8 research outputs found

    News Clipping from 1994 Relevant to Our Interest in Chernobyl

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    News coverage that could inform our work in Chernobyl and USA... eg, CLINTON WEIGHS NEXT STEP ON RADIATION TESTSRTw 1/1/94 9:42 AM HILTON HEAD, SC, Jan 1 (Reuter) - President Clinton said Saturday he supports Energy Secretary Hazel O\u27Leary\u27s release of documents disclosing secret Cold War radiation tests on people and said the next step is to decide what to do with the information. See more at https://archives.library.tmc.edu/dm-ms211-012-0025

    Identification parades upholding the integrity of the criminal justice process?

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    Evidence from eyewitnesses is often the starting point for police investigations and it is estimated that it plays an important role in one quarter of all contested Crown Court cases. However, the memory is a fragile and malleable instrument which can produce unreliable yet convincing evidence. Because mistaken witnesses can be both honest and compelling, the risk of wrongful conviction in eyewitness identification cases is high, as is illustrated in a number of famous miscarriages of justice. This thesis assesses the sufficiency of the protections offered to defendants in cases involving eyewitness identification by examining psychological research on memory, police procedures for the collection of evidence from eyewitnesses, and judicial discretion to exclude unreliable evidence found in RR vv TurnbullTurnbull and section 78 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act. In interview, startling levels of guessing were reported by witnesses attending identification procedures; and suspects were largely unaware of their rights. Current identification procedures are time-consuming and inefficient; and psychological research offers some guidance but few answers, precluding the usefulness of expert evidence. The thesis concludes that an increase in specialised identification officers, reform of procedures to allow for greater use of video identification, guidelines on the exercise of discretion under s.78, and judicial education regarding the importance of using a comprehensive TurnbullTurnbull direction are required before an adequate level of procedural and evidential protection against erroneous identification can be offered to suspects

    Conceptual metaphor in English popular technology and Greek translation

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    This research project studies the metaphorical conceptualisation of technology in English popular technology magazines and in translation in the respective Greek editions. The focus is on the cognitive linguistic view of metaphor initially presented by Lakoff and Johnson (1980), on the metaphor identification procedure (Pragglejaz Group 2007), and critical metaphor analysis (Charteris-Black 2004). The analysis of the English data identifies 14 main metaphors and 29 submetaphors which contribute to the structure of the target domain of technology. It distinguishes between conventional and novel metaphors, and common and original metaphorical expressions, motivated by correlations in experience between diverse source domains and by the widespread diffusion and impact of technology. The English data also provide insight into the functions of these metaphors in popular technology discourse and reveal evidence to thinking, values and attitudes about technology in the English language. The analysis of the Greek data examines similarities and differences in the conceptualisations between the English and Greek languages and cultures, and finds similarities in the categories of metaphors, frequency of and preference for metaphor use in the source and target languages, and in the majority of metaphorical expressions. Similarities are based on common experiences stemming from experiential co-occurrence or experiential similarity, and on translated experience. Differences are restricted to specific-level metaphors and expressions, motivated by alternative conceptualisations of terminology, cultural specificity and preferential conceptualisations. A set of translation strategies and a number of possible translation effects are also identified. These strategies and effects add to the possibilities of translation variations and the range of translation options, and are used to draw conclusions regarding the similarities and differences between the English and Greek languages and cultures. Consequently, through the identification and description of metaphors in technology magazines and in translation, the study attempts to highlight aspects of the culture of technology, which views technology as a cultural artefact and a producer of its own culture.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGreek State Scholarship Foundation (IKY)GBUnited Kingdo

    Users, systems, and technology in high-end audio

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    Thesis (Ph. D. in History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology and Society (HASTS))--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Program in Science, Technology and Society, 2009.Page 414 blank.Includes bibliographical references (p. 401-413).This is a story about technology, users, and music. It is about an approach to the design, manipulation, and arrangement of technologies in small-scale systems to achieve particular aesthetic goals - goals that are at once subjective and contingent. These goals emerge from enthusiasm for technology, for system-building, and for music among members of a community of users, and the promise of the emotional rewards derived from these elements in combination. It is a story about how enthusiasm and passion become practice, and how particular technologies, system-building activities, listening, debating, innovating, and interacting form that practice. Using both historical and ethnographic research methods, including fieldwork and oral history interviews, this dissertation is focused on how and why user communities mobilize around particular technologies and socio-technical systems. In particular, it concerns how users' aesthetic sensibilities and enthusiasm for technology can shape both technologies themselves and the processes of technological innovation. These issues are explored through a study of the small but enthusiastic high-end audio community in the United States. These users express needs, desires, and aesthetic motivations towards technology that set them apart from mainstream consumers, but also reveal important and under-recognized aspects of human relationships with technology more broadly. Covering the emergence and growth of high-end audio from the early 1970s to 2000, I trace some of the major technology transitions during this period and their associated social elements, including the shift from vacuum tube to solid-state electronics in the 1970s, and from analog vinyl records to digital compact discs in the 1980s. I show how this community came to understand technology, science, and their own social behavior through powerful emotional and aesthetic responses to music and the technologies used to reproduce music in the home. I further show how focusing on technology's users can recast assumptions about the ingredients and conditions necessary to foster technological innovation.by Kieran Downes.Ph.D.in History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology and Society (HAST

    Maritime expressions:a corpus based exploration of maritime metaphors

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    This study uses a purpose-built corpus to explore the linguistic legacy of Britain’s maritime history found in the form of hundreds of specialised ‘Maritime Expressions’ (MEs), such as TAKEN ABACK, ANCHOR and ALOOF, that permeate modern English. Selecting just those expressions commencing with ’A’, it analyses 61 MEs in detail and describes the processes by which these technical expressions, from a highly specialised occupational discourse community, have made their way into modern English. The Maritime Text Corpus (MTC) comprises 8.8 million words, encompassing a range of text types and registers, selected to provide a cross-section of ‘maritime’ writing. It is analysed using WordSmith analytical software (Scott, 2010), with the 100 million-word British National Corpus (BNC) as a reference corpus. Using the MTC, a list of keywords of specific salience within the maritime discourse has been compiled and, using frequency data, concordances and collocations, these MEs are described in detail and their use and form in the MTC and the BNC is compared. The study examines the transformation from ME to figurative use in the general discourse, in terms of form and metaphoricity. MEs are classified according to their metaphorical strength and their transference from maritime usage into new registers and domains such as those of business, politics, sports and reportage etc. A revised model of metaphoricity is developed and a new category of figurative expression, the ‘resonator’, is proposed. Additionally, developing the work of Lakov and Johnson, Kovesces and others on Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT), a number of Maritime Conceptual Metaphors are identified and their cultural significance is discussed
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