Fracking the future: the temporal portability of frames in political contests

Despite scientific consensus on the need to rapidly decarbonize economic systems to limit global warming, the exploitation of fossil fuels continues unabated. This begs the question, why do we continue down this path? We argue that one reason is the way in which fossil fuel expansion is temporally framed. In this article, we examine the disputed development of hydraulic fracturing of shale gas (‘fracking’) in the United Kingdom. Through analysis of a series of public inquiries conducted by the UK Government we show how industry, government and NGOs have engaged in a framing contest in debating the future of fracking. The findings show how the framing of fossil fuel development was solidified over time through processes of certainty, simplicity and familiarity. We contribute by: (a) showing how actors mobilize temporality in constructing persuasive and actionable frames; (b) developing a theory of how frames gain temporal portability – a chronology between a dominant past and a recognized future; and (c) providing an alternative theory of short-termism in explaining the path leading us to a dangerous climate changed future

Turning back the rising sea: Theory performativity in the shift from climate science to popular authority

Action on climate change continues to be hampered by vested interests seeding doubt about science and the need to reduce carbon emissions. Using a qualitative case study of local climate adaptation to sea level rise, we show how climate change science is translated into a self-referential theory focussed on property prices. Our analysis develops two mechanisms – enablement and theorization – to explain the relationship between theory performativity and power within a process of translation. This contributes to i) the performativity debate by showing how the constitution of power relations shapes theory performativity; ii) theories of power, by tracing the ways in which certain actors are able to enrol others and impact the authority of particular theories, and; iii) processes of translation by developing mechanisms for following the ways in which power and theory performativity interact. We conclude by arguing that a performative understanding of how power shapes beliefs is central to combat the failure to address climate change

Identification and rejection of scattered neutrons in AGATA

Gamma rays and neutrons, emitted following spontaneous fission of 252Cf, were measured in an AGATA experiment performed at INFN Laboratori Nazionali di Legnaro in Italy. The setup consisted of four AGATA triple cluster detectors (12 36-fold segmented high-purity germanium crystals), placed at a distance of 50 cm from the source, and 16 HELENA BaF2 detectors. The aim of the experiment was to study the interaction of neutrons in the segmented high-purity germanium detectors of AGATA and to investigate the possibility to discriminate neutrons and gamma rays with the gamma-ray tracking technique. The BaF2 detectors were used for a time-of-flight measurement, which gave an independent discrimination of neutrons and gamma rays and which was used to optimise the gamma-ray tracking-based neutron rejection methods. It was found that standard gamma-ray tracking, without any additional neutron rejection features, eliminates effectively most of the interaction points due to recoiling Ge nuclei after elastic scattering of neutrons. Standard tracking rejects also a significant amount of the events due to inelastic scattering of neutrons in the germanium crystals. Further enhancements of the neutron rejection was obtained by setting conditions on the following quantities, which were evaluated for each event by the tracking algorithm: energy of the first and second interaction point, difference in the calculated incoming direction of the gamma ray, figure-of-merit value. The experimental results of tracking with neutron rejection agree rather well with Geant4 simulations

Improved Linear Cryptanalysis of SOSEMANUK

Abstract. The SOSEMANUK stream cipher is one of the finalists of the eSTREAM project. In this paper, we improve the linear cryptanalysis of SOSEMANUK presented in Asiacrypt 2008. We apply the generalized linear masking technique to SOSEMANUK and derive many linear approximations holding with the correlations of up to 2 −25.5. We show that the data complexity of the linear attack on SOSEMANUK can be reduced by a factor of 2 10 if multiple linear approximations are used. Since SOSEMANUK claims 128-bit security, our attack would not be a real threat on the security of SOSEMANUK. Keywords: Stream Ciphers, Linear Cryptanalysis, SOSEMANUK, SOBER-128.

Complete Experimental Structure Determination of the p(3x2)pg Phase of Glycine on Cu{110}

We present a quantitative low energy electron diffraction (LEED) surface-crystallograpic study of the complete adsorption geometry of glycine adsorbed on Cu{110} in the ordered p(3×2) phase. The glycine molecules form bonds to the surface through the N atoms of the amino group and the two O atoms of the de-protonated carboxylate group, each with separate Cu atoms such that every Cu atom in the first layer is involved in a bond. Laterally, N atoms are nearest to the atop site (displacement 0.41 Å). The O atoms are asymmetrically displaced from the atop site by 0.54 Å and 1.18 Å with two very different O-Cu bond lengths of 1.93 Å and 2.18 Å. The atom positions of the upper-most Cu layers show small relaxations within 0.07 Å of the bulk-truncated surface geometry. The unit cell of the adsorbate layer consists of two glycine molecules, which are related by a glide-line symmetry operation. This study clearly shows that a significant coverage of adsorbate structures without this glide-line symmetry must be rejected, both on the grounds of the energy dependence of the spot intensities (LEED-IV curves) and of systematic absences in the LEED pattern

Psychological principles of successful aging technologies: A mini-review

Based on resource-oriented conceptions of successful life-span development, we propose three principles for evaluating assistive technology: (a) net resource release; (b) person specificity, and (c) proximal versus distal frames of evaluation. We discuss how these general principles can aid the design and evaluation of assistive technology in adulthood and old age, and propose two technological strategies, one targeting sensorimotor and the other cognitive functioning. The sensorimotor strategy aims at releasing cognitive resources such as attention and working memory by reducing the cognitive demands of sensory or sensorimotor aspects of performance. The cognitive strategy attempts to provide adaptive and individualized cuing structures orienting the individual in time and space by providing prompts that connect properties of the environment to the individual's action goals. We argue that intelligent assistive technology continuously adjusts the balance between `environmental support' and `self-initiated processing' in person-specific and aging-sensitive ways, leading to enhanced allocation of cognitive resources. Furthermore, intelligent assistive technology may foster the generation of formerly latent cognitive resources by activating developmental reserves (plasticity). We conclude that `lifespan technology', if co-constructed by behavioral scientists, engineers, and aging individuals, offers great promise for improving both the transition from middle adulthood to old age and the degree of autonomy in old age in present and future generations. Copyright (C) 2008 S. Karger AG, Basel

Chemotactic synthetic vesicles: Design and applications in blood-brain barrier crossing

In recent years, scientists have created artificial microscopic and nanoscopic self-propelling particles, often referred to as nano- or microswimmers, capable of mimicking biological locomotion and taxis. This active diffusion enables the engineering of complex operations that so far have not been possible at the micro- and nanoscale. One of the most promising tasks is the ability to engineer nanocarriers that can autonomously navigate within tissues and organs, accessing nearly every site of the human body guided by endogenous chemical gradients. We report a fully synthetic, organic, nanoscopic system that exhibits attractive chemotaxis driven by enzymatic conversion of glucose. We achieve this by encapsulating glucose oxidase alone or in combination with catalase into nanoscopic and biocompatible asymmetric polymer vesicles (known as polymersomes). We show that these vesicles self-propel in response to an external gradient of glucose by inducing a slip velocity on their surface, which makes them move in an extremely sensitive way toward higher-concentration regions. We finally demonstrate that the chemotactic behavior of these nanoswimmers, in combination with LRP-1 (low-density lipoprotein receptor–related protein 1) targeting, enables a fourfold increase in penetration to the brain compared to nonchemotactic systems

Spectroscopic studies of Dy-168,170 using CLARA and PRISMA

Preliminary results from an experiment aiming at Dy-170. Submitted to the LNL Annual Report 2008.Comment: 2 pages, 4 figures, Submitted to the LNL Annual Report 200

1n- and 2n-transfer with the Borromean nucleus 6^{6}He near the Coulomb barrier

Accepetd for publication in Physical Review LettersAngular distributions for 1n- and 2n-transfer are reported for the 6He + 65Cu system at Elab = 22.6 MeV. For the first time, triple coincidences between particles, neutrons and characteristic rays from the target-like residues were used to separate the contributions arising from 1n- and 2n-transfer. The differential cross sections for these channels, elastic scattering, and fusion were analyzed using a Coupled Reaction Channels approach. The large measured ratio of the 2n/1n cross section and the strong influence of 2n-transfer on other channels indicate that the di-neutron configuration of 6He plays a dominant role in the reaction mechanism