A Globalised Vulnerability: Re-Presenting the Labouring Body of Ireland\u27s Newly Industrialised Landscape

Situated in the context of globalisation in the Republic of Ireland, this ethnographically informed practice-based thesis addresses the critical relationship between visual arts practice, curatorship, the historical representation of labour, industrialised space and contemporary global labour practices. Drawing on audio and visual ethnographic material generated in my fieldsite - the Hewlett-Packard Manufacturing and Research complex in Leixlip, Ireland, together with the resulting installation and publication titled The Breathing Factory, it further investigates the dissemination of such epistemologies, the term ‘re-representation\u27 being deployed as a reflexive gesture in acknowledgement of such critical re-contextualisations

Final Build?: Imaging the Local-global Landscape of Hewlett-Packard, Ireland

This practice-led thesis constitutes a timely response to the absence of audio and visual representation of labour practices and post-industrial space in the context of Ireland’s accelerated economic development during the past decade, resulting in its current status as the most globalised economy in the world. The significance of Ireland’s global position is amplified by the fact that the South of Ireland never experienced the Industrial Revolution and has thus been propelled from an agricultural-based economy to one defined as post industrial. In both its methodological design and implementation, the study stakes out new terrain through the combined use of photography, digital video and ethnographic methods, further engaging with the oral testimony of workers in the post-industrialised multinational location, fieldsite of Hewlett-Packard Manufacturing and Technology Campus, Leixlip, County Kildare. The thesis comprises three chapters together with an introduction and conclusion. The first chapter situates Hewlett-Packard’s presence in Ireland within an historicised and economic framework, while simultaneously providing critical readings of propagandist representations by the public and private enterprise sectors. The chapter’s juxtaposition of these readings, together with disparate spatio-temporal labour practices, historical periods and the introduction of different theoretical paradigms, enacts a strategic textual device used throughout this chapter and the following two. The second chapter engages directly with methodological questions underpinning the research project, alongside foregrounding different field work practices. The textual presentation of interview transcript material, photography and digital video is brought into dialogue with depiction of industrialisations form the late nineteenth century to the present. The third and final chapter both identifies and establishes theoretical and representational strategies at work in the rationale, design and content of the re-constitution of the research material in the format of an installation titled ‘The Breathing Factor

Galvanic Liquid Applied Coatings for the Protection of Rebar in Concrete

No abstract availabl

Initial data for black hole-neutron star binaries, with rotating stars

The coalescence of a neutron star with a black hole is a primary science target of ground-based gravitational wave detectors. Constraining or measuring the neutron star spin directly from gravitational wave observations requires knowledge of the dependence of the emission properties of these systems on the neutron star spin. This paper lays foundations for this task, by developing a numerical method to construct initial data for black hole--neutron star binaries with arbitrary spin on the neutron star. We demonstrate the robustness of the code by constructing initial-data sets in large regions of the parameter space. In addition to varying the neutron star spin-magnitude and spin-direction, we also explore neutron star compactness, mass-ratio, black hole spin, and black hole spin-direction. Specifically, we are able to construct initial data sets with neutron stars spinning near centrifugal break-up, and with black hole spins as large as $S_{\rm BH}/M_{\rm BH}^2=0.99$.Comment: 25 pages, 12 figure

Bahamian Sangamonian Coral Reefs and Sea-Level Change

Reprinted from James L. Carew (ed.) May 30–June 3, 1996, Proceedings of the 8th Symposium on the Geology of the Bahamas and Other Carbonate Regions: Bahamian Field Station, San Salvador, Bahamas

Guide to Bahamian Ichnology: Pleistocene, Holocene, and Modern Environments: A Field Trip Guide

This guide was prepared for the Fourth International Ichnofabric Workshop (IIW- 4) to be hosted by the Bahamian Field Station and held on San Salvador Island on March 15-22, 1997. About 35 scientists representing 15 countries are registered to attend the workshop. The focus of discussion in the infonnal scientific sessions will be the uses of ichnofabric analysis in sedimentary geology. An ichnofabric is the texture or internal structure created within a sedimentary substrate from the bioturbating activity of organisms. Ichnofabric analysis is a new and emerging area of ichnology (the study of trace fossils), and its methods are proving useful in enhancing sedimentary facies recognition and interpretations, event correlation, paleoenvironmental and paleoecological reconstructions, reservoir prediction, and more. Ichnologists are field oriented, and San Salvador Island, with its diverse and largely pristine modem tropical, carbonate environments and well exposed Pleistocene and Holocene rock record, provides provides a fantastic natural laboratory for the study of all aspects of carbonate geology. San Salvador also is a geologically and ichnologically well known island, so proven field localities are readily available. This doesn\u27t mean that new ichnologic discoveries and interpretations won\u27t be forthcoming - they certainly will be, and probably some will occur during the time of the IIW-4 workshop. My colleague Brian White and I have been working in the Bahamas for just over 15 years. We know a great deal about Bahamian geology, but with every field excursion we find something new, and I often think that we have just scratched the surface! The centerpiece of this guide is the descriptions of six Ichno-localities on San Salvador Island that provide outstanding examples of modem traces or trace fossils and illustrate a veriety of ichnologic principles. In addition, in composite form, the stops provide a good overview of the Pleistocene, Holocene, and modem geology and environments of San Salvador. All of the stops are readily accessible from the main roads on the island. The initial chapter provides a brief introduction to the geology of the Bahamas and San Salvador for first-time visitors. The three chapters at the end of the guide are thematic and designed to expand the ichnologic perspectives to include borer organisms, plant trace fossils, and ichnologic sites in the Bahamas beyond San Salvador. I hope this guide will be useful to a broad spectrum of visitors to the Bahamian Field Station for several years to come, as well as to ichnologists unable to attend this workshop but with an interest in carbonates. See other Smith authored Field Trip Guides of Gerace Research Centre

A Sea-Level Lowstand (Devil\u27s Point Event) Recorded in Bahamian Reefs: Comparison with Other Last Interglacial Climate Proxies

Reprinted from: Benjamin J. Greenstein and Cindy K. Carney (eds.) Proceedings of the 10th Symposium on the Geology of the Bahamas and Other Carbonate Regions: San Salvador, Gerace Research Cente

Using SVD and DWT Based Steganography to Enhance the Security of Watermarked Fingerprint Images

Watermarking is the process of embedding information into a carrier file for the protection of ownership/copyright of digital media, whilst steganography is the art of hiding information. This paper presents, a hybrid steganographic watermarking algorithm based on Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) and Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) transforms in order to enhance the security of digital fingerprint images. A facial watermark is embedded into fingerprint image using a method of singular value replacement. First, the DWT is used to decompose the fingerprint image from the spatial domain to the frequency domain and then the facial watermark is embedded in singular values (SV’s) obtained by application of SVD. In addition, the original fingerprint image is not required to extract the watermark. Experimental results provided demonstrate the methods robustness to image degradation and common signal processing attacks, such as histogram and filtering, noise addition, JPEG and JPEG2000 compression with various levels of quality

Raman Spectroscopy Applied to the Noninvasive Detection of Monosodium Urate Crystal Deposits

An off-the-shelf Raman Spectrometer (RS) was used to noninvasively determine the presence of monosodium urate (MSU) crystals on the metatarsophalangeal joint (MTPJ) of a single gout sufferer. The spectrum sourced from the clinically diagnosed gout sufferer was compared to that sourced from an age-matched healthy subject scanned using the same protocol. Minimal signal processing was conducted on both spectra. Peaks characteristic of MSU crystals were evident on the spectrum sourced from the gout sufferer and not on the spectrum from the healthy control

The Hysteretic Limit of a Reaction-Diffusion System with a Small Parameter

This thesis is concerned with the study of a reaction-diffusion system with a nonlinearity that obeys a hysteresis law. This law is realized as an ensemble of scalar hysteresis operators, one defined at each spatial point and operating independently of one another. This independent ensemble approach is inspired by initial biological applications where combinations of diffusing and non-diffusing substances interact according to a hysteresis law. The individual operators are either non-ideal relays or solutions to an ordinary differential equation with a small parameter. Under a very general condition called spatial transversality we prove the well-posedness of the system with non-ideal relays and that it is approximated by the system with ordinary differential equations as the parameter goes to zero. For the first time in the partial differential equation setting, we prove explicit asymptotics with respect to this parameter. This work was supported by the Project A9: Reaction-diffusion systems: hysteresis and nonlocal interactions as part of Collaborative Research Center 910 Control of self-organizing nonlinear systems: Theoretical methods and concepts of application.In dieser Arbeit untersuchen wir Reaktions-Diffusionsgleichungen, deren Nichtlinearität einem Hysterese-Gesetz folgt. Das Hysterese-Gesetz wird als eine Sammlung skalarer Operatoren umgesetzt, je einer an jedem räumlichen Punkt, die alle unabhängig voneinander reagieren. Diese Herangehensweise wird durch biologische Anwendungen gerechtfertigt, bei denen Kombinationen diffundierender und nicht-diffundierender Substanzen interagieren und dabei einem Hysterese-Gesetz folgen. Die einzelnen Operatoren sind entweder nichtideale Schalter („Relais") oder Lösungen einer gewöhnlichen Differentialgleichung mit einem kleinen Parameter. Unter einer sehr allgemeinen Bedingung, der sogenannten räumlichen Transversalität, beweisen wir die Existenz und Eindeutigkeit der Lösungen des Systems mit den nichtidealen Schaltern. Außerdem beweisen wir, dass das System mit den gewöhnlichen Differentialgleichungen das System mit den nichtidealen Schaltern approximiert, wenn der kleine Parameter gegen Null geht. Im Zusammenhang mit partiellen Differentialgleichungen beweisen wir zum ersten Mal die explizite Asymptotik in Bezug auf diesen Parameter