Book Review: Body Parts: A Theological Anthropology

Book review of Body Parts: A Theological Anthropology. By Michelle Voss Roberts. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2017, xlvii + 181 pages

Embodying Bhakti Rasa in Bharata Natyam: An Indian-Christian Interpretation of Gayatri Mantra through Dance

As the five female dancers from the Indian-Christian fine art college of Kalai Kaviri encircle the South Indian brass lamp, or vilakku, awakening it to life with the flames from their own individual votives, the beginning melody of a song cues the women to stretch out their arms in preparation to rise from their seated positions and dance. As they raise their arms in unison, the light glinting off their bangles and gold threaded costumes, the Sanskrit words Om Bhur Bhuvah Svah signal the invocatory phrase of the popular Gayatri mantra chanted daily by many Hindus all over the world. By the time the second repetition of the mantra is completed, the bodies of the dancers are fanned out from behind a single dancer, creating the visual image of the sun with its rays beaming outwards to all directions of the universe

Book Review: \u3cem\u3eA Matter of Belief: Christian Conversion and Healing in North- East India\u3c/em\u3e

A review of A Matter of Belief: Christian Conversion and Healing in North- East India by Vibha Joshi

Electrical Characterization of PbZr0.4Ti0.6O3 Capacitors

We have conducted a careful study of current-voltage (I-V) characteristics in fully integrated commercial PbZr0.4Ti0.6O3 thin film capacitors with Pt bottom and Ir/IrO2 top electrodes. Highly reproducible steady state I-V were obtained at various temperatures over two decades in voltage from current-time data and analyzed in terms of several common transport models including space charge limited conduction, Schottky thermionic emission under full and partial depletion and Poole-Frenkel conduction, showing that the later is the most plausible leakage mechanism in these high quality films. In addition, ferroelectric hysteresis loops and capacitance-voltage data were obtained over a large range of temperatures and discussed in terms of a modified Landau-Ginzburg-Devonshire theory accounting for space charge effects.Comment: 17 pages, 7 figure

Silicon nanoparticles and interstellar extinction

To examine a recently proposed hypothesis that silicon nanoparticles are the source of extended red emission (ERE) in the interstellar medium, we performed a detailed modeling of the mean Galactic extinction in the presence of silicon nanoparticles. For this goal we used the appropriate optical constants of nanosized Si, essentially different from those of bulk Si due to quantum confinement. It was found that a dust mixture of silicon nanoparticles, bare graphite grains, silicate core-organic refractory mantle grains and three-layer silicate-water ice-organic refractory grains works well in explaining the extinction and, in addition, results in the acceptable fractions of UV/visible photons absorbed by silicon nanoparticles: 0.071-0.081. Since these fractions barely agree with the fraction of UV/visible photons needed to excite the observed ERE, we conclude that the intrinsic photon conversion efficiency of the photoluminescence by silicon nanoparticles must be near 100%, if they are the source of the ERE.Comment: Latex2e, uses emulateapj.sty (included), multicol.sty, epsf.sty, 6 pages, 3 figures (8 Postscript files), accepted for publication in ApJ Letters, complete Postscript file is also available at http://physics.technion.ac.il/~zubko/eb.html#SNP

An Aesthetics of Hospitality: Embodied Religious Experience and Scholarly Engagement in Hindu-Christian Studies

IT is with pleasure that I accepted an invitation to be a respondent to a panel that explores the interstices between aesthetic theory and practice. As an ethnographer who is trained in Sanskrit aesthetics, I am particularly interested in what happens in the spaces of contact and crossover between various embodied religious traditions. For me, these explorations mostly have been located in the study of Bhārata Nāṭyam, a rhythmic dance form through which artists traditionally enact the stories of Hindu gods and their devotees. In contemporary practice, the themes and practitioners of this dance form reflect a much broader spectrum of adaptation that includes various religious and secular contexts. I have posited that the interpretive reframing of the aesthetic of bhakti rasa, a devotional mood, by performers serves as a pivotal foundation for why and how choreographers and dancers move across religious boundaries in their choices of choreographic themes and participation in the dance form. I am humbled by Michelle Voss Roberts’ kind words about the small contributions I have made to the ongoing dialogue on aesthetics and pluralism in her introduction