Properties of material in the submillimeter wave region (instrumentation and measurement of index of refraction)

The Properties of Materials in the Submillimeter Wave Region study was initiated to instrument a system and to make measurements of the complex index of refraction in the wavelength region between 0.1 to 1.0 millimeters. While refractive index data is available for a number of solids and liquids there still exists a need for an additional systematic study of dielectric properties to add to the existing data, to consider the accuracy of the existing data, and to extend measurements in this wavelength region for other selected mateials. The materials chosen for consideration would be those with useful thermal, mechanical, and electrical characteristics. The data is necessary for development of optical components which, for example, include beamsplitters, attenuators, lenses, grids, all useful for development of instrumentation in this relatively unexploited portion of the spectrum

Landscape, Race, and Power on the Indo-Afghan Frontier, c.1840-c.1880

Landscape defined a problem of colonial rule on the nineteenth-century Indo-Afghan frontier, connected, as it was, to contemporary ideas about difference, novelly articulated in racial terms. This connection was the product of numerous developments, drawing on Enlightenment ideas about race and development and on historical analogy with the late eighteenth-century Scottish Highlands, as well as the nineteenth-century ethnographic inquiry linking geographic isolation with racial preservation or descent. These ‘noble savages’ were also more likely to fall under the spell of charismatic Sufi leaders, spurring them to fierce resistance of political authority and acts of violence, and earning them a reputation for ‘fanaticism’. Landscape also presented a problem for the expression of colonial power; for the ruggedness and remoteness of the frontier made the expatriate population vulnerable in an area where the colonial presence remained thin and where criminal prosecution could be easily evaded. The consequence was the Frontier Crimes Regulation, which devolved authority for the prosecution of crime and execution of justice to the heads of tribal societies according to local custom, and the Murderous Outrages Act, which empowered colonial officers to suspend due judicial process and order anachronistic and morally abhorrent forms of punishment. Just as ideas about race were ambivalent and contradictory, so, too, was colonial law

Salt, Smuggling, and Sovereignty: The Burma-China Borderland, c. 1880–1935

The formal demarcation of what is today the Burma-China border began following the British conquest of Upper Burma from the Konbaung dynasty in 1885 and the signing of international agreements with the Qing Empire (1886, 1894, 1897), the process only completed in the 1960s. Around the turn of the century and into the twentieth, therefore, the highlands between British Burma and Qing (later Republican) China remained a contested ‘borderland’; specifically, one over which successive lowland states had never been able to exert direct control – a space James C. Scott and others have named ‘Zomia’ – but toward which they had been expanding by the mid-nineteenth century (if not earlier). This article looks not at the ways in which Zomia’s inhabitants contested this expanding state authority, which has been the focus of most work on this space, but how the British pressed their territorial claims over part of this contested borderland vis-à-vis the Chinese. Salt was a monopoly of both the Government of India (of which Burma was a province until 1935) and the Qing and Republican states. Smuggling – trade, to British eyes – salt from Burma into China thus undermined Chinese sovereignty qua the expression of the latter’s monopoly powers. Complaints about smuggling were met with ‘masterly inactivity’, not only because the colonial administration was weak in Upper Burma and along the frontier, but also because it meant the British imperial state could permit the expansion of ‘legitimate’ trade and thereby contest Chinese sovereignty qua its territorial claims over the borderland. In contrast to other works positing that smuggling over defined borders undermined state power, this article shows how a permissive attitude to complaints about smuggling undergirded British sovereignty and was very much part of the making of the border

The role of the “Inter-Life” virtual world as a creative technology to support student transition into higher education

The shape of Higher Education (HE) in the UK and internationally is changing, with wider access policies leading to greater diversity and heterogeneity in contemporary student populations world-wide. Students in the 21st Century are often described as “fragmented”; meaning they are frequently working whilst participating in a full time Degree programme. Consequently, those in the HE setting are required to become “future ready” which increasingly involves the seamless integration of new digital technologies into undergraduate programmes of teaching and learning. The present study evaluated the effectiveness of the “Inter-Life” three-dimensional virtual world as a suitable Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) tool to support the initial stages of transition from school into university. Our results demonstrate that Inter-Life is “fit for purpose” in terms of the robustness of both the educational and technical design features. We have shown that Inter-Life provides a safe space that supports induction mediated by active learning tasks using learner-generated, multi-modal transition tools. In addition, through the provision of private spaces, Inter-Life also supports and fosters the development of critical reflective thinking skills. However, in keeping with the current literature in the field, some of the students expressed a wish for more training in the functional and social skills required to navigate and experience the Inter-Life virtual world more effectively. Such findings resonate with the current debate in the field which challenges the notion of “digital natives”, but the present study has also provided some new evidence to support the role of virtual worlds for the development of a suitable community to support students undergoing transition to university

Salt and Sovereignty in Colonial Burma

Across monsoon Asia, salt is of such vital necessity that controlling its production or supply has historically been connected to the establishment and expression of political authority. On the one hand, rulers maintained the allegiance of their subjects by ensuring their access to salt of suitable price and sufficient quantity. On the other hand, denying rebels their salt was a strategy of conquest and pacification, while the necessity of salt meant it could reliably be taxed to raise state finances. This article first sets out this connection of salt and sovereignty, then examining it in the context of colonial Burma, a province of British India from its annexation until its ‘divorce’ in 1935 (effected in 1937), and thus subject to the Government of India's salt monopoly. Focusing on salt brings into view two aspects of the state (while also permitting analysis of ‘Upper Burma’, which remains rather marginal in the scholarly literature). First, the everyday state and quotidian practices constitutive of its sovereignty, which was negotiated and contested where indigenes were able to exploit the chinks in the state's administrative capacity and its knowledge deficits. Second, in turn, the lumpy topography of state power. The state not only failed to restrict salt production to the extent it desired (with the intention that indigenes would rely on imported salt, whose supply was easier to control and thus tax), but conceded to a highly complex fiscal administration, the variegations in which reflected the uneven distribution in state power – thicker in the delta and thinnest in the uplands

‘Mahomedan Fenians’: Anti-Imperialism, the Islamic World, and Irish Republican Thought, c.1848-1885

If Irish republicanism (or Fenianism) after 1848 was sometimes articulated through the critique of British imperialism in Afro-Asia, by the 1870s the Fenian command and journalists writing for the Irish-American republican press were taking a marked interest in Muslim societies under British rule. This interest developed steadily from the Indian Rebellion of 1857–8 to the Great Eastern Crisis of 1875–8, analysis of the latter illuminating the additional potential possessed by those frontiers where imperial rivalries could be manipulated to exhaust and abrade British power and prestige. Afghanistan—a buffer between British India and Russian Central Asia—held great promise, and the eruption of the Anglo-Afghan War (1878–80) presented an opportunity for the Irish cause: support for Afghans might precipitate the disintegration of British coercive power, providing in turn the opportunity for Ireland’s emancipation. Focusing on the writings of the Fenian command and reportage in the US-based Irish World, this article shows the attentiveness of Irish patriots to the spectral power of the world of Islam, which haunted the European powers, and their subversion of the Orientalist categories constructed to demonise Muslims, particularly those from the frontier most resistant to European imperialism. Fantastical and opportunistic, this short-lived burst of interest was the culmination of a longer-term process, one revealing the embeddedness of Fenianism within a world-historical moment marked by numerous imaginative projects constitutive of Islam as a world religion and a (latent) world power, and, thus, the imperial, trans-imperial and global geographies of Fenian thought

CUSTOMER ACCESS INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY (CAIT) DEPLOYMENT EVALUATION

Customer access information technology offers great potential benefits to both the organization and its customers. However, managers lack methods for evaluating these technologies and determining whether conditions exist for success. We propose a model from Marketing Science which captures factors influencing the success of a CAIT. The factors include value platform features - features of the CAIT, and location strategy features - features of the environment into which the CAIT is deployed. This model is applied to home banking, providing insights as to types of systems most likely to be successful.Information Systems Working Papers Serie

Fluorescence-based incision assay for human XPF-ERCC1 activity identifies important elements of DNA junction recognition

The structure-specific endonuclease activity of the human XPF–ERCC1 complex is essential for a number of DNA processing mechanisms that help to maintain genomic integrity. XPF–ERCC1 cleaves DNA structures such as stem–loops, bubbles or flaps in one strand of a duplex where there is at least one downstream single strand. Here, we define the minimal substrate requirements for cleavage of stem–loop substrates allowing us to develop a real-time fluorescence-based assay to measure endonuclease activity. Using this assay, we show that changes in the sequence of the duplex upstream of the incision site results in up to 100-fold variation in cleavage rate of a stem-loop substrate by XPF-ERCC1. XPF–ERCC1 has a preference for cleaving the phosphodiester bond positioned on the 3′-side of a T or a U, which is flanked by an upstream T or U suggesting that a T/U pocket may exist within the catalytic domain. In addition to an endonuclease domain and tandem helix–hairpin–helix domains, XPF has a divergent and inactive DEAH helicase-like domain (HLD). We show that deletion of HLD eliminates endonuclease activity and demonstrate that purified recombinant XPF–HLD shows a preference for binding stem–loop structures over single strand or duplex alone, suggesting a role for the HLD in initial structure recognition. Together our data describe features of XPF–ERCC1 and an accepted model substrate that are important for recognition and efficient incision activity