46 research outputs found
β-delayed proton emission from nuclei near doubly magic ¹⁰⁰Sn
No full textThe proton-rich region of the nuclear chart surrounding the doubly magic nucleus
¹⁰⁰Sn (N = Z = 50) is of great interest in nuclear structure studies, in particular
when examining the limits of proton stability and the location of the proton drip-
line. Measurement of the properties of unstable nuclei in this region serves as a
direct test of the shell model for exotic isotopes further from stability. To this end,
an experiment was carried out at the Radioactive Ion Beam Factory (RIBF) at
RIKEN, Japan. Isotopes in this region were produced following fragmentation of
a primary ¹²⁴Xe beam (E beam = 345 MeV/u, beam intensity of 120 pnA) impinged
on a 9 Be target, to then be separated and identified, and finally guided along the
beamline and implanted in the Advanced Implantation Detector Array (AIDA).
AIDA is a state-of-the-art silicon detector array which was used in coincidence
with the Decay Total Absorption γ-ray Spectrometer (DTAS), a NaI crystal array
γ detection system, to measure the decay properties of exotic, short-lived unstable
proton-rich nuclei near ¹⁰⁰Sn.
This thesis presents an analysis of data collected with AIDA during this
experiment, notably for the first time with proton-rich nuclei. Measurements
of the β-delayed proton decay half-lives, branching ratios and energy spectra of
20 nuclei in the region of ¹⁰⁰Sn are presented in this work, the latter of which
was measured with significantly increased energy resolution compared to previous
studies.
β-delayed proton emission from ¹⁰¹Sn was analysed in depth, and compared to
predictions from shell model calculations in the context of identifying the ground-
state spin of this nucleus.
The data collected in this experiment also provided an opportunity to characterise
the fast-recovery time of AIDA, in the context of identifying very short-lived decay
events with half-lives ∼ μs. This characterisation was applied to constrain the
half-life of potential proton emission from an isomer in ⁹⁷In, which has not been
directly detected in this work or in previous studies
Shortcomings in the market for developing country debt
No full textThe author recommends ways of improving incentives for developing countries to repay future loans : 1) by finding ways to increase the penalties for default, or making the penalties more certain. This would increase the debtor countries'willingness to pay, which would benefit all parties, 2) by studying how to use existing multinational and international organizations to increase the flow of relevant information to potential creditors, 3) by increasing precommitment of funds through increased penalties for default and other approaches. IMF contingency programs are already used extensively to establish some form of precommitment. Further use of international organizations along these lines may be possible. Mutually beneficial contracts are not currently possible because precommitment is not enforceable.Environmental Economics&Policies,Financial Intermediation,Economic Adjustment and Lending,Banks&Banking Reform,Economic Theory&Research
Money, credit, banking, and payments system policy
No full textThis article employs contract theory to analyze the evolution of the payments system. Insights gained are used subsequently to evaluate three prominent public payments system policies: monetary policy, central bank lending, and deposit insurance.Payment systems
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Hydraulic Shuttle Irradiation System (HSIS) Recently Installed in the Advanced Test Reactor (ATR)
No full text2010 International Congress on Advances in Nuclear Power Plants (ICAPP’10) ANS Annual Meeting Imbedded Topical San Diego, CA June 13 – 17, 2010 Hydraulic Shuttle Irradiation System (HSIS) Recently Installed in the Advanced Test Reactor (ATR) Author: A. Joseph Palmer, Mechanical Engineer, Irradiation Test Programs, 208-526-8700, [email protected] Affiliation: Idaho National Laboratory P.O. Box 1625, MS-3840 Idaho Falls, ID 83415 INL/CON-10-17680 ABSTRACT Most test reactors are equipped with shuttle facilities (sometimes called rabbit tubes) whereby small capsules can be inserted into the reactor and retrieved during power operations. With the installation of Hydraulic Shuttle Irradiation System (HSIS) this capability has been restored to the Advanced Test Reactor (ATR) at Idaho National Laboratory (INL). The general design and operating principles of this system were patterned after the hydraulic rabbit at Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s (ORNL) High Flux Isotope Reactor (HFIR), which has operated successfully for many years. Using primary coolant as the motive medium the HSIS system is designed to simultaneously transport fourteen shuttle capsules, each 16 mm OD x 57 mm long, to and from the B-7 position of the reactor. The B-7 position is one of the higher flux positions in the reactor with typical thermal and fast (>1 Mev) fluxes of 2.8E+14 n/cm2/sec and 1.9E+14 n/cm2/sec respectively. The available space inside each shuttle is approximately 14 mm diameter x 50 mm long. The shuttle containers are made from titanium which was selected for its low neutron activation properties and durability. Shuttles can be irradiated for time periods ranging from a few minutes to several months. The Send and Receive Station (SRS) for the HSIS is located 2.5 m deep in the ATR canal which allows irradiated shuttles to be easily moved from the SRS to a wet loaded cask, or transport pig. The HSIS system first irradiated (empty) shuttles in September 2009 and has since completed a Readiness Assessment in November 2009. The HSIS is a key component of the ATR National Scientific User Facility (NSUF) operated by Battelle Energy Alliance, LLC and is available to a wide variety of university researchers for nuclear fuels and materials experiments as well as medical isotope research and production
Money, credit, banking, and payments system policy
No full textThis article employs contract theory to analyze the evolution of the payments system. Insights gained are used subsequently to evaluate three prominent public payments system policies: monetary policy, central bank lending, and deposit insurance.Payment systems
Identity and consumption practices of Northamptonshire Caribbeans c.1955-1989
No full textThe objective of this thesis is to delineate and analyse Northamptonshire Caribbeans' consumption c.1955-1989. Author-collected and other oral histories alongside complementary primary and secondary references dovetail to unearth and analyse aspects of Post-War Caribbean consumption in a British provincial location that have been significantly unexplored previously. Central to the argument is the contention that identity is fundamentally significant in comprehending and analysing Northamptonshire Caribbeans' consumption. Various conceptualisations of identity facilitated development of consumer materialisations and aspirations. This thesis explores how multiple forms of identity as Caribbean, Black and British people were significant in shaping local Caribbeans' consumption. The succeeding pages address and analyse how these multiple identities influenced consumption and how provincial consumer behaviour was shaped by Caribbeans' relative co-ethnic isolation in Northamptonshire. Chapter 3 delineates and analyses consumer practices and practicalities of Northamptonshire Caribbeans. Integral within these consumer practices and practicalities are changes in consumption over time, intergenerational differences in consumption, as well as aspects of consumption that could be considered 'typical' and/or 'atypical' Northamptonshire Caribbean consumption; all of which are incorporated within this chapter. Chapter 4 connects identity and consumption through enhancing understanding of Northamptonshire Caribbeans' consumer networks. These networks interacted with the combination of identities local Caribbeans psychologically felt part of within various Caribbean, Black and British permutations. Furthermore, such identities varied more widely amongst the younger generation than their co-ethnic elders, a concept which is also addressed. Education and cultural currency are two novel strands through which to analyse connections between consumption and identity. The final two chapters deploy these concepts in an innovative manner creating and developing greater understanding of Northamptonshire Caribbeans' consumption. Chapter 5 expounds on the concept that education can be used as consumption whilst shaping future consumer behaviour, both ideas significantly under-explored previously. Chapter 6 introduces the theory of cultural currency, the idea that aspects of culture have finite, but changing, values and must be shared to have value similar to monetary currencies having exchange values for other monetary currencies. This chapter demonstrates how Northamptonshire Caribbeans shared aspects of Caribbean culture as cultural currency, fostering co-ethnic strength whilst gaining inter-ethnic respect for Caribbeans. Through comprehending Caribbean identity, correlations between empirical and social history, local consumption, as well as educational and cultural circumstances that stimulated and inspired Northamptonshire Caribbeans, this thesis distinctively illuminates how local Caribbeans' consumption interacted with various permutations of Afro-Caribbean, Black and/or British identities whilst representing idiosyncratic local nodes within these larger amalgamations
Poetics of the same: a philosophical poetic recourse into sameness
No full textPhDThis study endeavours to investigate the philosophical and poetological
dimensions, the philological origins, and significant philosophical-literary
representations of the Same. It also assesses sameness as a philosophical and
poetological modus operandi; that is to say, it analyzes the ways in which the
Same operates in different types of discourses both as an object of investigation
and as an agent of (poetic) thought. The concept of the Same or the operation of
sameness as the philosophical question par excellence will be considered in the
development of Continental philosophy and philosophical poetics from classical
antiquity to Postmodernism, and its transposition into poetry.
The elaboration of the issue of sameness encompasses any philosophical
inquiry which seeks to establish the essence of Being and make it susceptible to a
general, unifying principle: as a search for an underlying element; for a
metaphysical unity or universal, preceding division or difference and amounting
to the harmony in the Universe; or for a transcendental absolute totality.
Postulations of the pure conceptual difference are likewise examined as part of the
elaboration of sameness, and will be viewed as indispensable for revealing the
genuine plenitude of sameness.
Part One traces the inception of sameness as a concept of pure identity,
amounting to the harmony of the Universe by virtue of the operations of
belonging (Presocratics), participation (Plato), and emanation (Plotinus), anchored
in the relationships between the One and the many, between the Whole and its
parts, between the Original and the copy. Part Two inquires into the limits of
postulating sameness in terms of pure identity and points to two possible solutions
to this problem: a philosophical-aesthetic digression from sameness (Kant and
related aesthetic theories of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries) and the
return to sameness as an absolute totality in Part Three (Schelling and Hegel).
Part Four investigates the re-postulation of sameness as pure Difference
(Nietzsche, Heidegger, Derrida), hence the entire re-organization of thought in
terms of the other. Part Five analyzes the transposition of sameness from
3
philosophy into the poetic language of repetition, using Rilke’s Sonnets to
Orpheus as its prime poetic example.
It will be argued that the philosophical displacement of the Same from a
concept of identity into that of difference does not amount to an abandonment of
its plenitude, but rather points to the need for a precarious balance between
sameness and difference, the simultaneous quest for unity and the absolute
singularity of the other. This balance, it will be argued, must be sought for in
every genuine creation
Ethics and entertainment : essays on media culture and media morality /
No full textThis collection of 19 essays provides useful guidelines and perspectives for the producers and consumers of entertainment. Topics covered include the contemporary creation of celebrity, the effects of entertainment on children, the hybridization of entertainment and news, author and intellectual property rights, and the role of human dignity in modern media, among many others --Provided by publisher.This collection of 19 essays provides useful guidelines and perspectives for the producers and consumers of entertainment. Topics covered include the contemporary creation of celebrity, the effects of entertainment on children, the hybridization of entertainment and news, author and intellectual property rights, and the role of human dignity in modern media, among many others --Provided by publisher.Includes bibliographical references and index.The ethics of speaking out / Wendy N. Wyatt and Kristie Bunton -- I'm sorry, oh, so sorry: celebrity apologies and public ethics / Nikki Usher and Janel S. Schuh -- Quasars: silent celebrities, ethical implications / Kyle F. Reinson -- Sportainment meets high school sports / Marie Hardin and Thomas F. Corrigan -- The diaper demographic: viewing very young children as an economically viable market / Erin L. Ryan and Keisha L. Hoerrner -- Superbad: a twisted and touching ethical mess of a movie / Joseph C. Harry -- Tall tales: exploring the ethics of storytelling in the age of infotainment / Cynthia M. King and Deni Elliott -- This time it's personal: united 93 and 9/11 docudrama / Steve Lipkin -- Bread and circuits: politics in an entertainment culture / Mike Dillon -- The common morality of interviewers: evaluating moral / Guidelines of Non-Journalists / David Charlton -- Cops and reality TV: public service or public menace? / Jack Breslin -- Documentary tradition and the ethics of Michael: Moore's SiCKO / Sandra L. Borden -- Just a cartoonist: the virtuous journalism of Joe Sacco / Howard Good -- Whose tube is it anyway? / John Chapin -- The cult of celebrity vs. the enlightenment of DIY culture / Bill Reader -- Entertainment and dignity -- Fictionalized torture: Jack Bauer's war on terrorism / K. Maja Krakowiak -- Hillbilly stereotypes and humor: entertaining ourselves at the expense of the other / Elizabeth K. Hansen and Angela F. Cooke-Jackson -- Epistemic freedom, science fiction, and ethical deliberation / Trin Turner and Joshua D. Upson -- Weight watching: the ethics of commodifying appearances for profit / Berrin A. Beasley
Developing a critical theory of child abuse : a discussion of the nature of child abuse as a manifestation of the social order
No full textThis thesis is an exploration into the nature and the prevalence of
child abuse. It incorporates in this investigation how children
understand abuse, and how the child may reject or oppose it. Its
origins lie in the experiences and observations I made as a local
authority social worker where children were silent, where child
abuse was seen as an event, a distinct moment within family life,
and with apparently little recognition of its relationship with the
social order. Arising from this observation, I consider how the
care of children may be a manifestation of the social order. This
thesis is therefore also a critique of the present theory and
practice of working within the field of childcare.
The premise taken here is that in order to understand abuse, there
must be an account of the individual's sense of being, as this
relates to wider issues of the political economy. Thus this
investigation uses the perspective of critical theory, since
critical theory can incorporate an analysis of both structure and
the experiential. It enables the researcher to shift perspective
and to focus on different levels and aspects of being.
Therefore, since child abuse is situated within the family, an
analysis based on the perspectives of critical theory is used to
examine family relationships. This includes an examination of the
relationships between parents, as well as of those between them and
the child. Three different facets of family life are explored:
that of gender construction from the viewpoint of feminist
psychoanalysis; the relationship between the social order and
interpersonal behaviour from the perspective of Marx and radical
feminism; and parental authority, drawing on the work of Laing.
Derived from this exploration, the key concepts of patriarchy,
alienation and mystification inform the direction of the empirical
investigation.
The empirical investigation, using firstly autobiographies of
childhood and then direct interviews with children, explores
further these concepts'. The autobiographies are used as a way of
sensitising oneself to the issues for the child, and as a means of
categorising experiences for the subsequent interviews with
children. From this reading, an alternative understanding of child
abuse is developed, one which differs from the narrow definition
used by organisations. Hence abuse can be seen as the experience
of hurt and pain, either emotional or physical, and which takes
place in a relationship based on the parental domination, control
and exploitation of the child. This understanding of abuse
situates the subjective experience within an interpersonal dynamic
of power and subordination.
Using this definition in analysing the interviews with children, it
was apparent that all children expedrience a form of abuse to some
degree. Abuse is not, therefore, the property of a small number of deviant families. Additionally it is argued that children are
silenced and rendered powerless within the family by three
mechanisms: firstly by the 'privacy control mechanism', secondly by
the 'ideology of paternalism', and thirdly by mystification. These
can be interpreted as also reinforcing the social order, since this
also depends for its maintenance on domination, powerlessness, and
mystification of the mechanisms of control.
The thesis concludes with a number of proposals for further
exploring these concepts in terms of developing sociological theory
and social work practice. The report on the death of Jasmine
Beckford is subjected to an alternative analysis, and derived from
this critique, ways of confronting violence, mystification and
privacy are discussed. Finally the thesis stresses the importance
of understanding child abuse as a personal as well as a social
phenomenon, and that it has ultimately, a political significance
The world is changing: ethics and genre development in three twentieth-century high fantasies.
No full textThis thesis examines three genre high fantasy texts published between 1954 and 2001: J. R. R. Tolkien’s 'The Lord of the Rings', Ursula K. Le Guin’s 'Earthsea' cycle and Patricia A. McKillip’s 'The Riddle-Master’s Game'. The emphasis is on examining how the three texts use a common set of structures to articulate a developing argument about forms of human engagement with the physical world in the face of environmental crisis.
Using theories of literary ecology and narrative paradigm, I examine the common structure shared by the three high fantasies and the weight of ethical implications it carries. The texts position the transcendent impulse of the mode of tragedy, and the behaviour it generates, as the source of crisis, and posit as a solution to the problem the integrative ethic characteristic of the comedic mode. They argue that a transition between these two ethics is necessary for the continued survival of the Secondary World. This thesis examines each text’s use of narrative paradigm to articulate methods by which this ethical transition may be achieved.
An argumentative trend is documented across the three fantasies through the representation of situation, problem and solution. In each text, as the Secondary World becomes more completely a closed physical system, the source of the solution to the problem caused by the transcendent presence and the achievement of ethical transition are both relocated within the control of human actors. The three fantasies express a gradual movement toward the acceptance of not only human responsibility for, but the necessity for action to remedy, the damaged state of the world.
I argue that the texts’ dominant concern is with the human relationship with and to context. Indeed, I argue that the three fantasies reflect the developing understanding of the human role in not only precipitating, but responding to, environmental crisis, and may function as both a reflection of and an intervention in that crisis.Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Adelaide, School of Humanities, 200
