Monstrous Oil: Theorizing Petromodernity\u27s Monsters

Petroleum, a primary global energy resource, serves as a foundation of our contemporary society. However, the pervasive influence of oil as substance, commodity, and industry in our petromodern lives often goes unrecognized. In the present moment of biogeocultural crisis surrounding fossil fuels, recognizing and understanding our multifaceted engagements with petroleum is critical. This thesis contributes to the growing field of Petrocultural Studies by considering the conceptualization of petroleum through the associated tropes and figure of the monster. Through the petromonstrous, a term that encapsulates the massive scale, haunting effects, and human-other entanglements of petroleum, cultural attitudes and anxieties about oil can be read. Looking to popular culture, literature, and film, I discuss appearances of monstrous embodiments of oil and primarily analyze three varied depictions of petromonstrosity in China Miéville’s short story “Covehithe,” Gracie Gardner’s absurdist play Pussy Sludge, and the South Korean creature feature Sector 7 (2011) directed by Kim Ji-hoon

Mars Science Laboratory Mission and Science Investigation

Scheduled to land in August of 2012, the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) Mission was initiated to explore the habitability of Mars. This includes both modern environments as well as ancient environments recorded by the stratigraphic rock record preserved at the Gale crater landing site. The Curiosity rover has a designed lifetime of at least one Mars year (∼23 months), and drive capability of at least 20 km. Curiosity’s science payload was specifically assembled to assess habitability and includes a gas chromatograph-mass spectrometer and gas analyzer that will search for organic carbon in rocks, regolith fines, and the atmosphere (SAM instrument); an x-ray diffractometer that will determine mineralogical diversity (CheMin instrument); focusable cameras that can image landscapes and rock/regolith textures in natural color (MAHLI, MARDI, and Mastcam instruments); an alpha-particle x-ray spectrometer for in situ determination of rock and soil chemistry (APXS instrument); a laser-induced breakdown spectrometer to remotely sense the chemical composition of rocks and minerals (ChemCam instrument); an active neutron spectrometer designed to search for water in rocks/regolith (DAN instrument); a weather station to measure modern-day environmental variables (REMS instrument); and a sensor designed for continuous monitoring of background solar and cosmic radiation (RAD instrument). The various payload elements will work together to detect and study potential sampling targets with remote and in situ measurements; to acquire samples of rock, soil, and atmosphere and analyze them in onboard analytical instruments; and to observe the environment around the rover. The 155-km diameter Gale crater was chosen as Curiosity’s field site based on several attributes: an interior mountain of ancient flat-lying strata extending almost 5 km above the elevation of the landing site; the lower few hundred meters of the mountain show a progression with relative age from clay-bearing to sulfate-bearing strata, separated by an unconformity from overlying likely anhydrous strata; the landing ellipse is characterized by a mixture of alluvial fan and high thermal inertia/high albedo stratified deposits; and a number of stratigraphically/geomorphically distinct fluvial features. Samples of the crater wall and rim rock, and more recent to currently active surface materials also may be studied. Gale has a well-defined regional context and strong evidence for a progression through multiple potentially habitable environments. These environments are represented by a stratigraphic record of extraordinary extent, and insure preservation of a rich record of the environmental history of early Mars. The interior mountain of Gale Crater has been informally designated at Mount Sharp, in honor of the pioneering planetary scientist Robert Sharp. The major subsystems of the MSL Project consist of a single rover (with science payload), a Multi-Mission Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator, an Earth-Mars cruise stage, an entry, descent, and landing system, a launch vehicle, and the mission operations and ground data systems. The primary communication path for downlink is relay through the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The primary path for uplink to the rover is Direct-from-Earth. The secondary paths for downlink are Direct-to-Earth and relay through the Mars Odyssey orbiter. Curiosity is a scaled version of the 6-wheel drive, 4-wheel steering, rocker bogie system from the Mars Exploration Rovers (MER) Spirit and Opportunity and the Mars Pathfinder Sojourner. Like Spirit and Opportunity, Curiosity offers three primary modes of navigation: blind-drive, visual odometry, and visual odometry with hazard avoidance. Creation of terrain maps based on HiRISE (High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment) and other remote sensing data were used to conduct simulated driving with Curiosity in these various modes, and allowed selection of the Gale crater landing site which requires climbing the base of a mountain to achieve its primary science goals. The Sample Acquisition, Processing, and Handling (SA/SPaH) subsystem is responsible for the acquisition of rock and soil samples from the Martian surface and the processing of these samples into fine particles that are then distributed to the analytical science instruments. The SA/SPaH subsystem is also responsible for the placement of the two contact instruments (APXS, MAHLI) on rock and soil targets. SA/SPaH consists of a robotic arm and turret-mounted devices on the end of the arm, which include a drill, brush, soil scoop, sample processing device, and the mechanical and electrical interfaces to the two contact science instruments. SA/SPaH also includes drill bit boxes, the organic check material, and an observation tray, which are all mounted on the front of the rover, and inlet cover mechanisms that are placed over the SAM and CheMin solid sample inlet tubes on the rover top deck

From icon to naturalised icon:a linguistic analysis of media representations of the BP Deepwater Horizon crisis

This research explores how news media reports construct representations of a business crisis through language. In an innovative approach to dealing with the vast pool of potentially relevant texts, media texts concerning the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill are gathered from three different time points: immediately after the explosion in 2010, one year later in 2011 and again in 2012. The three sets of 'BP texts' are investigated using discourse analysis and semi-quantitative methods within a semiotic framework that gives an account of language at the semiotic levels of sign, code, mythical meaning and ideology. The research finds in the texts three discourses of representation concerning the crisis that show a movement from the ostensibly representational to the symbolic and conventional: a discourse of 'objective factuality', a discourse of 'positioning' and a discourse of 'redeployment'. This progression can be shown to have useful parallels with Peirce's sign classes of Icon, Index and Symbol, with their implied movement from a clear motivation by the Object (in this case the disaster events), to an arbitrary, socially-agreed connection. However, the naturalisation of signs, whereby ideologies are encoded in ways of speaking and writing that present them as 'taken for granted' is at its most complete when it is least discernible. The findings suggest that media coverage is likely to move on from symbolic representation to a new kind of iconicity, through a fourth discourse of 'naturalisation'. Here the representation turns back towards ostensible factuality or iconicity, to become the 'naturalised icon'. This work adds to the study of media representation a heuristic for understanding how the meaning-making of a news story progresses. It offers a detailed account of what the stages of this progression 'look like' linguistically, and suggests scope for future research into both language characteristics of phases and different news-reported phenomena

Particle swarm optimization in multi-agents cooperation applications

Master'sMASTER OF ENGINEERIN

Simulation for digital manufacturing

Digitalisation has been among the most-often discussed developments of our modern society for decades and it increasingly stretches to manufacturing. Industrial processes merge with information technologies, accelerated by rapidly increasing amount of data and newly developed smart algorithms. This thesis focuses on demands of digital manufacturing and a neutral evaluation of smart algorithms. Digitalisation is a vast field. Various solutions have been suggested lately and establish further continuously. Companies feel increasingly pressured to amend their structures to smart and agile factories. These wide-spanning refurbishments often lack concrete objectives and clear target figures for successful implementation. This limits the clarity for comparing different solutions. Deriving from a discussion on purposes of digitalisation, simulation and calculation models have been established to evaluate and rate the most valuable approaches. A test and development system is established, which is suitable to compare different smart production IT solutions. Based on this practical case, a concrete evaluation is described. An exemplary production line is evaluated to find requirements for improved flexibility. After a critical discussion about the suitability of the suggested solution, assistance systems and mathematical models are introduced with which development and optimisation of smart production structures can be implemented in a given manufacturing system.Digitalisierung gehört seit Jahrzehnten zu den am häufigsten diskutierten Entwicklungen unserer heutigen Gesellschaft und erstreckt sich zunehmend auch auf die Produktion. Industrielle Prozesse verbinden sich mit Informationstechnik, beschleunigt durch rasant steigende Datenmengen und neu entwickelte, smarte Algorithmen. Diese Arbeit fokussiert sich auf die Anforderungen digitaler Fertigung und eine neutrale Bewertung smarter Algorithmen. Digitalisierung ist ein breites Feld. Verschiedene Lösungen wurden zuletzt vorgeschlagen und entwickeln sich kontinuierlich weiter. Unternehmen stehen zunehmend unter Druck, ihre Strukturen zu smarten und agilen Fabriken zu entwickeln. Diese weitreichenden Erneuerungen lassen oft konkrete Ziele und klare Zielvorgaben für eine erfolgreiche Implementierung vermissen. Dies reduziert die Klarheit im direkten Vergleich verschiedener Lösungen. Ausgehend von einer Diskussion über den Zweck der Digitalisierung, wurden Simulations- und Berechnungsmodelle entwickelt um vielversprechende Anwendungen zu bewerten und zu klassifizieren. Ein Test- und Entwicklungssystem wurde eingerichtet, um verschiedene smarte IT-Lösungen im Produktionsumfeld vergleichen zu können. Nach einer kritischen Diskussion, in wie fern die vorgeschlagene Lösung geeignet ist, werden Assistenzsysteme und mathematische Modelle vorgestellt, die die Entwicklung und Optimierung smarter Produktionsstrukturen für ein gegebenes Fertigungssystem unterstützt