Exploring the Role of United States Legal Discourse in Creating, Sustaining, and Disrupting Vestiges of Slavery

This exploratory study starts from the proposition that the use of the racialized names “negro,” “colored,” “black,” and “white” represent vestiges of slavery that were socially and legally constructed, maintained, and perpetuated to validate a superior position for descendants of Europe in the United States, while assigning an inferior status to descendants of Africa in the United States. I further suggest that the use of these racialized names appear to resemble what Noonan (1976) described as a legal mask: a legal construct that veils the humanity of participants in the legal process. Informed by Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Post-Colonialist Theory, this exploratory study aimed to explore the role of law and legal discourse in creating and sustaining racial differences between 1705-1857 and 1986-2017, and explore counter-hegemonic narratives in historic and contemporary legal texts as tools for dismantling vestiges of slavery. Utilizing the techniques of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), this exploratory study explores and compares the legal discourse for the use of racial names and ways of constructing race and racial differences. I discovered in the historic legal texts that legal actors often used hostile, “white supremacist” hegemonic legal discourse to create and maintain racial differences. Although the legal discourse today is much less overt and more nuanced, I found that many contemporary legal actors use their platform to disrupt racial hegemony as they attempt to remedy the mistakes of the past. This exploratory study breaks new ground by demonstrating that social workers can engage in sophisticated transdisciplinary research and enter a more active role in deconstructing and eliminating barriers of structural racism. My research has implications for social work research, leadership, and education

Transient Stability Enhancement Using Phasor Model of Superconducting Magnetic Energy Storage

Superconducting Magnetic Energy Storage (SMES) is one of most important device attracting researchers for enhancing the transient stability of power systems. To facilitate the use of this device in different simulations and studied, a phasor model is established and used to analyse the impact of this device using matlab/Simulink software. The phasor model has enough advantages like using the SMES without need detailed model that contains the electronic power converter and therefore minimize the simulation time. The Western Systems Council Coordinating (WSCC) 3 machine-9 bus system is taken as a power system test. Simulation results show that the phasor model of SMES unit is very effective to study their impact for enhancing the transient stability in large scale time

Environmental sustainability of liquid food packaging: Is there a gap between Danish consumers' perception and learnings from life cycle assessment?

The environmental impact of packaging has already been studied since the early development of the life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology, and today an extensive amount of studies exists. LCAs inform policy makers and guide companies in developing more environmentally sustainable packaging. From both a policy and a business perspective it is also relevant to understand what citizens and consumers recognize as being an environmentally sustainable packaging. Does perceived environmental sustain ability align with the results of LCAs? And if not, where do consumers go wrong? In this study, we investigate how well-educated young consumers living in Denmark understand the environmental sustainability of five different kinds of packaging for liquid food (milk, beer, soft drink, olive oil and skinned tomatoes) based on an on-line survey and qualitative interviews. The results are compared with a streamlined LCA we performed for packaging of beer and soft drinks, and they are validated by means of comparative LCAs of these five product categories published in scientific literature. The results of the consumer research show that consumers assess the environmental sustainability of the tested types of packaging primarily based on the material type and on what they can personally do at the disposal stage. The consumers covered in this study do, in general, not consider the impacts of production and of transport. Amongst the investigated packaging types, bio-based types and glass are perceived as the most environmentally sustainable ones, and plastic in general is perceived least favourable. Laminated cartons receive a mixed perception. LCA results show that plastic - and especially laminated cartons - can be environmentally preferable solutions, even though they may be difficult to recycle. Our streamlined LCA on beer and soft drink shows that there is a significant difference in environmental performance between one-way glass and refillable glass, but consumers seem not to be aware of this difference. Our findings show i) that there is a gap between Danish consumers' perception of environmental sustainability of packaging and LCA results, and ii) that consumers have limited knowledge of sustainability-related eco-labels. In order to close these gaps, actions are needed both from producers, retailers and policy makers. The final aim of such improvement efforts should be to give to the consumers the possibility to make choices based on better information. (C) 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

Roots of Ehrhart Polynomials of Smooth Fano Polytopes

V. Golyshev conjectured that for any smooth polytope P of dimension at most five, the roots z\in\C of the Ehrhart polynomial for P have real part equal to -1/2. An elementary proof is given, and in each dimension the roots are described explicitly. We also present examples which demonstrate that this result cannot be extended to dimension six.Comment: 10 page

Análisis de la accesibilidad urbanística y arquitectónica: SIG de la accesibilidad de Mallorca

La movilidad es un derecho fundamental de todos los ciudadanos de aquí que el análisis de la accesibilidad y evaluación sea una exigencia que han de considerar los planificadores territoriales. Actualmente las tecnologías de la información geográfica constituyen un instrumento que facilitan el reconocimiento de las barreras arquitectónicas y urbanísticas, tanto desde el punto de vista técnico como del ciudadano. Sobre esta base, el presente artículo muestra el desarrollo del Sistema de Información Geográfica de la Accesibilidad de Mallorca (SIGMA) cuyo objetivo principal es el de facilitar información actualizada y precisa al ciudadano y, al mismo tiempo, diseñar una herramienta de análisis, evaluación y soporte a la toma de decisiones para la mejora de la accesibilidad urbana y arquitectónica. El proyecto se ha desarrollado de acuerdo al Decreto 20/2003 del Reglamento de Supresión de Barreras Arquitectónica, Boletín Oficial de las Islas Baleares 18-03-2003). La construcción del SIGMA ha sido realizada por un equipo de investigación de la Universidad de las Islas Baleares y un grupo de trabajo del Área de Accesibilidad del Consell de Mallorca.Mobility is a fundamental right of all citizens that is why the analysis accessibility and its evaluation are demands that have to be considered by the territorial planners. Currently geographical information technologies are instruments that provide the recognition of the architectural barriers and urban, both from the technical and from the citizen’s point of view. On this base, the present article shows the development of the Accessibility's Geographic information System of Majorca (SIGMA) whose main goal is that one of to provide up-to-date information and precise to the citizen and, at the same time, to design a tool of analysis, evaluation and support to the decision making for the improvement of the urban accessibility and architectural. The project has been developed according to the regulations (Decree 20/2003 of the Regulations of Barrier Suppression Architectural, Official Gazette of Balearic Islands 18-03-2003). The construction of the SIGMA has been made by a team of investigation of the University of Balearic Islands and a working group of the Area of Accessibility of the Council of Majorca