Thinking in Islands; the Portuguese Perception of the Indonesian Archipelago and Particularly of Sunda in Early Texts and Charts

This article discusses various early sources on the Indonesian archipelago. It starts with the status of knowledge before the first voyage of the Portuguese to the Moluccas from accounts of travellers to insular Southeast Asia in the Middle Ages and the picture on world maps European cartographers produced. Comparing that view with text sources and the resulting geographic material of the first expeditions by the Portuguese provides an insight into contemporary mechanisms of knowledge transfer. Certain effects can be traced and are repeated on different levels of access to the original facts mainly because most maps were drawn up in Europe but based on the geographic description provided by text accounts. An abundance and multiplication of failures and mistakes is evident and is partly related to the scarcity of sources and due to reproduction techniques

Exploring block construction and mental imagery: Evidence of atypical orientation discrimination in Williams syndrome

The visuo-spatial perceptual abilities of individuals with Williams syndrome (WS) were investigated in two experiments. Experiment 1 measured the ability of participants to discriminate between oblique and between nonoblique orientations. Individuals with WS showed a smaller effect of obliqueness in response time, when compared to controls matched for non-verbal mental age. Experiment 2 investigated the possibility that this deviant pattern of orientation discrimination accounts for the poor ability to perform mental rotation in WS (Farran et al., 2001). A size transformation task was employed, which shares the image transformation requirements of mental rotation, but not the orientation discrimination demands. Individuals with WS performed at the same level as controls. The results suggest a deviance at the perceptual level in WS, in processing orientation, which fractionates from the ability to mentally transform images

On the SU(2)-Higgs Phase Transition

The properties of the Confinement-Higgs phase transition in the SU(2)-Higgs model with fixed modulus are investigated. We show that the system exhibits a transient behavior up to L=24 along which the order of the phase transition cannot be discerned. To get stronger conclusions about this point, without going to prohibitive large lattice sizes, we have introduced a second (next-to-nearest neighbors) gauge-Higgs coupling, k2. On this extended parameter space we find a line of phase transitions which become increasely weaker as k2 tends to 0. The results point to a first order character for the transition with the standard action (k2 = 0).Comment: Replaced with revised version, some minor changes added. Accepted for publication in Nuc. Phys.

The sphaleron energy for SU(2)-Higgs from cooling

The cooling algorithm for saddle points presented in ref. [1] is generalized to obtain static classical solutions of the SU(2)-Higgs field theory in the limit of infinite Higgs self-coupling. The sphaleron energy obtained via this algorithm is ${\cal E}_{\rm sph}= 5.08(7)\,M_W/\alpha_W$ to be compared with 5.0707 obtained in the variational approach [2].Comment: 3 pages, uuencoded compressed PostScript file. Contribution to Lattice '94, 27 Sep - 1 Oct 1994, Bielefeld, German

Tinnitus and Coxsackie B infections: A case series

Tinnitus is a frequent and often debilitating condition. There is consensus in the scientific community that there exist various forms of tinnitus, which differ in their pathogenesis. Here we report a series of five cases where the onset of tinnitus was associated with viral infections. In all five patients elevated antibodies against Coxsackie B have been detected. This observation suggests that Coxsackie B Virus infections might be involved in the development of some cases of tinnitus and indicate that further systematic investigations are warranted.Fil: Langguth, Berthold. Universitat Regensburg; AlemaniaFil: Stadtlaender, Hans. An der Zuckerfabrik 2; AlemaniaFil: Landgrebe, Michael. Universitat Regensburg; AlemaniaFil: Elgoyhen, Ana Belen. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Instituto de Investigaciones en Ingeniería Genética y Biología Molecular "Dr. Héctor N. Torres"; ArgentinaFil: Coors, Hermann. Gaußstr 10; AlemaniaFil: Vielsmeier, Veronika. Universitat Regensburg; AlemaniaFil: Kleinjung, Tobias. Universitat Regensburg; Alemani

Determining Lines of Constant Physics in the Confinement Phase of the SU(2) Higgs Model

We present a method for finding lines of constant physics in the confinement phase of the SU(2) Higgs model on the lattice. The model is considered at finite values of the cut-off where it behaves like an effective field theory with three independent couplings. In particular, a renormalised quantity sensitive to a variation of the bare Higgs quartic self-coupling is constructed from generalised Binder cumulants. Numerical results for the non-perturbative matching of the bare parameters of the model between beta=2.2 and beta=2.4 are presented.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures, small changes in the introductio