Ricoeur, Rawls, and Capability Justice

A review of Molly Harkirat Mann, Ricoeur, Rawls, and Capability Justice (London and New York: Continuum Books, 2012), pp. 232

Steam-Induced Coarsening of Single-Unit-Cell MFI Zeolite Nanosheets and Its Effect on External Surface Brønsted Acid Catalysis.

Commonly used methods to assess crystallinity, micro-/mesoporosity, Brønsted acid site density and distribution (in micro- vs. mesopores), and catalytic activity suggest nearly invariant structure and function for aluminosilicate zeolite MFI two-dimensional nanosheets before and after superheated steam treatment. Yet, pronounced reaction rate decrease for benzyl alcohol alkylation with mesitylene, a reaction that cannot take place in the zeolite micropores, is observed. Transmission electron microscopy images reveal pronounced changes in nanosheet thickness, aspect ratio and roughness indicating that nanosheet coarsening and the associated changes in the external (mesoporous) surface structure are responsible for the changes in the external surface catalytic activity. Superheated steam treatment of hierarchical zeolites can be used to alter nanosheet morphology and regulate external surface catalytic activity while preserving micro- and mesoporosity, and micropore reaction rates

How We Talk about the Movies: A Comparison of Australian, British and American Film Genre Terms

© 2020 Hollie White and Philip Hider. Vocabulary or terminological control has been an issue of critical information practice for Australian information professionals for many years. In the 1970s Australian libraries began to supplement Library of Congress Subject Headings with their own List of Australian Subject Headings, and today there remains the bibliographic need to cover uniquely Australian terms and concepts, including those about Indigenous Australian culture. The library world is not the only domain, however, to have developed vocabularies to describe and make sense of information resources. Comparison of film genre vocabularies is of particular interest because film studies have often assumed a fixed set of categories, regardless of geography, culture or time. Although much of today’s film industry is ‘global’, with a strong Hollywood influence on genre to sell movies, this does not mean that filmmakers, nor film audiences, use a set vocabulary. This paper looks at whether similar geographical biases may be discerned in vocabularies used in the domain of film curation by examining the variation in terminology and the classification of film genres used by film institutes based in Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States

Can Modus Vivendi Save Liberalism from Moralism? A Critical Assessment of John Gray’s Political Realism

This chapter assesses John Gray’s modus vivendi-based justification for liberalism. I argue that his approach is preferable to the more orthodox deontological or teleological justificatory strategies, at least because of the way it can deal with the problem of diversity. But then I show how that is not good news for liberalism, for grounding liberal political authority in a modus vivendi undermines liberalism’s aspiration to occupy a privileged normative position vis-à-vis other kinds of regimes. So modus vivendi can save liberalism from moralism, but at cost many liberals will not be prepared to pay

New classes of exact solutions of three-dimensional Navier-Stokes equations

New classes of exact solutions of the three-dimensional unsteady Navier-Stokes equations containing arbitrary functions and parameters are described. Various periodic and other solutions, which are expressed through elementary functions are obtained. The general physical interpretation and classification of solutions is given.Comment: 11 page

Autothermal reforming of palm empty fruit bunch bio-oil: thermodynamic modelling

This work focuses on thermodynamic analysis of the autothermal reforming of palm empty fruit bunch (PEFB) bio-oil for the production of hydrogen and syngas. PEFB bio-oil composition was simulated using bio-oil surrogates generated from a mixture of acetic acid, phenol, levoglucosan, palmitic acid and furfural. A sensitivity analysis revealed that the hydrogen and syngas yields were not sensitive to actual bio-oil composition, but were determined by a good match of molar elemental composition between real bio-oil and surrogate mixture. The maximum hydrogen yield obtained under constant reaction enthalpy and pressure was about 12 wt% at S/C = 1 and increased to about 18 wt% at S/C = 4; both yields occurring at equivalence ratio Φ of 0.31. The possibility of generating syngas with varying H2 and CO content using autothermal reforming was analysed and application of this process to fuel cells and Fischer-Tropsch synthesis is discussed. Using a novel simple modelling methodology, reaction mechanisms were proposed which were able to account for equilibrium product distribution. It was evident that different combinations of reactions could be used to obtain the same equilibrium product concentrations. One proposed reaction mechanism, referred to as the ‘partial oxidation based mechanism’ involved the partial oxidation reaction of the bio-oil to produce hydrogen, with the extent of steam reforming and water gas shift reactions varying depending on the amount of oxygen used. Another proposed mechanism, referred to as the ‘complete oxidation based mechanism’ was represented by thermal decomposition of about 30% of bio-oil and hydrogen production obtained by decomposition, steam reforming, water gas shift and carbon gasification reactions. The importance of these mechanisms in assisting in the eventual choice of catalyst to be used in a real ATR of PEFB bio-oil process was discussed

Sustainability analysis off-grid community solar PV projects in Malawi

The sustainability challenges of off-grid community energy projects using solar photovoltaics in Malawi have been widely acknowledged. However, little evidence has been produced regarding the factors that affect the sustainability of these projects. This paper presents the results of a nationwide study of community solar PV project sustainability in Malawi. The concept of sustainability as a holistic measure is defined and captured through field survey at 43 projects. A multi-factor scoring technique provides a relative ranking of the surveyed projects. The majority of projects have serious shortcomings undermining their ability to produce a positive impact as intended. The results provide useful insights to the design of solar PV projects for community energy practitioners and indicate that the underlying challenges are both internal and systematic, from a poor technical design approach to limitations in the skills required to effectively manage such projects

Silence

Silence, as poets and thinkers in every age have realized, is not the mere absence of something else. It is a complex, positive phenomenon that occurs in language, in music, and in mime. Bernard P. Dauenhauer offers an original, comprehensive, and explicitly phenomenological analysis of silence in all its aspects. In the first part of the study the author describes the various kinds of silence, explores the relationship of silence to different types of discourse (political, artistic, moral, religious, and technological), and presents an intentional analysis, delimiting the essential characteristics of silence. Testing his insights against the thought of other philosophers who have considered the meaning of silence—notably Heidegger, Hegel, Husserl, Sartre, Derrida. and Merleau-Ponty—Dauenhauer, in the second part of the book, constructs an ontological interpretation of the significance of silence. The synthesis that emerges demonstrates the complexity of silence and its important role in a broadly conceived philosophy of language