Book review: Symbolic power, politics and intellectuals: the political sociology of Pierre Bourdieu

"Symbolic Power, Politics and Intellectuals: The Political Sociology of Pierre Bourdieu." David L. Swartz. University of Chicago Press. May 2013. --- Power is the central organizing principle of all social life, from culture and education to stratification and taste. And there is no more prominent name in the analysis of power than that of Pierre Bourdieu. In Symbolic Power, Politics, and Intellectuals, David L. Swartz delves into Bourdieu’s work to show how central – but often overlooked – power and politics are to an understanding of sociology. This book can be regarded as a superb piece of analysis, as well as a great read, and one which successfully sheds light on a neglected aspect of Bourdieu’s work, concludes Luke McDonagh

Predicted vs Measured Initial Camber in Precast Prestressed Concrete Girders

Prestressing of concrete is the introduction of permanent internal stresses in a structure or system in order to improve its performance. Concrete is strong in compression but weak in tension. The tensile strength of concrete is approximately 10% of the concrete’s compressive strength. Prestressing strands helps counteract this by introducing compressive stress in the area that will experience tensile stress because of the service load. In precast prestressed concrete girders, strands are placed in the bottom flange of the girder. These strands are tensioned to approximately 75% of their ultimate tensile capacity. After placing the concrete and after the required compressive strength has been achieved, the strands are cut and the tension forces transfer from the strands to the concrete. This creates a large compressive stress in the bottom flange. The eccentricity of the pretensioned strands in the prestressed concrete girders creates a bending moment that causes the girder to deflect upward, and this is called camber. This camber is reduced by the downward deflection of the girder due to the girder self-weight. Camber in prestressed concrete girders is effected by several factors, such as the girder’s cross sectional properties, concrete material properties, strand stress, ambient temperature, and relative humidity. Some methods of predicting camber use the initial camber that occurs immediately after cutting the strands to predict the camber at the time of girder erection. There are many sources of errors in predicting camber in a concrete girder including the differences in the actual and the design value of concrete properties and of strand stress. In this study, the difference between the measured and the predicted initial camber will be investigated on six AASHTO Type VI girders. The initial camber was predicted using the simple elastic analysis. The measured initial camber was then compared with the design camber. The difference between using the gross section properties and the transformed section properties to predict camber was quantified. Actual concrete properties including compressive strength, elastic modulus and unit weight were used to assess the current design method. Camber obtained from the actual, measured concrete properties will be called the predicted camber in this study. The effect of using the actual and the design elastic shortening losses on the estimation of the initial camber was also quantified

The government’s copyright policy causes both frustration and excitement in the music industry

Luke McDonagh argues that the government isn’t enforcing the Digital Economy Act, which introduced severe penalties for those illegally downloading copyrighted music online, because of the potential political backlash from the large number of illegal downloaders in the UK. There is much room for improvement in legal online music infrastructure that will serve as the ‘carrot’ to end rampant online piracy

Race, class, and community in a southern forest-dependent region

Based on a Community and Environment in Rural America survey, this brief looks at four counties in Alabama. It finds blacks and whites have different outcomes in the community, despite expectations of regional stability and greater equality. Though they reported similar rates of social mobility, African Americans in the Black Belt of Alabama are disproportionately poorer and employed in lower-skill jobs than whites

Age and lifecycle patterns driving U.S. migration shifts

Migration—people moving between locations—is now driving much of the demographic change occurring in the United States. In this brief, authors Kenneth Johnson, Richelle Winkler, and Luke Rogers share new research on age-related migration patterns to provide a fuller understanding of the complex patterns of demographic change in the United States. Examining four migration age groups, including emerging adults, young adults, family age, and older adults, their analysis of trends over time shows evidence that certain age groups migrate in similar ways. For example, young adult migrants are flowing to large metropolitan areas, while family age migrants are leaving large urban cores for the suburbs. Major metro areas in the Northeast and Midwest are losing older migrants, and rural farm counties continue to lose young adults. The authors explore how these migration patterns have important implications for people, institutions, and communities of both rural and urban America, as well as for the design of policies and practices that foster the development of sustainable communities

Impact of pressure dissipation on fluid injection into layered aquifers

Carbon dioxide (CO2) capture and subsurface storage is one method for reducing anthropogenic CO2 emissions to mitigate climate change. It is well known that large-scale fluid injection into the subsurface leads to a buildup in pressure that gradually spreads and dissipates through lateral and vertical migration of water. This dissipation can have an important feedback on the shape of the CO2 plume during injection, and the impact of vertical pressure dissipation, in particular, remains poorly understood. Here, we investigate the impact of lateral and vertical pressure dissipation on the injection of CO2 into a layered aquifer system. We develop a compressible, two-phase model that couples pressure dissipation to the propagation of a CO2 gravity current. We show that our vertically integrated, sharp-interface model is capable of efficiently and accurately capturing water migration in a layered aquifer system with an arbitrary number of aquifers. We identify two limiting cases --- `no leakage' and `strong leakage' --- in which we derive analytical expressions for the water pressure field for the corresponding single-phase injection problem. We demonstrate that pressure dissipation acts to suppress the formation of an advancing CO2 tongue during injection, resulting in a plume with a reduced lateral extent. The properties of the seals and the number of aquifers determine the strength of pressure dissipation and subsequent coupling with the CO2 plume. The impact of pressure dissipation on the shape of the CO2 plume is likely to be important for storage efficiency and security

Australian Sheep Industry CRC: Economic Evaluations of Scientific Research Programs

By the end of its seven-year term in 2007-08, the Australian Sheep Industry CRC (Sheep CRC) will have received total funds of about $90 million, that comprises Commonwealth and industry funding of$30 million, and in-kind contributions valued at $60 million. This level of public and private funding emphasises the need for the Sheep CRC to demonstrate that its research programs will generate sound economic returns to all stakeholders. This paper reports an evaluation of the potential economic value of the achievements of the Sheep CRC at the midpoint of its term of operations at which it has some completed research and a large volume of research in progress. The main question that has been addressed in this evaluation concerns the nature and likely magnitude of the potential benefits relative to the costs of their realisation. The economic methods and other procedures that were used to answer this question, the evaluation scenarios and the results obtained are described. Based on the defined with- and without-Sheep CRC evaluation scenarios, the ‘bottom-line’ result was that the Sheep CRC’s scientific research programs have the potential to deliver a total incremental benefit with a 20-year net present value (NPV) of$191.3 million, and a total benefit-cost ratio (BCR) of 8.1:1 (both at a 5% real rate of discount), indicating that the Sheep CRC’s total research investment over all programs has the potential to return about $8 for every$1 of research investment funds.sheep research, economic evaluations, economic-surplus- benefit-cost analysis., Agribusiness, Farm Management, Livestock Production/Industries, Production Economics, Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies, Q160,

The Increasing Diversity of America\u27s Youth

This brief documents how unfolding demographic forces have placed today’s children and youth at the forefront of America’s new racial and ethnic diversity. Authors Kenneth M. Johnson, Andrew Schaefer, Daniel T. Lichter, and Luke T. Rogers discuss how the rapidly changing racial and ethnic composition of the youth population has important implications for intergroup relations, ethnic identities, and electoral politics. They report that diversity is increasing among America’s youth because there are more minority children and fewer non-Hispanic white children. Minority births exceeded non-Hispanic white births for the first time in U.S. history in 2011 according to Census Bureau estimates. Both the declining number of non-Hispanic white women of prime child-bearing and growing numbers of minority women contributed to this change as did differential fertility rates. The largest gains in child diversity between 2000 and 2012 were in suburban and smaller metropolitan areas. Yet, child diversity is geographically uneven, with minimal diversity in some areas of the country and significant diversity in other areas. They conclude that natural population increase—particularly fertility rates—will continue to reshape the racial and ethnic mix of the country, and this change will be reflected first among the nation’s youngest residents