Browsing by Subject "Space"

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A chronotopic guide to the galaxy : reading spatiotemporal aspects in Golden Age French science fiction
(2022-05-09) Blatz, Andrea Marie; Picherit, Hervé G.; Wettlaufer, Alexandra; Grumberg, Karen; Wilkinson, Lynn
My dissertation makes two arguments about Golden Age French science fiction. First, these texts represent the world of the author. Second, the genre of science fiction depicts the world differently than other genres. Thus, my analysis is focused around three strands of inquiry: historical context, genre, and spatiotemporal elements. Linking these three threads is Mikhail Bakhtin’s notion of the chronotope. A chronotopic analysis looks at how different spatiotemporal aspects in a text relate to and interact with one other, building an entirely new world within each text. Furthermore, this type of analysis also encourages the reader to look for similarities between their world and the world represented in the text. While Bakhtin and many other scholars focus on one aspect of the chronotope—that is, either time or space—I instead look at them in relation to each other, to see how they impact and are impacted by the other. Because SF is not confined to representing real spaces and times in a realistic manner, it pushes its readers to extrapolate, thereby eliciting a stronger form of engagement than familiar situations. The connection to science and the realm of the possible is unique to SF; other genres do not necessarily expect the reader to question why things happen. While SF can be mimetic or non-mimetic, most other genres base their settings in real locations and times, assuming the reader will automatically, even unconsciously, connect the text to the real world. Keeping in mind that SF is, like any other text, a portrayal, SF representations nevertheless depict actions that could, in the world of the text, be tested. Put differently, works of SF have a form of materialism that functions to create a reality effect. Employing a spatiotemporal analysis, I demonstrate how authors of six representative works of early French science fiction deploy conceptual spaces to depict a variety of contemporary issues, such as the environment, fascism, colonialism, and human identity. In each chapter, I focus on how a set of two texts depicts a certain type of space and time to see how each text reflects aspects of the author’s society. Throughout these chapters, I return to the notion that SF represents the world differently than other genres. It draws on aspects of the reader’s world and shifts them just enough to affect the reader’s awareness of similarities between their world and the represented world.
Application of Euler-Bernoulli finite element methods for torque and drag model verification
(2022-12-02) Elyas, Odai Alaa; Foster, John T., Ph. D.; Landis, Chad
As the industry extends its search for hydrocarbons in remote locations, efficient extended reach drilling operations become crucial to reaching subsurface targets. This starts with enhanced simulation and monitoring of real time data measurements. Torque and drag are two of the most important parameters that are monitored continuously throughout any oil and gas drilling operations. Where torque is defined as the force of rotation between the drill pipe and the wellbore wall and drag is defined as the force required to push or pull the drill pipe through the wellbore and formations. The two parameters are often used as indicators for downhole conditions and must be maintained within certain ranges to ensure successful drilling to the targeted depths and running in hole the required completion equipment. Prior to any drilling operation, an estimate of both torque and drag are calculated based on the known drilling fluid properties, and formation parameters. Which is then used as an indicator of drilling issues such as wellbore collapse, cuttings accumulation, and change in drilling fluid properties. Several analytical models are utilized for torque and drag calculation. The first, and widely used approach is the soft string model which assumes the drill pipe acts as soft string taking the shape of the wellbore. This assumption neglects additional forces that cause the drill pipe to bend in deviated locations, which often results in underestimating torque and drag measurements in complex well designs. To address this, a stiff string model was implemented which considers the pipe’s bending stiffness and its effects on torque and drag calculations. Additionally, finite elements analysis (FEA) has been implemented to validate torque and drag calculations throughout the industry. However, the application of FEA often includes mesh generations which creates a 3D model of the drill pipe and subdivides the object into smaller domains to perform the calculations across the entire volume. This approach typically requires special software or large computational power to perform the calculations in a timely manner for real time monitoring applications. This thesis presents an approach to FEA that utilizes the Euler-Bernoulli beam equations, with the addition of an axial forces component to address both axial and transverse forces and deformations. The outcome of this thesis provides an accurate representation of torque and drag calculations, performed efficiently which could be used for planning, and real time monitoring during drilling operations.
The application of systems engineering to a Space-based Solar Power Technology Demonstration Mission
(2012-05) Chemouni Bach, Julien; Fowler, Wallace T.; Guerra, Lisa A.
This thesis presents an end-to-end example of systems engineering through the development of a Space-based Solar Power Satellite (SSPS) technology demonstration mission. As part of a higher education effort by NASA to promote systems engineering in the undergraduate classroom, the purpose of this thesis is to provide an educational resource for faculty and students. NASA systems engineering processes are tailored and applied to the development of a conceptual mission in order to demonstrate the role of systems engineering in the definition of an aerospace mission. The motivation for choosing the SSPS concept is two fold. First, as a renewable energy concept, space-based solar power is a relevant topic in today's world. Second, previous SSPS studies have been largely focused on developing full-scale concepts and lack a formalized systems engineering approach. The development of an SSPS technology demonstration mission allows for an emphasis on determining mission, and overall concept, feasibility in terms of technical needs and risks. These are assessed through a formalized systems engineering approach that is defined as an early concept or feasibility study, typical of Pre-Phase A activities. An architecture is developed from a mission scope, involving the following trade studies: power beam type, power beam frequency, transmitter type, solar array, and satellite orbit. Then, a system hierarchy, interfaces, and requirements are constructed, and cost and risk analysis are performed. The results indicate that the SSPS concept is still technologically immature and further concept studies and analyses are required before it can be implemented even at the technology demonstration level. This effort should be largely focused on raising the technological maturity of some key systems, including structure, deployment mechanisms, power management and distribution, and thermal systems. These results, and the process of reaching them, thus demonstrate the importance and value of systems engineering in determining mission feasibility early on in the project lifecycle.
Archiving the present in Beirut’s southern suburb : memory, history, and power at Umam Documentation and Research
(2016-05) Maddox, Katherine Nora; Merabet, Sofian, 1972-; Asdar Ali, Kamran
Umam Documentation and Research, a private archive and non-governmental organization located in the Beirut’s southern suburb, states as its goal to “initiate collective reflection on the many different types of violence that plagued Lebanon’s past, weighs heavily on its present, and has [sic] the potential to influence its future as well.” This thesis seeks to interrogate the spaces and narratives that influence Umam D&R’s work as well as to analyze the forms and concepts in contemporary Lebanon that inform it. It begins with a description of the historic home, Villa Slim, in which the organization’s office and a large part of the archive are housed. From there, it shifts to focus on The Hangar and its relationship to the broader arts and culture milieu that emerged in Beirut following the Lebanese civil war (1975-91). Finally, it addresses questions of intention and authenticity in the production of history through a comparison between Umam D&R’s work and the art of Lebanese artist Walid Raad, which also focuses on constructing and archiving memories of Lebanese conflicts. Through these three spheres of Umam D&R’s work, I will explore the underlying currents of their project – to intervene in the dominant historical narrative through conceptual efforts grounded in the discourse of documents and facts. Just as specific spaces shape Umam D&R’s work, certain notions of “truth” and “history” effect the way they construct the past through their multifaceted projects, which engage the present by projecting images onto the future, attempting to spark possibilities.
Dem is drunk through the ears: sound, space, and listening in Alevi collective worship ritual
(2016-05) Kreger, Alexander Colin; Seeman, Sonia Tamar, 1958-; Dell'Antonio, Andrew; Moin, Azfar
In Turkey, Alevi social and religious identity is often constructed in conscious opposition to institutionalized Sunni Islam. Sound is an important medium by which the relationship of violence and resistance between Alevis and the Sunni state is produced and perpetuated. This paper focuses on the ways in which Alevi aural dispositions and spatial constructions constitute and reinforce one another. These auralities and spacialities are rehearsed and disciplined within the context of collective worship rituals [cem or muhabbet], but play a broader role in molding and thus preserving the Alevi community as a religious minority under the threat of assimilation. In particular, I examine how Alevis map space by cultivating listening habits based on oppositions of interior and exterior, private and public, and esoteric and exoteric. Two Alevi concepts play especially prominent roles in regulating the relationship between sound and space. Dem refers to the divine power which resides in the words, voice, and breath of spiritually mature individuals. It is also the name for the alcohol Alevis may drink as part of their collective worship services. With the idea of dem, Alevis draw a link between listening and the acquisition of knowledge on the one hand, and drinking and interiority on the other that is embodied in the phrase “dem is drunk by the ears” [dem kulaktan içilir]. Just as tea is said to steep [demlenmek], Alevis steep—discipline themselves as Alevi subjects—during muhabbet by listening to words of wisdom spoken or sung by spiritually mature individuals. Meanwhile, dem is emplaced through its association with a face, or didar. The Alevi fixation on didar creates spatial orientations also experienced as listening vectors linking people together. Instead of facing towards Mecca while praying, Alevis face towards one another because they see God as the human being him/herself, and the beauty of God as reflected in the beauty of the human countenance. As a result, Alevi spiritual landscapes strikingly different from those of Sunni Islam, in which prayer is oriented towards a single, remote point.
Endemic trauma and the cross-cultural gap : a study of fiction about the 2003 American-Iraqi war
(2021-01-26) Hadla, Halah Salman; Carton, Evan; Houser, Heather; Kevorkian, Martin; Cvetkovich, Ann; Ferreira-Buckley, Linda
Trauma theories have acquired paradigmatic significance in the study of war and representations of violence and horrors. Theorists like Freud, Cathy Caruth, Shoshana Felman, Kay Erikson and Judith Herman explore trauma through analyzing distinctions of victims-perpetrators-witnesses as well as themes of gender and female representations. War literature shares with trauma theories this interest in studying the methodology of expressing war from various perspectives, whether individualistic or collective. My project studies these aspects through intersectional narrative representations of war- trauma literature. I focus on narratives that are written by American and Iraqi writers in relation to 2003 invasion of the US on Iraq. In this study, I argue that positioning the events and the characters at an intersection between theories of psychological and cultural trauma is best in understanding cross-cultural traumatic connection resulting from war and violence. This study problematizes and recontextualizes the psychological, cultural, and cross-cultural relations of trauma in narrative. I attempt at demolishing cultural barriers through discussing analogous premises and igniting empathy in dealing with the other through reading trauma and victimhood. Each of my chapters responds to a definite problem stimulated through intercultural and transcultural connections resisting, at the same time, Eurocentric representations of the other. Gender, space, and testimony manage to destabilize significant traumatic-derived assumptions that identify common thematic foundations in characterizing the texts under discussion.
Exhumed from asterisks : from commomplace Russian tyrannies to the dark spaces of Bulgakov’s Heart of a dog
(2011-05) Flider, Marina; Garza, Thomas J.; Grumberg, Karen
Few spaces have been as tyrannically predetermined as St. Petersburg and Soviet Moscow. This paper aims to present a theoretical narrative delineating the tyranny of space through both Russian capitols by examining both Peter the Great’s and Lenin’s predetermined construction of Russian spaces. First will be an examination of the manner in which Peter the Great undercut authentic Russian tradition by replacing historical with European spatial consciousness. In the second chapter, a few case studies from the history of Russian letters will be provided so as to best demonstrate the continuing anxiety of spatial representation plaguing Russian writers through the nineteenth century. Chapter three concerns Lenin’s spatial despotism. In contrast to Peter the Great, who opened Russia (and Russian consciousness) to the West, Lenin will compress space by reclaiming Russia’s capital of old, Moscow. This compression of space is best embodied in the kitsch, micromanagement, and tyranny of the Soviet communal apartment. Finally, the goal is to show the shift from the highly cerebral production of the place that is St. Petersburg to the unconscious social cues that constituted the mapping, reading, and minute control of Soviet spaces as evidenced in the works of Mikhail Bulgakov’s Heart of a Dog. By defamiliarizing common spaces, Bulgakov points to Russia’s inability to reconcile space with its national identity.
Food, space, and mobility : the railroad, chili stands, and chophouses in San Antonio and El Paso, 1870-1905
(2015-08) Bendele, Marvin Charles, Jr.; Hoelscher, Steven D.; Engelhardt, Elizabeth S. D. (Elizabeth Sanders Delwiche), 1969-; Davis, Janet M.; Smith, Mark C.; Tang, Eric, 1974-
As the railroad changed the urban landscape of Texas cities after the Civil War, it offered new economic opportunities for restaurateurs in both public and private spaces. This dissertation illustrates the ways chili stands owners working in San Antonio plazas and Chinese restaurateurs working in El Paso chophouses at the end of the nineteenth century negotiated the use of space in the growing cities. While chili-stand owners subverted the prevailing narrative definition of the restaurant by performing with success another version outside of that narrative, the Chinese chophouses negotiated stories about their uncleanliness and vice by adopting some of those same prevailing, dominant ideas and definitions regarding the American restaurant. These two stories offer both a glimpse into contests over food space at the end of the nineteenth century and complicate the history of the American restaurant industry as it has been told over the last century. The railroad is very much an actor in this story as its presence brought attention to the nightlife of the plazas and the downtown areas of each city as well as increased the real and imagined values of spaces throughout both cities, which only heightened the contests over those spaces.
A framework for spatio-temporal querying amongst mobile devices
(2012-05) Cochran, Benjamin Mark, 1982-; Julien, Christine, D. Sc.; Bard, William
With mobile web browsers holding around eight percent of the global browser market share in terms of usage, web development for these platforms is becoming critically important as usage moves from the desktop towards mobile devices. Recent advances in client side browser technology like HTML5 and WebSockets have allowed web browser applications to approach feature parity with thick client desktop applications. This paper explores the possibility of a real-time online multiplayer game playable from just a mobile device's web browser. It does not focus on gameplay or graphics, rather it focuses on the backend infrastructure needed to support such a game. The framework devised to support this sort of interaction, Marionette, is well suited towards addressing sharing of location-specific, short-lived information between people using their smartphones without the use of any external software or proprietary software packages on the client side.
From the countryside and city to the edges and interstices : places and spaces of the quotidien in contemporary French film and literature
(2013-05) Jones, Claire Catherine; Wettlaufer, Alexandra
This dissertation examines the use of the quotidien (the everyday) in contemporary French film and literature to understand its relationship with notions of place and space. Defined as the paradoxical process of how one repeatedly constructs each day "anew" on a routine basis, the quotidien in the texts of my analysis is not static, but rather a means for articulating changes in French communities and ways of life, while further reflecting ongoing changes to attitudes, politics, and identity. I advance current readings of the quotidien by viewing it as both descriptive, a recurring manifestation of change, as well as transformative, able to effect change. I argue that, in these depictions, the quotidien effectively erodes traditional spatial categories to create and reveal new and less stable versions. Specifically, places lose their real and symbolic sway to indeterminate spaces in which meaning is uncertain, in flux, or non-existent. My dissertation is novel for its interest in tracing the quotidien across spatial categories, so that its chapters move from the more "stable" categories of the rural and the urban to those in more obvious flux, edges and interstices. Chapter 1 studies the depicted quotidiens of rural France in Agnès Varda's film, Les Glaneurs et la glaneuse (2000), and Raymond Depardon and Claudine Nougare's film series, Profils paysans (2000-2008). Chapter 2 investigates the quotidiens of urban centers in Cédric Klapisch's film, Chacun cherche son chat (1996), Patrick Modiano's novel, Dora Bruder (1997), and Laurent Cantet's film, Entre les murs (2008). Chapter 3 examines everyday France at the periphery of Paris in Gérard Gavarry's novel, Hop là! Un deux trois (2001). The Conclusion addresses the emergence of a new space, the interstitial, in which its dwellers float, move, or exist between places on a daily basis, such as a commute to work. I analyze Walter Salles and Daniela Thomas's short film, Loin du 16ème (2006), Abdellatif Kechiche's film, La Graine et le mulet (2007), and Alain-Paul Mallard's film, L'Origine de la tendresse (1999). These mini-ethnographies of French society reveal a France grappling with issues related to globalization, shifting populations, the relative newness of the European Union, and consequently, identity. Who is French, and where does "authentic France" lie?
G.R.A.C.E. satellite thermal model
(2012-12) Jones, Fraser Black III; Howell, John R.
I developed a thermal model of the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment satellite for the Center for Space Research to use in verifying their thermal models and for developing the next generation of satellites for their experiments. I chose COMSOL to model the satellite and used ProEngineer and 3Ds Max to generate the mesh from a .STEP file provided by DaimlerChrysler. I adjusted the model based on previous computer models and actual telemetry data from the GRACE satellite provided from 2002 through 2008. Using the model, I developed a sensitivity analysis of the satellites key thermal environment components and used that to recommend design changed for the next generation of satellites. Special attention should be given to redesigning the Star Camera Arrays and the heat transfer between the Main Equipment Platform and the Radiator.
Marginal nature: urban wastelands and the geography of nature
(2009-12) Anderson, Kevin Michael; Doughty, Robin W.; Parmenter, Barbara; Manners, Ian; Young, Kenneth; Richardson, Richard H.
In the United States, the foundational myths of Nature are wilderness and pastoral arcadia. This dissertation examines a different kind of nature that emerges as habitats in urban wastelands and margins. This cosmopolitan community is a hybrid nature that is the unintended product of human activity and nature's unflagging opportunism, which I call marginal nature. Marginal nature is neither pristine nor pastoral, but rather a nature whose ecological and cultural significance requires a reassessment of our narratives of nature. The wastelands are unique sounding boards for measuring perceptions of nature, since these places provoke ambiguous responses of attraction and repulsion. I explore perceptions of wasteland habitat from the perspectives of urban space, urban ecology, and literature about urban nature. The primary methodology of this dissertation is hermeneutical inquiry which reveals the layers of environmental discourse concealing marginal nature beneath language that asks it to be something that it is not. This environmental hermeneutics focuses on key issues of the geography of nature: nonhuman agency, place, and nature/society hybrids. I argue that comprehending the lifeworld of the wastelands requires a reassessment of the concept of place as a coproduction of humans and nonhumans, that is, an ecology of place.
Mnemosyne rising - the genesis of a sci-fi short film
(2009-12) Alvarez, Miguel Angel; Shea, Andrew Brendan; Schatz, Thomas; Ramirez-Berg, Charles; Smith, Alex
This report will summarize the process of writing, developing, directing, and finishing the 35mm short film, Mnemosyne Rising. This film was produced as my graduate thesis film in the Department of Radio-Television-Film at the University of Texas at Austin in partial fulfillment of my Master of Fine Arts in Film Production degree.
Mobility and environmental intimacy in Italian volcanic zones
(2019-12-05) McQuaid, Megan Louise; Sturm, Circe, 1967-
This thesis explores human and environmental movement and mobility in various Italian volcanic zones. Places and sites are typically thought of as stable, locatable in a specific location, pin-pointable. Places are not generally considered “mobile.” Stromboli, Italy and other volcanic sites force the ethnographer to reconcile a certain tension between movement and place. Volcanic sites are worlds that are materially and socially constituted through movement. How tectonic plates move creates volcanic activity, how lava moves up and out of the volcano transforms the landscape, and how people move to, from, around, through, up and down the volcano creates a volcanic social world. How do humans navigate this environment, and how does the environment agentially present itself as a force to be circumnavigated? Movement and mobility serve as a framework for theorizing human social relations with their environment and other non-humans. Thinking through mobility captures the unique limits and affordances that volcanic environments offer to their human, plant, and animal residents. Scholars differ on whether or not we can call a landscape “alive,” “lively,” or “vibrant.” This thesis argues that the answer to this question is based in observations about movement. That we can, in fact, locate agential capability in the way that a subject moves. The ability to move is the condition for agency.
Narratives of home: home-making practices and political violence in a Kurdish border town in Turkey
(2011-05) Ozcan, Omer, M.A.; Ali, Kamran Asdar, 1961-; Stewart, Kathleen C
This essay analyzes a series of home narratives I gathered in Yüksekova (Gever in Kurdish) district of Hakkari (Colemêrg), a small Kurdish town located on the Iraqi-Turkish border. This essay presents and discusses the ways in which people have been struggling to create, maintain, and talk about their homes during and after a series of violent moments that have marked the local time-space of Yüksekova over the last century. Drawing an ethnographic picture of survival and home-making practices, I will trace the changing semantics of home and the social/spatial relationships and cultural imaginaries associated with it. To this end, I will focus on home-making in three violent moments in the cultural and political history of the town that are most emphasized in the narratives I gathered: 1) The massacre and deportation of Armenian and other non-Muslim peoples of Hakkari in 1915 that turned the region into a home only for Muslim Kurds 2) the destruction of homes as rural Kurds of Hakkari were displaced as a part of the recent counterinsurgency warfare against Kurdish guerillas; and 3) the struggles of people to make homes in Yüksekova. Informed by a body of literature on space that defines space meaningfully only in and through social relations, this paper aims to take an ethnographic look at home as a space that is situated in human agency and practices and which is open to change as it is shaped and reshaped as part of the dynamism of social, political and daily life.
On-orbit pose and angular velocity estimation
(2020-12-04) Kaki, Siddarth Bhargava; Akella, Maruthi Ram, 1972-
The problem of estimating relative pose and angular velocity for uncooperative space objects using camera images has garnered great interest, especially within applications such as asteroid mapping and satellite servicing. This report consists of two parts which address the aforementioned problem: (1) the development of a relative pose estimation and filtering pipeline for the NASA Seeker cubesat program, and (2) the theoretical development of a batch estimator based on relative orientation measurements to estimate not only the angular velocity magnitude and spin-axis direction of a target body, but also the accompanying uncertainty bounds for the resulting spin-axis direction estimate under reasonable assumptions.
Presentation: Exploring Outer Space: Fact vs. Fiction
(Environmental Science Institute, 2004-11-19) Environmental Science Institute; Fowler, Wallace
Reorienting representation : gender and space in Ocarina of Time
(2015-05) Mallindine, Jayme Dale; Traphagan, John W.; Hindman, Heather
Gendered video game spaces, spaces in which particular types of gendered performance and play are considered welcomed, appropriate, or intended, has been a topic of conversation in game studies since the 90s. While previous research on this topic successfully broadened the discussion on gender representation to include virtual space, it also simultaneously narrowed it by either implying feminine game spaces primarily attract woman players (and vice versa) or by forcing spaces into a "feminine-masculine" binary and leaving little room for overlap of gendered spaces. In what follows, by focusing on a key Legend of Zelda title, Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, I broaden the discussion of representation beyond purely narrative or visual gender cues by bringing together theories of gender performativity with research on gendered game space to more thoroughly nuance what is specific about gender representation when presented via the medium of a video game. By closely analyzing overlapping gendered spatialities within Ocarina of Time, we not only reinfuse gender with a sense of malleability destabilized from a concrete connection to specific types of character or player bodies, we’re then also forced to confront the historical privileging of masculine game spaces over feminine ones. The inclusion of multiple gendered spatialities within an older game such as Ocarina of Time means that games, rather than having such a clear cut history as a hotbed of singularly masculine coded digital playlands, have also contained alternative or additional gendered readings that have yet to be fully fleshed out in scholarship.
A Spatial Theory of Precapitalist Money: Evidence from Feudal Europe
(2018-05) Uzman, Seth
In this study, we seek to interrogate and explain how relations of exchange respond to changes in relations of production. To explain the interaction between the underlying processes of production and their epiphenomenon in exchange, we introduce space as their historical mediator. We argue that the social organization of space functions as a relay – between tectonic shifts in relations of production and the multifarious and secondary landscapes of exchange. We explore this question by, first, examining changes in monetary forms and functions from numismatic evidence during the transition to capitalism in Europe and, second, by imposing a socio-spatial framework to explain those changes. The result is a theory of money before capitalism, emphasizing the deep cleavage between pre- capitalist and capitalist space. We argue that the uneven geographic movement of feudal money, its failure to store value and its dispersion into valueless monies of account reflects the struggle to measure value in the absence of the homogeneous supply and abstract labor markets inaugurated by capitalist space.
Ta Ligado 1: Historia e Influencia
(2014) Diaz-Hurtado, Jessica Natalia; Orta, Jonathon David
In this first webisode of Ta Ligado: Rodas e Hip Hop no Rio, Brazilian Zulu Nation members set up the historical scene for hip hop in Brazil in order to get a broader understanding of today's movement.