Academic literature on the topic 'Twin arm tensioners'

In the present work, an experimental analysis of the performances of a twin arm tensioner is conducted. The investigated device is used in an automotive belt drive system mounting a belt starter generator. This configuration represents the latest trend of micro-hybrid technologies and is devoted to keep the tension of the belt within a reasonable range, while obtaining the highest possible efficiency in both motor and generator modes. At first, the functionality of a twin arm tensioner is investigated with a static model. Afterward, the performances of a real tensioner are experimentally assessed through a dedicated test rig in quasi-static conditions. The system is benchmarked in terms of angular displacement of the tensioner arms, belt tensions on the corresponding spans, and sliding arc in different operating conditions. Finally, experimental and simulation results are compared. It is shown that the proposed static model is able to capture the behavior of the real device and highlight its functionality.

The existing Komurhan Bridge was built over the dam reservoir prior to water storage. The aging segmental post-tensioned concrete bridge with two lanes had an active sagging problem at its mid-span. As the traffic demand increased over the years, the authorities decided to add two more lanes to have a twin two-lane road for this part of highway network. Therefore, a need was developed to build a new bridge. Unlike the existing one, the suggested crossing needed to pass 300 meters wide water body with a depth of 45 meters to avoid piers at water body. Couple of alternatives was considered to cross the deep water at conceptual design phase. The focus of this study is given to the conceptual design of a cable-stayed bridge with two towers crossing the water at the narrowest location. This option results in a curved back span at one side of the water. A three-dimensional computer model was developed to assess challenges in design. Special care is given to the design details of the cables and the superstructure. Even if one of the back spans is curved, the proposed conceptual cable-stay bridge design is satisfactory under service and earthquake loads.

This work focuses on the development of foamed high temperature thermoplastic substrates for printed circuit boards. For this application it is necessary to achieve mean cell diameters smaller than 30 µm in order to be able to realize vias and high packaging densities (miniaturization). Different additives as nucleating agents, namely macro- and micro-crystalline talc, silica, calcium carbonate, and wollastonite, were melt-compounded with polyetherimide using a twin-screw extruder. Foamed samples are prepared by foam extrusion using a slit die and CO2 as physical blowing agent. The aim of this study is to analyze the influence of the mean particle size and the particle surface tension on the mean cell diameters. Therefore, the shape of the additives, the foam morphology, and the elongational viscosity were considered. The additives with a suitable particle size and surface tension exhibit a positive influence on the foam morphology, resulting in smaller cell diameters (<30 µm), a narrower cell size distribution and a foam density lower than 900 kg/m3. If the mean particle diameter of the nucleating agents is lower than 0.6 µm in this study, no nucleation effect could be observed. This is related to the fact that no heterogeneous nucleation occurs, if the particle diameter is too small. If the mean particle diameter of the used additives is larger than 1.5 µm, which could be demonstrated in this study in case of polyetherimide, then the additive acts as nucleating agent and heterogeneous nucleation occurs. Furthermore, it was observed that the mean cell diameter was affected by the different surface tensions of the studied nucleating agents.

John Foxe's De censura, sive excommunicatione ecclesiastica, rectoque eius usu, published in 1551, was the earliest tract to be written by an English Protestant on the subject of ecclesiastical discipline and, as such, deserves a closer examination than it has received to date. Given that continental Protestants and, later on, Puritan apologists alike accepted as axiomatic that the Reformation could only be established on the twin pillars of pure doctrine and right discipline, the appearance at this time, amid a stream of doctrinal polemic, of a tract on discipline, was significant. It indicated that Protestants had become confident enough, after waging war on the claims of the Church of Rome, to regulate the lives of its members, to assert similar claims in the name of Scripture and reformed ‘true religion’. That this tract should appear in Edward VI's reign, and not earlier, was important in this respect, for the effect of the Henrician Reformation had been to render impossible any suggestion that the Church should or could be autonomous in discipline. The psychological climate - as well as the theoretical framework - of the Supremacy persisted throughout Edward's reign, but the fact that the king was a minor gave Protestants a breathing space in which to approach the problem of trying to bring the Church into line with pure, apostolic models. In terms of quantity of published material, doctrine, rather than discipline, was undoubtedly much the more important of the issues discussed; by dealing with discipline a Protestant writer was grasping the nettle, for the subject raised questions about the relative roles of Church and State in the reformation of society and, ultimately, about the structure of the national Church. Foxe's tract was the first attempt to face the question of discipline; that it was the only one, even in Edward vi's reign, showed what a hold the Supremacy had taken. The aim of this article, therefore, is to bring out the significance of Foxe ‘s tract and to explore some of the tensions in mid-Tudor Protestant thought which it reflects. The first part (by Catharine Davies) aims to set it more precisely in its Edwardian context; the second (by Jane Facey) uses it to illuminate the changed emphasis of Foxe's thought on the relationship of Church and State required by the writing of the Acts and Monuments.

For micro-hybrid electric vehicles, the belt-driven starter generator system is a typical idle stop–start system that is used to substitute the traditional engine front-end accessory drive system. The aim of this work is to present a method to investigate steady-state and start-up transient responses of a typical belt-driven starter generator system with twin tensioner arms for micro-hybrid electric vehicles. A dynamic model of the belt-driven starter generator system is established for this scheme, where a smoothing dynamic friction model considering the velocity-weakening effect is presented to model the tensioner dry friction. Unlike some traditional dynamic models of the belt-driven starter generator system that the engine dynamics and dynamics of the belt-driven starter generator system are decoupled, an engine dynamic model, which is embedded in the dynamic model of the belt-driven starter generator system, is also established to calculate engine resistance torques at the engine starting process stage. Influences of the tensioner dry friction and stiffness on steady-state responses of the belt-driven starter generator system especially the stick–slip oscillations of the twin tensioner arms are examined. Angular oscillations and rotation speed variations of the belt-driven starter generator pulley and C/S pulley as well as the belt tension variations during the engine starting process are calculated. Influences of the tensioner dry friction and stiffness on transient dynamic performances of the belt-driven starter generator system during the engine starting process and its starting efficiency are investigated.

AbstractEuropean Community (EC) Horizon-funded projects and Earth Observation-based Consortia aim to create sustainable value for Space, Land, and Oceans. They typically focus on addressing Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Many of these projects (e.g. Commercialization and Innovation Actions) have an ambitious challenge to ensure that partners share core competencies to simultaneously achieve technological and commercial success and sustainability after the end of the EC funds. To achieve this ambitious challenge, Horizon projects must have a proper governance model and a systematized process that can manage the existing paradoxical tensions involving numerous European partners and their respective agendas and stakeholders. This article presents the VCW-Value Creation Wheel (Lages in J Bus Res 69: 4849–4855, 2016), as a framework that has its roots back in 1995 and has been used since 2015 in the context of numerous Space Business, Earth Observation, and European Community (EC) projects, to address complex problems and paradoxical tensions. In this article, we discuss six of these paradoxical tensions that large Horizon Consortia face in commercialization, namely when managing innovation ecosystems, co-creating, taking digitalization, decision-making, tech-transfer, and sustainability actions. We discuss and evaluate how alliance partners could find the optimal balance between (1) cooperation, competition, and coopetition perspectives; (2) financial, environmental, and social value creation; (3) tech-push and market-pull orientations; (4) global and local market solutions; (5) functionality driven and human-centered design (UX/UI); (6) centralized and decentralized online store approaches. We discuss these challenges within the case of the EC H2020 NextLand project answering the call for greening the economy in line with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). We analyze NextLand Online Store, and its Business and Innovation Ecosystem while considering the input of its different stakeholders, such as NextLand’s commercial team, service providers, users, advisors, EC referees, and internal and external stakeholders. Preliminary insights from a twin project in the field of Blue Economy (EC H2020 NextOcean), are also used to support our arguments. Partners, referees, and EC officers should address the tensions mentioned in this article during the referee and approval processes in the pre-grant and post-grant agreement stages. Moreover, we propose using the Value Creation Wheel (VCW) method and the VCW meta-framework as a systematized process that allows us to co-create and manage the innovation ecosystem while engaging all the stakeholders and presenting solutions to address these tensions. The article concludes with theoretical implications and limitations, managerial and public policy implications, and lessons for Horizon Europe, earth observation, remote sensing, and space business projects.

Wife (1975) is a novel ostensibly about immigration, but it is also about gender, ethnicity, and power. Bharati Mukherjee's well-known essay, "An Invisible Woman" (1981), describes her experience in Canada as one that created "double vision" because her self-perception was put so utterly at odds with her social standing (39). She experienced intense and horrifying racism in Canada, particularly in Toronto, and claims that the setting of Wife, her third novel, is "in the mind of the heroine...always Toronto" (39). Mukherjee concludes the article by saying that she eventually left Toronto, and Canada, because she was unable to keep her "twin halves" together (40). In thinking about "mixing," Mukherjee’s work provides entry points into "mixed" or interlocking structures of domination; the diasporic female subject in Mukherjee’s Wife struggles to translate this powerful "mix" in her attempt to move across and within national borders, feminisms, and cultural difference. "An Invisible Woman", in many ways, illuminates the issues that are at stake in Mukherjee's Wife. The protagonist Dimple Dagsputa, like Mukherjee, experiences identity crisis through the cultural forces that powerfully shape her self-perception and deny her access to control of her own life. I want to argue that Wife is also about Dimple's ability to grasp at power through the connections that she establishes between her mind and body, despite the social forces that attempt to divide her. Through a discussion of Dimple's negotiations with Western feminisms and the methods by which she attempts to reclaim her commodified body, I will rethink Dimple's violent response as an act of agency and resistance. Diasporic Feminisms: Locating the Subject(s): Mukherjee locates Wife in two very different geographic settings: the dusty suburbs of Calcutta and the metropolis of New York City. Dimple’s experience as a diasporic subject, one who must relocate and find a new social/cultural space, is highly problematic. Mukherjee uses this diasporic position to bring Dimple’s ongoing identity formation into relief. As she crosses into the space of New York City, Dimple must negotiate the web created by gender, class, and race in her Bengali culture with an increasingly multiple grid of inseparable subject positions. Avtar Brah points out that diaspora is useful as a "conceptual grid" where "multiple subject positions are juxtaposed, contested, proclaimed or disavowed" (208). Brah points to experience as the site of subject formation; a discursive space where different subject positions are inscribed, repeated, or contested. For Brah, and for Mukherjee, it is essential to ask what the "fields of signification and representation" are that contribute to the formation of differing subjects (116). Dimple’s commodification and her submission to naming in the Bengali context are challenged when she encounters Western feminisms. Yet Mukherjee suggests that these feminisms do little to "liberate" Dimple, and in fact serve as another aspect of her oppression. Wife is concerned with the processes which lead up to Dimple’s final act of murder; the interlocking subject positions which she negotiates with in an attempt to control her own life. Dimple believes that the freedom offered by immigration will give her a new identity: "She did not want to carry any relics from her old life; given another chance she could be a more exciting person, take evening classes perhaps, become a librarian" (42). She is extremely optimistic about the opportunities of her new life, but Mukherjee does not valourize the New World over the Old. In fact, she continually demonstrates the limited spaces that are offered on both sides of the globe. In New York, Dimple faces the unresolved dilemma between her desire to be a traditional Indian wife and the lure of Western feminism. Her inability to find a liveable place within the crossings of these positions contributes to her ultimate act of violence. At her first party in Manhattan, Dimple encounters the diaspora of Indian and Pakistani immigrants who provide varying examples of the ways in which being "Indian" is in conversation with being "American." She hears about Ina Mullick, the Bengali wife whose careless husband has allowed her to become "more American than the Americans" (68). Dimple quickly learns that Amit is sharply disapproving of women who go to college, wear pants, and smoke cigarettes: "with so many Indians around and a television and a child, a woman shouldn’t have time to get any crazy ideas" (69). The options of education and employment are removed from Dimple’s grasp as soon as she begins to consider them, leaving her wondering what her new role in this place will be. Mukherjee inserts Ina Mullick into Dimple’s life as a challenge to the restrictions of traditional wifehood: "Well Dimple...what do you do all day? You must be bored out of your skull" (76). Ina has adopted what Jyoti calls "women’s lib stuff" and Dimple is warned of her "dangerous" influence (76). Ina engagement with Western feminisms is a form of resistance to the confines of traditional Bengali wifehood. Mukherjee, however, uses Ina’s character to demonstrate the misfit between Western and Third World feminisms. Although the oppressions experienced in both geographies appear to be similar, Mukherjee points out that neither Ina nor Dimple can find expression through a feminism that forces them to abandon their Indianess. Western feminist discourse has been much maligned for its Eurocentric construction of a monolithic Third World subject that ignores cultural complexity. Chandra Talpade Mohanty’s "Under Western Eyes" (1988) is the classic example of the interrogation of this construction. Mohanty argues that "ethnocentric universality" obliterates the differences within the varied category of female (197), and that "Western feminist writings on women in the third world subscribe to a variety of methodologies to demonstrate the universal cross-cultural operation of male dominance and female exploitation" (208-209). Mukherjee addresses these problems through Ina’s struggle; Western feminisms and their apparent "liberation" fail to provide Ina with a satisfying sense of self. Ina remains oppressed because these forms of feminism cannot adequately deal with the web of cultural and social crossings that constitute her position as simultaneously "Indian" and "American." The patriarchy that Ina and Dimple experience is not simply that of the industrialized first world; they must also grapple with the ways in which they have been named by their own specific cultural context. Mohanty argues that there is no homogenous group called "women," and Mukherjee seems to agree by demonstrating that women's subject positions are varied and multi-layered. Ina’s apparently comfortable assimilation is soon upset by desperate confessions of her unease and depression. She contrasts her "before" and "after" self in caricatures of a woman in a sari and a woman in a bikini. These drawings represent, "the great moral and physical change, and all that" (95). Mukherjee suggests, however, that the change has been less than satisfactory for Ina, "‘I think it is better to stay a Before, if you can’...’Our trouble here is that we imitate badly, and we preserve things even worse’" (95). Ina’s confession alludes to her belief that she is copying, rather than actually living, a life which might be empowering. She has been forced to give up the "before" because it clashes with the ideal that she has constructed of the liberated Western woman. In accepting the oppositions between East and West, Ina pre-empts the possibility of being both. Though Dimple is fascinated by the options that Ina represents, and begins to question her own happiness, she becomes increasingly uncomfortable with the absolutes that Ina insists upon. Ina’s feminist friends frighten Dimple because of their inability to understand her; they come to represent a part of the American landscape that Dimple has come to fear through her mediated experience of American culture through the television and lifestyle magazines. Leni Anspach’s naked gums, "horribly pink and shiny, like secret lips, only more lecherous and lethal, set themselves up as enemies of decent, parsimonious living" (152). Leni’s discourse threatens to obliterate any knowledge that Dimple has of herself and her only resistance to this is an ironic reversal of her subservient role: "After Leni removed her cup Dimple kept on pouring, over the rim of Leni’s cup, over the tray and the floating dentures till the pregnant-bellied tea pot was emptied" (152). Dimple’s response to the lack of accommodation that Western feminism presents is tied to her feeling that Ina and Leni live with unforgiving extremes: "that was the trouble with people like Leni and Ina who believed in frankness, happiness and freedom; they lacked tolerance, and they abhorred discussions about the weather" (161). Like Amit, Ina offers a space through her example where Dimple cannot easily learn to negotiate her options. The dynamic between these women is ultimately explosive. Ina cannot accept Dimple’s choices and Dimple is forced to simplify herself in a defence that protects her from predatory Western feminisms: I can’t keep up with you people. I haven’t read the same kinds of books or anything. You know what I mean Ina, don’t you? I just like to cook and watch TV and embroider’...’Bravo!’ cried Ina Mullick from the sofa where she was sitting cross legged. ‘And what else does our little housewife do? ‘You’re making fun of me,’ Dimple screamed. ‘Who do you think you are?’ (169-170. Dimple lacks the ability to articulate her oppression; Ina Mullick can articulate it but cannot move outside of it. Both women feel anger, depression, and helplessness, but they fail to connect and help one another. Mukherjee demonstrates that women from the Third World, specifically those who come into contact with the diaspora, are not homogenous subjects; her various representations of negotiation with processes of identity constitution show how different knowledges of self are internalized and acted out. Irene Gedalof’s recent work on bringing Indian and Western feminisms into conversation proceeds from the Foucauldian notion that these multiple discursive systems must prevail over the study of woman or women within a single (and limiting) symbolic order (26). The postcolonial condition of diaspora, Gedalof and other critics have pointed out, is an interesting position from which to begin talking about these complex processes of identity making since it breaks down the oppositions of South and North, East and West. In crossing the South/North and East/West divide, Dimple does not abandon her Indian subject position, but rather attempts to keep it intact as other social forces are presented. The opposition between Ina and Dimple, however, is dissolved by the flux that the symbol "woman" experiences. This process emphasizes differences within and between their experiences in a non-hierarchical way. Rethinking the Mind/Body Dichotomy: Dimple’s Response This section will attempt to show how Dimple’s response to her options is far more complex than the mind/body dichotomy that it appears to be upon superficial examination. Dimple’s body does not murder in an act of senseless violence that is divorced from her mental perception of the world. I want to rethink interpretations like the one offered by Emmanuel S. Nelson: "Wife describes a weak-minded Bengali woman [whose]...sensibilities become so confounded by her changing cultural roles, the insidious television factitiousness, and the tensions of feminism that, ironically, she goes mad and kill her husband" (54-55). Although her sense of reality and fantasy become blurred, Dimple acts in accordance with the few choices that remain open to her. In slowly guiding us toward Dimple’s horrifying act of violence, Mukherjee attempts to examine the social and cultural networks which condition her response. The absolutes of Western feminisms offer little space for resistance. Dimple, however, is not a victim of her circumstances. She reclaims her body as a site of inscription and commodification through methods of resistance which are inaccessible to Amit or her larger social contexts: abortion, vomiting, fantasies of mutilating her physical self, and, ultimately, through using her body as a tool, rather than an object, of violence. These actions are responses to her own lack of power over self representation; Dimple creates a private world in which she can resist the ways her body has been encoded and the ways in which she has been constructed as a divided object. In her work on the body in feminist discourse, Elizabeth Grosz argues that postructuralist feminists such as Luce Irigaray, Helene Cixous, and Judith Butler conceptualize female bodies as: "crucial to understanding women’s psychical and social existence, but the body is no longer understood as an ahistorical, biologically given, acultural object. They are concerned with the lived body, the body insofar as it is represented and used in specific ways in particular cultures" (Grosz 18). In emphasizing difference within the sexes, these postructuralist thinkers reject the Cartesian dualism of mind and body and do much for Chandra Talpade Mohanty’s project of considering the ways in which "woman" is a heterogenously constructed and shifting category. Mukherjee presents Dimple’s body as a "social body": a "social and discursive object, a body bound up in the order of desire, signification and power" (Grosz 18-19). Dimple cannot control, for example, Amit’s desire to impregnate her, to impose a schema of patriarchal reproduction on her body. Yet, as I will demonstrate, Dimple resists in ways that she cannot articulate but she is strongly aware that controlling the mappings of her body gives her some kind of power. This novel demonstrates how the dualisms of patriarchal discourse operate, but I want to read Dimple’s response as a reclaiming of the uncontrollable body; her power is exercised through what Deleuze and Guattari would call the "rhizomatic" connections between her body and mind. Their book, A Thousand Plateaus (1980), provides a miscellany of theory which, "flattens out the relations between the social and the psychical," and privileges neither (Grosz 180). Deleuze and Guattari favour maps and rhizomes as conceptual models, so that all things are open, connectable, and subject to constant modification (12). I want to think of Dimple as an assemblage, a rhizomatic structure that increases in the dimensions of a multiplicity that changes as it expands its connections (8). She is able to resist precisely because her body and mind are inseparable and fluid entities. Her violence toward Amit is a bodily act but it cannot be read in isolation; Mukherjee insists that we also understand the mental processes that preface this act. Dimple’s vomit is one of the most powerful tropes in the novel. It is a rejection and a resistance; it is a means of control while paradoxically suggesting a lack of control. Julia Kristeva is concerned with bodily fluids (blood, vomit, saliva, tears, seminal fluid) as "abjections" which necessarily, "partake of both polarized terms [subject/object, inside/outside] but cannot be clearly identified with either" (Grosz 192). Vomiting, then, is the first act that Dimple uses as a means of connecting the mind and body that she has been taught to know only separately. Vomiting is an abjection that signifies Dimple's rhizomatic fluidity; it is the open and changeable path that denies the split between her mind and her body that her social experiences attempt to enforce. Mukherjee devotes large sections of the narrative to this act, bringing the reader into a private space where one is forced to see, smell, and taste Dimple’s defiance. She initially discovers her ability to control her vomit when she is pregnant. At first it is an involuntary act, but she soon takes charge of her body’s rejections: The vomit fascinated her. It was hers; she was locked in the bathroom expelling brownish liquid from her body...In her arrogance, she thrust her fingers deep inside her mouth, once jabbing a squishy organ she supposed was her tonsil, and drew her finger in and out in smooth hard strokes until she collapsed with vomiting (31) Dimple’s vomiting does contain an element of pathos which is somewhat problematic; one might read her only as a victim because her pathetic grasp at power is reduced to the pride she feels in her bodily expulsions. Mukherjee’s text, however, begs the reader to read Dimple carefully. Dimple acts through her body, often with horrible consequences, but she is resisting in the only way that she is able. In New York, as Dimple encounters an increasingly complicated sociocultural matrix, she fights to find a space between her role as a loyal Indian wife and the apparent temptations of the United States. Ina Mullick’s Western feminism asks her to abandon her Bengali self, and Amit asks her to retain it. In the face of these absolutes, Dimple continues to attempt her resistance through her body, but it is often weak and ineffectual: "But instead of the great gush Dimple had hoped for, only a thin trickle was expelled. It gravitated toward the drain, a small slimy pool full of bubbles. She was ashamed of it; it seemed more impersonal than a cooking stain" (150). Mukherjee asks us to read Dimple through her abjections--through both mind and body (not entirely distinct entities for Mukherjee)--in order to understand the murder. We must gauge Dimple's actions through the open and connectable relationships of body and mind. Her inability to vomit "pleasurably" signifies a growing inability to locate a space that is tolerable. Vomiting becomes a way for Dimple to tie her multiple subject positions together: "Vomiting could be pleasurable; thinking of all the bathrooms she had vomited in she felt nostalgic, almost middle-aged" (149). This moment at the kitchen sink occurs when Leni and Ina have fractured her sense of a stable Indian identity. In an interview, Mukherjee admits that Dimple’s movement to the United States means that she begins to ask questions about her oppression; she begins to ask herself questions about her own happiness (Hancock 44). These questions, coupled with Leni and Ina’s challenging presence, leads to Dimple to desire a reconnection and a sense of control. Undoubtedly, Dimple’s act of murder is misguided, but Mukherjee sensitively demonstrates that Dimple has very little choice left. Dimple does not simply break down into a body and mind that are unaware of their connections, rather she begins to operate on several levels of consciousness. Shen Mei Ma interprets Dimple’s condition as schizophrenic, and explores this as a prominent trope in Asian diaspora literatures. She uses R.D. Laing’s classic explanation of schizophrenia as a working definition: The term schizoid refers to an individual the totality of whose experience is split in two main ways: in the first place, there is a rent in his relation with his world, and, in the second, there is a disruption of his relation with himself...Moreover, he does not experience himself as a complete person but rather as ‘split’ in various ways, perhaps a mind more or less tenuously linked to a body, as two or more selves, and so on (Ma 43) Ma analyses this condition (which can be seen, like gender and race, as a socially constructed state of being), as a "defense mechanism" against an unbearable world; the separation in space and memory that the diasporic subject experiences results in a schizophrenic, or divisive, tendency. I agree with Ma's use of Laing's definition of schizophrenia in the sense that this understanding is certainly more useful than Emmanuel Nelson's insistence on Dimple's "madness." Reading Dimple's response with an interest in Deleuze and Guattari's conceptual rhizomes, however, leads me to resist using a definition that is linked to mental illness. This may be a prominent trope in Asian diaspora literature, but it is also necessary, and perhaps more useful, to recognize that Dimple's act of violence and her debatable "madness" are ultimately less important than reading her negotiation as a means of survival and her response as an act of resistance. Many critics interpret the final act of murder as "an ironic twist of Sati, the traditional self-immolation of an Indian wife on the funeral pyre of her husband" (Ma 58). This suggestion draws up Dimple’s teenage desire to be like Sita, "the ideal wife of Hindu legends" who walks through fire for her husband (6). The violence perpetrated against women who naturalize Sita’s tradition is wrenched into an act in which Dimple is able to exercise some control over her fate. The act of murder is woven with the alternate text of industrial/commercial culture in a way that demonstrates Dimple’s desperate negotiation with the options available to her: The knife stabbed the magical circle once, twice, seven times, each time a little harder, until the milk in the bowl of cereal was a pretty pink and the flakes were mushy and would have embarrassed any advertiser, and then she saw the head fall off - but of course it was her imagination because she was not sure anymore what she had seen on TV and what she had seen in the private screen of three A.M. (212-213) The tragedy of this conclusion surely lies in the events that are left unsaid: what is Dimple’s fate and how will society deal with her violent choice? Ma’s article on schizophrenia points to the most likely outcome--Dimple will be declared insane and "treated" for her illness. Yet my reading of this act has attempted to access a careful understanding of how Dimple is constructed and how this can contribute to rethinking her violent response. Dimple's mind is not an insane one; her body is not an uncontrollable, hysterical one. Murder is a choice for Dimple--albeit a choice that is exercised in a limited and oppressive space. "Mixing" is an urgent topic; as globalization and capitalist homogenization make the theorization of diaspora increasingly necessary, it is essential to consider how gendered and raced subject positions are constituted and how they are reproduced within and across geographies. This novel is important because it forces the reader to ask the difficult questions about "mixing" that precede Dimple’s act of spousal violence. I have attempted to address these questions in my discussion of Dimple’s negotiations and her resistance. Much has been written about this novel in terms of Dimple’s "split," but very few critics have tried to examine Dimple’s character in ways that penetrate our limited third person access to her. Mukherjee’s own writing in "An Invisible Woman" suggests the urgency of rethinking characters like Dimple and the particular complexities of immigration for non-English speaking housewives. Mukherjee’s relative position of privilege has given her access to far more choices than Dimple has, but notably, she avoids turning Dimple’s often suicidal violence inward. Instead, Mukherjee shows how the inward is inescapable from the outward: in murdering Amit, the violence Dimple perpetrates is, after all, a rearticulation of the violence from which her limited subject position cannot completely escape. Footnote: In thinking about Dimple's response, it is important to note that, of course, her actions and her words are always conditioned by the position that she has naturalized. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's "Can the Subaltern Speak?"(1988) argues that the subaltern subject cannot "speak" because no act of resistance occurs that can be separated from the dominant discourse that provides the language and the conceptual categories with which the subaltern voice speaks (Ashcroft et al 1998 217-218).The violence of Dimple's response must be seen as an ironic subversion of a television world that enforces patriarchal norms. References Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin. Key Concepts in Postcolonial Studies. London: Routledge, 1998. Brah, Avtar.Cartographies of Diaspora - Contesting Identities. London: Routledge, 1996. Deleuze, Gilles and Felix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus - Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1980. Gedalof, Irene. Against Purity - Rethinking Idenity With Indian and Western Feminisms. London: Routledge, 1999. Grosz, Elizabeth. Volatile Bodies - Toward a Corporeal Feminism. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1994. Ma, Sheng-mei. Immigrant Subjectivities in Asian American and Asian Diaspora Literatures. Albany: State U of NY P, 1998. Mohanty, Chandra Talpade. "Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses." Colonial Discourse and Postcolonial Theory: A Reader. Laura Chrisman and Patrick Williams, eds. NY: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1993: 196-220. Mukherjee, Bharati. Wife. Toronto: Penguin, 1975. -- "An Invisible Woman." Saturday Night 1981, 96: 36-40. Nelson, Emmanual S. Writers of the Indian Diaspora - A Bio-Bibliographical Critical Sourcebook.Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1993. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. "Can the Subaltern Speak?" Colonial Discourse and Postcolonial Theory: A Reader. Laura Chrisman and Patrick Williams, eds. NY: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1993: 196-220.

Belt Drive Systems (BDS) constitute the traditional automotive mechanism used to power the main internal accessories (such as the alternator, water pump and air conditioning pump) taking power from the engine's crankshaft rotational motion. BDS usually work in the severe ambient conditions of the engine compartment and are subject to highly dynamic excitations coming from the crankshaft harmonics. The substitution of the traditional alternator with an electric machine, namely Belt Starter Generator (BSG), is the most promising micro-hybrid technology towards a quick and effective satisfaction of the current regulations of fuel consumption and pollutant emissions reduction. The use of a BSG leads to increased stresses in the already complex front end accessory drive. As a matter of fact, a BSG is an electrical machine able to work both as motor and as generator and defines two distinct functioning modes of the drive, namely motor and alternator modes. The relative alternation of tight and slack spans profoundly changes the functionality of the overall drive and affects its transmissions capability and efficiency, furthermore resulting in NVH (noise vibration harshness) effects that need to be carefully addressed. Traditional automatic tensioners acting on the slack span of the alternator mode application are not capable of facing the irregular stresses of a BSG-based BDS which requires the use of a tensioning device capable of keeping the belt tension inside a safe range and of preventing slippage during all the operating conditions of the drive. With this goal many solutions are currently being investigated, such as the cooperation of two tensioners one for each span, active tensioners, double arm tensioners or hydraulic tensioners. The critical issues due to the involvement of BSG in BDS require a deep study focused on the tension conditions of the belt and its influence on the overall efficiency of the system. The aim of the research described in this thesis is to obtain a defined modelling approach of belt drive systems for micro-hybrid vehicles and to validate it through extensive experimental analysis. To obtain a reliable testing environment, a dedicated full-electric test rig was designed and realized. The test rig presented in this work is capable of assuring the repeatability and accuracy of the measurements leaving aside the uncertainties deriving from the irregularities of the ICE behaviour that usually affect the experimental activities conducted on front engine accessory drives. After providing both the modelling and testing environment as assets for the analysis, several experimental activities are carried out with the goal of assessing the dynamic behaviour of belt drive systems and their efficiency, comparing the performances of different tensioning solutions, understanding the behaviour in static and dynamic conditions of a traditional automatic tensioner and one example of an omega twin arm tensioner, which is the tensioning solution most explored by the manufacturers at present. The ultimate goal of gaining a complete understanding of belt drive systems in the special case of micro-hybrid vehicles is eventually fulfilled by an experimental validation of the static and dynamic models proposed.

Of the many composers in the Western classical tradition who celebrated the marriage between psyche and sound, those explored in this book followed the lines diverging from Wagner in philosophizing the nature of desire in music. This book offers two new theories of tonal functionality in the music of the first half of the twentieth century that seek to explain its psychological complexities. First, the book further develops Riemann’s three diatonic chord functions, extending them to account for chromatic chord progression and substitution. The three functions (tonic, subdominant, and dominant) are compared to Jacques Lacan’s twin concepts of metaphor and metonymy, which drive the apparatus of human desire. Second, the book develops a technique for analyzing the drives that pull chromatic music in multiple directions simultaneously, creating a libidinal surface that mirrors the tensions of the psyche found in Schopenhauer, Freud, and the post-Freudians Lacan, Lyotard, and Deleuze. The harmonic models are tested in psychologically challenging pieces of music by post-Wagnerian composers. From the obsession with death and mourning in Suk’s Asrael Symphony to an exploration of “perversion” in Strauss’s Elektra, from the post-Kantian transcendentalism of Ives’s Concord Sonata to the “Accelerationism” of Skryabin’s late piano works, and from the Sufi mysticism of Szymanowski’s Song of the Night to the failed fantasy of the American dream in Copland’s The Tender Land, the book cuts a path through the dense forests of chromatic complexity and digs deep into the psychological makeup of post-Wagnerian psychodynamic music.

In this chapter Benjamin Poore takes the example of ‘The Elephant Man’ as a test case for how Victorian narratives have been developed in a neo-Victorian theatrical context. After outlining the way that a neo-Victorian stage culture has been developed Poore argues that Bernard Pomerance’s play The Elephant Man (1977) and David Lynch’s 1980 film The Elephant Man can be regarded as twin foundational texts in the modern-day repurposing of the story of Joseph Merrick. The film, originally adapted in part from the surgeon Frederick Treves’s The Elephant Man and Other Reminiscences (1923) was subsequently adapted back into a film novelization by Christine Sparks. Since the early 1980s, Merrick’s story in its various iterations has become a popular way to view nineteenth-century mores and to speculate on how far ‘we’ have come. However, Poore argues that there is a series of tensions between the lip-service paid to the condemnation of Victorian freak shows and the increasingly diverse uses, from comedy sketches to comic books, to which Merrick’s image and story are put. This chapter then considers the wider implications of the case of Merrick for nineteenth-century studies and the neo-Victorian.

This chapter shifts the focus from the circumstances of deliberation to actual deliberative practice. It begins by distinguishing two different types of disagreement within the partisan groups: ones about organizational matters and ones about issues concerning society at large. It then goes on to examine several exemplary text passages that illustrate how partisans ‘deliberatively’ handle these kinds of disagreements. The central point that emerges from the analysis is that party activists engage in acts of reason giving that may reasonably be interpreted as satisfying the twin demands of uptake and mutual engagement. One of several interesting specificities of partisan deliberation is that it is marked by tensions between pragmatically-minded partisans and more ideological ones. This, it turns out, is also an important source of diversity within party groups. Another notable finding is that the political principles underpinning partisanship can facilitate mutual justification. The ‘normative consensus’ that characterizes partisan collectives plays a crucial role in this connection: partisans’ pre-deliberative agreement on a certain set of political principles ensures that appeals to those principles are immediately resonant. This makes reaching agreements and compromises easier. The upshot is that even though deliberation in party branches is a particular kind of deliberation, it is undoubtedly good deliberation. If this is any indication, then there is plenty of potential for involving these partisans more in the party’s wider deliberations and giving them bigger deliberative tasks

David Harvey is one of the few global public intellectuals whose lifelong political and academic mission is the search for a more genuinely humanizing geography of everyday urban life. His relentless and thought-provoking engagement with the realities and contradictions of contemporary capitalist urbanization has long inspired those seeking to fight for an urban life free from the practices of social, political, and racial exclusion and the divisions that have been the hallmark of modern urbanization throughout the world. Harvey is one of the urban geographers whose intellectual influence has reached most widely across disciplines. With a Ph.D. in Geography from Cambridge University, he embarked on a lifelong intellectual and political trajectory that has transformed the ways in which urban theorists approach the capitalist city and in which activists seek urban, social, and political change. Already noted for the landmark publication in 1969 of Explanation in Geography, his epistemological and political attention soon turned to a more radical and Marxist understanding of the urban. This epistemological shift coincided with his transatlantic migration to the Johns Hopkins University, where he taught Marxist urban theory for the next fifteen years or so. The deep injustices that had just come to the boil in rioting US cities, combined with a rediscovery of the power of historical materialist Marxist analysis, resulted in the publication of Social Justice and the City (1973). Harvey’s theorization of the city, deeply embedded in the original writings of Marx, also draws on the radical urban theories and politics pioneered by Henri Lefebvre. For Harvey, cities are—and have always been—highly differentiated spaces of activity, excitement, and pleasure. They are arenas for the pursuit of unoppressed activities and desires, but also ones replete with systematic power, danger, oppression, domination, and exclusion. Exploring the tensions between this dialectical twin of emancipation and disempowerment has been at the centre of Harvey’s theoretical and political concerns. Questions of justice cannot be seen independently from the urban condition, not only because most of the world’s population now lives in cities, but above all because the city condenses the manifold tensions and contradictions that infuse modern life.

The objective of this paper is to optimize the belt tensioning mechanism, known as the Twin Tensioner. The optimized tensioner achieves the minimum magnitude of belt tension in a Belt-driven Integrated Starter-generator (B-ISG) system. The B-ISG is an emerging hybrid transmission that closely resembles conventional serpentine belt drives. The system contains an integrated starter-generator (ISG) unit that performs a start-stop function on the engine. A derivation of the system’s equation of motion is simulated in this paper. A parametric study evaluates the Twin Tensioner’s parameters with respect to their impact on static tensions. Design variables are selected from these parameters for optimization. The optimization uses the genetic algorithm (GA) and the sequential quadratic programming (SQP) searches. Computations for belt tension based on the optimized design variables indicate the optimal system contains spans with static tensions that are significantly lower in magnitude than in the original design.

Abstract This paper describes characteristics of motion responses and tether tensions of a floating structure with four moon pools, on which one or two vertical axis wind turbines are installed. In this study, the authors proposed a twin-VAWT installed floating system, which was a pontoon based structure. However four moon pools were set on. The study conducted model experiments in a wave tank using regular waves with 0.6 to 2.0 seconds in wave periods and 0.02 and 0.04 m in wave height. The model had four moon pools and was installed with one or two vertical axis turbine models. From it, gyroscopic moment effects were investigated. Besides, the study performed numerical calculations with the linear potential theory based method which were a Green function method. As a results, responses of the twin-turbine model are not affected by gyroscopic moment. The study discusses motion responses and tether tensions with nonlinear behaviours from mainly the experimental results.

Abstract This paper describes characteristics of motion responses and tether tensions of a floating structure with four moon pools, on which one or two vertical axis wind turbine models are installed. Effects of several moon pools founded in a floating structure on motion characteristics have been unclear. In this study, the authors proposed a twin-VAWT installed floating system, which was a pontoon based structure. However four moon pools were set on. The study conducted model experiments in a wave tank using regular waves with 0.6 to 2.0 seconds in wave periods and 0.02 and 0.04 m in wave height. The model had four moon pools and was installed with one or two vertical axis turbine models. From it, gyroscopic moment effects were investigated. Besides, the study performed numerical calculations with the linear potential theory based method which were a Green function method. As a results, responses of the twin-turbine model are not affected by gyroscopic moment. The study discusses motion responses and tether tensions with nonlinear behaviours from mainly the experimental results. Also the effect of moon pools were investigated from the calculations. From comparisons of motion results on calculation models with same displacement but different draft, the results suggested that not only heave motion but also roll motion could be reduced because of the moon pools if the size of the moon pools were optimized.

A numerical and experimental investigation is performed with respect to the seakeeping behavior of a prototype, twin-hull, LNG-FPSO and its hydromechanic interactions with the offtake (LNG) shuttle carrier during Side-by-Side offloading. The numerical model describing the SbS mooring system as well as the assumptions and calibration steps made towards the development of a robust numerical realization are presented herewith. Following calibration, the numerical model was tested against dedicated seakeeping experiments in order to assess the effectiveness of the proposed approach as well as the hydrodynamic performance of the overall offloading system. For a more realistic offloading-scenario case, three-component, i.e., wave, wind and current, offloading environments were used for validation purposes. For the time domain simulation, as far as the hydrodynamic (diffraction) database is concerned, the multibody response amplitude operators are implemented directly, instead of employing retardation functions, in order to observe whether such an approach can still yield robust results for such complicated hydromechanic system. Statistics of the relative motions between the LNG-FPSO and LNGC manifolds, fender loads and lines’ tensions are obtained and presented, illustrating the good agreement between numerical and experimental results. Lessons learned and further recommendations are subsequently summarized and stated.