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"Presences of the Infinite": J.M. Coetzee and Mathematics
No full textThis thesis articulates the resonances between J. M. Coetzee's lifelong engagement with mathematics and his practice as a novelist, critic, and poet. Though the critical discourse surrounding Coetzee's literary work continues to flourish, and though the basic details of his background in mathematics are now widely acknowledged, his inheritance from that background has not yet been the subject of a comprehensive and mathematically- literate account. In providing such an account, I propose that these two strands of his intellectual trajectory not only developed in parallel, but together engendered several of the characteristic qualities of his finest work. The structure of the thesis is essentially thematic, but is also broadly chronological. Chapter 1 focuses on Coetzee's poetry, charting the increasing involvement of mathematical concepts and methods in his practice and poetics between 1958 and 1979. Chapter 2 situates his master's thesis alongside archival materials from the early stages of his academic career, and thus traces the development of his philosophical interest in the migration of quantificatory metaphors into other conceptual domains. Concentrating on his doctoral thesis and a series of contemporaneous reviews, essays, and lecture notes, Chapter 3 details the calculated ambivalence with which he therein articulates, adopts, and challenges various statistical methods designed to disclose objective truth. Chapter 4 explores the thematisation of several mathematical concepts in Dusklands and In the Heart of the Country. Chapter Five considers Waiting for the Barbarians and Foe in the context provided by Coetzee's interest in the attempts of Isaac Newton to bridge the gap between natural language and the supposedly transparent language of mathematics. Finally, Chapter 6 locates in Elizabeth Costello and Diary of a Bad Year a cognitive approach to the use of mathematical concepts in ethics, politics, and aesthetics, and, by analogy, a central aspect of the challenge Coetzee's late fiction poses to the contemporary literary landscape
Development of a new Soft Muon Tagger for the Identification of b quarks, applied to a Top Quark Pair Production Cross Section Measurement, using the ATLAS Detector at CERN.
No full textThis thesis presents a study of a method for identifying b-jets by searching for “soft” muons produced within them. This method, a so-called Soft Muon Tagger, uses the quality of the match (Χ2match) between tracks left in the inner detector and the muon systems within the ATLAS detector to discriminate between muons within hadronic jets produced by the decay of b quarks, and those within light flavour jets.
The complete characteristics of the tagger are investigated in a detailed study on simulated data. The scale factors between the efficiency of the tagger in simulated and collision data, dependent on the kinematics of the tagged muon, are found using J/Ψ decays. These are used in a measurement of the top quark pair production cross section in collision data.
The measurement is performed on data taken during the 2011 run of the LHC, specifically in the lepton+jets top-antitop quark decay channel. A summary of this measurement is presented, and is found to be compatible with theoretical predictions for the cross section at a centre of mass energy of √s = 7 TeV, and with published ATLAS and CMS measurements using b-tagging in the lepton+jets channel. The measured cross section is:
σtt ̄ = 165 ± 2(stat.) ± 17(syst.) ± 3(lumi.) pb
The Χ2match-based soft muon tagger contributes a small b-tagging systematic uncertainty to the cross section measurement compared to measurements performed using lifetime based b-taggers, and has a good signal to background ratio
Deficits in volitional oculomotor control align with language status in autism spectrum disorders
No full textAccounting and the absence of a business economics tradition in the United Kingdom
No full textThe chapter explains why business economics did not emerge as a distinct discipline in the UK, and examines the extent to which accounting filled the gap left by this in UK universities
Don’t mention Europe: a study of the Europeanisation of party organisation in the British Labour Party, the French Socialist Party and the German Social Democratic Party.
No full textThis thesis examines how the British Labour Party, the French Socialist Party (PS) and the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) have ‘Europeanised’ their organisations in three different arenas: (1) in the electorate and party system; (2) in central government and parliament; and (3) in their internal procedures and activities. ‘Europeanisation’ is defined as ‘a shorthand term for a complex process whereby national actors (in this case, parties) adapt to, and also seek to shape, the trajectory of European integration in general, and EU policies and processes in particular’ (Bomberg: 2002, 32). The underlying argument is that social democratic parties have to respond to challenges created by the European Single Market, which demands the reduction of state subsidies, and by the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), which sets limits to public spending. Social democratic parties are expected to react to these challenges by Europeanising their organisations.
This thesis draws on the academic literature, party documents and contemporary newspaper articles, together with insights gained from 70 semi-structured interviews with EU experts at the European and national levels.
The central claim is that Labour, the PS and SPD have not become as Europeanised as might have been supposed for three ostensibly pro-European parties. Whilst successive party leaderships have paid lip service to the increasing importance of European integration, their party organisations have barely been involved in the formulation of European policy. The findings have serious implications for the three parties and domestic politics in Britain, France and Germany, since the memberships lack the enthusiasm and expertise to lead well-informed, critical, Europeanised debates and election campaigns
E-BASS25: Recommendations/Next Steps
Get PDFPresentation given at the E-BASS25 End of Project Briefing on the next steps for the project, and its recommendations
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