and bezel setting of semi-precious stones or jewelry glasses. Altogether, five stylistically distinct groups of polychromic articles can be distinguished in the Late Roman Period. The first stylistic group named Illerup–Kerch consists of objects decorated with thin gold plates embossed with the following designs: granulation, filigree patterns, concentric circles and serpents. They appear as early as the second third of the 3rd century AD and continue to exist up to the middle of the 4th century. The second stylistic group Berkasovo–Kishpek includes objects decorated mainly with thin gilded silver plates embossed with both the same and some new designs such as sidelong crosses, stars, triangles. These objects appear not earlier than the early 4th century and continue to exist during most of this century. The third stylistic group Gorgippia–Loo includes massive gold objects decorated all over with festoon patterns of soldered granulation and filigree, and with turquoise, carnelian and garnet inserts in the center of the girdle. While such objects are particularly common at the Caucasian sites (Armaziskhevi, Kldeeti, Loo) dated to the second half of the 2nd century and the first half of the 3rd century, they are also known in Bosporus (Gorgippia, Panticapaeum) and in the Kuban region (“Golden cemetery”). In addition, some of the Late Roman sites have yielded rare finds of objects executed in a technique similar to the technique of filigree incrustation. These objects constitute the fourth stylistic group Aragvispiri–Tanais. They were found at Komarov II (barrow 8); Adzhimushkai, 1841; burial with the Golden Mask of 1837; Berdyansk barrow; Tanais, 1972, etc. The fifth group Messaksudi–Kerch appears in the second third of the 4th century AD and combines characteristics of the previous two groups: ornaments of the third group (genuine granulation and filigree), but on thin gold plates. The main ornamental motif are granulated triangles which fill all the space between the bezels inserted with semiprecious stones and glasses. Nearly all items included in the third and fifth groups may have analogies among the objects of I.P. Zasetskaya’s stylistic group I of the Hunnic era polychrome products, but precede them and belong to the 3rd – 4th centuries AD.

“To Read the Round of Eternity”

The Book of Mormon is concerned with, among other things, the nature of language. Participating in ancient debates about the relative strengths and weaknesses of oral versus written language, The Book of Mormon points toward a hybrid model of scripture in which oral—brimming with power but limited in space and time—and written—unlimited by space or time but dead and susceptible to multiple interpretations—languages are both necessary to constitute scripture. The Book of Mormon models this behavior extensively, even obsessively, starting with its front matter and extending through multiple narrative threads. Throughout its primary and multiple secondary narrative arcs, The Book of Mormon models a hybrid scripture that depends on both written and oral language. In its narrative of Jaredites—a people protected from the curse of Babel whose sacred history is locked in gold plates until a supernaturally gifted seer can be found—The Book of Mormon provides a key to understanding the entire scriptural text. The Jaredite prophet has powerful oral language and also a written scripture stored in gold plates, liberated by the living voice of the seer. Both a scripture and a seeric figure are required for the Jaredites as well as for the Lehites. This scriptural hybridity is perhaps most striking in two encounters between Christ and the New World worshippers whose story The Book of Mormon tells—in both cases, Christ employs both his own divine speech and written scriptural texts to communicate sacred truths. This scriptural hybridity that appears central to The Book of Mormon argues strongly for the necessity of both ancient and modern voices in this foundational Latter-day Saint scripture.

The Book of Mormon and the Reshaping of Covenant

The Book of Mormon can be situated within the context of a tradition of covenantal rhetoric. The book is introduced by its editor as assurance to an American remnant of Israel of “the covenants of the Lord, that they are not cast off.” The term covenant occurs almost 200 times in the text—but it undergoes particular permutations that endow the concept with new shades of meaning. First, against the book’s stark apocalypticism, the gold plates themselves embody the durability of covenant and secure a bridge from ancient to restoration forms of relation to the divine. Second, The Book of Mormon hints at a soteriological reconstruction of covenant that emerges in the context of Smith’s radical theism and his reconstitution of heaven into an anthropocentric rather than theocentric heaven. Covenant, in this light, becomes constitutive of, rather than preparatory for, the celestial society that itself comprises the Mormon heaven.