Three Attempts at Cold War Neutralization: Its Success in Austria and Laos and its Failure in Vietnam

During the Cold War, the inherent mistrust between the United States and the Soviet Union kept the two superpowers from cooperating even on many projects that might have proven mutually beneficial. Nevertheless, they were willing to work together at least occasionally; two such examples are the neutralizations of Austria (in 1955) and of Laos (in 1962). Despite very different world orders in those two countries at those times, the weaker superpowers in each contest, the Soviets in Austria and the Americans in Laos, took very similar actions. They followed the same three-stage process from the outbreak of the dispute to its negotiated conclusion. This process failed, however, in Vietnam. In trying to explain why neutralization failed so soon after its success, this thesis postulates a number of possible explanations. Ultimately, it was several factors coming to result in the failure of neutralization in Vietnam

The Segment Ontology: Bridging Music-generic and Domain-specific

Existing semantic representations of music analysis encapsulate narrow sub-domain concepts and are frequently scoped by the context of a particular MIR task. Segmentation is a crucial abstraction in the investigation of phenomena which unfold over time; we present a Segment Ontology as the backbone of an approach that models properties from the musicological domain independently from MIR implementations and their signal processing foundations, whilst maintaining an accurate and complete description of the relationships that link them. This framework provides two principal advantages which are explored through several examples: a layered separation of concerns that aligns the model with the needs of the users and systems that consume and produce the data; and the ability to link multiple analyses of differing types through transforms to and from the Segment axis

Effect of low initial envelope material moisture content on swine tissue degradation in layered livestock mortality composting systems

A 12-week laboratory study was conducted to assess the minimum initial moisture content of compost bulking (envelope) materials necessary to sustain desired heat production and completion of carcass decomposition during emergency composting of swine carcasses. During full-scale field testing of a semi-enclosed emergency composting procedure, first developed and used by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency during an avian influenza outbreak in 2004, the ability of potential emergency compost envelope materials were evaluated on their ability to achieve elevated temperatures (\u3e55 oC) necessary to inactivate pathogens and successfully decompose carcasses under a variety of initial moisture conditions, during cool and warm season trials. Two-way ANOVA modeling of results showed that envelope material type and envelope material initial moisture content had a significant effect on internal temperature production, with silage (52.5 oC) having the highest predicted internal temperature production. Counter to these findings, envelope material and initial moisture did not have a significant effect on carcass decomposition, and silage (72%) had the lowest predicted carcass decomposition. To corroborate and better understand these unexpected field test results, laboratory tests were carried out using the same envelope materials, under conditions of identical external temperature and a range of initial moisture contents. Results from the laboratory test showed that, when pre-moistened adequately, total oxygen uptake (and heat production potential) in ground cornstalks and similar materials were significantly higher (48 and 51 mg O2 respectively) than for moist silage (11 mg O2). Heat production potential increased significantly when initial moisture was increased from 15 to 35%, and no significant increase was noted when initial moisture content was raised to 60%. Animal tissue decomposition rankings observed in the lab agreed with those from field trials. Decomposition of tissue samples within cornstalks and oat straw exceeded 66% during the 10-day lab study, while decomposition in silage averaged only 54%. Animal tissue decomposition at initial moisture of only 25% was significantly improved over that observed at 15%, and no significant improvement in decomposition was noted when initial moisture was increased to 60%. These results are encouraging as they suggest modest increases in envelope material initial moisture can significantly improve mortality composting system performance. This is particularly important during emergency situations, as moisture addition can be a time consuming process and its practicality during emergency disposal operations will depend on the level of initial moisture necessary to achieve desired results

Two-frequency forced Faraday waves: Weakly damped modes and pattern selection

Recent experiments (Kudrolli, Pier and Gollub, 1998) on two-frequency parametrically excited surface waves exhibit an intriguing "superlattice" wave pattern near a codimension-two bifurcation point where both subharmonic and harmonic waves onset simultaneously, but with different spatial wavenumbers. The superlattice pattern is synchronous with the forcing, spatially periodic on a large hexagonal lattice, and exhibits small-scale triangular structure. Similar patterns have been shown to exist as primary solution branches of a generic 12-dimensional $D_6\dot{+}T^2$-equivariant bifurcation problem, and may be stable if the nonlinear coefficients of the bifurcation problem satisfy certain inequalities (Silber and Proctor, 1998). Here we use the spatial and temporal symmetries of the problem to argue that weakly damped harmonic waves may be critical to understanding the stabilization of this pattern in the Faraday system. We illustrate this mechanism by considering the equations developed by Zhang and Vinals (1997, J. Fluid Mech. 336) for small amplitude, weakly damped surface waves on a semi-infinite fluid layer. We compute the relevant nonlinear coefficients in the bifurcation equations describing the onset of patterns for excitation frequency ratios of 2/3 and 6/7. For the 2/3 case, we show that there is a fundamental difference in the pattern selection problems for subharmonic and harmonic instabilities near the codimension-two point. Also, we find that the 6/7 case is significantly different from the 2/3 case due to the presence of additional weakly damped harmonic modes. These additional harmonic modes can result in a stabilization of the superpatterns.Comment: 26 pages, 8 figures; minor text revisions, corrected figure 8; this version to appear in a special issue of Physica D in memory of John David Crawfor

Author Correction: Task-dependent representations of stimulus and choice in mouse parietal cortex.

In the original version of this Article, the Acknowledgements section was inadvertently omitted. This has now been corrected in both the PDF and HTML versions of the Article

Workers’ rights vs ‘owners’ rights: how structures of corporate law affect the realization of labour rights

The thesis develops a systematic exposition of the relationship between corporate law and labour rights. The analysis explores the ways in which the legal structuring of the labour relationship through the corporate employer affects the realization of labour rights. The analysis moves beyond the traditional scope of labour law to consider the ways in which corporate, insolvency and competition law uphold hierarchical control over workers across the ‘corporate veil’ of formally independent legal entities. The study draws on perspectives in the Law and Political Economy (LPE) tradition. Katherina Pistor’s concept of the legal ‘coding’ of capital is adapted to the labour relationship. The coding of capital is analysed as a process through which private law rules are applied to the legal structuring of the social relations of the firm. The impacts of this legal structuring for workers claims to value, job security, and autonomy and voice at work are explored through a series of case examples. 1) The leveraged buyout and the effect of takeovers on rights to collective bargaining and workers share of value. 2) The structure of creditors rights in high yield credit instruments and workers exposure to risk, priority of claims, and rights to worker voice in insolvency. 3) The structuring of the labour relationship across franchise networks and supply chains. The analysis will explore the ways in which rights are shaped by the legal coding of capital: of the forms of corporate property; a process of capitalization which structures social relations through law

Arecibo PALFA Survey and Einstein@Home: Binary Pulsar Discovery by Volunteer Computing

We report the discovery of the 20.7 ms binary pulsar J1952+2630, made using the distributed computing project Einstein@Home in Pulsar ALFA survey observations with the Arecibo telescope. Follow-up observations with the Arecibo telescope confirm the binary nature of the system. We obtain a circular orbital solution with an orbital period of 9.4 hr, a projected orbital radius of 2.8 lt-s, and a mass function of f = 0.15 M ☉ by analysis of spin period measurements. No evidence of orbital eccentricity is apparent; we set a 2σ upper limit e 1.7 × 10–3. The orbital parameters suggest a massive white dwarf companion with a minimum mass of 0.95 M ☉, assuming a pulsar mass of 1.4 M ☉. Most likely, this pulsar belongs to the rare class of intermediate-mass binary pulsars. Future timing observations will aim to determine the parameters of this system further, measure relativistic effects, and elucidate the nature of the companion star

“The Much Wished-For Shore”: Nationalism and Utopianism in New Zealand Literature: 1817-1973.

This thesis examines the relationship between utopianism and nationalism in New Zealand literature between 1817 and 1973. My research utilises the definition of both the utopia and the nation as “imagined” or “imaginary” communities (to use Benedict Anderson and Phillip Wegner’s terms), in demonstrating how they function as interdependent concepts in colonial New Zealand literature. Specifically, my research focuses on how a dominant discourse of Pākehā nationalism is influenced by the desires of colonial settlement. There is an identifiable tradition in which New Zealand is imagined as a utopian space with an ambivalence towards modernity. The settler nation is defined subjectively by different authors, retaining, however, a tradition of excluding groups which are not compatible with the authors’ utopian projections. This exclusion may be based on race, gender, class, political views or other categorisations. I view this tradition as a dialectic of changing desires and utopian visions, based on changing historical contexts, but always engaged with the central attempt to speculate the possibilities that New Zealand holds as a utopia for Anglocentric settlement. The thesis is divided into four chapters, each based on the comparison of two texts from a certain period. The first chapter compares two texts of early nineteenth century British settlement, J.L. Nicholas’ Narrative of Voyage to New Zealand (1817) and E.J. Wakefield’s Adventure in New Zealand (1845). The second chapter examines Samuel Butler’s Erewhon (1872) and Julius Vogel’s Anno Domini 2000 (1889). The third chapter focuses on Robin Hyde’s Wednesday’s Children (1936) and John Mulgan’s Man Alone (1939). My final chapter argues that the end of this mode of writing is signalled by Smith’s Dream (1971 rev. 1973) by C.K. Stead and Intensive Care (1970) by Janet Frame, which demonstrate a changing approach to the tradition. After this point, other postcolonial voices emerge and the attempted homogeneity of settler utopianism is disrupted