Imagining Vínland : George Mackay Brown and the literature of the New World

This essay looks at George Mackay Brown's novel of 1992, Vinland, in the context of nineteenth- and twentieth-century “foundation myth” literature inspired by the Viking discovery of North America as originally recounted in medieval Icelandic sagas. This body of writing ranges from the New England “Fireside Poets” to Ottilie Liljencrantz's Vinland trilogy (1902–1906) to Nevil Shute's An Old Captivity (1940). The overarching aim will be to assess Mackay Brown's Orcadian perspective on Vínland in the context of what can broadly be regarded as a literature of colonialism; that is to say, a literature that explores the unequal relationships and value differences between the colonizers and the indigenous population

The Logistical Challenges of the SpaceLiner Concept

The SpaceLiner concept developed at DLR combines extremely fast transport (90 minutes from Europe to Australia) with the experience of Space flight. As such it is different from the spaceflight which focuses exclusively on space tourism but it combines space tourism with for example business travel. The SpaceLiner is designed to carry 50 passengers in suborbital flight. The conceptual technical design presents some challenges which have already been partially investigated at DLR [1]. However, the overall commercial concept presents a number of different challenges. This paper will identify and describe the logistical challenges involved

Broadbanding Brunswick: High-speed broadband and household media ecologies

New research from the University of Melbourne and Swinburne University has found that 82% of households in the NBN first release site of Brunswick, Victoria, think the NBN is a good idea. The study, Broadbanding Brunswick: High-speed Broadband and Household Media Ecologies, examines the take-up, use and implications of high-speed broadband for some of its earliest adopters. It looks at how the adoption of high-speed broadband influences household consumption patterns and use of telecoms. The survey of 282 Brunswick households found there had been a significant uptake of the NBN during the course of the research. In 2011, 20% of households were connected to the NBN and in 2012 that number had risen to 34%. Families, home owners, higher income earners and teleworkers were most likely to adopt the NBN. Many NBN users reported paying less for their monthly internet bills, with 49% paying about the same. In many cases those paying more (37%) had elected to do so.Download report: Broadbanding Brunswick: High-speed Broadband and Household Media Ecologies [PDF, 2.5MB] Download report: Broadbanding Brunswick: High-speed Broadband and Household Media Ecologies [Word 2007 document, 5MB

Low mass lepton pair production in hadron collisions

The hadroproduction of lepton pairs with mass $Q$ and transverse momentum $Q_T$ can be described in perturbative QCD by the same partonic subprocesses as prompt photon production. We demonstrate that, like prompt photon production, lepton pair production is dominated by quark-gluon scattering in the region $Q_T>Q/2$. This leads to sensitivity to the gluon density in kinematical regimes that are accessible both at collider and fixed target experiments while eliminating the theoretical and experimental uncertainties present in prompt photon production.Comment: Talk given by M. Klasen at the International Conference on the Structure and Interactions of the Photon, PHOTON 99, Freiburg i. Brsg., Germany, May 23-27, 1999. To be published in the proceedings. 6 pages, 6 postscript figure

Effect of moisture on the bending properties of thermally modified beech and spruce

For appropriate and successful applications of thermally modified wood, a detailed knowledge of its distinct properties is essential. A thermal modification leads to structural and chemical changes in the wood constituents, which may significantly alter the material properties as compared to untreated solid wood. As contribution to a comprehensive material characterisation, moisture-mechanical property relationships were studied for selected bending properties of untreated and thermally modified beech and spruce. Static bending tests were conducted on small clear specimens at three treatment and five moisture levels. Bending strength at standard (dry) climate conditions was reduced by the thermal modification, while stiffness tended to show some increase. Furthermore, both properties decreased with increasing moisture content in untreated as well as thermally modified wood. However, because of the lower moisture sensitivity of thermally modified wood, the moisture dependence of its bending properties was considerably reduced. Therefore, in moist environments, equal or even better stiffness and strength values may be expected for thermally modified wood as compared to untreated solid wood. On the other hand, the changed fracture behaviour of thermally modified wood related to its increased brittleness, which was present also in wet conditions, has to be taken into account for potential structural application

On the origins of the Gothic novel : from Old Norse to Otranto

This essay assesses the extent to which Old Norse tradition provided the basis for a subspecies of literary horror. It focuses on those formations and interpretations of Old Norse Literature as it came gradually to light from the sixteenth century onwards, and how the Nordic Revival impacted on what is widely considered to be the first Gothic novel, The Castle of Otranto (1764) by Horace Walpole (1717-97)

Users and non-users of next generation broadband

This paper explores the contexts and motivations that underpin the uptake of Australia’s National Broadband Network (NBN). The findings are drawn from a mixed-methods research study of households using surveys and interviews conducted in 2011 and 2012 in an early release site of the NBN rollout. Whilst use and non-use have traditionally been treated as questions of digital access, inequality and exclusion, there is evidence for emerging forms of non-use characterized by more critical and discriminating approaches. We contribute to this evidence, but our findings suggest that use and non-use of high speed broadband do not occur in isolation or as an expression of individual choice, but as part of increasingly dense household media ecologies of digital infrastructures, devices, services and knowledge