1,709 research outputs found
Post-war British working-class fiction with special reference to the novels of John Braine, Alan Sillitoe, Stan Barstow, David Storey and Barry Hines
Get PDFThis study is about British working-class fiction in the post-war period.
It covers various authors such as Robert Tressell, George Orwell, Walter Greenwood, Lewis Grassic Gibbon and DH Lawrence from the early twentieth century; writers traditionally classified as 'Angry Young Men' like John Osborne, Arnold Wesker, Shelagh Delaney, John Wain and
Kingsley Amis; and working-class novelists like John Braine, Stan Barstow, David Storey, Alan Sillitoe and Barry Hines from the 1950s and 1960s.
Some of the main issues dealt with in the course of this study are language, form, community, self/identity/autobiography, sexuality and relationship with bourgeois art. The major argument centres on two questions: representation of working-class life, and the
relationship between working-class literary tradition and dominant ideologies.
We will be arguing that while working-class fiction succeeded in challenging and rupturing bourgeois literary tradition, on the level of language and linguistic medium of expression for example, it utterly failed to break away from dominant, bourgeois modes of literary production in relation to form, for instance.
Our argument is situated within Marxist approaches to literature, a political and aesthetic position from which we attempt an analysis and an evaluation of this working-class literary tradition. These critical approaches provide us also with the theoretical tool to define the political perspective of this tradition, and to judge whether it was confined to a descriptive mode of representation or
located in a radical, political outlook
David Fable Books No 1
No full textThere are five stories in this book. I ordered this one for the collection because of the title of the first: The Story of Anna, Buddy, and the Country Mouse. That story is utterly charming, together with its colored lithographs. The author frequently pauses to note to the reader elements of a picture that the reader might miss. There is a first visit to a town, complete with a visit to a restaurant for tea, but in this case the two dogs sit nicely at a table and order, while Homer the mouse gets on top of the table. The three then again travel by bus back to the country. The five stories are interspersed with illustrations for traditional rhymes, including Sing a Song of Sixpence. Indeed, it is the art that makes this book, along with the charm of whimsical local stories. Coppin was serving in the armed forces overseas during World War II and wrote these stories for his son David, to whom the book is dedicated. There is a picture of David facing the Publisher's Introduction at the book's beginning.This is a hardbound book (hard cover)Alan Middleton Coppi
On estimating local long-term climate trends
Get PDFClimate sensitivity is commonly taken to refer to the equilibrium change in the annual mean global surface temperature following a doubling of the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration. Evaluating this variable remains of significant scientific interest, but its global nature makes it largely irrelevant to many areas of climate science, such as impact assessments, and also to policy in terms of vulnerability assessments and adaptation planning. Here, we focus on local changes and on the way observational data can be analysed to inform us about how local climate has changed since the middle of the nineteenth century. Taking the perspective of climate as a constantly changing distribution, we evaluate the relative changes between different quantiles of such distributions and between different geographical locations for the same quantiles. We show how the observational data can provide guidance on trends in local climate at the specific thresholds relevant to particular impact or policy endeavours. This also quantifies the level of detail needed from climate models if they are to be used as tools to assess climate change impact. The mathematical basis is presented for two methods of extracting these local trends from the data. The two methods are compared first using surrogate data, to clarify the methods and their uncertainties, and then using observational surface temperature time series from four locations across Europe
Activation of Aryl C-H and C-X bonds by a pincer-ligated 'PCP' iridium complex
No full textThe activation of carbon-hydrogen (C-H) bonds mediated by transition metal complexes is a fundamental step in a vast array of chemical transformations and industrial processes. As such, research into the understanding of the factors governing both efficiency and selectivity of these reactions has been intense. The work presented in this thesis comprises results of experiments designed to evaluate the ability of a pincer-ligated iridium complex to activate the C-H bonds of several classes of aryl substrates. The pincer-ligated iridium fragment (PCP)Ir (PCP = {κ3-2,6-bis[(di-tert-butylphosphino)methyl]phenyl}) rapidly and reversibly adds the C-H bond of benzene, giving a kinetically labile addition product. The kinetics and thermodynamics of C-H activation of a series of halogen-, alkyl-, and trifluoromethyl-substituted arenes were studied with a particular focus on determining whether “directing” effects play a significant role. In regard to electronic effects, it was observed that electron withdrawing aryl substituents favor C-H activation. Products of C-H activation ortho to weakly or non-coordinating substituents (e.g., Cl, Br, CF3) are kinetically more stable than those of the meta- and para-substituted analogs, due to steric crowding in the transition state for addition and elimination. However, there is no thermodynamic preference for the ortho-substituted complexes. In addition to C-H activation, (PCP)Ir also activates C-X bonds (X = Cl, Br) under certain conditions, yielding product mixtures through a mechanism that remains unclear. Several series of polycyclic aromatic substrates (naphthalenes, biphenyls, bipyridines, and associated tricyclic analogs) were also studied, giving insight into the utility of aryl C-H activation and preferred binding modes of the (PCP)Ir fragment. Not surprisingly, steric effects play a significant role in the regioselectivity of polycyclic aromatic C-H bond activation by (PCP)Ir. Cyclometalation reactions resulting from single or double C-H activation processes yield particularly stable products. Additional results included an unexpected C-C activation, and several products stabilized by heteroatom (N, O) coordination to iridium. Activation of large polycycles like terpyridine yielded stable, κ2 chelates that may be of value in research on organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs). Finally, several congested (PCP)Ir dimers were synthesized by taking advantage of the remarkable stability of the products from cyclometalation to the (PCP)Ir complex.Ph. D.Includes bibliographical referencesIncludes vitaby David Alan Lavisk
Why Torture?
Get PDFI develop a framework to account for torture, which I argue should be understood with reference to international relations. I show that torture is intended as a tool to ensure the security, stability and legitimacy of elites, often transnationally, but there is often a disjuncture between its intended and actual outcomes. Despite dominant claims that torture is used to defeat security threats, most torture is intended to deter political opposition and secure legitimacy for elites. I conclude that torture should be renounced, both on moral grounds, and because it is not necessary for the functions it is intended to serve
David Stockman
No full textDavid Alan Stockman (born November 10, 1946) is a former businessman and U.S. politician who served as a Republican U.S. Representative from the state of Michigan (1977–1981) and as the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (1981–1985) under President Ronald Reagan. He is also a well known author in economics.
(Bio taken from Wikipedia, accessed 11/12/2014)https://nsuworks.nova.edu/nsudigital_forums/1020/thumbnail.jp
Climate Change Adaptation: The Role of ICT in Facilitating the Application of Robust and Relevant Science
No full textA wide variety of available information concerning the climate change impact on water resources is available in communication networks and the Internet. Researches of the climate change are very complicated since many factors are indefinite or unknown. Global change and its reasons are closely associated with regional characteristics. The evaluation of the past and future changes of Lithuanian rivers’ runoff and their consistent patterns during the XXI century was done using the accumulative database of meteorological and hydrological observation, ECHAM5 and HadCM3 global climate circulation models and A1B, A2 and B1 emission scenarios, statistical methods and hydrological modelling (HBV software). Changes of climate elements (temperature and precipitation) directly influence conditions of river runoff formation. The average annual temperature increased about 0.9 oC during the last decades in Lithuania. The most significant temperature increase was in the winter and spring seasons. The cycle change has been estimated in the long time period series of precipitation. Average durations of wet and dry periods are 14 and 13 years accordingly. Precipitation of the winter season increases only from 1961 till now in all territory of Lithuania. The cyclic wateriness change is characteristic of the river annual runoff. The increase of winter season runoff, decrease of spring season runoff and maximum discharges of the spring floods have been observed in the last decades. In the forecasted period (2010-2100) average annual temperature will increase to 4.6 oC. Significant tendencies are not estimated in the precipitation change. The average annual runoff of the biggest Lithuanian river Nemunas is forecasted to decrease to 14% during the century.
Rapid flow of such kind of climate-change information from scientists to water managers would be useful and needful for solving many problems. Many sectors (water supply, agriculture, energy, industry, human health, transportation, infrastructure, tourism) are dependent on water resources and their possible variability due to climate change. Water managers, politicians and lower orders could get full-scale information concerning to impact of climate change on freshwater resources.
New Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) enable the users to search out a wide variety of available information. Unfortunately, the found papers, opinions and hypotheses could be not reliable and confidence. There is no official web-site concerning the climate change impact on the environment in Lithuania. The rubric “Climate Change” is in the web-site of Ministry of Environment of the Republic of Lithuania but the content of this rubric is related to the government activity in this field. The Environmental Protection Agency of Lithuania has a wide web-site regarding monitoring data of environment. There is no special rubric on climate change except some “references” to the web-sites of other organizations. In my point of view the official web-sites could be expanded with the wide and confident information from scientific community (papers, reports, projects et al.) concerning the climate change impact on environment.http://enviroinfo.eu/sites/default/files/pdfs/vol122/0283.pd
Uncertainty and confidence in prediction of climate change
No full textEThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo
Public investment and economic growth in Mexico
Get PDFMexico's growth rate began to plummet at roughly the same time that its public investment expenditures declined. That decline also appears to coincide with a slowdown in the growth of infrastructure capital in the electricity, transport, and communications sectors. Because of these parallel developments, many economists have attributed at least part of the blame for the decline in Mexico's growth after 1981 to the decline of public infrastructure investment. The empirical results presented in this report provide only limited support for this argument. They also suggest, in turn, that increases in public investment would not automatically translate into faster output and productivity growth. One reason not to take for granted a positive relationship between more public investment and faster growth is public investment's crowding out effect on private investment. Although the time-series regression results for Mexico all point toward a crowding out coefficient of less than unity, the existence limits the growth impact of public investment by reducing its net effect on capital accumulation. The time-series results also suggest that the economy's total factor productivity growth responds positively to increases in the ratio of public to private investment. In light of that result, increases in public investment should have a positive net impact on economic growth, despite significant crowding out effects. Chow breakpoint tests indicate, however, that the positive productivity effect appears to have weakened significantly in the past decade. A third reason for questioning a stable relationship is that the impact of increased public investment is likely to depend on how it is financed. The cross-country regressions reported here indicate that a general increase in the public capital stock has a positive impact on growth only if financed through savings generated through lower public consumption expenditures, but not if financed through higher public debt, which implies higher current and future taxation levels. The scope for reducing public consumption expenditures in Mexico is very limited, however, since they are already at rock bottom levels. Therefore, the only way to assure that the public investment program makes a significant contribution to growth is by improving its"quality"through careful attention to its rate of return and complementarity with private capital. In Mexico the most important reforms to make public investment more productive came from policymakers'recognition of the need to distinguish more clearly between the roles of the public and private sectors. This led to the privatization of most public enterprises and a reorientation of public investment to a more narrowly focused set of activities. In addition, the government took important steps to strengthen the institutional framework within which the public investment program is determined.Macroeconomic Management,Inequality,Economic Theory&Research,Environmental Economics&Policies,Economic Stabilization
On the Plurality of Lewis's Triviality Results
No full textDavid Lewis introduced a new kind of reductio ad absurdum style of argument: while the claims, suitably formalized, do not lead to outright contradiction, he showed they are tenable only in trivial ways. Lewis proved what are known as triviality results against the claims. The claims are "Probabilities of conditionals are conditional probabilities." "Desires are beliefs about what is good." The author argues that the tenuous connections between the claims go considerably further still: the claims give rise to debates that display a remarkably parallel structure. He brings out their many similarities to illuminate both of them, and to point the way to some promising avenues for future research. He displays structural similarities between the fluctuating fortunes of Stalnaker's Thesis, and those of Desire‐as‐Belief. Lewis concludes telegraphically by saying that Desire by Necessity is "a form of anti‐Humeanism, sure enough, but not the right form of anti‐Humeanism"; and that's it
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