The ABCs of ATVs: Factors implicated in child deaths and injuries involving all terrain vehicles on New Zealand farms

The agricultural sector features prominently in the rates of ATV injuries and fatalities amongst children in New Zealand. This research project assesses the nature and scope of ATV accidents to children on New Zealand farms and provides recommendations that attempt to meet the needs of all relevant stakeholders. In particular, we believe that the most effective means of reducing the rates of ATV injuries and fatalities amongst children involves a strategy which recognises the unique circumstances which give rise to practical impediments to safer farm workplace practices. We identified three distinct groups of children in the literature, each facing a different major risk category. Very young children were most at risk as passengers. As age increased the highest risks applied to bystanders, while older children and teenagers were more likely to be injured as drivers. The high risks to younger children as passengers and bystanders were indicative of underlying problems associated with childcare options – or, more particularly, the lack of childcare options. Accidents involving older children were associated more closely with practices around child supervision and involved aspects of farming culture, rather than practical barriers to safer practices

Liberal militarism as insecurity, desire and ambivalence: gender, race and the everyday geopolitics of war

The use and maintenance of military force as a means of achieving security makes the identity and continued existence of states as legitimate protectors of populations intelligible. In liberal democracies, where individual freedom is the condition of existence, citizens, have to be motivated to cede some of that freedom in exchange for security, however. Accordingly, liberal militarism becomes possible only when military action and preparedness become meaningful responses to threats posed to the social body, not just the state, meaning that it relies on co-constitutive practices of the geopolitical and the everyday. Through a feminist discursive analysis of British airstrikes in Syria, and attendant debates on Syrian refugees, I examine how liberal militarism is animated through these co-constitutive sites, with differential effects. Paying particular attention to gender and race, I argue that militarism is an outcome of social practices characterized as much by everyday desires and ambivalence as fear and bellicosity. Moreover, I aim to show how the diffuse and often uneven effects liberal militarism produces actually make many liberal subjects less secure. I suggest therefore that despite the claims of liberal states that military power provides security, for many, militarism is insecurity

Raising an army: the geopolitics of militarizing the lives of working-class boys in an age of austerity

This article examines the political and social impact of elevating military values in society in a context of austerity. Centering on discussions around two British government “military ethos” initiatives, I consider the idea that military service instills desirable qualities and values in military personnel, making them well suited to educating and socializing children, to the advantage of both children and society. Arguing that these schemes primarily target boys from disadvantaged backgrounds in an effort to turn them into “productive” members of society, I suggest that military ethos initiatives contribute to not only the “raising” of working-class boys but the raising of a class-based army. Moreover, rather than focusing solely on the implications of the military ethos in the British context, I argue that its underlying assumptions about military socialization as a social good have significant geopolitical effects. Through characterizing the military as a core institution of society and its values as moral and good for children, these initiatives obscure the military’s core violent functions. Thus, by both normalizing violence and militarism in everyday life and targeting boys from disadvantaged backgrounds, “military ethos” initiatives engender the subjectivities that provide the very political, social economic, and indeed practical resources that make war possible

Lost Vision

This case is to be used as an understanding of the causalities that result from the disarray of future direction, impeding chaos and dysfunctional status to an organization when its “Vision” is lost.  The case presents the financial impact when the impetus of a strategy implementation incurs a major disruption due to the loss of its inspirational and transformational leader.  The joint venture had completed its internal structuring, communicated internally its mission and product and services, acquired and/or spent many millions of dollars in operational and capital infra-structure prior to its premier into the marketplace.  The case describes the environment of disillusion, political in-fighting, and personal and selfish objectives that resulted in the death of the joint venture.  Analysis of the case should address the organizational and managerial behavior that should have been the practical application and situation in order for the continual implementation of the organization and benefit to the market place and all stakeholders

AN ANALYSIS OF THE SURVEYS ON CLERICAL CELIBACY

Within the Catholic Church at the present time there is a great deal of unrest with regards the problem of compulsory clerical celibacy. The purpose of this thesis was to analyze the results of the various surveys of diocesan priests on the question of compulsory clerical celibacy. Although there have been many surveys, there was a need to analyze the data from these surveys. Through this analysis it was hoped that a factual basis for serious discussion of the issue of optional celibacy could be established. In order to put the results from the surveys in true perspective a short history of compulsory clerical celibacy within the Catholic Church was added to the review of pertinent literature. The results from the surveys were then analyzed and put into Table form so that the salient points would be highlighted. Five major conclusions were yielded from the data of these diocesan surveys: 1. Support for Episcopal Leadership. Priests who want optional celibacy desire that the Bishops of the country take the initiative to resolve this problem. Support for change is not an indication of current rebellion against episcopal leadership but rather of substantial dissatisfaction with official attitudes towards the celibacy problem. 2. More than 7,000 Priests want Optional Celibacy. The surveys conducted in fifty-two dioceses yielded 3,666 responses favoring optional celibacy. Since the surveys reached forty-six per cent of the diocesan priests in the United States, it seemed a reasonably conservative estimate that not less than 7,000 diocesan priests want the freedom to marry. 3. Assistant Pastors Lead Support for Change. More than half of the priests who want optional celibacy (2,052) are currently assistant pastors. In practically all dioceses, whether large or small, and in all parts of the country, assistants favor the right to marry in meaningful majorities. 4. Differences Between Regions: Size of Diocese is Key Factor. The surveys show that support for optional celibacy is weak in some geographical regions and strong in others. The explanation seemed to lie in the fact that the smaller the diocese the more favorable the attitude towards optional celibacy. 5. Celibacy is not a Closed Issue. The results of the surveys do not support the view that priests have understood the Encyclical, Sacerdotalis Coelibatus, as a final word on the subject. The survey results reported give adequate proof that clerical celibacy is an urgent problem in the American Catholic Church. As such, it was recommended that a detailed report of each diocesan survey should be sent to the National Conference of Bishops, and also that a formal presentation of the data of the surveys be made at the next meeting of the National Conference of Bishops. Finally, it was recommended that an independent study should be conducted to determine the reasons why priests are leaving the ministry

Higher Derivative Gravity, Causality and Positivity of Energy in a UV complete QFT

In this note we discuss the relation between the constraints imposed by causality in the bulk of $AdS$ and the condition of positivity of the energy measured in ideal calorimeters in a collider experiment in the dual CFT. We first extend the analysis in the literature and recover all bounds imposed by causality of the boundary theory in the bulk dynamics for all polarizations of the graviton and the gauge boson field. These results translate to specific bounds for the ratio of central charges $\frac{a}{c}$ in the dual CFT, already found by analyzing the energy one point function. Then, we generalize this discussion and we study shock wave backgrounds in which we make manifest the relation between causality in the bulk and the three point function in the dual field theory. We remark that particular care has to be given to the exponentiation procedure of the three point function when solving the classical equations of motion in the higher gravity theory, as it is not clear that every theory will present causality problems. Finally, we present a field theoretic argument explaining the positivity of energy condition in any UV complete QFT.Comment: 31 pages, 3 figures; v2: references adde

Structure of adsorbed organometallic rhodium: model single atom catalysts

We have determined the structure of a complex rhodium carbonyl chloride [Rh(CO)(2)Cl] molecule adsorbed on the TiO2 (110) surface by the normal incidence x-ray standing wave technique. The data show that the technique is applicable to reducible oxide systems and that the dominant adsorbed species is undissociated with Rh binding atop bridging oxygen and to the Cl found close to the fivefold coordinated Ti ions in the surface. A minority geminal dicarboryl species, where Rh-Cl bond scission has occurred, is found bridging the bridging oxygen ions forming a high-symmetry site

Reproducing the military and heteropatriarchal normal: Army Reserve service as serious leisure

The notion that military violence engenders security and that military service is a selfless and necessary act are orthodoxies in political, military and scholarly debate. The UK Reserves’ recent expansion prompts reconsideration of this orthodoxy, particularly as it suggests that reservists serve selflessly. Drawing on fieldwork with British Army reservists and their spouses/partners, we examine how this orthodoxy allows reservists to engage in everyday embodied performances, and occasionally articulations, of the need to serve, to free themselves up from household responsibilities. This supposed necessity of military service necessitates heteropatriarchal divisions of labour, which facilitate participation in military service and the state’s ability to conduct war/war preparations. However, whilst reserve service is represented as sacrificial and necessary it is far more self-serving and is better understood as ‘serious leisure’ (Stebbins, 1982), an activity whose perceived importance engenders deep selffulfilment. By showing that the performances of sacrifice and necessity reservists rely on are selfish, not selfless, we show how militarism is facilitated by such everyday desires. We conclude by reflecting on how exposing reserve service as serious leisure could contribute to problematising the state’s ability to rely on everyday performances and articulations of militarism and heteropatriarchy to prepare for and wage war

Exploring More-Coherent Quantum Annealing

In the quest to reboot computing, quantum annealing (QA) is an interesting candidate for a new capability. While it has not demonstrated an advantage over classical computing on a real-world application, many important regions of the QA design space have yet to be explored. In IARPA's Quantum Enhanced Optimization (QEO) program, we have opened some new lines of inquiry to get to the heart of QA, and are designing testbed superconducting circuits and conducting key experiments. In this paper, we discuss recent experimental progress related to one of the key design dimensions: qubit coherence. Using MIT Lincoln Laboratory's qubit fabrication process and extending recent progress in flux qubits, we are implementing and measuring QA-capable flux qubits. Achieving high coherence in a QA context presents significant new engineering challenges. We report on techniques and preliminary measurement results addressing two of the challenges: crosstalk calibration and qubit readout. This groundwork enables exploration of other promising features and provides a path to understanding the physics and the viability of quantum annealing as a computing resource.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures. Accepted by the 2018 IEEE International Conference on Rebooting Computing (ICRC