Why Symbolic Representation Frames Parliamentary Public Engagement

The UK Parliament’s activity in public engagement has recently expanded considerably. Faced with declining levels of trust, it has invested considerable time and resources to new activities focusing specifically on engagement: educational resources and cultural events among many others. This embodies a new role for parliament of increasing importance particularly in the context of the twenty-first century parliament. This article analyses the aims of public engagement and its consequences for representation. We explore the potential representative role of public engagement, identifying key changes that have affected the relationship between public and parliament. We utilise evidence from documentary analysis and elite in-depth interviews with parliamentary officials to show that public engagement planning aims to develop amongst the public a sense of connectivity that relies on more collective and symbolic forms of representation, which seek to present the institution detached from its actors and politics. We utilise constructivist representation theories to support our analysis

A Simplified Description of Char Combustion

A simplified analysis of carbonaceous particle combustion is presented that includes the effects of pore diffusion and growth as well as gas-phase heat and mass transfer. The combustion dynamics are described by time-dependent equations for particle temperature, radius and a number of intraparticle conversion variables. These are coupled to pseudosteady equations for gas-phase transport and internal reaction and diffusion. The differential equations for gas-phase transport are reduced by quadrature to a nonlinear boundary condition to the intraparticle boundary value problem. Numerical calculations are performed for conditions relevant to pulverized coal combustion. An analytical solution of the intraparticle problem, pertinent to the regime of strong diffusional limitations, reduces the intraparticle solution into a set of two quadratures which drastically simplifies the numerical calculations. The simplified intraparticle solution is in excellent agreement with the full solution at 1800 K free stream temperature and fair agreement at 1500 K