What’s in a name? : some reflections on naming and identity in prosopography

A prosopography will start from the identification of different individual persons among a mass of name records drawn from the primary sources. Individuals can be discerned even where all or part of the name is missing: for example, “the poor man”, is a person who has been distinguished from others by the description “poor”. But names are normally present in our records, because all human beings have them. They are easy to take for granted, and all too often they are taken for granted even by prosopographers. This paper reflects on the meaning and function of names, and explores their use as descriptions intended to designate and to categorize a single specific individual, even though there may be other persons with the same name. Name evidence is a peculiarly rich resource for the historian, but it cannot be used uncritically but has to be assessed in relation to who recorded the name as we have it – very rarely the name-bearer him/herself –, and how and why.Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologi

Situational Analysis from Two Studies Facilitating the Development of a Psycho- Cultural Rehabilitation Program for Children Affected by the 12 May 2008 Earthquake in Sichuan, China

The data presented are from two field studies: (1) a survey of 2234 current children’s caregivers; and (2) interviews with 1200 children, evaluating the children’s social, psychological and behavioural situation after the devastating Sichuan earthquake in the hard-hit Qiang ethnic community. Insights from the findings will be used to develop an evidence-based, culturally appropriate approach on the best use of cultural resources to facilitate the children’s post-disaster rehabilitation. Evidence from the first study indicated that the disaster had a significant impact on the ethnic Qiang children and their families in regard to personal loss, physical injury, social relationships and psychological well-being. Evidence from the second study further indicated: (1) the need for a sustained response to the increasing vulnerability of these children; (2) a very limited effect from outside community visitors, whose one-off inconsistent, non-indigenous approaches and psychological counselling, drawing on the western, individualistic, approach to counseling and psychological/ psychiatric therapies and non-Qiang approaches do not carry over into the children’s everyday life in their own contexts; (3) that little is known about psycho-cultural factors as key resources for supporting an effective response to disaster for ethnic Qiang children; (4) the greatest need for a sustainable effect is therefore to build a culturally appropriate approach through making best use of cultural resources drawing on contributions of both volunteers and official workers from various disciplines and using the Qiang traditional ways to promote the children’s psycho-cultural rehabilitation

Proceedings of the workshop "Standard Model at the LHC" University College London 30 March - 1 April 2009

Proceedings from a 3-day discussion on Standard Model discoveries with the first LHC dataComment: 9 contributions to the proceedings of the LHC Standard Model worksho

Emulation Techniques for Scenario and Classical Control Design of Tokamak Plasmas

The optimisation of scenarios and design of real-time-control in tokamaks, especially for machines still in design phase, requires a comprehensive exploration of solutions to the Grad-Shafranov (GS) equation over a high-dimensional space of plasma and coil parameters. Emulators can bypass the numerical issues in the GS equation, if a large enough library of equilibria is available. We train an ensemble of neural networks to emulate the typical shape-control targets (separatrix at midplane, X-points, divertor strike point, flux expansion, poloidal beta) as a function of plasma parameters and active coil currents for the range of plasma configurations relevant to spherical tokamaks with a super-X divertor, with percent-level accuracy. This allows a quick calculation of the classical-control shape matrices, potentially allowing real-time calculation at any point in a shot with sub-ms latency. We devise a hyperparameter sampler to select the optimal network architectures and quantify uncertainties on the model predictions. To generate the relevant training set, we devise a Markov-Chain Monte Carlo algorithm to produce large libraries of forward Grad-Shafranov solutions without the need for user intervention. The algorithm promotes equilibria with desirable properties, while avoiding parameter combinations resulting in problematic profiles or numerical issues in the integration of the GS equation.Comment: Physics of Plasmas in print, ICDDPS-4 special issue, 15 pages, 6 figure

Geophysical imaging of ophiolite structure in the United Arab Emirates

The Oman-United Arab Emirates ophiolite has been used extensively to document the geological processes that form oceanic crust. The geometry of the ophiolite, its extension into the Gulf of Oman, and the nature of the crust that underlies it are, however, unknown. Here, we show the ophiolite forms a high velocity, high density, >15 km thick east-dipping body that during emplacement flexed down a previously rifted continental margin thereby contributing to subsidence of flanking sedimentary basins. The western limit of the ophiolite is defined onshore by the Semail thrust while the eastern limit extends several km offshore, where it is defined seismically by a ~40–45°, east-dipping, normal fault. The fault is interpreted as the southwestern margin of an incipient suture zone that separates the Arabian plate from in situ Gulf of Oman oceanic crust and mantle presently subducting northwards beneath the Eurasian plate along the Makran trench

The integrated academic information system support for education 3.0 in higher education institution: lecturer perspective

Education 3.0 has been implemented in many higher education institutions (HEIs). Education 3.0 has been directed the institution toward better educational experience. But on the other hands, the implementation of Education 3.0 also caused some problems. Previous research has found administrative problem experienced by the lecturer. This research explores deeper from the lecturer and suggested the solution from lecturer perspective, combined with information technology capabilities owned by the HEIs. The research used a case study as the method and conducted a qualitative research with a semi-structured interview. The interview analysis has found that the increase of the administrative processes is caused by online and offline administrative activities. The online activities are from e-learning and the offline activities are from traditional learning (face-to-face). The administrative processes also involved the academic information system (AIS). Simplified all of the administrative processes are more preferred. To overcome the problems, integrating the AIS and e-learning become necessary. This research suggests transforming the existing AIS into an integrated AIS and hopes the solution can simplify the administration process