563 research outputs found

    Designs of Blackness

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    Across more than two centuries Afro-America has created a huge and dazzling variety of literary self-expression. Designs of Blackness provides less a narrative literary history than, precisely, a series of mappings—each literary-critical and comparative while at the same time offering cultural and historical context. This carefully re-edited version of the 1998 publication opens with an estimation of earliest African American voice in the names of Phillis Wheatley and her contemporaries. It then takes up the huge span of autobiography from Frederick Douglass through to Maya Angelou. "Harlem on My Mind," which follows, sets out the literary contours of America’s premier black city. Womanism, Alice Walker’s presiding term, is given full due in an analysis of fiction from Harriet E. Wilson to Toni Morrison. Richard Wright is approached not as some regulation "realist" but as a more inward, at times near-surreal, author. Decadology has its risks but the 1940s has rarely been approached as a unique era of war and peace and especially in African American texts. Beat Generation work usually adheres to Ginsberg and Kerouac, but black Beat writing invites its own chapter in the names of Amiri Baraka, Ted Joans and Bob Kaufman. The 1960s has long become a mythic change-decade, and in few greater respects than as a black theatre both of the stage and politics. In Leon Forrest African America had a figure of the postmodern turn: his work is explored in its own right and for how it takes its place in the context of other reflexive black fiction. "African American Fictions of Passing" unpacks the whole deceptive trope of "race" in writing from Williams Wells Brown through to Charles Johnson. The two newly added chapters pursue African American literary achievement into the Obama-Trump century, fiction from Octavia Butler to Darryl Pinkney, poetry from Rita Dove to Kevin Young

    Design and characterisation of monolithic CMOS detectors for high energy particle physics and SEU radiation tests for ATLAS Inner Tracker Upgrade readout chip

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    This thesis covers the characterisation results and the design of monolithic CMOS detectors designed in TowerJazz 180nm CMOS technology for High Energy Particle Physics applications. Three different detectors have been studied the MALTA, the Mini-MALTA and the MALTA2. The MALTA sensor showed some efficiency losses at the corners of the pixels after irradiation, which meant that it was not suitable for the radiation environments in which it was supposed to be installed. Therefore, the front-end electronics and the fabrication process were modified to overcome this issue. The Mini-MALTA prototype was designed including the above mentioned improvements, fabricated and fully characterised. Finally taking into account all the knowledge acquired during these years of developments another large scale sensor the MALTA2 has been produced which should be radiation tolerant and have very good time resolution. The description and studies of the different architectures used in this family of detectors are covered and a simulation to estimate the bandwidth capabilities have been reported. Furthermore, this work will present characterisation of single event effects in the ITkPixV1, the prototype version of the ATLAS Inner Tracker Upgrade chip for the High Luminosity LHC. Measurements were made in testbeam campaigns with high energy ions and protons to evaluate the level of single event effects in the chip

    A SciFi tracker for the LHCb experiment

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    The quest to understand the prevalence of matter over antimatter in the observable universe drives the Large Hadron Collider Beauty (LHCb) Experiment at CERN, situated beneath the France-Switzerland border. This thesis focuses on a detector upgrade crucial to enhance the sensitivity of the LHCb Experiment. A key ingredient of this upgrade is the Scintillating Fiber Detector (SciFi) Tracker.The introduction of the SciFi replaced key components like the Outer and Inner Tracker, improving tracking efficiency and spatial resolution.To ensure SciFi's radiation resilience, comprehensive tests were conducted, that revealed effects on Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs), including speed degradation, leakage current, re-programmability loss, Single Event Upsets (SEU), and Single Event Latch-ups (SEL).Results indicated that speed degradation, leakage current, and SELs were manageable during the detector's lifetime. However, FPGAs became unprogrammable after a certain radiation exposure, necessitating operational planning. Mitigation strategies, like triple modular redundancy, reduced SEUs to an acceptable level.Mass-produced SciFi modules and readout electronics underwent their first particle beam test, allowing optimization of operating parameters of the front-end electronics, such as clustering coefficients, thresholds, and shaper settings.Resolution analysis demonstrated compliance with detector specifications. With an efficiency surpassing 99\% and a spatial resolution better than 70 µm, SciFi is validated for LHCb operation.As SciFi is commissioned, the configurations explored in this thesis offer valuable insights for optimizing the detector during commissioning and beyond

    Modell bedarfsorientierter Leistungserbringung im FM auf Grundlage von Sensortechnologien und BIM

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    Während der Digitalisierung im Bauwesen insbesondere im Bereich der Planungs- und Errichtungsphase von Bauwerken immer größere Aufmerksamkeit zuteilwird, ist das digitale Potenzial im Facility Management weit weniger ausgeschöpft, als dies möglich wäre. Vor dem Hintergrund, dass die Bewirtschaftung von Gebäuden jedoch einen wesentlichen Kostenanteil im Lebenszyklus darstellt, ist eine Fokussierung auf digitale Prozesse im Gebäudebetrieb erforderlich. Im Facility Management werden Dienstleistungen häufig verrichtungsorientiert, d. h. nach statischen Intervallen, oder bedarfsorientiert erbracht. Beide Arten der Leistungserbringung weisen Defizite auf, beispielweise weil Tätigkeiten auf Basis definierter Intervalle erbracht werden, ohne dass eine Notwendigkeit besteht oder weil bestehende Bedarfe mangels Möglichkeiten der Bedarfsermittlung nicht identifiziert werden. Speziell die Definition und Ermittlung eines Bedarfs zur Leistungserbringung ist häufig subjektiv geprägt. Auch sind Dienstleister oft nicht in frühen Phasen der Gebäudeplanung involviert und erhalten für ihre Dienstleistungen notwendige Daten und Informationen erst kurz vor Inbetriebnahme des zu betreibenden Gebäudes. Aktuelle Ansätze des Building Information Modeling (BIM) und die zunehmende Verfügbarkeit von Sensortechnologien in Gebäuden bieten Chancen, die o. g. Defizite zu beheben. In der vorliegenden Arbeit werden deshalb Datenmodelle und Methoden entwickelt, die mithilfe von BIM-basierten Datenbankstrukturen sowie Auswertungs- und Entscheidungsmethodiken Dienstleistungen der Gebäudebewirtschaftung objektiviert und automatisiert auslösen können. Der Fokus der Arbeit liegt dabei auf dem Facility Service der Reinigungs- und Pflegedienste des infrastrukturellen Facility Managements. Eine umfangreiche Recherche etablierter Normen und Standards sowie öffentlich zugänglicher Leistungsausschreibungen bilden die Grundlage der Definition erforderlicher Informationen zur Leistungserbringung. Die identifizierten statischen Gebäude- und Prozessinformationen werden in einem relationalen Datenbankmodell strukturiert, das nach einer Darstellung von Messgrößen und der Beschreibung des Vorgehens zur Auswahl geeigneter Sensoren für die Erfassung von Bedarfen, um Sensorinformationen erweitert wird. Um Messwerte verschiedener und bereits in Gebäuden existenten Sensoren für die Leistungsauslösung verwenden zu können, erfolgt die Implementierung einer Normierungsmethodik in das Datenbankmodell. Auf diese Weise kann der Bedarf zur Leistungserbringung ausgehend von Grenzwerten ermitteln werden. Auch sind Verknüpfungsmethoden zur Kombination verschiedener Anwendungen in dem Datenbankmodell integriert. Zusätzlich zur direkten Auslösung erforderlicher Aktivitäten ermöglicht das entwickelte Modell eine opportune Auslösung von Leistungen, d. h. eine Leistungserbringung vor dem eigentlich bestehenden Bedarf. Auf diese Weise können tätigkeitsähnliche oder räumlich nah beieinander liegende Tätigkeiten sinnvoll vorzeitig erbracht werden, um für den Dienstleister eine Wegstreckeneinsparung zu ermöglichen. Die Arbeit beschreibt zudem die für die Auswertung, Entscheidungsfindung und Auftragsüberwachung benötigen Algorithmen. Die Validierung des entwickelten Modells bedarfsorientierter Leistungserbringung erfolgt in einer relationalen Datenbank und zeigt simulativ für unterschiedliche Szenarien des Gebäudebetriebs, dass Bedarfsermittlungen auf Grundlage von Sensortechnologien erfolgen und Leistungen opportun ausgelöst, beauftragt und dokumentiert werden können

    Out of sight, out of mind: accessibility for people with hidden disabilities in museums and heritage sites

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    As of 2020, an estimated 14.1 million residents of the United Kingdom reported a disability (DWP 2020). Within this population, approximately 6.1 million people have a hidden disability (Buhalis and Michopoulou 2011). These hidden disabilities range widely, from neurodiverse conditions like autism and dyslexia to long term chronic conditions such as fibromyalgia and arthritis. Due to the wide range of disabilities and their impact on a disabled person’s life, they have generally been underrepresented in accessibility studies. This thesis uncovers the accessibility needs of people with hidden disabilities, specifically in museums and heritage sites where they have heretofore mostly been overlooked. I utilise semi-structured interviews and correspondence with people with hidden disabilities, as well as participant-led experiences through three case study sites in Northern England, to understand the barriers they face. Their experiences help me expose the importance of passive accessibility – accessibility measures built directly into an exhibition design, such as adequate lighting and personal interpretation boards. Additionally, this thesis aims to understand the cultural forces that prevent or support accessibility-related improvements to such sites from taking place. By studying the cultural make-up of each case study organisation through ethnographic observations of the staff at these sites, institutional roadblocks to enacting accessibility-related adjustments are revealed. Specifically, the lack of communication at these sites presents a significant barrier to enacting accessibility suggestions from disabled visitors. Tying together the themes of active/passive accessibility and lack of communication is the theme of gaps in disability awareness, by which I mean that heritage organisations do not wilfully create these barriers to inclusion, and yet they create them still because they simply do not realise these things. Filling these gaps opens up countless possibilities for improving accessibility not only for people with hidden disabilities but for all visitors and staff at museums and heritage sites

    Eco-Naturalism: re-evaluating the role of naturalism in contemporary eco-theatre

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    My thesis critically re-evaluates the role and potential of naturalism in contemporary eco-theatre. Challenging prevailing orthodoxies which dismiss naturalism as an eco-dramaturgical form on account of its perceived anthropocentrism, phallocentrism and conservatism, I argue that naturalism performs a vital—albeit frequently misunderstood—function within a range of contemporary plays and performances which foreground ecological issues. By introducing this fresh perspective on naturalism's eco-dramaturgical potential, I aim to stimulate a more nuanced critical debate than currently exists. My original contribution to knowledge centres around my formulation of the naturalistic spectrum, a new conceptual framework designed to help scholars, playwrights and theatre-makers square the spatiotemporal complexities of the ‘hyperobjects’ (Morton 2013) of global warming and ecological collapse with human scale theatrical representation. My case studies—plays and performances written and produced between 2011 and 2022—interrogate: overt eco-naturalism (Kirkwood’s The Children); symbolist eco-naturalism (Waters’ On the Beach); hyper eco-naturalism (Steiner’s You Stupid Darkness! and Baker’s The Antipodes); disrupted eco-naturalism (Macmillan’s Lungs and Churchill’s Escaped Alone) and covert eco-naturalism (Emmott and Mitchell’s Ten Billion and Hickson’s Oil). Using a methodology which combines close reading of texts with archive recordings and interviews with playwrights, directors and designers, my study reveals that naturalism performs a number of crucial eco-dramaturgical functions. Firstly, it presents the audience with an image of itself, vicariously suggesting ways to cope on a human scale with the suprahuman scale of ecological crisis. Secondly, it interrogates moral culpability, concerning itself with the long consequence of human actions. Thirdly, it highlights the deterministic effects of environment on character which, in the Anthropocene, reveals a degraded environment returning to haunt humans for their reckless custodianship of the planet. Lastly, it raises awareness of deep time, a concept which lies at the heart of ecological thinking

    The Pollinating Mesh: The Ecological Thought in Indigenous Australian Speculative Fiction

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    This thesis studies how the mesh or the idea of interconnectedness among all beings, humans and nonhumans, pollinates Indigenous Australian speculative fiction and how the aesthetics of these texts warrants their reading as sites of these enmeshments. It aims to put this literature in the context of Indigenous cosmologies, epistemologies, ontologies, or metaphysics to establish how these underpin Indigenous literature and frame its reading. To attend to the global pertinence of both the texts under study and the ecological thought as the main conceptual framework, the thesis engages Object Oriented Ontology and adjacent theories of the ontological turn alongside trans-national Indigenous critical thought. Thus, analysing Alexis Wright’s The Swan Book (2013), Ambelin Kwaymullina’s The Interrogation of Ashala Wolf (2010), The Disappearance of Ember Crow (2013), and The Foretelling of Georgie Spider (2015), as well as Kim Scott’s Benang: From the Heart (1999) allows me to establish that the ecological thought thematically informs them in diverse but interlinked ways. The ecological thought establishes enmeshments among all beings in what I posit as the aesthetics and poetics of the uncanny to capture Alexis Wright’s writing as leading us to think ecologically about the enmeshments of all beings in irreducible ways. All beings’ enmeshments attune us to seeking and finding our kin among all beings and I explore this in Ambelin Kwaymullina’s trilogy. In Kwaymullina’s work, I argue that all beings’ enmeshments sees Indigenous survivance as aesthetically coalescing with Indigenous dreams, which are speculatively manoeuvred and explored as the interface between the real and surreal, the material and the spiritual to enact all beings’ enmeshments. The texts thus enact speculative worlds of enmeshments wherein humans, nonhumans, organic, synthetic (AI) alive, dead, undead, spiritual, and nonliving depend on and become with one another for life, survival and survivance. Kwaymullina’s trilogy ultimately enacts a community of beings mediated by thinking about interconnectedness as becoming with and part of one another. The implication of such a way of thinking brings us to rethink what it means to (not) be and the hauntings of identity from the perspective of Indigenous ecological thinking, which my intervention pursues in the reading of Kim Scott’s Benang: From the Heart. The core of my intervention on Benang establishes it as a wellspring of onto-epistemic affordances to understand being and identity as fluid, floating, permeable, leaking, never rigid or definitive. My reading stages how all beings’ enmeshments enhance the protagonist Harley’s regeneration of his effaced Aboriginal identity as an ontological and identity transformation through blood memory, listening to and reading about his family stories, encountering, and becoming with Country and his Aboriginal culture in its material and spiritual aspects. The thesis ends with interrogating my own speaking position as a postcolonial African reader-critic, and what it means for any African to engage with Indigenous cosmologies, epistemologies, and meeting with these literary texts and their philosophical underpinnings. I establish similarities between both worlds and argue that such African texts as Daniel Fagunwa’s Forest of a Thousand Daemons, Tutuola’s The Palm Wine Drunkard and My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, and Okri’s The Famished Road trilogy, epitomise worlds that equally register aesthetics and poetics similar to those in Indigenous Australian literature

    Situating Data: Inquiries in Algorithmic Culture

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    Taking up the challenges of the datafication of culture, as well as of the scholarship of cultural inquiry itself, this collection contributes to the critical debate about data and algorithms. How can we understand the quality and significance of current socio-technical transformations that result from datafication and algorithmization? How can we explore the changing conditions and contours for living within such new and changing frameworks? How can, or should we, think and act within, but also in response to these conditions? This collection brings together various perspectives on the datafication and algorithmization of culture from debates and disciplines within the field of cultural inquiry, specifically (new) media studies, game studies, urban studies, screen studies, and gender and postcolonial studies. It proposes conceptual and methodological directions for exploring where, when, and how data and algorithms (re)shape cultural practices, create (in)justice, and (co)produce knowledge
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