647 research outputs found

    The African warlord revisited

    Get PDF
    To date, warlordism in Africa has been viewed solely negatively. This has come about, in part, because of the analytical lenses that have been used. Typically, warlordism has been examined at the state level; and behavioural traits, rather than definitionally necessary components, have been the focus. In effect, ‘warlord’ has been confused with other violent actors. I suggest here a reconceptualisation ‘from below’, which takes into account variation in types of warlordism, and which allows for both positive and negative effects of warlordism on society and the state

    Ecological Invasion, Roughened Fronts, and a Competitor's Extreme Advance: Integrating Stochastic Spatial-Growth Models

    Full text link
    Both community ecology and conservation biology seek further understanding of factors governing the advance of an invasive species. We model biological invasion as an individual-based, stochastic process on a two-dimensional landscape. An ecologically superior invader and a resident species compete for space preemptively. Our general model includes the basic contact process and a variant of the Eden model as special cases. We employ the concept of a "roughened" front to quantify effects of discreteness and stochasticity on invasion; we emphasize the probability distribution of the front-runner's relative position. That is, we analyze the location of the most advanced invader as the extreme deviation about the front's mean position. We find that a class of models with different assumptions about neighborhood interactions exhibit universal characteristics. That is, key features of the invasion dynamics span a class of models, independently of locally detailed demographic rules. Our results integrate theories of invasive spatial growth and generate novel hypotheses linking habitat or landscape size (length of the invading front) to invasion velocity, and to the relative position of the most advanced invader.Comment: The original publication is available at www.springerlink.com/content/8528v8563r7u2742

    The limitations of whiteness and the boundaries of Englishness: second-generation Irish identifications and positionings in multiethnic Britain

    Get PDF
    The focus of this article is the second-generation Irish in England. It is based on data collected as part of the Irish 2 project, which examined processes of identity formation amongst the second-generation Irish population in England and Scotland. The article examines and maps identifications and positionings of second-generation Irish people and discusses how two hegemonic domains - Ireland and England - intersect in the lives of the children of Irish-born parents, with material and psychological consequences. Their positionings in multiethnic Britain are compared with those of ‘visible’ minority ethnic groups, and their narratives of belonging and non-belonging are analysed in terms of the limitations of whiteness and the boundaries of Englishness

    Coalescence of nanoscale metal clusters: Molecular-dynamics study

    Full text link
    We study the coalescence of nanoscale metal clusters in an inert-gas atmosphere using constant-energy molecular dynamics. The coalescence proceeds via atomic diffusion with the release of surface energy raising the temperature. If the temperature exceeds the melting point of the coalesced cluster, a molten droplet forms. If the temperature falls between the melting point of the larger cluster and those of the smaller clusters, a metastable molten droplet forms and freezes.Comment: 5 figure

    Time-integrated luminosity recorded by the BABAR detector at the PEP-II e+e- collider

    Get PDF
    This article is the Preprint version of the final published artcile which can be accessed at the link below.We describe a measurement of the time-integrated luminosity of the data collected by the BABAR experiment at the PEP-II asymmetric-energy e+e- collider at the ϒ(4S), ϒ(3S), and ϒ(2S) resonances and in a continuum region below each resonance. We measure the time-integrated luminosity by counting e+e-→e+e- and (for the ϒ(4S) only) e+e-→μ+μ- candidate events, allowing additional photons in the final state. We use data-corrected simulation to determine the cross-sections and reconstruction efficiencies for these processes, as well as the major backgrounds. Due to the large cross-sections of e+e-→e+e- and e+e-→μ+μ-, the statistical uncertainties of the measurement are substantially smaller than the systematic uncertainties. The dominant systematic uncertainties are due to observed differences between data and simulation, as well as uncertainties on the cross-sections. For data collected on the ϒ(3S) and ϒ(2S) resonances, an additional uncertainty arises due to ϒ→e+e-X background. For data collected off the ϒ resonances, we estimate an additional uncertainty due to time dependent efficiency variations, which can affect the short off-resonance runs. The relative uncertainties on the luminosities of the on-resonance (off-resonance) samples are 0.43% (0.43%) for the ϒ(4S), 0.58% (0.72%) for the ϒ(3S), and 0.68% (0.88%) for the ϒ(2S).This work is supported by the US Department of Energy and National Science Foundation, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (Canada), the Commissariat à l’Energie Atomique and Institut National de Physique Nucléaire et de Physiquedes Particules (France), the Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung and Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (Germany), the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (Italy), the Foundation for Fundamental Research on Matter (The Netherlands), the Research Council of Norway, the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation, Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (Spain), and the Science and Technology Facilities Council (United Kingdom). Individuals have received support from the Marie-Curie IEF program (European Union) and the A.P. Sloan Foundation (USA)

    Isothermal and Cyclic Aging of 310S Austenitic Stainless Steel

    Get PDF
    Unusual damage and high creep strain rates have been observed on components made of 310S stainless steel subjected to thermal cycles between room temperature and 1143 K (870 °C). Microstructural characterization of such components after service evidenced high contents in sigma phase which formed first from δ-ferrite and then from γ-austenite. To get some insight into this microstructural evolution, isothermal and cyclic aging of 310S stainless steel has been studied experimentally and discussed on the basis of numerical simulations. The higher contents of sigma phase observed after cyclic agings than after isothermal treatments are clearly associated with nucleation triggered by thermal cycling

    TEM-EELS study of low-friction superlattice TiAlN/VN coating: the wear mechanisms

    Get PDF
    A 20-50 nm thick tribofilm was generated on the worn surface of a multilayer coating TiAlN/VN after dry sliding test against an alumina counterpart. The tribofilm was characterized by applying analytical transmission electron microscopy techniques with emphasis on detailed electron energy loss spectrometry and energy loss near edge structure analysis. Pronounced oxygen in the tribofilm indicated a predominant tribo-oxidation wear. Structural changes in the inner-shell ionization edges of N, Ti and V suggested decomposition of nitride fragments

    Search for direct production of charginos and neutralinos in events with three leptons and missing transverse momentum in √s = 7 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

    Get PDF
    A search for the direct production of charginos and neutralinos in final states with three electrons or muons and missing transverse momentum is presented. The analysis is based on 4.7 fb−1 of proton–proton collision data delivered by the Large Hadron Collider and recorded with the ATLAS detector. Observations are consistent with Standard Model expectations in three signal regions that are either depleted or enriched in Z-boson decays. Upper limits at 95% confidence level are set in R-parity conserving phenomenological minimal supersymmetric models and in simplified models, significantly extending previous results
    corecore