The 'Parekh Report' - national identities with nations and nationalism

‘Multiculturalists’ often advocate national identities. Yet few study the ways in which ‘multiculturalists’ do so and in this article I will help to fill this gap. I will show that the Commission for Multi-Ethnic Britain’s report reflects a previously unnoticed way of thinking about the nature and worth of national identities that the Commission’s chair, and prominent political theorist, Bhikhu Parekh, had been developing since the 1970s. This way of thinking will be shown to avoid the questionable ways in which conservative and liberal nationalists discuss the nature and worth of national identities while offering an alternative way to do so. I will thus show that a report that was once criticised for the way it discussed national identities reflects how ‘multiculturalists’ think about national identities in a distinct and valuable way that has gone unrecognised

Topics concerning state variable feedback in automatic control systems. Part 1 - Specification. Part 2 - Sensitivity. Part 3 - Intentional nonlinearities. Part 4 - Unavailable states

Specifications, sensitivity, intentional nonlinearities, and unavailable states concerned with state variable feedback in automatic control system

Adam Smith and Colonialism

In the context of debates about liberalism and colonialism, the arguments of Adam Smith have been taken as illustrative of an important line of anti-colonial liberal thought. The reading of Smith presented here challenges this interpretation. It argues that Smith’s opposition to colonial rule derived largely from its impact on the metropole, rather than on its impact on the conquered and colonised; that Smith recognised colonialism had brought ‘improvement’ in conquered territories and that Smith struggled to balance recognition of moral diversity with a universal moral framework and a commitment to a particular interpretation of progress through history. These arguments have a wider significance as they point towards some of the issues at stake in liberal anti-colonial arguments more generally

National identity - A multiculturalist's approach

‘Multiculturalists’ in Britain have advocated the importance of national identity since the 1970s. Yet many claim that multiculturalists do not do this and few study how they do it. We thus do not know why and how multiculturalists in Britain advocate the importance of national identity. In this article I will examine how one of Britain’s most prominent multiculturalists, Bhikhu Parekh, has done so since the 1970s. I will show that Parekh’s way of thinking about national identity is distinct from the ways in which other prominent thinkers discuss such an identity, and valuable, as Parekh has insights into what such an identity is and why we should value it. This article will identify a previously unnoticed, distinct and valuable way of thinking about national identity, which comes from a multiculturalist in Britain

Community-engaged primary care medical education

BACKGROUND: Community-engaged medical education (CEME) requires medical schools to partner with local communities to help address community priorities, whilst enhancing the learning experiences of students. Current literature on CEME has focused on evaluating its effects on students; however, there remains a gap in exploring whether CEME initiatives can have a sustainable impact for communities. APPROACH: The Community Action Project (CAP) at Imperial College London, is an eight-week, community-engaged, quality improvement project for Year 3 medical students. Students initially consult with clinicians, patients and wider community stakeholders to understand local needs and assets, and identify a health priority to address. They then work with relevant stakeholders to design, implement and evaluate a project to help address their identified priority. EVALUATION: All CAPs (n = 264) completed in the 2019-2021 academic years were evaluated for evidence of several key areas, including community engagement and sustainability. 91% of projects evidenced a needs analysis, 71% demonstrated patient involvement in their development, and 64% demonstrated sustainable impacts from their projects. Analysis revealed the topics frequently addressed, and the formats used by students. Two CAPs are described in more detail to demonstrate their community impact. IMPLICATIONS: The CAP demonstrates how the principles of CEME (meaningful community engagement and social accountability) can lead to sustainable benefits for local communities through purposeful collaboration with patients and local communities. Strengths, limitations and future directions are highlighted

Development of an Advanced Fine Coal Suspension Dewatering Process

With the advancement in fine coal cleaning technology, recovery of fine coal (minus 28 mesh) has become an attractive route for the U.S. coal industry. The clean coal recovered using the advanced flotation technology i.e. column flotation, contains on average 20% solids and 80% water, with an average particle size of 35 microns. Fine coal slurry is usually dewatered using a vacuum dewatering technique, providing a material with about 25 to 30 percent moisture. The process developed in this project will improve dewatering of fine (0.6mm) coal slurry to less than 20 percent moisture. Thus, thermal drying of dewatered wet coal will be eliminated. This will provide significant energy savings for the coal industry along with some environmental benefits. A 1% increase in recovery of coal and producing a filter cake material of less than 20 % moisture will amount to energy savings of 1900 trillion Btu/yr/unit. In terms of the amount of coal it will be about 0.8% of the total coal being used in the USA for electric power generation. It is difficult to dewater the fine clean coal slurry to about 20% moisture level using the conventional dewatering techniques. The finer the particle, the larger the surface area and thus, it retains large amounts of moisture on the surface. The coal industry has shown some reluctance in using the advanced coal recovery techniques, because of unavailability of an economical dewatering technique which can provide a product containing less than 20% moisture. The U.S.DOE and Industry has identified the dewatering of coal fines as a high priority problem. The goal of the proposed program is to develop and evaluate a novel two stage dewatering process developed at the University of Kentucky, which involves utilization of two forces, namely, vacuum and pressure for dewatering of fine coal slurries. It has been observed that a fine coal filter cake formed under vacuum has a porous structure with water trapped in the capillaries. When this porous cake is subjected to pressure for a short time, the free water present is released from the filter cake. Laboratory studies have shown that depending on the coal type a filter cake containing about 15% moisture could be obtained using the two-stage filtration technique. It was also noted that applying intermittent breaks in vacuum force during cake formation, which disturbed the cake structure, helped in removing moisture from the filter cakes. In this project a novel approach of cleaning coal using column flotation was also developed. With this approach the feed capacity of the column is increased significantly, and the column was also able to recover coarser size coal which usually gets lost in the process. The outcome of the research benefits the coal industry, utility industry, and indirectly the general public. The benefits can be counted in terms of clean energy, cleaner environment, and lower cost power