12,625 research outputs found

    Finite-element analysis on cantilever beams coated with magnetostrictive material

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    The main focus of this paper is to highlight some of the key criteria in successful utilization of magnetostrictive materials within a cantilever based microelectromechanical system (MEMS). The behavior of coated cantilever beams is complex and many authors have offered solutions using analytical techniques. In this study, the FEMLAB finite-element multiphysics package was used to incorporate the full magnetostrictive strain tensor and couple it with partial differential equations from structural mechanics to solve simple cantilever systems. A wide range of geometries and material properties were solved to study the effects on cantilever deflection and the system resonance frequencies. The latter were found by the use of an eigen-frequency solver. The models have been tailored for comparison with other such data within the field and results also go beyond previous work

    Inkatha's young militants: reconsidering political violence in South Africa

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    South Africa's township revolts have generated much excellent research on the central role played by rebellious, urban youth. This article explores a parallel set of intergenerational conflicts that opened up in the marginal rural districts of the Natal Midlands, which were exacerbated by apartheid's forced removals of labour tenants from commercial farming districts to crowded ‘Native Reserves’ in the 1970s. At this time of deepening poverty, elders worried about the rising incidence of juvenile petty crime, particularly amongst the teenagers who increasingly took itinerant, seasonal labour on the commercial farms. Some of these young migrants, unable to find steady factory work at a time of mounting unemployment, also played a leading role in the illicit, sometimes criminal networks of South Africa's growing popular economy. Finally, I show how some of these youths were mobilized by Inkatha during the war against the African National Congress in Johannesburg – often to the revulsion of older men who abhorred their socially harmful, thuggish violence, which spiralled uncontrollably along migrant routes. Thus the political violence was often known as the udlame: a brutal savagery that destroys households, communities and society

    Mandela, Human Rights and the Making of South Africa’s Transformative Constitution

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    Since 1994, numerous books have been written about South Africa’s leadership of the human rights revolution. Such narratives lie at the heart of Nelson Mandela’s Long Walk to Freedom and George Bizos’ Odyssey to Freedom: A Memoir by the World-Renowned Human Rights Advocate, Friend and Lawyer to Nelson Mandela. More recently, historians have taken a clearer-eyed view of the African National Congress’s (ANC) late conversion to the language of rights. They have mainly looked at how the ANC, an organisation rhetorically committed to revolution and suspicious of ‘bourgeois rights’, made an abrupt about-turn and adopted human rights discourses in the late 1980s. This article takes a different course, opening up debates about the different meanings that rival groups of anti-apartheid lawyers attributed to the notion of human rights. At the start of the 1980s, there was little common ground between the mainly liberal, mainly white, Lawyers for Human Rights, the Black Lawyers Association’s demands for ‘rights and recognition’ and ANC exiles’ search for ‘a liberated law’ and ‘popular justice’. I trace how these three broad strands of legal thinking converged during the 1980s around a common set of ideas: speaking of ‘positive freedoms’ that would undo the inequalities of the apartheid regime. By shepherding together these different groupings, the ANC leadership entered the constitutional negotiations that would usher in South Africa’s democratic transition as the champion of human rights and ‘transformative constitutionalism’. None the less, sharp disagreements remained between rival groupings. This is one reason, I suggest, why ‘Mandela’s constitution’ has recently become a lightning rod for bitter debates about race and inequality and, more broadly, the meaning of human rights and transformation

    MBA quality: An examination of stakeholder perspectives

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    The research project is set within the context of the ongoing debate regarding the quality of MBA programmes in the UK and contextualizes and articulates the concerns regarding the quality of MBA programmes emanating from within and outside the teaching profession. The MBA environment in the UK is examined in detail and both typologies of MBA programmes and the strategies of MBA providers are discussed. The provision of the MBA in the UK is set within the context of the wider higher education quality debate. The relevance of prevailing quality theory and commercial quality models as ways of enhancing MBA programme quality are evaluated, and quality perspectives of key MBA stakeholders are compared. There is also an exploration of the means by which MBA Directors exploit the notion of quality in order to achieve their personal organisational goals. The notion that quality theory can best be understood as a form of anxiety relieving, 'religious' phenomena is discussed. The ontological and epistemological position taken within the study is explained and the issues surrounding the measurement of attitudes are examined. Three groups of MBA stakeholders: MBA Directors, prospective MBA students and practising MBA students are questioned with regard to their views on MBA quality using a mixture of interviews and critical incident technique. The resulting data are subjected to content analysis. The contribution to knowledge can be seen in terms of the results that indicate that individual MBA Directors operate a variety of quality perspectives, depending upon the particular circumstances, and use different ways of communicating their quality vision and ensuring programme quality. Prospective students undertake programmes for numerous reasons, and make their final programme choices in line with the way in which their expectations meet their perceptions of the programmes they are considering. The findings also indicate a strong relationship between satisfaction and expectations with regard to practising MBA students. In conclusion, the various stakeholder perspectives are compared and a series of 'quality gaps' are presented and discussed. Suggestions are subsequently made regarding possible future research

    Writing the Histories of South Africa’s Cities after Apartheid

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    Pitfalls in developing coastal climate adaptation responses

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    Increasing awareness of the risks to coastal communities and infrastructure posed by sea level rise and possible climate-induced changes to the frequency and intensity of catchment flooding events have triggered a large number of studies that have assessed the risk, and developed a prioritisation of actions. These prioritised action recommendations are typically encapsulated in climate adaptation plans and pathways documents, risk reduction strategies, and climate action plans. These studies typically involve a vulnerability assessment task and an action prioritisation task, often performed in the same study. Most of the focus on research and method development over recent decades has been on the first task that aims to quantify the vulnerability of coastal communities and infrastructure. It is argued here that as a result of this emphasis on assessing vulnerability, at the cost of adequate consideration of response actions, along with the linear ‘fix and forget’ management approach to climate adaptation, has led to a lack of uptake in coastal climate adaptation studies and strategies. To this end the aim of the work presented here is to highlight common shortfalls in this fix and forget approach and in particular in the response prioritisation task. Ways that these shortfalls can be avoided, based on knowledge from decision theory, are presented

    Science and Religion.

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    Monte Carlo simulation of baryon and lepton number violating processes at high energies

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    We report results obtained with the first complete event generator for electroweak baryon and lepton number violating interactions at supercolliders. We find that baryon number violation would be very difficult to establish, but lepton number violation can be seen provided at least a few hundred L violating events are available with good electron or muon identification in the energy range 10 GeV to 1 TeV.Comment: 40 Pages uuencoded LaTeX (20 PostScript figures included), Cavendish-HEP-93/6, CERN-TH.7090/9

    Annual Report of President Warmoth T. Gibbs to the Board of Trustees

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    Page 5 of President Warmoth T. Gibbs’ annual report to the Board of Trustees submitted on May 29, 1960. The report entails Dr. Gibbs’ response to the Sit-Ins.https://digital.library.ncat.edu/atfour/1008/thumbnail.jp

    Maya Zooarchaeology: An Integrative Approach

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