Cross-cultural dimensions of meaning in the evaluation of events in world history? Perceptions of historical calamities and progress in cross-cultural data from 30 societies

The universality versus culture specificity of quantitative evaluations (negative-positive) of 40 events in world history was addressed using World History Survey data collected from 5,800 university students in 30 countries/societies. Multidimensional scaling using generalized procrustean analysis indicated poor fit of data from the 30 countries to an overall mean configuration, indicating lack of universal agreement as to the associational meaning of events in world history. Hierarchical cluster analysis identified one Western and two non-Western country clusters for which adequate multidimensional fit was obtained after item deletions. A two-dimensional solution for the three country clusters was identified, where the primary dimension was historical calamities versus progress and a weak second dimension was modernity versus resistance to modernity. Factor analysis further reduced the item inventory to identify a single concept with structural equivalence across cultures, Historical Calamities, which included man-made and natural, intentional and unintentional, predominantly violent but also nonviolent calamities. Less robust factors were tentatively named as Historical Progress and Historical Resistance to Oppression. Historical Calamities and Historical Progress were at the individual level both significant and independent predictors of willingness to fight for one’s country in a hierarchical linear model that also identified significant country-level variation in these relationships. Consensus around calamity but disagreement as to what constitutes historical progress is discussed in relation to the political culture of nations and lay perceptions of history as catastrophe.

Modulational instabilities in passive cavities: theory and experiment

Les Houches workshop, September 28-October 2, 1998.

Spin three gauge theory revisited

We study the problem of consistent interactions for spin-3 gauge fields in flat spacetime of arbitrary dimension 3$">n>3. Under the sole assumptions of Poincaré and parity invariance, local and perturbative deformation of the free theory, we determine all nontrivial consistent deformations of the abelian gauge algebra and classify the corresponding deformations of the quadratic action, at first order in the deformation parameter. We prove that all such vertices are cubic, contain a total of either three or five derivatives and are uniquely characterized by a rank-three constant tensor (an internal algebra structure constant). The covariant cubic vertex containing three derivatives is the vertex discovered by Berends, Burgers and van Dam, which however leads to inconsistencies at second order in the deformation parameter. In dimensions 4$">n>4 and for a completely antisymmetric structure constant tensor, another covariant cubic vertex exists, which contains five derivatives and passes the consistency test where the previous vertex failed. © SISSA 2006.

"L'Invitation au voyage" de Baudelaire :une analyse évocative

This paper presents a detailed analysis of Baudelaire's poem ''L'Invitation au voyage''. It aims to understand the general meaning of this poem, showing that Baudelaire's ''voyage'' comes less to an ideal paradise than to a kind of voluptuous purgatory. We associate together dimensions of the poem that are usually treated separately :biographical background, stylistic and intertextual borrowings (orientalized Holland, Goethe's Mignon, popular song and romance, Weber's music, Biblical episodes), formal structure and cognitive effects. Our method is based on Benoît de Cornulier's theory of metrics, Searle and Vanderveken's speech act theory and Marc Dominicy's theory of poetic evocation. As Dominicy's theory is quite recent, our article provides substantial summary and clarification of its main theoretical and methodological hypothesis.

Experimental and density functional theory study of the vibrational properties of 2-mercaptobenzimidazole in interaction with gold

The vibrational properties of the 2-mercaptobenzimidazole (MBI) molecule in interaction with gold were examined by a combined approach of FTIR measurements and density functional theory (DFT). A complete assignment of the 42 normal modes of MBI has been performed on the basis of DFT calculations at the B3PW91 level in complement to the Raman and FTIR spectra. Calculations demonstrated that, on the deprotonated MBI molecule, the negative charge is localized on the sulfur atom, favoring the formation of a gold-sulfur bond upon reaction of MBI with gold. This was confirmed by the very good agreement between the calculated spectrum and the experimental spectra of different gold-MBI compounds, indicating that the vibrational properties of adsorbed MBI are chiefly determined by the coordination through the sulfur atom. © 2006 American Chemical Society.

Brackets in the jet-bundle approach to field theory

info:eu-repo/semantics/published