A Very Embarrassing Moment

Travail créatif / Creative Work

Ferrofluid thin films as optical gaussmeters proposed for field and magnetic moment sensing

Ferrofluids belonging to the series, Ni x Fe1-x Fe2O4 and Zn x Fe1-x Fe2O4, were synthesized using cold co-precipitation. Liquid films of these ferrofluids were prepared by encapsulating the ferrofluids in between two optically smooth and ultrasonically cleaned glass plates. Magnetic field induced laser transmission through these ferrofluid films has been investigated. Magnetic field values can be calibrated in terms of output laser power in the low field region in which the variation is linear. This set up can be used as a cheap optical gaussmeter in the low field regime. Using the same set-up, the saturation magnetization of the sample used can also be calculated with a sample that is pre-characterized. Hence both magnetization of the sample, as well as applied magnetic field can be sensed and calculated with a precalibrated sample.

Performance Study of an Improved Legendre Moment Descriptor as Region-Based Shape Descriptor

This paper reports a novel region-based shape descriptor based on orthogonal Legendre moments. The preprocessing steps for invariance improvement of the proposed Improved Legendre Moment Descriptor (ILMD) are discussed. The performance of the ILMD is compared to the MPEG-7 approved region shape descriptor, angular radial transformation descriptor (ARTD), and the widely used Zernike moment descriptor (ZMD). Set B of the MPEG-7 CE-1 contour database and all the datasets of the MPEG-7 CE-2 region database were used for experimental validation. The average normalized modified retrieval rate (ANMRR) and precision- recall pair were employed for benchmarking the performance of the candidate descriptors. The ILMD has lower ANMRR values than ARTD for most of the datasets, and ARTD has a lower value compared to ZMD. This indicates that overall performance of the ILMD is better than that of ARTD and ZMD. This result is confirmed by the precision-recall test where ILMD was found to have better precision rates for most of the datasets tested. Besides retrieval accuracy, ILMD is more compact than ARTD and ZMD. The descriptor proposed is useful as a generic shape descriptor for content-based image retrieval (CBIR) applications

Constructing a ‘moment of crisis’ and its adequate solution

The rejection of the European Constitution marks an important crystallization point for debate about the European Union (EU) and the integration process. The European Constitution was envisaged as the founding document of a renewed and enlarged European Union and thus it was rather assumed to find wide public support. Its rejection was not anticipated. The negative referenda in France and the Netherlands therefore led to a controversial debate about the more fundamental meaning and the consequences of the rejection both for the immediate state of affairs as well as for the further integration process. The rejection of the Constitution and the controversy about its correct interpretation therefore present an intriguing puzzle for political analysis. Although the treaty rejection was taken up widely in the field of European Studies, the focus of existing analyses has predominantly been on explaining why the current situation occurred. Underlying these approaches is the premise that by establishing the reasons for the rejection it is possible to derive the ‘true’ meaning of the event for the EU integration process. In my paper I rely on an alternative, discourse theoretical approach which aims to overcome the positivist perspective dominating the existing analyses. I argue that the meaning of the event ‘treaty rejection’ is not fixed or inherent to it but discursively constructed. The critical assessment of this concrete meaning-production is of high relevance as the specific meaning attributed to the treaty rejection effectively constrains the scope for supposedly ‘reasonable’ options for action, both in the concrete situation and in the further European integration process more generally. I will argue that the overall framing suggests a fundamental technocratic approach to governance from part of the Commission. Political struggle and public deliberation is no longer foreseen as the concrete solutions to the citizens’ general concerns are designed by supposedly apolitical experts. Through the communicative diffusion and the active implementation of this particular model of governance the Commission shapes the future integration process in a more substantial way than is obvious from its seemingly limited immediate problem-solving orientation of overcoming the ‘constitutional crisis’. As the European Commission is a central actor in the discourse production my analysis focuses on the specific interpretation of the situation put forward by the Commission. In order to work out the Commission’s particular take on the event I conducted a frame analysis (according to Benford/Snow) on a body of key sources produced in the context of coping with the treaty rejection.

L'Activité de l'enseignant dans les situations de rencontre avec des oeuvres d'art (littérature, arts visuels): quels gestes professionnels spécifiques? (Co) activité de l'enseignant et de l'élève au moment de "parler de l'oeuvre"

Les travaux ici présentés se définissent explicitement comme des recherches sur des situations de formation d’enseignants non spécialistes aux problématiques des Enseignements Artistiques et Culturels1 [EAC]. Cela ne signifie pas que ces travaux relèvent de ce qui serait une «recherche appliquée»; bien au contraire, nous postulons que ces situations professionnelles renvoient à la recherche «fondamentale» en sciences des arts des questions originales et difficiles. Une des difficultés de la formation d’enseignants polyvalents est justement de leur apporter, dans des délais forcément réduits, des connaissances solides, alors qu’elles portent sur des champs disciplinaires multiples, et sur des noeuds théoriques qui se révèlent complexes

Turning Point zapper test of moment by moment voting

This short 3 min video shows how Camtasia Studio can be used to record the audio of a lecture alongside the moment-by-moment votes recorded using Turning Point.

El perfil del mestre en educació musical : un moment crític per a una reflexió. 'El perfil del maestro en educación musical : un momento crítico para una reflexión'.

Resumen basado en el del autor

The populist moment in American Education.

Se expone la situación de las escuelas públicas norteamericánas. La imposibilidad de los padres de llevar a sus hijos a un colegio que no sea el más cercano a su casa, ha producido un malestar social que reclama un sistema de elección de centros. Mediante la concesión de becas se garantiza que aquellos alumnos con menos medios económicos puedan acceder al colegio que deseen tantos públicos como privados. Además se han creado una serie de colegios públicos llamados 'Charter School' que permiten la libre elección y poseen conceptos nuevos sobre la autonomía y variedad de métodos de enseñanza, contenidos y gestión. De esta forma se intentan establecer mecanismos a través de los cuales la educación americana sea más democrática.

El Copagament: el moment del colze a colze?

La modalitat del copagament és una opció que pren força a mesura que s’estén la sensació que, per salvar l’estat del benestar, caldrà que tots treballem colze a colze. L’aprovació de l’anomenada Llei de dependència és un primer tast d’aquesta fórmula que, per als professionals del dret, planteja dubtes sobre la seva configuració jurídica

Force constants and dipole‐moment derivatives of molecules from perturbed Hartree–Fock calculations

General expressions for the force constants and dipole‐moment derivatives of molecules are derived, and the problems arising in their practical application are reviewed. Great emphasis is placed on the use of the Hartree–Fock function as an approximate wavefunction, and a number of its properties are discussed and re‐emphasised. The main content of this paper is the development of a perturbed Hartree–Fock theory that makes possible the direct calculation of force constants and dipole‐moment derivatives from SCF–MO wavefunctions. Essentially the theory yields ∂ϕi / ∂RJα, the derivative of an MO with respect to a nuclear coordinate.

Force constants and dipole moment derivatives of molecules from perturbed Hartree-Fock calculations II. Applications to limited basis set SCF-MO wavefunctions

The perturbed Hartree–Fock theory developed in the preceding paper is applied to LiH, BH, and HF, using limited basis‐set SCF–MO wavefunctions derived by previous workers. The calculated values for the force constant ke and the dipole‐moment derivative μ(1) are (experimental values in parentheses): LiH, ke  =  1.618(1.026)mdyn/Å,μ(1)  =  −18.77(−2.0±0.3)D/ÅBH,ke  =  5.199(3.032)mdyn/Å,μ(1)  =  −1.03(−)D/Å;HF,ke  =  12.90(9.651)mdyn/Å,μ(1)  =  −2.15(+1.50)D/Å. The values of the force on the proton were calculated exactly and according to the Hellmann–Feynman theorem in each case, and the discrepancies show that none of the wavefunctions used are close to the Hartree–Fock limit, so that the large errors in ke and μ(1) are not surprising. However no difficulties arose in the perturbed Hartree–Fock calculation, so that the application of the theory to more accurate wavefunctions appears quite feasible.

Determination of the vibrational transition moment ratio for the Coriolis interacting v9 and v10 fundamentals of allene

Comparison between observed and calculated infrared band contours has been made to determine the vibrational transition moment ratio |M10/M9| for the Coriolis interacting ν9 and ν10 perpendicular fundamentals of allene-h4. The ratio obtained is appreciably lower than that of a previous estimate and the result obtained by integrated band intensity measurements of Overend and Crawford. From the best estimate of the ratio, the dipole moment derivatives of the two bands are determined; the value for the weaker band ν9 is subject to a large uncertainty.