Democracy, Pluralization and Voice

This article explores different theoretical and political dimensions of voice in democratic theory. Drawing on recent developments in political theory, ranging from James Bohman?s work on the movement from demos to demoi in transnational politics, to William Connolly?s writings on pluralization, it develops a critical account of the emphasis within conventional pluralism on the representation of extant identities. Instead, it foregrounds the need to engage with emerging identities, demands, and claims that fall outside the parameters of dominant discursive orders. Building on the works of Ranciere and Cavell, it highlights the importance of an analytical engagement with the emergence and articulation of new struggles and voices -the processes through which inchoate demands are given political expression- so as to counter the ongoing possibilities of domination, understood here as a ?deprivation of voice.? The article develops an account of the centrality of the category of responsiveness to such claims and demands for democratic theory, especially in relation to a range of democratic struggles in our contemporary world. In so doing, it contributes to a growing body of work that questions the taken for granted character and status of the institutional forms of liberal democracy

Progress in the development of a video-based wind farm simulation technique

The progress in the development of a video-based wind farm simulation technique is reviewed. While improvements have been achieved in the quality of the composite picture created by combining computer generated animation sequences of wind turbines with background scenes of the wind farm site, extending the technique to include camera movements has proved troublesome

Statutory erosion of secured creditors' rights: some insights from the United Kingdom

As the American Bankruptcy Institute’s Commission to Study the Reform of Chapter 11 considers the state of business bankruptcy in this country, the narrative on chapter 11 is well-established and oft-repeated. According to this narrative, whereas in the past firms filing for chapter 11 came into the bankruptcy process with at least some unencumbered assets, modern firms tend to have capital structures that are entirely consumed by multiple layers of secured debt. Moreover, as secured creditors have come to dominate capital structures, conventional wisdom has it that they have “captured” chapter 11 to the detriment of unsecured creditors. This development has justifiably troubled many scholars on both efficiency and distributional grounds. However, it remains an open question whether the perceived downsides of secured creditor control can be satisfactorily addressed through bankruptcy law reform. In this Article, Professor Walters examines English attempts to use bankruptcy law to adjust the priority and control rights of secured creditors with the aim of improving the welfare of unsecured creditors. The Article starts from the premise that lenders that are powerful enough to bargain for superior control and priority rights inside or outside of bankruptcy will be equally capable of adjusting to legal changes that affect, or are perceived as affecting their interests. Four ways in which lenders will adjust to “adverse” bankruptcy reform are identified: (i) metabargaining; (ii) adjustments to prebankruptcy behavior; (iii) transactional innovation; and (iv) “shape shifting”. In Parts II and III, the Article then illustrates how English lenders have successfully adjusted to statutory erosion of their priority rights through transactional innovation and to statutory attempts to curb their control rights through “shape shifting”. Walters’ conclusion on the efficacy of bankruptcy law reform is cautionary and skeptical. He assesses English attempts to improve the position of unsecured creditors by dampening the rights of secured creditors as a failed conceit

Problem Based Learning and its use on the Automotive Engineering Design Course at Coventry University

The Automotive Engineering Design course at Coventry University has been in operation since October 1989 and has earned a reputation for creating able engineers well prepared for industry. When originally conceived, a problem led approach to learning was adopted across the course. This approach best enables the course objectives to be satisfied. However, there is nothing new about problem-based learning for engineering design educators but for our engineering science colleagues a degree of novelty has been encountered by this approach. But is the success of the course purely down to this teaching and learning approach? This paper will discuss the opportunities, benefits and limitations of the problem-led approach being extended across a whole course. The paper also will address how the use of industrially defined problems in engineering design projects has been critical to the development of the course. The paper will then attempt to identify the key factors that lie behind the success of the Automotive Engineering Design course. Finally, a set of best practice guidelines for engineering design education will be presented based upon my experiences as the Course Tutor and a teacher of engineering design on this course

Al'brekht's Method in Infinite Dimensions

In 1961 E. G. Albrekht presented a method for the optimal stabilization of smooth, nonlinear, finite dimensional, continuous time control systems. This method has been extended to similar systems in discrete time and to some stochastic systems in continuous and discrete time. In this paper we extend Albrekht's method to the optimal stabilization of some smooth, nonlinear, infinite dimensional, continuous time control systems whose nonlinearities are described by Fredholm integral operators

Propagation mechanisms for the Madden-Julian Oscillation

The Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO) is examined using 20 years of outgoing longwave radiation and NCEP-NCAR reanalysis data. Two mechanisms for the eastward propagation and regeneration of the convective anomalies are suggested. The first is a local mechanism operating over the warm pool region. At the phase of the MJO with a dipole structure to the convection anomalies, there is enhanced tropical convection over the eastern Indian Ocean and reduced convection over the western Pacific. Over the equatorial western Indian Ocean, the equatorial Rossby wave response to the west of the enhanced convection includes a region of anomalous surface divergence associated with the anomalous surface westerlies and pressure ridge. This tends to suppress ascent in the boundary layer and shuts off the deep convection, eventually leading to a convective anomaly of the opposite sign. Over the Indonesian sector, the equatorial Kelvin wave response to the east of the enhanced convection includes a region of anomalous surface convergence into the anomalous equatorial surface easterlies and pressure trough, which will tend to favour convection in this region. The Indonesian sector is also influenced by an equatorial Rossby wave response (of opposite sign) to the west of the reduced convection over the western Pacific, which also has a region of anomalous surface convergence associated with its anomalous equatorial surface easterlies and pressure trough. Hence, convective anomalies of either sign tend to erode themselves from the west and initiate a convective anomaly of opposite sign via their equatorial Rossby wave response, and expand to the east via their equatorial Kelvin wave response. The second is a global mechanism involving an anomaly completing a circuit of the equator. Enhanced convection over the tropical western Pacific excites a negative sea level pressure (SLP) anomaly which radiates rapidly eastward as a dry equatorial Kelvin wave at approximately 35 m s-1 over the eastern Pacific. It is blocked by the orographic barrier of the Andes and Central America for several days before propagating through the gap at Panama. After rapidly propagating as a dry equatorial Kelvin wave over the Atlantic, the SLP anomaly is delayed further by the East African Highlands before it reaches the Indian Ocean and coincides with the development of enhanced convection at the start of the next MJO cycle

Dispersion interactions between semiconducting wires

The dispersion energy between extended molecular chains (or equivalently infinite wires) with non-zero band gaps is generally assumed to be expressible as a pair-wise sum of atom-atom terms which decay as $R^{-6}$. Using a model system of two parallel wires with a variable band gap, we show that this is not the case. The dispersion interaction scales as $z^{-5}$ for large interwire separations $z$, as expected for an insulator, but as the band gap decreases the interaction is greatly enhanced; while at shorter (but non-overlapping) separations it approaches a power-law scaling given by $z^{-2}$, \emph{i.e.} the dispersion interaction expected between \emph{metallic} wires. We demonstrate that these effects can be understood from the increasing length scale of the plasmon modes (charge fluctuations), and their increasing contribution to the molecular dipole polarizability and the dispersion interaction, as the band gaps are reduced. This result calls into question methods which invoke locality assumptions in deriving dispersion interactions between extended small-gap systems.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figure

Experimental investigation of small diameter two-phase closed thermosyphons charged with water, FC-84, FC-77 and FC-3283

Copyright © 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.An experimental investigation of the performance of thermosyphons charged with water as well as the dielectric heat transfer liquids FC-84, FC-77 and FC-3283 has been carried out. The copper thermosyphon was 200 mm long with an inner diameter of 6 mm, which can be considered quite small compared with the vast majority of thermosyphons reported in the open literature. The evaporator length was 40 mm and the condenser length was 60 mm which corresponds with what might be expected in compact heat exchangers. With water as the working fluid two fluid loadings were investigated, that being 0.6 ml and 1.8 ml, corresponding to approximately half filled and overfilled evaporator section in order to ensure combined pool boiling and thin film evaporation/boiling and pool boiling only conditions, respectively. For the Fluorinert™ liquids, only the higher fill volume was tested as the aim was to investigate pool boiling opposed to thin film evaporation. Generally, the water-charged thermosyphon evaporator and condenser heat transfer characteristics compared well with available predictive correlations and theories. The thermal performance of the water-charged thermosyphon also outperformed the other three working fluids in both the effective thermal resistance as well as maximum heat transport capabilities. Even so, FC-84, the lowest saturation temperature fluid tested, shows marginal improvement in the heat transfer at low operating temperatures. All of the tested Fluorinert™ liquids offer the advantage of being dielectric fluids, which may be better suited for sensitive electronics cooling applications and were all found to provide adequate thermal performance up to approximately 30–50 W after which liquid entrainment compromised their performance