Cheese Makers are Always Women: Gendered Representations of Farm Life in the Agricultural Press

Drawing upon the 'Farmlife' pages of Farmer's Weekly, the most significant farming publication in the UK, this paper assesses the ways in which gender identities in farming are represented by its text and images. Lead articles from 1976 and 1996 issues of Farmlife are taken as the research focus to determine how representations have altered in line with restructuring of the agricultural industry. Reference is made to Connell's (1987) notions of hegemonic masculinity and emphasised femininity to inform the analysis about the ways in which these gender identities are (re)produced through the British farming media. A simple typology is derived from the articles which assists in revealing a remarkable degree of consistency in the portrayal of gender identities over time. The findings augment evidence from international research suggesting that dominant gender identities within agriculture are being perpetuated through the farming media. The implications of this are highlighted and suggestions made for research with the consumers of these media products

Translational Symmetry Breaking in Higgs & Gauge Theory, and the Cosmological Constant

We argue, at a very basic effective field theory level, that higher dimension operators in scalar theories that break symmetries at scales close to their ultraviolet completion cutoff, include terms that favour the breaking of translation (Lorentz) invariance, potentially resulting in striped, chequered board or general crystal-like phases. Such descriptions can be thought of as the effective low energy description of QCD-like gauge theories near their strong coupling scale where terms involving higher dimension operators are generated. Our low energy theory consists of scalar fields describing operators such as $\bar{q} q$ and $\bar{q} F^{(2n)} q$. Such scalars can have kinetic mixing terms that generate effective momentum dependent contributions to the mass matrix. We show that these can destabilize the translationally invariant vacuum. It is possible that in some real gauge theory such operators could become sufficiently dominant to realize such phases and it would be interesting to look for them in lattice simulations. We present a holographic model of the same phenomena which includes RG running. A key phenomenological motive to look at such states is recent work that shows that the non-linear response in $R^2$ gravity to such short range fluctuations can mimic a cosmological constant. Intriguingly in a cosmology with such a Starobinsky inflation term, to generate the observed value of the present day acceleration would require stripes at the electroweak scale. Unfortunately, low energy phenomenological constraints on Lorentz violation in the electron-photon system appear to strongly rule out any such possibility outside of a disconnected dark sector.Comment: 9 pages, 1 figure; minor changes. Version to be published in PR

Running up Blueberry Hill: Prototyping whole body interaction in harmony space

Musical harmony is considered to be one of the most abstract and technically difficult parts of music. It is generally taught formally via abstract, domain-specific concepts, principles, rules and heuristics. By contrast, when harmony is represented using an existing interactive desktop tool, Harmony Space, a new, parsimonious, but equivalently expressive, unified level of description emerges. This focuses not on abstract concepts, but on concrete locations, objects, areas and trajectories. This paper presents a design study of a prototype version of Harmony Space driven by whole body navigation, and characterizes the new opportunities presented for the principled manipulation of chord sequences and bass lines. These include: deeper engagement and directness; rich physical cues for memory and reflection, embodied engagement with rhythmic time constraints; hands which are free for other simultaneous activities (such as playing a traditional instrument); and qualitatively new possibilities for collaborative use

Comprehensive investigation of Ge-Si bonded interfaces using oxygen radical activation

In this work, we investigate the directly bonded germanium-silicon interfaces to facilitate the development of high quality germanium silicon hetero integration at the wafer scale. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy data is presented which provides the chemical composition of the germanium surfaces as a function of the hydrophilic bonding reaction at the interface. The bonding process induced long range deformation is detected by synchrotron x-ray topography. The hetero-interface is characterized by measuring forward and reverse current, and by high resolution transmission electron microscopy. (C) 2011 American Institute of Physics. [doi: 10.1063/1.3601355

Lubricant-surface system characterisation for high performance transmissions

Lubricant-surface system characterisation for high performance transmission

Lubricant-surface system characterisation for high performance transmissions abstract

Lubricant-surface system characterisation for high performance transmissions abstrac

Eliciting public preferences for managing the public rights of way

Public Rights of Way (PROW) in England and Wales, provides a wide range of social and economic benefits to those other than owners of land. The protection and extension of PROW are an important way of encouraging people to engage in informal enjoyment of urban and rural areas, with beneficial consequences for health and welfare. In urban areas they provide networks of mobility and interaction for people at the community level, helping to reduce reliance on motorised transport. In the rural context they define access to the countryside, critically linked to recreation and tourism, as well as providing mobility networks for local residents. This study describes the use of a Choice Experiment (CE) to derive monetary estimates the social benefits of PROW in an English county.Choice Experiments, Public Rights of Way, Willingness to Pay, Land Economics/Use, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Localisation of gamma-ray interaction points in thick monolithic CeBr3 and LaBr3:Ce scintillators

Localisation of gamma-ray interaction points in monolithic scintillator crystals can simplify the design and improve the performance of a future Compton telescope for gamma-ray astronomy. In this paper we compare the position resolution of three monolithic scintillators: a 28x28x20 mm3 (length x breadth x thickness) LaBr3:Ce crystal, a 25x25x20 mm3 CeBr3 crystal and a 25x25x10 mm3 CeBr3 crystal. Each crystal was encapsulated and coupled to an array of 4x4 silicon photomultipliers through an optical window. The measurements were conducted using 81 keV and 356 keV gamma-rays from a collimated 133Ba source. The 3D position reconstruction of interaction points was performed using artificial neural networks trained with experimental data. Although the position resolution was significantly better for the thinner crystal, the 20 mm thick CeBr3 crystal showed an acceptable resolution of about 5.4 mm FWHM for the x and y coordinates, and 7.8 mm FWHM for the z-coordinate (crystal depth) at 356 keV. These values were obtained from the full position scans of the crystal sides. The position resolution of the LaBr3:Ce crystal was found to be considerably worse, presumably due to the highly diffusive optical in- terface between the crystal and the optical window of the enclosure. The energy resolution (FWHM) measured for 662 keV gamma-rays was 4.0% for LaBr3:Ce and 5.5% for CeBr3. The same crystals equipped with a PMT (Hamamatsu R6322-100) gave an energy resolution of 3.0% and 4.7%, respectively

Tribology of partial pad journal bearings with textured surfaces

Tribology of partial pad journal bearings with textured surface

Optical measurements of cavitation in tribological contacts

The paper describes the use of a white light interformeter to measure the cavitation bubble and oil film thickness in a tribological contact and compares the results to theory. It is found that oil film thickness is best predicted by the theory proposed by Coyne and Elrod.