13,607 research outputs found

    The development of the Kent coalfield 1896-1946

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    One of the unique features of the Kent Coalfield is that it is entirely concealed by newer rocks. The existence of a coalfield under southern England, being a direct link between those of South Wales, Somerset and Bristol in the west and the Ruhr, Belgium. and northern France in the east, was predicted by the geologist R. A. C. Godwin-Austen as early as 1856. It was, however, only the rapid increase in demand for Britain's coal in the last quarter of the nineteenth century that made it worth considering testing this hypothesis. The first boring was made in the years 1886-90, and although it discovered coal, this did not in itself prove the existence of a viable coalfield. This could be done only by incurring the heavy cost of boring systematically over a wide area. As the financial returns from such an undertaking were uncertain, it was not surprising that in the early years, around the turn of the century, a dominant role was played by speculators, who were able to induce numerous small investors to risk some of their savings in the expectation of high profits. As minerals in Britain were privately owned, the early pioneer companies not only had to meet the cost of the exploratory borines, but also, if they were not to see the benefit of their work accrue to others, lease beforehand the right to mine coal from local landowners in as much of the surrounding area as possible. This policy was pursued most vigorously by Arthur Burr, a Surrey land specula tor, who raised capital by creating the Kent Coal Conoessions Ltd. and then floating a series of companies allied to it. Burr's enterprise would probably have been. successful had it not been for the water problems encountered at depth in -v- the coalfield. As a result, the Concessions group found itself in control of most of the coalfield, but without the necessary capital to sink and adequately equip its 01ffi collieries. By 1910, however, the discovery of iron ore deposits in east Kent, coupled with the fact that Kent coal was excellent for coking purposes, began to attract the large steel firms of Bolckow, Vaughan Ltd. and Dorman, Long & Co. Ltd. in to the area. The First World War intervened, however, to delay their plans, and to provide an extended lease of life to the Concessions group, which, by the summer of 1914, was facing financial collapse. By the time Dorman, Lone & Co, in alliance with Weetman Pearson (Lord Cowdray), had acquired control over the greater part of the coalfield from the Concessions group, not only was the country's coal industry declining, but so was its steel industry, which suffered an even more severe rate of contraction during the inter-war years. As a result, Pearson and Dorman Long Ltd. was forced to concentrate just on coal production, and this in turn was hampered not only by the water problems, but also by labour shortages and the schemes introduced by the government in 1930 to restrict the country's coal output, in an attempt to maintain prices and revenue in the industry. Nevertheless, production did show a substantial increase between 1927 and 1935, after which it declined as miners left the coalfield to return to their former districts, where employment opportunities were improving in the late thirties. Supporting roles were played in the inter-war years by Richard Tilden Smith, a share underwriter turned industrialist with long standing interests in the coalfield, who acquired one of the Concessions group's two collieries, and by the Powell Duffryn Steam Coal Co. Ltd., which through subsidiary companies, took over the only colliery to be developed by a pioneer company outside the Concessions group. The impossibility of Kent coal, because of its nature, ever gaining more than token access to the more lucrative household market, and then the failure of the local steel industry to materialise meant that the -vi- companies had to develop alternative outlets for their growing outputs. Although nearness to industrial markets in the south-east of England did confer certain advantages were poor consolation for the hoped for developments of either the early pioneers or the later industrialists. Instead of the expected profits, the companies mostly incurred losses, and only the company acquired by Powell Duffryn ever paid a dividend to its shareholders in the years before nationalisation. From the point of view of the Kent miners, the shortage of labour in the coalfield, particularly in the years 1914-20 and 1927-35, was to an important extent responsible for their being amongst the highest paid in the industry. At the same time the more favourable employment opportunities prevailing in Kent compared with other mining districts enabled the Kent Nine Workers Association to develop into a well organised union, which on the whole was able to look after the interests of its members fairly successfully. Throughout the period 1896 to 1946 the Kent Coalfield existed very much at the margin of the British coal industry. Its failure to develop substantially along the lines envisaged by either the early pioneers or by the later industrialists meant that its importance in national terms always remained small

    The place where curses are manufactured : four poets of the Vietnam War

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    The Vietnam War was unique among American wars. To pinpoint its uniqueness, it was necessary to look for a non-American voice that would enable me to articulate its distinctiveness and explore the American character as observed by an Asian. Takeshi Kaiko proved to be most helpful. From his novel, Into a Black Sun, I was able to establish a working pair of 'bookends' from which to approach the poetry of Walter McDonald, Bruce Weigl, Basil T. Paquet and Steve Mason. Chapter One is devoted to those seemingly mismatched 'bookends,' Walt Whitman and General William C. Westmoreland, and their respective anthropocentric and technocentric visions of progress and the peculiarly American concept of the "open road" as they manifest themselves in Vietnam. In Chapter, Two, I analyze the war poems of Walter McDonald. As a pilot, writing primarily about flying, his poetry manifests General Westmoreland's technocentric vision of the 'road' as determined by and manifest through technology. Chapter Three focuses on the poems of Bruce Weigl. The poems analyzed portray the literal and metaphorical descent from the technocentric, 'numbed' distance of aerial warfare to the world of ground warfare, and the initiation of a 'fucking new guy,' who discovers the contours of the self's interior through a set of experiences that lead from from aerial insertion into the jungle to the degradation of burning human feces. Chapter Four, devoted to the thirteen poems of Basil T. Paquet, focuses on the continuation of the descent begun in Chapter Two. In his capacity as a medic, Paquet's entire body of poems details his quotidian tasks which entail tending the maimed, the mortally wounded and the dead. The final chapter deals with Steve Mason's JohnnY's Song, and his depiction of the plight of Vietnam veterans back in "The World" who are still trapped inside the interior landscape of their individual "ghettoes" of the soul created by their war-time experiences

    'Exarcheia doesn't exist': Authenticity, Resistance and Archival Politics in Athens

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    My thesis investigates the ways people, materialities and urban spaces interact to form affective ecologies and produce historicity. It focuses on the neighbourhood of Exarcheia, Athens’ contested political topography par excellence, known for its production of radical politics of discontent and resistance to state oppression and eoliberal capitalism. Embracing Exarcheia’s controversial status within Greek vernacular, media and state discourses, this thesis aims to unpick the neighbourhoods’ socio-spatial assemblage imbued with affect and formed through the numerous (mis)understandings and (mis)interpretations rooted in its turbulent political history. Drawing on theory on urban spaces, affect, hauntology and archival politics, I argue for Exarcheia as an unwavering archival space composed of affective chronotopes – (in)tangible loci that defy space and temporality. I posit that the interwoven narratives and materialities emerging in my fieldwork are persistently – and perhaps obsessively – reiterating themselves and remaining imprinted on the neighbourhood’s landscape as an incessant reminder of violent histories that the state often seeks to erase and forget. Through this analysis, I contribute to understandings of place as a primary ethnographic ‘object’ and the ways in which place forms complex interactions and relationships with social actors, shapes their subjectivities, retains and bestows their memories and senses of historicity

    Physical phenomena controlling quiescent flame spread in porous wildland fuel beds

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    Despite well-developed solid surface flame spread theories, we still lack a coherent theory to describe flame spread through porous wildland fuel beds. This porosity results in additional complexity, reducing the thermal conductivity of the fuel bed, but allowing in-bed radiative and convective heat transfer to occur. While previous studies have explored the effect of fuel bed structure on the overall fire behaviour, there remains a need for further investigation of the effect of fuel structure on the underlying physical phenomena controlling flame spread. Through an extensive series of laboratory-based experiments, this thesis provides detailed, physics-based insights for quiescent flame spread through natural porous beds, across a range of structural conditions. Measurements are presented for fuel beds representative of natural field conditions within an area of the fire-prone New Jersey Pinelands National Reserve, which compliment a related series of field experiments conducted as part of a wider research project. Additional systematic investigation across a wider range of fuel conditions identified independent effects of fuel loading and bulk density on the spread rate, flame height and heat release rate. However, neither fuel loading nor bulk density alone provided adequate prediction of the resulting fire behaviour. Drawing on existing structural descriptors (for both natural and engineered fuel beds) an alternative parameter ασδ was proposed. This parameter (incorporating the fuel bed porosity (α), fuel element surface-to-volume ratio (σ), and the fuel bed height (δ)) was strongly correlated with the spread rate. One effect of the fuel bed structure is to influence the heat transfer mechanisms both above and within the porous fuel bed. Existing descriptions of radiation transport through porous fuel beds are often predicated on the assumption of an isotropic fuel bed. However, given their preferential angle of inclination, the pine needle beds in this study may not exhibit isotropic behaviour. Regardless, for the structural conditions investigated, horizontal heat transfer through the fuel bed was identified as the dominant heating mechanism within this quiescent flame spread scenario. However, the significance of heat transfer contributions from the above-bed flame generally increased with increasing ασδ value of the fuel bed. Using direct measurements of the heat flux magnitude and effective heating distance, close agreement was observed between experimentally observed spread rates and a simple thermal model considering only radiative heat transfer through the fuel bed, particularly at lower values of ασδ. Over-predictions occurred at higher ασδ values, or where other heat transfer terms were incorporated, which may highlight the need to include additional heat loss terms. A significant effect of fuel structure on the primary flow regimes, both within and above these porous fuel beds, was also observed, with important implications for the heat transfer and oxygen supply within the fuel bed. Independent effects of fuel loading and bulk density on both the buoyant and buoyancy-driven entrainment flow were observed, with a complex feedback cycle occurring between Heat Release Rate (HRR) and combustion behaviour. Generally, increases in fuel loading resulted in increased HRR, and therefore increased buoyant flow velocity, along with an increase in the velocity of flow entrained towards the combustion region. The complex effects of fuel structure in both the flaming and smouldering combustion phases may necessitate modifications to other common modelling approaches. The widely used Rothermel model under-predicted spread rate for higher bulk density and lower ασδ fuel beds. As previously suggested, an over-sensitivity to fuel bed height was observed, with experimental comparison indicating an under-prediction of reaction intensity at lower fuel heights. These findings have important implications particularly given the continuing widespread use of the Rothermel model, which continues to underpin elements of the BehavePlus fire modelling system and the US National Fire Danger Rating System. The physical insights, and modelling approaches, developed for this low-intensity, quiescent flame spread scenario, are applicable to common prescribed fire activities. It is hoped that this work (alongside complimentary laboratory and field experiments conducted by various authors as part of a wider multi-agency project (SERDP-RC2641)) will contribute to the emerging field of prescribed fire science, and help to address the pressing need for further development of fire prediction and modelling tools

    Material Economies of South Yorkshire. The Organisation of Metal Production in Roman South Yorkshire.

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    This thesis aims to develop a model for the social organisation and production of ferrous and non-ferrous metals in South Yorkshire during the Roman period. This characterisation of the organisation of metallurgical activities is achieved through a combined methodology that will gather data from grey literature, published literature, as well as chemical, visual and microstructural analysis of metallurgical debris. The metallurgical practices in the study area are primarily rural in nature. These results are looked at through the lenses of Agency, Habitus, and the social construction of craft production. The movement of materials and people within the study area and local specialist practices are central in the interpretation of regional metalworking practices. Furthermore, models of craft production are critiqued, and an alternative modelisation process is suggested to characterise and understand the organisation of metal production in Roman South Yorkshire

    Layout strategy of protease production from industrial fishery wastes in Kuantan, Pahang

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    Layout strategy is considered as key decision that controls long-term effectiveness of production operational activities. Fish wastes in the fisheries sector can have negative impact on the environment if not handled properly. This issue plays a huge role in the commitment for choosing the right layout suitable for production of protease from those wastes. The whole analysis of this research was conducted in Kuantan, Pahang that has concentrated many fisheries processing industries which generated quite huge tons of waste material. The purpose of this study was to define a layout strategy that was sufficient for production of protease from fishery waste. Data was obtained from interview sessions with manager of Kilang Keropok Pak Lah followed by documents review and observations of production activities for layout analysis. The study had determined the protease product process flow and therefore developed layout suited to the protease production processed from identified fishery wastes at the site. Feasibility analysis performed had determined the proposed protease production would benefit consumers, increases manufacturing capacity as well as open up new market and business opportunity for company. The study concluded that protease production from fisheries waste increases career opportunities, generate new income and bringing positive impact to the local community. From the research findings gathered, authors strongly recommended further study in this sector looking for other types of commercial products for new economic viability

    Optimizing Indoor Navigation Policies For Spatial Distancing

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    In this paper, we focus on the modification of policies that can lead to movement patterns and directional guidance of occupants, which are represented as agents in a 3D simulation engine. We demonstrate an optimization method that improves a spatial distancing metric by modifying the navigation graph by introducing a measure of spatial distancing of agents as a function of agent density (i.e., occupancy). Our optimization framework utilizes such metrics as the target function, using a hybrid approach of combining genetic algorithm and simulated annealing. We show that within our framework, the simulation-optimization process can help to improve spatial distancing between agents by optimizing the navigation policies for a given indoor environment.Comment: 9 pages, 8 figures, conference-- simulation in architecture and urban design, in-cooperation with ACM SIGSI

    Z Force on the Ground: The Canadian Deployment to Iceland, 1940-41

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    The date of 10 May 1940 is well known for the start of the German blitzkrieg and the end of Neville Chamberlain’s tenure as British Prime Minister. That fateful day also opened a chapter in Canada’s war story that, in the end, saw more than 2,600 Canadian servicemen deployed to far-away but strategic Iceland. The Canadian commitment to that remote island from June 1940 to April 1941 was a metaphoric stepping-stone in the long Allied struggle against the Axis powers in the North Atlantic, building what ultimately became a secure strategic bridge for the deployment of the forces that liberated Europe
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