A Critique of Functionalist and Rhetorical Social Movement Theory: A Case Study of China\u27s 1989 Democracy Movement

Current Communication-based social movement theory provides an excellent framework for analyzing social movements at a superficial level, but it neglects to include one important aspect that influences social movements – the culture in which a social movement takes place. The dominant theories used to evaluate social movements are written with a Western, North-American bias and thus are inadequate tools for explaining social movements that occur in other cultures. This work uses a non-Western social movement – China\u27s 1989 Democracy Movement – as a case study to demonstrate the Western bias that Communication-based social movement theory holds, as well as to show the inadequacy of using a Western-based theory to analyze and explain a non-Western culture. Using current social movement theory to analyze China\u27s 1989 Democracy Movement demonstrates the amount of misunderstanding and misinterpretation that can occur if theories that are not culturally sensitive are used to analyze social movements. This thesis proposes that Communication-based social movement theory should either be reformed so that it includes the aspect of culture in its analysis, or it should be used in conjunction with another, more culturally oriented theory in order to prevent misinterpretation and the inaccurate analysis of social movements

PGIS Supported Knowledge Based Participation and Evidences of Empowered Community Members

In much of Botswana’s rural population, formal business ethic is not common and the business environment contains fragmented and incomplete information. Under such mainly agrarian economies, the villagers do not know where the customers for their produce are, there is limited technology and often the farmers are not aware of the potential benefits from their agro-businesses. Many people are also not aware of the supportive policy frameworks, the agricultural programs/projects that the government has set up for them and the attendant financial support programs that are intended to implement the programs. The villagers participate more in social welfare programs from which they do not earn enough to live dignified lives. Participation and empowerment paradigms have been used in development programs to foster rural community development. However, many national and international development projects have been implemented with insufficient understanding of participation and empowerment processes. Using participation as learning and empowerment as informed participation within community group interactions, this paper presents the use of participatory action research implemented through participatory geographic information system (PGIS), to facilitate community learning and the construction of a PGIS based knowledge repository. The knowledge repository addressed issues of fragmented and incomplete information and also served more to facilitate knowledge construction, encourage local innovation and forged links with the local community development institutions as well as district and central government institutions

Web mapping for promoting interaction and collaboration in community land planning

There is an inherent advantage of geographic information Systems (GIS) and mapping in facilitating dialogue between experts and non-experts during land use plan development. Combining visual mapping information and effective user interaction can result in considerable benefits for developing countries like Botswana. Although the adoption of information and communication technologies has lagged behind that for developed countries, initiatives by the Botswana government in providing suitable information infrastructures, including internet and web based communications, are enabling multiple users to interact and collaborate in community land planning. A web mapping application was developed for the Maun Development Plan (MDP) in the Okavango Delta region in Botswana. It was designed according to requirements of land planners and managers and implemented using ArcGIS Viewer for Flex. Land planners and managers from two organisations in Maun involved in the development of the MDP were asked to evaluate the web mapping tools. This paper describes the results of implementation and some preliminary results of the web mapping evaluation

Effective Operator for dddd Transitions in Nonresonant Inelastic X-ray Scattering

Recent experiments by Larson et al. demonstrate the feasibility of measuring local $dd$ excitations using nonresonant inelastic X-ray scattering (IXS). We establish a general framework for the interpretation where the $dd$ transitions created in the scattering process are expressed in effective one-particle operators that follow a simple selection rule. The different operators can be selectively probed by employing their different dependence on the direction and magnitude of the transferred momentum. We use the operators to explain the presence of nodal directions and the nonresonant IXS in specific directions and planes. We demonstrate how nonresonant IXS can be used to extract valuable ground state information for orbiton excitations in manganite

Cloud/web mapping and geoprocessing services - Intelligently linking geoinformation

We live in a world that is alive with information and geographies. ‘‘Everything happens somewhere” (Tosta, 2001). This reality is being exposed in the digital earth technologies providing a multidimensional, multi-temporal and multi-resolution model of the planet, based on the needs of diverse actors: from scientists to decision makers, communities and citizens (Brovelli et al., 2015). We are building up a geospatial information infrastructure updated in real time thanks to mobile, positioning and sensor observations. Users can navigate, not only through space but also through time, to access historical data and future predictions based on social and/or environmental models. But how do we find the information about certain geographic locations or localities when it is scattered in the cloud and across the web of data behind a diversity of databases, web services and hyperlinked pages? We need to be able to link geoinformation together in order to integrate it, make sense of it, and use it appropriately for managing the world and making decisions

Simulation of anisotropic wet-chemical etching using a physical model

We present a method to describe the orientation dependence of the etch rate of silicon, or any other single crystalline material, in anisotropic etching solutions by analytical functions. The parameters in these functions have a simple physical meaning. Crystals have a small number of atomically smooth faces, which etch (and grow) slowly as a consequence of the removal (or addition) of atoms by rows and layers. However, smooth faces have a roughening transition (well known in statistical physics); at increasing temperature they become rougher, and accordingly the etch and growth rates increase. Consequently, the basic physical parameters of our functions are the roughness of the smooth faces and the velocity of steps on these faces. This small set of parameters describes the etch rate in the two-dimensional space of orientations (on the unit sphere). We have applied our method to the practical case of etch rate functions for silicon crystals in KOH solutions. The maximum deviation between experimental data and simulation using only nine physically meaningful parameters is less than 5% of the maximum etch rate. This method, which in this study is used to describe anisotropic etching of silicon, can easily be adjusted to describe the growth or etching process of any crysta

Determining the Electron-Phonon Coupling Strength in Correlated Electron Systems from Resonant Inelastic X-ray Scattering

We show that high resolution Resonant Inelastic X-ray Scattering (RIXS) provides direct, element-specific and momentum-resolved information on the electron-phonon (e-p) coupling strength. Our theoretical analysis demonstrates that the e-p coupling can be extracted from RIXS spectra by determining the differential phonon scattering cross section. An alternative, very direct manner to extract the coupling is to use the one and two-phonon loss ratio, which is governed by the e-p coupling strength and the core-hole life-time. This allows measurement of the e-p coupling on an absolute energy scale.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

Magnetic circular dichroism of x-ray absorption spectroscopy at rare-earth L2,3 edges in RE2Fe14B compounds (RE = La, Pr, Nd, Sm, Gd, Tb, Dy, Ho, Er, Tm, Yb, and Lu)

Magnetic circular dichroism (MCD) in the x-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) at the L2,3 edges for almost entire series of rare-earth (RE) elements in RE2Fe14B, is studied experimentally and theoretically. By a quantitative comparison of the complicated MCD spectral shapes, we find that (i) the 4f-5d intra-atomic exchange interaction not only induces the spin and orbital polarization of the 5d states, which is vital for the MCD spectra of the electric dipole transition from the 2p core states to the empty 5d conduction band, but also it accompanies a contraction of the radial part of the 5d wave function depending on its spin and orbital state, which results in the enhancement of the 2p-5d dipole matrix element, (ii) there are cases where the spin polarization of the 5d states due to the hybridization with the spin polarized 3d states of surrounding irons plays important roles, and (iii) the electric quadrupole transition from the 2p core states to the magnetic vale! nce 4f states is appreciable at the pre-edge region of the dipole spectrum. Especially, our results evidence that it is important to include the enhancement effect of the dipole matrix element in the correct interpretation of the MCD spectra at the RE L2,3 edges.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figures, 1 table, REVTe