Erotic Photography

Abstract

In his exhibition catalogue The Body Exposed: 150 Years of the Nude in Photography (Zurich 1995), Michael Kohler expresses the hope that ‘nobody will shy away from taking a closer look at nude photography, its aesthetics, its history and its ideology under the illusion that there is nothing left to discover; for it's exactly the opposite’. In fact, true academic attention toward the nude photograph has been surprisingly limited, the genre leaving behind instead a trail of pseudo-academic coffee-table books and prodigious, but unanalysed, collections. This is perhaps the reason that Michelle Olley's book is at once so heartening and so disappointing. Venus presents an anthology of erotic, and predominantly nude, photography of women spanning approximately the last 40 years. Unfortunately, where such a collection could be a prime opportunity to finally provide a cogent and analytical narrative of the genre's recent history, Olley instead offers a sparse text that uses the photographs merely as evidence of the modern world's sexual liberation. She asserts that ‘Our attitudes toward sex and sexuality, women and the depiction of erotic subjects has shifted, so that society no longer hides the nude away from us as something forbidden and too shocking even for adults’. Her argument is supported by a cursory history of the female nude in painting and photography and by references to ‘restrictive’ Victorian morality. This single-mindedness glosses over the diversity of issues posed by the photographs in the collection — issues such as identity, isolation and interaction, confinement and freedom, universality and incident.     

AN IMPROVED VOLUMENOMETER*

A volumcnometer of improved design has been developed for measuring the solid volumes of specimens varying in size up to that of standard refractory bricks. The chief feature of the new design is the use of a closed-cistern, altitude-type mercurial barometer to replace the simple manometer previously used. The barometer is de signed for use in a constant temperature room (21.1°C.) where the acceleration of gravity is 980.1 cm. per sec.². Under these conditions, pressure readings are auto matically corrected to standard conditions. A vernier permits rapid readings to 0.1 mm. of mercury.     

The theory of general and ideal plastic deformations of Treasca solids

Summary Ideal plastic deformations have been defined elsewhere as solenoidal smooth deformations in which an eigenvector field associated everywhere with the greatest (major) principal rate of deformation is fixed in the material. For the rigid/perfectly plastic Tresca solid, which satisfies the Tresca yield condition and its associated normality flow rule, it is always possible to find an equilibrium stress field which is compatible with an ideal deformation. Under such conditions all material elements undergo paths of minimum plastic work, a condition which is believed to be advantageous for metalforming processes. Thus, ideal deformation theory has been used as the basis of a procedure for the direct preliminary design of such processes.The present work is focused on three-dimensional deformations where none of the components of principal strain rate vanishes and where the Tresca model is particularly useful. First the general nonsteady three-dimensional equations are derived in a special Lagrangian coordinate system. Then new results involving this coordinate system are obtained for nonsteady axisymmetric ideal deformations. Finally, similar ideas are applied to steady three-dimensional and axisymmetric deformations. In these cases, however, the special coordinate system is not Lagrangian, but is associtted with streamlines.Deceased, late Director of ALCOA Technical Center, Alcoa Center, PA 15069-0001, USA     

The physical properties of extruded food foams

The extrusion cooking process has led to the production of many novel foamed foods. Their formation is critically dependent on the processing history and the local conditions at the die. The pore size generally decreases with a decrease in foam bulk density, whilst foamed plastics show the opposite trend. Narrow pore size distributions tend to be associated with foams where the pore size is small compared with the extrudate dimensions. A pendulum impact device has been used to assess the deformation of the different foams as a function of impact energy. The compressive strain increases to a maximum corresponding to the densification of these brittle foams. This contrasts with data for plastic foams.     

Propagation on a Ported Coaxial Cable Buried in Flat Earth

Consider a horizontal coaxial cable with periodic slots in the outer conductor. This ?leaky cable? is buried in the earth as one component of an intruder detection system. We develop the theory for surface-wave propagation on the cable in the presence of the planar air-earth interface. Numerical results are included for the phase velocity and attenuation constant as functions of the various parameters. Data are presented for the electric-field strength at the air-earth interface, and the electric-field distribution in the air region above the buried cable.     

Earing in cup drawing face-centered cubic single crystals and polycrystals

A simple model of flange behavior during cup drawing was used to predict the earing profile of deep-drawn cups. The relationship between yield surface shape and earing tendency was established, with plane stress yielding corresponding to no hold-down pressure on the flange and plane strain corresponding to no thickening. Using the Schmid law, the earing model was applied to the case of a single crystal in cube position and compared to Tucker’s well-known results.^[6] For the plane strain case, good agreement was obtained with the experiment; but for plane stress, the predicted profile did not agree with the experimental one. Using the Taylor/ Bishop and Hill (TBH) theory^[8,9] and measured crystallite orientation distribution functions (CODF), the model was applied to the case of high-purity aluminum sheet with various cold-rolling reductions (35, 60, 80, and 90 pct). The major experimental trends were again correctly predicted by the plane strain case.     

A simple algorithm for predominantly plastic flows with free surfaces

The upper bound method provides a convenient tool for evaluating the rates of work and sometimes the global forces in plastic deformation processes. Its application is restricted, however, in that plastic flows in domains with free surfaces, and also local stresses cannot be determined. We suggest a procedure which is free of these constraints. It is demonstrated on the example of a rigid tool penetrating a perfectly plastic body, including experimental comparisons.     

A study into first and second order thermal transitions of materials using Spectral-DSC

Thermal and spectral analysis is conducted routinely to characterise a large range of materials and compounds. However, tests are often conducted independently on separate samples where comparison between essentially the same material can provide conflicting results. Simultaneous thermal and spectral measurements have the advantage of being able to directly compare results using the same sample. A novel design of a simultaneous thermal and spectral technique is described along with application examples that highlight the benefits of this technique. The thermal analysis was conducted using Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC) and the in situ spectral analysis was conducted using a Fourier Transform Near Infrared (FT-NIR) spectrometer. Two examples are used to illustrate the versatility and potential advantages of the combined thermal and spectral method. Analysis of the first and second order transitions of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) is presented along with the pharmaceutical polymorphic conversion of carbamazepine from Form III to Form I through an isothermal hold at 160 °C.     

Asymptotics of Largest Components in Combinatorial Structures

Given integers m and n, we study the probability that structures of size n have all components of size at most m. The results are given in term of a generalized Dickman function of n/m.