16,281 research outputs found
The computer simulation and prediction of rock fall
No full textThis thesis deals with the study of rock falls using a mathematical model, codified for computer use, entitled GeoFall. GeoFall, which was developed by the author, allows predictions to be made of rock fall trajectories, run out distances and kinetic energies for a rock of any arbitrary shape. Its main purpose is to assist in the design of remedial works. The mathematical model is based on rigid body mechanics, and analyses a fall in 2D space using a new theory of impact dynamics developed by Brach (1991). The main features and algorithms of the program are presented in this thesis. The performance of GeoFall was evaluated by comparing actual rock fall events described in several published papers with the output created by GeoFall. Also the output from GeoFall has been compared with the output from other rock fall simulation programs used to simulate the documented rockfalls. A new rock slope inventory system entitled the Rock Fall Risk Assessment System (RFRAS) has been developed by the author to determine the rock fall risk at specific rock fall sites. It consists of three phases of inspection, the slope survey, and the preliminary and detailed rating phases. The detailed rating phase uses 13 parameters that when assessed, evaluated and totalled, numerically differentiates slopes from the least to the most hazardous producing an overall rating in the range 21-1926. It not only allows the relative risk of rockfall between slopes to be assessed but it also categorises the rock fall risk and the potential number of future rockfalls. It has been tested on 18 slopes at ten locations in County Durham. The final part of the thesis details a new laboratory based procedure that can be used to determine the coefficients of restitution for any type of rock material. The normal coefficient of restitution has been determined for seven different types of rock, and the tangential coefficient of restitution has been determined for a local sandstone. Some tentative correlations between the normal coefficient of restitution and the rocks physical properties, such as its Unconfined Compressive Strength (UCS) have been presented
Development and deployment of a rapid recombinase polymerase amplification Ebola virus detection assay in Guinea in 2015
No full textIn the absence of a vaccine or specific treatments for Ebola virus disease (EVD), early identification of cases is crucial for the control of EVD epidemics. We evaluated a new extraction kit (SpeedXtract (SE), Qiagen) on sera and swabs in combination with an improved diagnostic reverse transcription recombinase polymerase amplification assay for the detection of Ebola virus (EBOV-RT-RPA). The performance of combined extraction and detection was best for swabs. Sensitivity and specificity of the combined SE and EBOV-RT-RPA were tested in a mobile laboratory consisting of a mobile glovebox and a Diagnostics-in-a-Suitcase powered by a battery and solar panel, deployed to Matoto Conakry, Guinea as part of the reinforced surveillance strategy in April 2015 to reach the goal of zero cases. The EBOV-RT-RPA was evaluated in comparison to two real-time PCR assays. Of 928 post-mortem swabs, 120 tested positive, and the combined SE and EBOV-RT-RPA yielded a sensitivity and specificity of 100% in reference to one real-time RT-PCR assay. Another widely used real-time RT-PCR was much less sensitive than expected. Results were provided very fast within 30 to 60 min, and the field deployment of the mobile laboratory helped improve burial management and community engagement
The rise and fall of the Labour league of youth
No full textThis thesis charts the rise and fall of the Labour Party’s first and most enduring youth organisation, the Labour League of Youth. The history of the League, from its birth in the early nineteen twenties to its demise in the late nineteen fifties, is placed in the context of the Labour Party’s subsequent fruitless attempts to establish and maintain a vibrant and functional youth organisation. A narrative is incorporated that illuminates the culture, organisation and political activism of the League and establishes it as a predominantly working class radical organisation. The reluctance on the part of the Labour Party to grant autonomy to its youth sections resulted in the history of the League of Youth being one of control, suppression and tension. This state of affairs ensured that subsequent youth groups, the Young Socialists and Young Labour, would be established in an atmosphere of reservation and scepticism.
The thesis places the prime responsibility for the failure of the party’s youth organisations with the party leadership but also considers the contributory factors of changing social and political circumstances. A number of themes are explored which include the impact of structure and agency factors, the power of the Parliamentary Labour Party, the political socialisation of leading figures within the party, the social context in which each of the groups emerged and the extent to which the youth groups were prey to intra-party factionalism.
The thesis redresses the balance of research where most accounts have focussed on the Young Socialists and traces the common characteristics that are prevalent in the way the party leadership has approached its relationship with its youth organisations. Use has been made of previously unpublished primary source material, the major source being the League of Youth members themselves whose recollections have helped to demonstrate the arguments put forward in this thesis
Not a geography of what doesn't exist, but a counter-geography of what does: Rereading Giuseppe Dematteis' Le Metafore della Terra
No full textThe shaping of geography as a discipline has been the result of a combination of productive and successful communication and missed opportunities, of presence and absence, of fluid travels of ideas and projects, but also of closures, impediments, good lessons that got lost. This paper suggests that using a counterfactual approach to draw attention to specific geographies that remained unfulfilled and poorly known helps to think beyond linear genealogies. By discussing a particular book called Le Metafore della Terra by Giuseppe Dematteis, published in Italian in 1985 but largely unknown in English-language geography, we reflect on what happened when it was published - and also specifically what did not happen and, cautiously, what might have happened. In his book, Dematteis took issue with geography and geographers' past and contemporary mistakes, suggesting that the depoliticization of geographical knowledge had served merely powerful interests, rendering the imagining of alternative worlds impossible. He picked apart sacred tenets of the geographical tradition: escapist fantasies of exploration and conquest, the poorly problematized use of scale, the faith in the power of cartographic reason, the metaphysics of organicism, and the magical belief in the power of the market. Here, by extending the idea of counterfactual histories to look inwards to the discipline of geography itself, we choose to engage with what might have happened if this particular critical approach to geography had become better known, exploring why this radical project for the discipline was cast aside, including by the author himself. In so doing, we consider how scholars are located in so-called peripheral' places of production of geographical knowledge, discussing how this helps to understand the circulation and non-circulation of certain ideas. We use these alternatively rewritten geographies to show how dominant linear narratives of the emerging of critical thinking in the 1980s tell us an incomplete story, suggesting instead a tangled, multiple history of the discipline. We are interested in how scientific knowledge is communicated and received, how this exposes both the multi-sited nature of knowledge production and circulation, and cultural and national differences in the reception of science, and what this says about the possibility of critical thinking and progressive ideas having real impact
The Poudre River: history of collaboration over conflict
No full textPresented at the Fall 2014 Center for Collaborative Conservation (https://collaborativeconservation.org/) Seminar and Discussion Series, "Perspectives on the Poudre: Working River/Healthy River", September 9, 2014, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado. This fall semester's bi-weekly Seminar and Discussion Series focuses on the Poudre River and its watershed, its ecological needs, and how it is used to supply water for agriculture and urban needs. Presenters will highlight their topics and engage participants in dialogue. The series will culminate in a "world café" - campus and community open dialogue about the Poudre.Tom Cech was born and raised on a farm near Clarkson, Nebraska, graduated from Kearney State College with a Bachelor of Science Degree in Math Education, and later received a Masters Degree in Community and Regional Planning from the University of Nebraska – Lincoln. He was Executive Director of the Central Colorado Water Conservancy District in Greeley, taught water undergraduate and graduate level water resources courses at the University of Northern Colorado and Colorado State University, and is now the Director of the One World One Water (OWOW) Center for Urban Water Education and Stewardship at Metropolitan State University of Denver. Tom wrote "Principles of Water Resources: History, Development, Management and Policy," published by John Wiley & Sons - currently in its 3rd edition. Tom also recently published "Introduction to Water Resources and Environmental Issues," (co-author Dr. Karrie Pennington) with Cambridge University Press, and "Colorado Water Law for Non-Lawyers," (co-author P. Andrew Jones) with the University Press of Colorado. He has also completed histories of the Colorado Water Conservation Board and the Colorado State Engineer's Office with Bill McDonald and Dick Stenzel, respectively.Poster presentation.The meeting was held on a hot, dry summer day in 1874. Two groups of irrigators, from the downstream Union Colony (Greeley) and the new agricultural community in upstream Fort Collins - came armed with guns. The neutral Eaton Schoolhouse was too small to hold everyone, so people crammed the doorway. Most were Civil War veterans, and they all had a problem. "How would the two feuding groups divide the trickle of Cache la Poudre River water the remainder of the irrigation season - would it be based on "greatest need" or by priority (who dug their ditch first)?" The Union Colony delegates didn't like the greatest need idea, and they "hurled defiance in hot and unseemly language." The debate escalated with the Union Colony irrigators threatening to dig new irrigation ditches upstream of Fort Collins to choke off their water supply. The Fort Collins contingent objected to their uncooperative reaction. Then the meeting got ugly. One man, unable to bear the tension any longer, stood up and yelled, "Every man to his tent! To your rifle and cartridges!" It was a flashpoint in Colorado's water history. Were irrigators shot at this meeting? Who tried to calm the crowd and come up with a workable compromise for water management on the Cache la Poudre River? Tom Cech will explain this and more
Agricultural use of Poudre water: issues and opportunities
No full textPresented at the Fall 2014 Center for Collaborative Conservation (https://collaborativeconservation.org/) Seminar and Discussion Series, "Perspectives on the Poudre: Working River/Healthy River", November 4, 2014, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado. This fall semester's bi-weekly Seminar and Discussion Series focuses on the Poudre River and its watershed, its ecological needs, and how it is used to supply water for agriculture and urban needs. Presenters will highlight their topics and engage participants in dialogue. The series will culminate in a "world café" - campus and community open dialogue about the Poudre.Dr. Wallace was a professor in WCNR and the director of the Center for Protected Area Management and Training (CPMAT). His areas of expertise include land use planning, park and protected area planning and management, private land conservation, and the human dimensions of natural resource management. As founder and former director of CPMAT, he supervised and participated in many technical assistance, training and research projects carried out in both the US and Latin American parks and protected areas over two decades. He is a US member of IUCN's World Commission on Protected Areas (WCPA) and the recipient of the Packard International Parks Merit Award, the Chief of the Forest Service's Rural Community Development award, the Enos Mills Lifetime Achievement Award and the Troxell Award for Distinguished Service to Students. He is the author of 38 peer reviewed publications, 37 technical reports and invited articles, and has given more than 40 invited presentations at conferences. Locally, Dr. Wallace has served on and chaired variety of Larimer County, and Ft. Collins boards and commissions, related to agriculture, planning and natural resources. He served 9 years as a planning commissioner for Larimer County and is in his eighth year on the Larimer County Agricultural Advisory Board and on the Legacy Land Trust Board. He owns and operates a farm/ranch North of Ft. Collins, Colorado. The Wallaces have received both State and County environmental stewardship awards for their conservation and restoration practices on the farm.PowerPoint presentation.Presentation covers: Changing the way we think about the water used by agriculture; benefits provided by the irrigated landscape; local food supplies are in greater demand; irrigated agriculture in Larimer County produces a wide range of crops; Larimer County farms, ranches provide open space; irrigated ag provides wildlife habitat; and Larimer County production expenses from 2007 USDA census of agricutlure
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