Resiliency to Vulnerabilities and Violence in the Caribbean

On September 8, 2022, Dr. W. Andy Knight, a distinguished professor of International Relations in the Department of Political Science at the University of Alberta, presented on Resiliency to Vulnerabilities and Violence in the Caribbean. The presentation was followed by a question-and-answer period from the audience and CASIS Vancouver executives that delved into discussions on important dimensions currently affecting the Caribbean, such as transitioning from independent state-based security to regional security cooperation; developing financial stability amongst Caribbean nations; and promoting inclusiveness of Caribbean Canadians, along with an understanding of the diversity and needs of the population within the Caribbean

Reduced density matrix approach to ultracold few-fermion systems in one dimension

The variational determination of the two-fermion reduced density matrix is described for trapped, ultracold few-fermion systems in one dimension with equal spin populations. This is accomplished by formulating the problem as a semi-definite program, with the two-fermion reduced density matrix being subject to the D, Q, G, T1, and T2 $N$-representability conditions. The ground-state energies of $N=2,4$, and $8$ fermion systems are found by utilising an augmented Lagrangian method for semi-definite programming. The ground-state energies are found to match extremely well to those determined by full-configuration interaction and coupled-cluster calculations. This demonstrates the utility of the reduced density matrix approach to strongly correlated, ultracold few-fermion systems.Comment: 13 pages, 3 figure

New approaches to mapping and managing palaeochannel resources in the light of future environmental change : a case study from the Trent Valley, UK

Abandoned river channels may provide rich primary sources of palaeoenvironmental and cultural information elucidating landscape evolution, climate change, vegetation history and human impact, especially since the beginning of the Holocene epoch. However, although potentially an important resource, palaeochannels are not often recorded systematically and only rarely enjoy robust statutory protection (in the UK as Sites of Special Scientific Interest). In consequence, it is challenging to mitigate and manage this important geoarchaeological resource effectively within the UK planning framework. Whilst palaeochannels have long been recognised on aerial photographs and historic maps, the advent of airborne laser scanning (Lidar) and other remote-sensing technologies has provided a hitherto unforeseen opportunity to record such landforms and related features at a catchment scale. This paper provides a case study from the Nottinghamshire reach of the Trent Valley, where a desk-based methodology that is now being extended across the entire catchment has been developed for recording, geospatially locating and defining the attributes of observed palaeochannels. After outlining the methodology, we consider how this approach to resource management can aid archaeological research and future heritage management, especially in the light of predicted climate and environmental change

Repacking ‘privacy’ for a networked world

In this paper we examine the notion of privacy as promoted in the digital economy and how it has been taken up as a design challenge in the fields of CSCW, HCI and Ubiquitous Computing. Against these prevalent views we present an ethnomethodological study of digital privacy practices in 20 homes in the UK and France, concentrating in particular upon people’s use of passwords, their management of digital content, and the controls they exercise over the extent to which the online world at large can penetrate their everyday lives. In explicating digital privacy practices in the home we find an abiding methodological concern amongst members to manage the potential ‘attack surface’ of the digital on everyday life occasioned by interaction in and with the networked world. We also find, as a feature of this methodological preoccupation, that privacy dissolves into a heterogeneous array of relationship management practices. Accordingly we propose that ‘privacy’ has little utility as a focus for design, and suggest instead that a more productive way forward would be to concentrate on supporting people’s evident interest in managing their relationships in and with the networked world

Dynamic/Jitter Assessment of Multiple Potential HabEx Structural Designs

One of the driving structural requirements of the Habitable Exo-Planet (HabEx) telescope is to maintain Line Of Sight (LOS) stability between the Primary Mirror (PM) and Secondary Mirror (SM) of 5 mas. Dynamic analyses of two configurations of a proposed (HabEx) 4 meter off-axis telescope structure were performed to predict effects of jitter on primary/secondary mirror alignment. The dynamic disturbance used as the forcing function was the James Webb Space Telescope reaction wheel assembly vibration emission specification level. The objective of these analyses was to predict "order-of-magnitude" performance for various structural configurations which will roll into efforts to define the HabEx structural design's global architecture. Two variations of the basic architectural design were analyzed. Relative motion between the PM and the SM for each design configuration are reported