Marrying European and Domestic Politics? The Marriage Referendum in Croatia and Value-Based Euroscepticism

On 1 December 2013, Croatia voted in a referendum on the constitutional definition of marriage. Whilst recent scholarship highlighted the symbolism nature of the referendum in domestic politics, its European dimension has not been reflected on.Using Leconte’s notion of value-based Euroscepticism this article explores the role of European politics in the marriage referendum, using electoral data at the municipal level. As the analysis demonstrates that the referendum, at least partly, was a proactive attempt to halt the Europeanisation of same-sex marriage, the article also sheds light on local resistance to EU’s homonationalist politics

Activities of the Pilot Land Data System project

The University of Maryland's Remote Sensing Systems Laboratory submitted to NASA/Goddard an interim progress report on the work being conducted within its Pilot Land Data System IPLDS project. The Remote Sensing Systems Laboratory addressed the following tasks: (1) identify data types and data sources needed to describe the selected test sites in collaboration with Goddard's Hydrological Sciences Branch; (2) define the procedures necessary to access/acquire this data; (3) conduct meetings with the PLDS Systems Engineering Group to identify functional specification priorities for PLDS development; (4) assemble documentation on historical remotely sensed imagery and transfer of such information to the PLDS Data Management Group; (5) collect data identified by Goodard's Hydrological Sciences Branch for data set inventory in PLD; (6) develop a Workstation-PLDS system interface over high speed lines, (7) develop and test through a Phase 1 demonstration of a micro workstation to access PLDS; and (8) establish interdepartmental agreement of development of computer link for electronic access of water resources data from USGS

Definition and testing of the hydrologic component of the pilot land data system

The specific aim was to develop within the Pilot Land Data System (PLDS) software design environment, an easily implementable and user friendly geometric correction procedure to readily enable the georeferencing of imagery data from the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) onboard the NOAA series spacecraft. A software subsystem was developed within the guidelines set by the PLDS development environment utilizing NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) Image Analysis Facility's (IAF's) Land Analysis Software (LAS) coding standards. The IAS current program development environment, the Transportable Applications Executive (TAE), operates under a VAX VMS operating system and was used as the user interface. A brief overview of the ICARUS algorithm that was implemented in the set of functions developed, is provided. The functional specifications decription is provided, and a list of the individual programs and directory names containing the source and executables installed in the IAF system are listed. A user guide is provided for the LAS system documentation format for the three functions developed

Dynamics and Rheology of Biaxial Liquid Crystal Polymers

In this thesis we derive a hydrodynamical kinetic theory to study the orientational response of a mesoscopic system of nematic liquid crystals in the presence of an external flow field. Various problems have been attempted in this direction. First, we understand the steady-state behavior of uniaxial LCPs under an imposed elongational flow, electric and magnetic field respectively. We show that (1) the Smoluchowski equation can be cast into a generic form, (2) the external field is parallel to one of the eigenvectors of the second moment tensor, and (3) the steady state probability density function is of the Boltzmann type. In the next problem, we study the mono-domain dynamics of rigid rod and platelet suspensions in a linear flow and a steady magnetic field. The flows with a rotational component is mapped to simple shear with rate parameter subject to a transverse magnetic field with strength parameter and the irrotational flows are reduced into a triaxial extensional flow with two extensional rate parameters. For rotational flows, various in-plane and out-of-plane stable steady attractors emerge. For irrotational flows, the biaxial equilibria is characterized generically in terms of an explicit Boltzmann distribution, providing a natural generalization of the analytical results on pure nematic equilibria. Finally, we present the dynamics of a mesoscopic system of biaxial liquid crystal polymers in the presence of a homogenous shear flow. The Smoluchowski equation is derived in the rotating frame and solved using a specially formulated Wigner-Galerkin approximation in selected regions of the material parameter space and a range of accessible shear rates, to investigate the stable mesoscopic states and robust structures

Development of a prototype spatial information processing system for hydrologic research

Significant advances have been made in the last decade in the areas of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and spatial analysis technology, both in hardware and software. Science user requirements are so problem specific that currently no single system can satisfy all of the needs. The work presented here forms part of a conceptual framework for an all-encompassing science-user workstation system. While definition and development of the system as a whole will take several years, it is intended that small scale projects such as the current work will address some of the more short term needs. Such projects can provide a quick mechanism to integrate tools into the workstation environment forming a larger, more complete hydrologic analysis platform. Described here are two components that are very important to the practical use of remote sensing and digital map data in hydrology. Described here is a graph-theoretic technique to rasterize elevation contour maps. Also described is a system to manipulate synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data files and extract soil moisture data

Kinetics and Mechanism of Sulfation Reactions

Roasting of metallic sulfides have been studies by a large number of investigators in recent years. Wadsworth, McCabe in U.S.A. and Smirnov and his group have contrib-uted to our understanding of the roasting mechanism to a very considerable extent. On the basis of these works, two kinds of mechanisms have been proposed for the formation of metallic sulfate from metallic sulfide and oxygen. One of the theory suggests a direct formation of metallic sulfate, whereas the other theory assumes prior formation of metallic oxide of SO2 to SO3, which combines with metallic oxide to give sulfate. Present investigation is aimed at further clearing up the mechanism of sulfate formation and estabilishing the role of individuality of the system on a more generalised basis