Objects and images

My work often involves photographic source material as well as surrealistic forms. Two primary influences, René Magritte and Gerhard Richter, can be seen as at odds with each other in many respects. Drawing parallels and distinctions, I explore relationships in the work of Magritte, Richter and myself

The development of secretarial and administrative support staff: influential factors in the identification of need

Merged with duplicate record 10026.1/583 on 27.02.2017 by CS (TIS)Radical advances in microelectronics applications during the 1970's precipitated rapid developments in new office technology which was held to threaten the very existence of the traditional secretarial task role. Many contemporary commentators conceived a correlative link between the emergence of the new technology and the displacement of administrative support staff, whilst others predicted that a form of "Taylorism" was about to invade the office environment with all manner of dehumanising connotations. The reality proved somewhat different and, far from eradicating the role of the secretary or reducing it to assembly-line proportions, the technology helped to facilitate the flattening of organisational structures, thereby exposing secretaries to new opportunities as they asserted control over the new communications. Companies subsequently perceived the benefits of horizontally enlarging secretarial roles to encompass paraprofessional activities such as personnel, finance, sales and marketing, etc., or vertically extending them to undertake supervisory or monitorial tasks that were previously the domain of functional managers. Thus, the training and development of secretarial and administrative support staff became of paramount importance, yet this was frequently left to the vagaries of chance, to the whim of management, or to questionable analytical practices. The following thesis discusses the role of the secretary in its inner and outer context and explores the literature to ascertain weaknesses in contemporary approaches to needs analysis. Moreover, from a survey of Times Top 1,000 Companies, it examines the forces for change that are influencing these organisations and charts the ways that secretarial and administrative support staff are increasingly addressing performance gaps in corporate indices of effectiveness. Equally, in combining a survey of secretaries, it establishes the range of competencies that are considered important in reconciling individual, task and organisational goals and suggests a diagnostic procedure that might effectively accomplish this without the biases and concerns that have resolutely pervaded needs analysis methodologies

Development of Smart, Compact Fusion Diagnostics using Field-Programmable Gate Arrays

Abstract: Fusion research requires high quality diagnostics to understand the complex physical processes involved. Traditional analogue systems are complex, large and expensive, and expansion of diagnostic capabilities is often impossible without building a completely new system at considerable expense. Field-programmable gate array (FPGA) technology can provide a solution to this problem. By implementing complex functionality and digital signal processing on an FPGA chip, diagnostic hardware can be greatly simplified and compacted. In this thesis we describe the enhancements of two diagnostics for the MAST-Upgrade tokamak using FPGA technology. Firstly, the design of the back end electronics for the new divertor bolometer is described. Results of tests of the new electronics at a number of sites, including lab-based testing and tokamak installations, are also presented. We demonstrate the correct functionality of the electronics and illustrate a number of important effects which must be taken into account when interpreting bolometer data on MAST-U. Secondly, we describe the new control and acquisition electronics developed for the MAST-U divertor Langmuir probe diagnostic. Much of the analogue control circuitry of the previous system has been upgraded to a digital implementation on an FPGA, which results in a significantly more compact and cost effective design. Given that MAST-Upgrade will feature around 850 Langmuir probes, these improvements are extremely important to keep the diagnostic manageable. Again, results are presented from the testing of the system at several sites, which both demonstrate the correct functionality of the new system and provide information on the diagnostic behaviour which needs to be accounted for when interpreting the probe data during MAST-U experiments

Institutional memory: we need a more dynamic understanding of the way institutions remember

Institutional memory is central to the task of governing. But existing understandings of how institutional memory works are too limiting and rooted in an ontological falsehood, argue Jack Corbett, Dennis C. Grube, Heather Lovell, and Rodney Scott. They explain why a more dynamic approach is needed

Singular memory or institutional memories? Toward a dynamic approach

The ability of the civil service to act as a reservoir of institutional memory is central to the pragmatic task of governing. But there is a growing body of scholarship that suggests the bureaucracy is failing at this core task. In this article, we distinguish between two different ways of thinking about institutional memory: one “static” and one “dynamic.” In the former, memory is singular and held in document form, especially by files and procedures. In the latter, memories reside with people and are thus dispersed across the array of actors that make up the differentiated polity. Drawing on four policy examples from three countries, we argue that a more dynamic understanding of the way institutions remember is both empirically salient and normatively desirable. We conclude that the current conceptualization of institutional memory needs to be recalibrated to fit the types of policy learning practices required by modern collaborative governance.... thanks are due to the Australia and New Zealand School of Government for the grant that funded the research, and to the Institute for the Study of Social Change at the University of Tasmania for its support. Some initial research assistance was provided by Thomas Butler. Heather Lovell would also like to thank the Australian Research Council, which part funded the Victorian Smart Meter case under its Future Fellowships program—Project ID FT140100646

The Phenotypic and Genetic Relation of Chronic Inflammation to Chronic Pain

Inflammation is essential to the health and normative function of any living animal. The immune system has provided mechanisms of survival to animals and more primitive organisms for millennia, and the dysregulation of those ancient mechanisms are vital to the onset and maintenance of disease. There are many lines of evidence converging on the notion that chronic inflammation is a large determinant of an individual&rsquo;s health. Despite this convergence, chronic inflammation&rsquo;s relation to chronic pain is largely unknown. Here, we attempted to characterize that relationship both phenotypically and genomically in a population-sized cohort. To do so, we implemented three different structural equation models to understand how C-reactive protein (CRP)&mdash;a biomarker of low-grade systemic inflammation&mdash;relates to the latent structure of chronic pain. In the first model, we hypothesized that the phenotypic relation of CRP to a set of pain phenotypes that were primarily inflammatory was mediated by a single latent factor. We found little to no evidence for the claim that CRP related inflammatory pain was being mediated by a common latent factor. Rather, we found that the relationship of CRP to each individual pain phenotype was a better fit of the data. For the second model, we tested a similar hypothesis that the phenotypic relationship between CRP and chronic pain (not just inflammatory pain) was mediated by set of three factors that were implied by the genetic covariance of each pain condition. We found evidence supporting this hypothesis, though there was suggestion that the latent genetic structure was not an optimal fit to the phenotypic data. In the third and final model, we found a robust genetic association between chronic inflammation and the three chronic pain factors mentioned before. This genetic association indicated that an individual&rsquo;s genes are at least partly affecting inflammatory related chronic pain. In conclusion, we found evidence for associations between chronic inflammation and chronic pain both at the genetic and phenotypic level. Future work should aim to use our findings as a foundation for discerning CRP&rsquo;s functional relation to both the latent structure and observable etiology of chronic pain.&nbsp; </div

Adorno under the spell: Utopia, praxis and the limits of critique

This thesis presents an interpretation of Theodor W. Adorno’s philosophy that emphasises the notion of the spell. This has been commented on, but rarely centred, in previous scholarship on Adorno. The spell represents Adorno’s understanding of the way in which totalising trends in society (including ‘identity thought’, and the tendency toward ever-greater integration, hierarchy and domination) exerts an ideological force that is so great it informs the way in which we are able to think and act in the world. I argue that, in light of this, Adorno’s negative dialectics should be understood as an attempt to criticise the spellbound world immanently, i.e. without postulating any alternative vision, but only acting to reveal what is excluded under the spell and what, therefore, is false within it. This reading builds on recent work on Adorno’s ‘inverse theology’, extending this to an inverse theory of truth in Adorno, and taking seriously his argument that negative dialectics holds only so long as we are in the ‘wrong state of things’ (ND 11). For all this, however, Adorno is motivated in his critique by a strong sense of utopian possibility and the potential, however distant, of moving beyond the spell. The interplay between these two positions causes difficulty for Adorno at times, particularly in his account of experience, and notoriously when it comes to the question of political action. I argue that there are nevertheless grounds to believe that Adorno’s utopian urge and his critical practice can be reconciled, and I give a distinctive argument that changing social and political conditions since Adorno’s death could allow for meaningful, legitimate praxis that could lead us toward overcoming the spell, which I establish through the politics of climate breakdown

High-charge electron beams from a laser-wakefield accelerator driven by a CO2 laser

Laser-wakefield accelerators (LWFAs) driven by widely available 100s TW-class near-infrared laser systems have been shown to produce GeV-level electron beams with 10s-100s pC charge in centimetre-scale plasma. As the strength of the ponderomotive force is proportional to the square of the laser wavelength, more efficient LWFAs could be realised using longer wavelength lasers. Here we present a numerical study showing that 10.6 µm, sub-picosecond CO2 lasers with peak powers of 100-800 TW can produce high-charge electron beams, exceeding that possible from LWFAs driven by femtosecond near-infrared lasers by up to three orders of magnitude. Depending on the laser and plasma parameters, electron beams with 10s~MeV to GeV energy and 1-100 nC charge can be generated in 10-200 mm long plasma or gas media without requiring external guiding. The laser-to-electron energy conversion efficiency can be up to 70% and currents of 100s kA are achievable. A CO2 laser driven LWFA could be useful for applications requiring compact and industrially robust accelerators and radiations sources