Construction of national identity: British art 1930-1990

Claims for the 'Englishness' or 'Britishness' of art are often attended by a confident appeal to the 'obvious' innateness of certain characteristics - such as individualism, an amateur impulse, or a tendency for figurative work. In some cases claims are made that these, and other 'national' traits, are an embodiment of 'civilized values'. One of the objects of the present study will be to identify and examine some of these key characteristics. This will involve an enquiry into the relationship of art to other areas of social life at different historical conjunctures. Three periods have been chosen for particular consideration: 1930-1939; the mid-40s to mid-50s; and the 1980s. In each of the three periods attention will be focussed on a range or art practices, theories, and sites of production and distribution. This will involve, in some places 'case studies' of books, journals and exhibitions which seem to bring some of the issues into sharp focus. Key subjects will include not only the issue of what is 'British' but what is 'un- British'. 'Figuration', 'the landscape', 'abstraction', and 'internationalism' emerge as some of the principal concepts fought over by those who attempt to assert or contest what is essentially 'British'. A further object of enquiry will be the claims made by some 'critical' modern artists and critics that invocations of 'Britishness' reveal a tendency in this country towards parochialism. The thesis will conclude by observing an interesting development in Britain during the eighties. While some have pronounced modernism dead, others have continued to believe that some of the fundamental ideals and values of modernism remain substantial. Modernism, the latter would claim, continues for the foreseeable future to provide the necessary resources to maintain a critical practice which can resist the more parochial tendencies of 'British' art

COVID in statistics: numbers do not speak for themselves

David Spiegelhalter (University of Cambridge) and Anthony Masters (Royal Statistical Society) highlight some of the key findings from their book, COVID by Numbers: Making Sense of the Pandemic with Data

Outpatient Injuries of the Hand

All hand injuries, regardless of superficiality, may result in crippling loss of function if treatment is inadequate or mishandled. The essential elements of diagnosis, examination, approach to therapy and after-care are constant. The major difference between an injury requiring hospitalization and one amenable to outpatient management is the extent of the trauma. This article reviews the major outpatient injuries with respect to method of management, choice of definitive procedure, and preservation of function

Rethinking Our Future: Moving Past December 31, 2010

This presentation features: Past, Present and Future; Redefining Old Age…Young-Old (Neugarten); A Lesson to be Learned…; Young-Old Concerns…; Counties with the highest percentage of 65 -74; Aging is a process…not an event; Redefining old age…Oldest-Old (Neugarten); Oldest-Old Concerns; Counties with the highest percentage 85 +; A glimpse of the state; Forget the Sweet Little Old Lady Model…; When does it all begin? The Nebraska example:; Aging of the US population; What’s All the Fuss About Aging?; Age at Time of Death; Changes are a happenin’; From childhood education to gerontology; Alpha Boomers -coined by Alan Wurtzel; AARP and NASCAR -Connecting the Generations; Where are all the alpha boomers???; Parents supporting adult children; Parental Support; Potential Implications of Parental Support; Caregiving 2011 -It’s not for the faint of heart…; The Alzheimer’s Generation; Future Considerations; and Our Future??

Outpatient Injuries of the Hand

All hand injuries, regardless of superficiality, may result in crippling loss of function if treatment is inadequate or mishandled. The essential elements of diagnosis, examination, approach to therapy and after-care are constant. The major difference between an injury requiring hospitalization and one amenable to outpatient management is the extent of the trauma. This article reviews the major outpatient injuries with respect to method of management, choice of definitive procedure, and preservation of function

Can the Earth's dynamo run on heat alone?

The power required to drive the geodynamo places significant constraints on the heat passing across the core-mantle boundary and the Earth's thermal history. Calculations to date have been limited by inaccuracies in the properties of liquid iron mixtures at core pressures and temperatures. Here we re-examine the problem of core energetics in the light of new first-principles calculations for the properties of liquid iron. There is disagreement on the fate of gravitational energy released by contraction on cooling. We show that only a small fraction of this energy, that associated with heating resulting from changes in pressure, is available to drive convection and the dynamo. This leaves two very simple equations in the cooling rate and radioactive heating, one yielding the heat flux out of the core and the other the entropy gain of electrical and thermal dissipation, the two main dissipative processes. This paper is restricted to thermal convection in a pure iron core; compositional convection in a liquid iron mixture is considered in a companion paper. We show that heat sources alone are unlikely to be adequate to power the geodynamo because they require a rapid secular cooling rate, which implies a very young inner core, or a combination of cooling and substantial radioactive heating, which requires a very large heat flux across the core-mantle boundary. A simple calculation with no inner core shows even higher heat fluxes are required in the absence of latent heat before the inner core formed

Gross thermodynamics of two-component core convection

We model the inner core by an alloy of iron and 8 per cent sulphur or silicon and the outer core by the same mix with an additional 8 per cent oxygen. This composition matches the densities of seismic model, Preliminary Reference Earth Model (PR-EM). When the liquid core freezes S and Si remain with the Fe to form the solid and excess 0 is ejected into the liquid. Properties of Fe, diffusion constants for S, Si, 0 and chemical potentials are calculated by first-principles methods under the assumption that S, 0, and Si react with the Fe and themselves, however, not with each other. This gives the parameters required to calculate the power supply to the geodynamo as the Earth's core cools. Compositional convection, driven by light O released at the inner-core boundary on freezing, accounts for half the entropy balance and 15 per cent of the heat balance. This means the same magnetic field can be generated with approximately half the heat throughput needed if the geodynamo were driven by heat alone. Chemical effects are significant: heat absorbed by disassociation of Fe and 0 almost nullify the effect of latent heat of freezing in driving the dynamo. Cooling rates below 69 K Gyr(-1) are too low to maintain thermal convection everywhere; when the cooling rate lies between 35 and 69 K Gyr(-1) convection at the top of the core is maintained compositionally against a stabilizing temperature gradient; below 35 K Gyr(-1) the dynamo fails completely. All cooling rates freeze the inner core in less than 1.2 Gyr, in agreement with other recent calculations. The presence of radioactive heating will extend the life of the inner core, however, it requires a high heat flux across the core-mantle boundary. Heating is dominated by radioactivity when the inner core age is 3.5 Gyr. We, also, give calculations for larger concentrations of O in the outer core suggested by a recent estimation of the density jump at the inner-core boundary, which is larger than that of PREM. Compositional convection is enhanced for the higher density jumps and overall heat flux is reduced for the same dynamo dissipation, however, not by enough to alter the qualitative conclusions based on PREM. Our preferred model has the core convecting near the limit of thermal stability, an inner-core age of 3.5 Gyr and a core heat flux of 9 TW or 20 per cent of the Earth's surface heat flux, 80 per cent of which originates from radioactive heating

Laboratory and Well-Log Velocity and Density Measurements from the Ontong Java Plateau: New in-situ corrections to laboratory data for pelagic carbonates

During Ocean Drilling Program Leg 130, sonic velocity and bulk density/porosity well logs were measured in five separate holes drilled through the sequence of pelagic carbonate oozes, chalks, and limestones that comprise the thick, continuous sedimentary cover on the Ontong Java Plateau. An internally consistent and continuous suite of shipboard laboratory velocity and sediment physical properties measurements were made from the top of each hole down through the entire logged interval. Because of the high quality of the data, extensive overlap of 500 m or more between the log and laboratory measurements at each hole, and the homogeneous nature of the sediments, we have been able to compare laboratory and in-situ log measurements in detail and to evaluate factors that alter laboratory data from their in-situ values. For measurements of bulk density and porosity, differences between laboratory and in-situ log measurements are very small and remain constant over the entire range of depths studied. We have applied a simple hydraulic rebound correction to the laboratory data that compensates for pore fluid expansion after removal of a sediment sample from in-situ conditions. The small, correctable differences between the laboratory and log data imply that mechanical rebound is significantly less than previous estimates (maximum near 5%) of rebound in pelagic carbonates. Furthermore, porosity rebound cannot be used to correct laboratory sonic velocity measurements to in-situ values. Such a rebound correction implicitly requires that laboratory and in-situ data must occupy identical fields on velocity-porosity crossplots. This condition is not met for the Ontong Java Plateau results because laboratory and in-situ logging data occupy distinct trends with little overlap between the two types of measurement. Mechanical rebound in pelagic carbonates cannot be used to correct either laboratory porosity or velocity measurements to in-situ values. The complex porosity systematics of these carbonates resulting from varying abundances of hollow foraminifer grains precluded use of an empirical correction derived from the log porosity and velocity data. Laboratory sonic velocity measurements can be corrected to in-situ values at all of the Ontong Java Plateau sites using a depth-based function derived from downhole differences between log and laboratory velocities in Hole 807A. The applicability of the depth correction implies that the effect of overburden pressure reduction on sediment elastic moduli is the most significant factor affecting laboratory velocity measurements. The depth correction to laboratory velocity measurements appears to be generally applicable to pelagic carbonate oozes and chalks of the Ontong Java Plateau, regardless of depositional depth or sediment age