8,272 research outputs found
History of the steel industry in the Port Talbot Area 1900-1988
No full textThis thesis examines the history of steelmaking at Port Talbot in South Wales from the start of modern steelmaking in 1902 to 1988. Although the British steel industry has been studied at national level, few studies have looked at company level and fewer on plant level studies. By studying this large and significant steelmaking site this thesis sheds light on the interaction between national constraints and local forces for change or inertia and on the interaction of plant management, industry leadership and national Government policies. A number of themes are examined including issues of locational inertia and change; technological innovation and choice; relationships to, and changes in markets; products and demand levels; the role of the state; and issues of decision making. The later includes managers, management structure, conflict among managers, corporate rivalries, relationships with banks and Government, and within nationalised industries.
The thesis covers the origins of modern steelmaking at Port Talbot in the 1900s, its expansion and integration with iron making during World War One. It looks at Port Talbot within the framework of heavy steel rationalisation in the 1920s and the inconclusive manoeuvrings to build a strip mill in the 1930s. After World Ward Two Port Talbot emerged as Britain’s leading strip mill through a complex interplay of technological and locational choices including Government pressure and corporate rivalries. The boom years of the 1950s were followed by consolidation and modernisation in the 1960s through the Government inspired over expansion of the strip mill sector. After re-nationalisation in 1967 Port Talbot became involved in internal struggles with rival strip mills over investment. At each stage the thesis uses the detailed local adaptation and innovation within that context.
The thesis draws on extensive primary sources including the National Archives, Government Reports and documents, company records, Bank of England papers, trade papers, technical journals, trade union papers and local newspapers. The secondary literature on the steel industry is discussed and revised where appropriate and this study adds a full-scale plant level industrial history of one of the most important British steelworks to this literature
Talbot-enhanced, maximum-visibility imaging of condensate interference
No full textNearly two centuries ago Talbot first observed the fascinating effect whereby light propagating through a periodic structure generates a `carpet' of image revivals in the near field. Here we report the first observation of the spatial Talbot effect for light interacting with periodic Bose-Einstein condensate interference fringes. The Talbot effect can lead to dramatic loss of fringe visibility in images, degrading precision interferometry, however we demonstrate how the effect can also be used as a tool to enhance visibility, as well as extend the useful focal range of matter wave detection systems by orders of magnitude. We show that negative optical densities arise from matter-wave induced lensing of detuned imaging light -- yielding Talbot-enhanced single-shot interference visibility of >135% compared to the ideal visibility for resonant light
Freedom’s cry: the popular dimension in the Pakistan Movement and Partition experience in North West India
No full textStandard historical accounts of the emergence of Pakistan have been dominated by events and issues at the elite level of politics. This book introduces two new angles to the subject. It lays particular emphasis firstly on the role of popular participation in the freedom struggle and secondly on the human dimension of the Partition experience. In order to open up these fresh perspectives this study utilizes new sources, including the extended use of fictitional representation. In addition to the injection of a human perspective into the historical discourse on Pakistan's emergence, the author provides comprehensive data on refugee resettlement and bibliographical notes.Ian Talbot examines the role of popular participation in the Pakistan Movement and the social and psychological impact of the 1947 experience. While standard historical accounts have been dominated by events and issues at the elite level of politics, the author introduces two more angles to the study of the Freedom Movement: he lays particular emphasis on, firstly, the role of the ordinary citizen, and secondly, the human dimension of the Partition experience. Exploring these fresh perspectives, he includes the extended use of fictional representation and provides comprehensive data on refugee resettlement
Public Reading & Conversation with Jill Talbot
No full textJill Talbot is the author of The Last Year: Essays (Winner of Wandering Aengus Press Editor’s Prize, August 2023), as well as The Way We Weren’t: A Memoir and Loaded: Women and Addiction, a collection of personal essays. Her writing has appeared in literary journals such as AGNI, Brevity, Colorado Review, Diagram, Gulf Coast, Hotel Amerika, Lit Mag, River Teeth: A Journal of Narrative Nonfiction, and The Paris Review Daily and has been recognized seven times in TheBest American Essays annual series. She is Associate Professor of Creative Writing and a University Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University of North Texas
Adaptive photodetector for assisted talbot effect
No full textWe use an adaptive photodetector for measuring the visibility of the Fresnel diffraction patterns generated by a grating. Visibility is measured in real time, with high spatial resolution, and without any signal processing. This method is well suited for analyzing the Talbot effect and its many applications
Conclusions: Learning from Listening? Why the EU Failed to Learn from the Arab Uprisings and Why that Matters
No full textThis book has above all shown why the EU is not a ‘normative actor’ in the Middle East and how and why EU democracy promotion fails. These efforts fail because the Union promotes the wrong kind of democracy and the wrong kind of strategies for economic growth—wrong both in the sense that these approaches do not work and in the sense that they are not what people want. This double failure highlights a paradox of EU democracy promotion: while nominally an emancipatory endeavour, de facto it undermines those very emancipatory transitions to democracy and to inclusive development which it claims to pursue. In detailing these failures, the book compares conceptions of gender, democracy and human rights. The ‘gap’ between EU images and populations’ self-conceptions explains negative perceptions of the EU—undermining its role as a ‘normative power’—and how the EU’s own narratives ‘other’ Southern Mediterranean Countries’ populations
In the Eye of the Beholder: Perceptions of the EU Through Survey Data
No full textThis chapter uses survey data to analyse perceptions of the EU, its development cooperation programmes, its promotion of democracy, the appropriateness of its response to the Arab Uprisings and the perception of the EU as an international actor. Overall, the data suggests low levels of awareness and relatively negative opinions of the EU’s actions both in general and in the specific context of its response to the Arab Uprisings
Gender Equality in Theory and Practice
No full textThis chapter compares the way in which the EU defines and promotes gender equality and the empowerment of women on the one hand and the conceptions of women’s rights in Southern Mediterranean Countries (SMCs) on the other. The chapter begins by examining the evolution and metamorphosis of the EU’s self-image as a gender entrepreneur, followed by an in-depth analysis of EU gender promotion policy in the region both before and after the Uprisings, in theory and in practice. It then examines the progress that has been made in SMCs in gender equality and concludes by discussing the attitudes of women and men in Egypt, Jordan, Morocco and Tunisia to gender equality. It concludes that there is a mismatch between EU gender policy and the attitudes of citizens, with the latter remaining conservative with strong support for family policy being based on shari’a
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