Minerals in Afghanistan : The Hajigak iron deposit

The Hajigak iron ore deposit is situated in the mountainous Bamyan province, 130 km west of the Afghanistan capital, Kabul (Figure 1). It is one of several iron deposits within this area but is the largest located to date. The ore occurs within the Herat fault zone as sub-concordant sheets and lenses within Proterozoic metasedimentary and metavolcanic rocks. A study in the 1960s demonstrated the mineral potential of the region, and estimated the Hajigak resource as 1.8 billion tonnes of iron ore with a concentration of approximately 62 % Fe (Table 1). This assessment ranks the Hajigak deposit as world class. The presence of coking coal nearby at Shabashak and the world-class ranking of the iron ore resource combine to make the Hajigak deposit an exceptionally favourable target for economic development

Processing of signals in the peripheral auditory system in relation to aural perception

Imperial Users onl

The Earls of Leicester, Sygerius Lucanus and the Death of Seneca:Some Neglected Evidence for the Cultural Agency of the Norman Aristocracy

This article investigates the claim found in London, British Library, Burney 357, fol. 12rv, that a count of Leicester called Robert used to recite from memory certain verses found in this manuscript. Revising previous reports that the remark refers to a poem in praise of holy monks by an otherwise unknown poet 'Sygerius Lucanus', it argues for its plausibility by suggesting that it concerns two brief poems of a different character, most notably the Epitaphium Senecae, a poem that evokes the deeds and ideas of the Roman philosopher Seneca. Since the poem was well-known for its associations with Seneca, the note suggests that an earl of Leicester, probably Robert II (1120–68), but perhaps Robert I (1107–18) or Robert III (1168–90), was interested in classical life and thought. The article goes on to offer a critique of the tendency to dismiss the cultural agency of magnates like the Beaumonts in preference for that exercised by the cathedral schools and religious houses. Arguing for a more nuanced approach, it suggests that greater weight ought to be given to evidence such as the remark in Burney 357—evidence which suggests, despite the surviving record’s profound bias in favour of religious persons and institutions, that certain lay magnates helped to promote some of the period’s most striking cultural fashions, not least its surge of interest in Senecan texts and ideas. Other issues treated include the dissemination of Senecan anthologies, Sygerius Lucanus, his poems, their sources, and their gender politics

THE QUANTITATIVE ISOLATION OF 'INSOLUBLE ORGANIC MATTER' (IOM) FROM SEDIMENTS AND BACTERIA, AND ITS ATTEMPTED DISSOLUTION USING THE IONIC LIQUID l-ETHYL-3- METHYLIMIDAZOLIUM CHLORIDE-ALUMINIUM (HI) CHLORIDE

Organic matter which is insoluble in common solvents and non-oxidising acids often comprises the quantitatively most important fraction of organic matter in sediments. This operationally defined material is usually simply termed 'insoluble organic matter' (IOM) or 'kerogen' when it is isolated from ancient sediments. Indeed, kerogen is regarded as the most abundant form of carbon on the planet. The molecular character of this generic material has not been fully elucidated, principally because of its insolubility which limits instrumental methods of analysis to those applicable to solid substrates. This thesis describes the quantitative isolation of IOM from lacustrine and marine sediments and two species of methanogenic bacteria using a sequential isolation procedure. A range of synthetic IOMs (melanoidins) was also prepared. The dissolution of IOM and melanoidins obtained in this manner was then attempted using the acidic ionic liquid l-ethyl-3- methylimidazolium chloride-aluminium (III) chloride. Two synthetic dendrimers containing similar functional groups to those observed in sedimentary IOM were used to try and assess the mode of action of the ionic liquid. Ionic liquid treatment of the DCM soluble dendrimers resulted in the formation of 7 - 62 % of material that was no longer soluble in DCM, whilst the soluble components had been substantially altered. The ionic liquid was found to non-quantitatively promote ether cleavage, protonation and rearrangement reactions. IOM was isolated from lacustrine Rostherne Mere, UK, sediments (7 - 3 0 % dry weight), Kimmeridge Clay, Dorset (11 - 12 %) and methanogenic bacteria (Methanococcus jannaschii, 3 %; Methanobacterium thermoaiitotrophicum, 0.1 %) using a time-consuming isolation procedure involving over forty separate chemical manipulations. Monitoring of the sequential isolation of IOM and characterisation of the final isolates was carried out using solid-state NMR, IR, elemental analysis, pyrolysis-gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (Py-GC-MS), scanning electron microscopy, and the newer surface sensitive technique of time of flight-secondary ion mass spectrometry (ToF-SIMS). Less than 1 % of sedimentary IOM and 5 % of Kimmeridge Clay IOM was soluble in DCM following ionic liquid treatment, whilst alkyl chains were lost from the insoluble portion which also increased in aromaticity. The poor yield recovered following ionic liquid treatment of M. jannaschii IOM (5 %) was attributed to loss of volatile material during hydrolysis. Following ionic liquid treatment 93 - 96 % of the melanoidins remained insoluble in DCM although their character had been altered, becoming more condensed. This ionic liquid dissolution procedure has not provided the substantial progress in elucidating the molecular character of IOM promised by earlier reports

Islamic banking within the financial development of Malaysia

Islamic banking is based on the Muslim precept that interest, riba, is prohibited. In 1983 an Islamic Bank named Bank Islam was established in Malaysia. This was the first Islamic bank to be supported by a Government and be legislatively accommodated within a mixed financial system. It has succeeded in mobilizing funds from the general public and corporate sector and has introduced a wide range of relatively sophisticated financial services in a short period of time. As with other Islamic banks. Bank Islam's operations have relied upon the use of Islamic pre determined financial instruments. These instruments, however, are regarded with superstition by Islamic economists who contend that Islamic banks should base their operations solely on the profit-sharing principles of mudarabah and musharakah. Within the financial development of Malaysia, the introduction of an Islamic bank can be regarded as an extension of the, "Supply-following," and, "Malayani-sation," policies pursued since independence by the Central Bank (Bank Negara). The supply-leading policy is based on the theory that active government development of the financial system will induce economic growth. For example, the savings generated from Bank Islam depositors (who as Muslims were previously denied the opportunity to save in a riba-dominated system), will be used in investments within the economy. Bank Islam, however, has had a qualitative, rather than quantitive impact upon financial development, being a development consistent with the Government's policy of building an economy and financial system that meets the indigenous needs. In the case of Bank Islam, this means the indigenous needs of the Muslims

From premature semantics to mature interaction programming

As HCI has progressed as a discipline, perhaps just as time has passed, the engineering work of programming has become increasingly separated from the HCI, the core user interface design work. At the same time, the sophistication of digital devices, across multiple dimensions, has grown exponentially. The result is that HCI and User Experience (UX) professionals and programmers now work in very different worlds. This separation causes problems for users: the UX is attractive but the program is unreliable, or the program is reliable but unattractive or unhelpful to use, correctly implementing the wrong thing. In this chapter, we dig down from this high-level view to get to what we identify as a new sort of fundamental problem, one we call premature semantics. Premature semantics must be recognised and understood by name by UX and HCI practitioners and addressed by programmers

The 1/3-conjectures for domination in cubic graphs

A set S of vertices in a graph G is a dominating set of G if every vertex not in S is adjacent to a vertex in S . The domination number of G, denoted by $\gamma$(G), is the minimum cardinality of a dominating set in G. In a breakthrough paper in 2008, L{\"o}wenstein and Rautenbach proved that if G is a cubic graph of order n and girth at least 83, then $\gamma$(G) $\le$ n/3. A natural question is if this girth condition can be lowered. The question gave birth to two 1/3-conjectures for domination in cubic graphs. The first conjecture, posed by Verstraete in 2010, states that if G is a cubic graph on n vertices with girth at least 6, then $\gamma$(G) $\le$ n/3. The second conjecture, first posed as a question by Kostochka in 2009, states that if G is a cubic, bipartite graph of order n, then $\gamma$(G) $\le$n/3. In this paper, we prove Verstraete's conjecture when there is no 7-cycle and no 8-cycle, and we prove the Kostochka's related conjecture for bipartite graphs when there is no 4-cycle and no 8-cycle