AUTISM AND THE PERPETUAL PUZZLE: A RHETORICAL ANALYSIS OF THREE EXPLANATIONS FOR AUTISM

Autism awareness has increased in recent years in part because it is marked by confusion and controversy. The confusion and controversy stem from the fact that there are many beliefs about autism but little agreement. In this dissertation I examined the rhetoric produced by three primary groups?professional autism experts, caregivers to children with autism and mainstream media. In particular, I studied how each group explains autism. Explanations are vehicles for persuasion; they advance particular viewpoints about an illness. I conducted a rhetorical analysis of the three discourses produced by these groups, highlighting the most cohesive themes to emerge from the discourse. To study professional autism experts? explanations, I analyzed articles in autism?s flagship research journal and research articles from other journals and key books for additional insight. A computer metaphor guided expert explanations of autism. To define autism through one of most advanced and culturally accepted technological devices lent significant credibility to the explanations. Next, I studied the caregiver explanations, first conducting interviews with 19 parents to children with autism and then I analyzed the transcripts. Caregivers described autism as a social pathology; their children with autism were different and distant, or alien-like. The pathology affected people with autism, their caregivers and their families, many other neuro-typical people, and it also determined the course of treatment for the person with autism. Finally, mainstream media often explained autism in terms of its conflicts, framing its explanations of autism with a war metaphor. The vaccine debate received a significant attention, recharacterizing the role of medical institutions and health practitioners. Caregivers became the heroes, using their personal experiences as weapons against healthcare practitioners and their science. Caregivers also dealt with the invasion of autism, struggling for ways to return their children closer to the boundary that exists between the child with autism and the neuro-typical child

The Forward Physics Facility: Sites, Experiments, and Physics Potential

The Forward Physics Facility (FPF) is a proposal to create a cavern with thespace and infrastructure to support a suite of far-forward experiments at theLarge Hadron Collider during the High Luminosity era. Located along the beamcollision axis and shielded from the interaction point by at least 100 m ofconcrete and rock, the FPF will house experiments that will detect particlesoutside the acceptance of the existing large LHC experiments and will observerare and exotic processes in an extremely low-background environment. In thiswork, we summarize the current status of plans for the FPF, including recentprogress in civil engineering in identifying promising sites for the FPF andthe experiments currently envisioned to realize the FPF's physics potential. Wethen review the many Standard Model and new physics topics that will beadvanced by the FPF, including searches for long-lived particles, probes ofdark matter and dark sectors, high-statistics studies of TeV neutrinos of allthree flavors, aspects of perturbative and non-perturbative QCD, andhigh-energy astroparticle physics.<br

Оптимизация конструкции захвата для детали «Барабан»

Грузозахватные приспособления обычно применяются при производстве работ по подъему и перемещению грузов с применением грузоподъемных машин. Использование приспособлений позволяет реализовать максимальное удобство и безопасность производственного процесса. Грузозахватные приспособления конструируются для определенного этапа технологического процесса, для конкретного изделия. При проектировании таких приспособлений необходимо учитывать основные показатели оптимальности конструкции: прочность, надежность, простота, удобство и безопасность при эксплуатации, эргономичность. Кроме того, нужно стремиться к наименьшей массе и, соответственно, металлоемкости захвата. Конструкция грузозахватного приспособления, в основном, будет зависеть от назначенных технологом поверхностей, за которые можно крепиться и от максимальной высоты подъема крюка крана. В статье описана задача по конструированию захвата для детали «Барабан¬ в новом технологическом процессе. Рассмотрена конструкция существующего захвата, взятого за прототип. Приведен анализ различных вариантов конструктивных решений, созданных в процессе проектирования. Выбран вариант конструкции захвата, который в наибольшей степени соответствует требованиям технического задания. Конструкция этого модернизированного приспособления представляет собой захват с тремя лапами, удерживающими деталь, и подвес в виде траверсы. Разработанная конструкторская документация утверждена производством и отделом промышленной безопасности

Current possibilities of mechanized logging in mountain areas

Modern technologies allow wood harvest in almost all terrains, including hard-to-reach mountain areas. Each of the technical measures used, however, has limitations due to its construction and the nature of the work. The present study discusses issues related to the selection of machinery and technology as well as planning work in mountainous terrain, taking into account factors such as accessibility of the stand and terrain properties (slope, ground bearing capacity). Adaptive changes of forest machinery for work in mountain stands are also presented. This article furthermore discusses possibilities of applying machinery and technologies already used in other countries to harvest wood in mountainous forests in Poland