On the interpretation of lateral manganin gauge stress measurements in polymers

Encapsulated wire-element stress gauges enable changes in lateral stress during shock loading to be directly monitored. However, there is substantial debate with regards to interpretation of observed changes in stress behind the shock front; a phenomenon attributed both to changes in material strength and shock- dispersion within the gauge-encapsulation. Here, a pair of novel techniques which both modify or remove the embedding medium where such stress gauges are placed within target materials have been used to try and inform this debate. The behavior of three polymeric materials of differing complexity was considered, namely polystyrene, the commercially important resin transfer moulding RTM 6 resin and a commercially available fat lard. Comparison to the response of embedded gauges has suggested a possible slight decrease in the absolute magnitude of stress. However, changing the encapsulation has no detectable effect on the gradient behind the shock in such polymeric systems

Ultrasound as a technology of reassurance? How pregnant women and health care professionals articulate ultrasound reassurance and its limitations

The premise that ultrasound technologies provide reassurance for pregnant women is well‐rehearsed. However, there has been little research about how this reassurance is articulated and understood by both expectant mothers and health care professionals. In this article, we draw on two qualitative UK studies to explore the salience of ultrasound reassurance to women's pregnancy experiences whilst highlighting issues around articulation and silence. Specifically, we capture how expectant parents express a general need for reassurance and how visualisation and the conduct of professionals have a crucial role to play in accomplishing a sense of reassurance. We also explore how professionals have ambiguities about the relationship between ultrasound and reassurance, and how they subsequently articulate reassurance to expectant mothers. By bringing two studies together, we take a broad perspectival view of how gaps and silences within the discourse of ultrasound reassurance leave the claims made for ultrasound as a technology of reassurance unchallenged. Finally, we explore the implications this can have for women's experiences of pregnancy and health care professionals’ practices

Stigma, class, and ‘respect’: Young people’s articulation and management of place in a post-industrial estate in south Wales

Using data from two studies in an economically under-resourced, post-industrial estate in the south Wales valleys, we explore the ways in which young people articulate and negotiate the place in which they live. Taken together, both studies provide observational, interview, and visual data on how young people manage, and resist, dominant media and policy-oriented representations whilst living in a place bearing the wounds and the scars of economic neglect. Here, young people face double discrimination: living in a place externally portrayed as ‘abject’, and representing a demographic perceived locally and elsewhere as the embodiment of apathy, trouble, and disorder. Using creative methods, we show how young people reimagined their futures and engaged in forms of activism to resist stigmatising depictions and to realise recognition and a desire for change. Dissecting the micro-processes through which stigma is embodied and confronted, we highlight the opportunities of confronting, disrupting, and rewriting entrenched macro-political narratives in a neo-liberal age. However, we also identify the limitations of this, specifically the misalignment between recognition (i.e. of what young people call ‘respect’) and resources (i.e. of confronting structural inequalities). We conclude by sketching out the potential of young people to become more active agents of change

Modelling and characterization of cell collapse in aluminium foams during dynamic loading

Plate-impact experiments have been conducted to investigate the elastic–plastic behaviour of shock wave propagation and pore collapse mechanisms of closed-cell aluminium foams. FE modelling using a meso-scale approach has been carried out with the FE software ABAQUS/Explicit. A micro-computed tomography-based foam geometry has been developed and microstructural changes with time have been investigated to explore the effects of wave propagation. Special attention has been given to the pore collapse mechanism. The effect of velocity variations on deformation has been elucidated with three different impact conditions using the plate-impact method. Free surface velocity (ufs) was measured on the rear of the sample to understand the evolution of the compaction. At low impact velocities, the free-surface velocity increased gradually, whereas an abrupt rise of free-surface velocity was found at an impact velocity of 845 m/s with a copper flyer-plate which correlates with the appearance of shock. A good correlation was found between experimental results and FE predictions

A legacy of silence: the inter-sections of medical sociology and disability studies

Disability remains on the margins of the social sciences. Even where disability is foregrounded as a category of analysis, accounts regularly emerge in silos, with too little interdisciplinary dialogue acknowledging the intersections and/or incongruities. This discord is particularly acute within medical sociology and disability studies, yet there is mostly a legacy of silence about the relationship between the two disciplines. Drawing upon data from a qualitative study with parents of disabled children in the UK, I show the value of meshing ideas and tropes from medical sociology and disability studies to make sense of parents’ lived experiences. They described the challenges of living with impairment and a need to readjust expectations. At the same time, parents were keen to not align with a deficit framing of their lives. They talked in affirmative terms about their children as sources of joy and vitality, perceived themselves as ‘normal’ and described convivial, even unremarkable, interactions in public spaces. Yet, parents encountered difficulties when navigating institutional settings and bureaucratic arrangements, or what was commonly referred to as ‘the system’. Their troubles were not located in their children’s bodies, but in – as per a disability studies sensibility – cultural and structural systems preventing their capacity to live well. I argue that both disability studies and medical sociology offer something to this analysis, thereby recognising the virtues of not simply buying into the tradition of one worldview. I conclude by imploring for more concrete conversations between both disciplines

Picture perfect: ‘4D’ ultrasound and the commoditisation of the private prenatal clinic

Non-medical ‘4D’ ultrasound is commercially advertised as promoting maternal ‘bonding’, providing reassurance, and tendering entertaining experiences for expectant parents. Despite the proliferation of this technology, it has not yet been subjected to sufficient social scientific attention. Drawing on an ethnography of a private prenatal clinic in the UK, I explore how 4D scans, providing detailed real-time images of a foetus, have transformed the prenatal clinic into a site of consumption. I argue that the discourse present in 4D scans and the materiality of the clinic achieve two things. First, it blurs the boundary between clinical and nonclinical practices. This must be carefully negotiated by professionals who perform serious emotional labour to balance the delicate tension of offering expertise and medically-based reassurance with providing a joyful experience for parents as consumers. Second, the 4D scan and clinic’s materiality promote the notion of ‘perfection’, particularly around the idealised family and future body. I conclude by reflecting on how such non-medical technologies play a central role in the commoditisation of pregnancy, bodies, the family, and prenatal care in an increasingly consumer-led market

Cooling the mother out: revisiting and revising Goffman's account

This article revisits Erving Goffman’s important yet neglected metaphor of ‘‘cooling the mark out.’’ Drawing on a study of mothers whose child has Down’s syndrome, I explore the value of Goffman’s work for capturing how mothers interpret their child’s diagnosis as a loss and rectify this breach by constructing an acceptance of their new situation. The mothers’ accounts highlight how Goffman’s contentions can be enriched by acknowledging the gendered, temporal, and public character of a loss. This article, thus, can be read both as a celebration and critical revision of his theoretical contribution

Dis-mantling stigma: parenting disabled children in an age of ‘Neoliberal-Ableism’

Stigma is a dominant presence in many fields, yet the term frequently remains ill-defined, individualist, and dislocated from matters of power, inequality, and resistance. Extending a budding literature on rethinking the sociology of stigma, I draw upon interviews with parents of children with Down’s syndrome to revisit one of sociology’s most enduring concepts. I explore how parents articulate new imaginaries of difference which depart from narratives of disability as tragic and pitiful, and promote notions of dignity and worth. Parents talk of their children as a reason for celebration and pride, discuss their experiences of convivial community relations and public interactions, and praise evolving configurations of disability in popular media. Yet parents simultaneously highlight painful, convoluted, and exhausting experiences with institutions (education, healthcare, welfare) as part of what they believe to be a wider (structural) hostility to disability which force them into a series of ‘fights and battles’. Whilst parents resist deficit framings of their children, and their lives more broadly, parents lament dwelling in a society whereby disabled people endlessly navigate enmity and indifference. In this article, then, I dis-mantle common conceptions of stigma by revealing not only its interactional properties, but also its political economy, in which disabled people are devalued, discounted, and cast as disposable in an age of ‘neoliberal-ableism’ (Goodley 2014)

The Geometry of the Cholesteric Phase

We propose a construction of a cholesteric pitch axis for an arbitrary nematic director field as an eigenvalue problem. Our definition leads to a Frenet-Serret description of an orthonormal triad determined by this axis, the director, and the mutually perpendicular direction. With this tool we are able to compare defect structures in cholesterics, biaxial nematics, and smectics. Though they all have similar ground state manifolds, the defect structures are different and cannot be, in general, translated from one phase to the other.Comment: 5 pages, the full catastroph

Geometry of the cholesteric phase

We propose a construction of a cholesteric pitch axis for an arbitrary nematic director field as an eigenvalue problem. Our definition leads to a Frenet-Serret description of an orthonormal triad determined by this axis, the director, and the mutually perpendicular direction. With this tool, we are able to compare defect structures in cholesterics, biaxial nematics, and smectics. Though they all have similar ground state manifolds, the defect structures are different and cannot, in general, be translated from one phase to the other