Dynamical resonant structures in meteoroid stream orbits

ABSTRACT Herein we use the Canadian Meteor Orbit Radar (CMOR) data set to search for evidence of a resonant swarm in the Taurid meteoroid stream at the 7:2 Jovian resonance. We use a numerical method to estimate the reduction in radar orbit measurement uncertainty required to detect this feature in a data set. This is highly dependent on the proportion of observed particles that are members of the resonant swarm. However, we find that a meteor radar with uncertainties a factor of 10 lower than those of the current CMOR will be sufficient for detection to be possible, if the meteor shower consists of more than 5 per cent resonant particles (considered likely given the results of visual meteor studies). Such an improvement will require accurate removal of deceleration errors from pre-atmospheric meteor velocities, and improvement to the robustness of echo inflection point identification algorithms and interferometric measurements

Cities in fiction: Perambulations with John Berger

This paper explores selected novels by John Berger in which cities play a central role. These cities are places, partially real and partially imagined, where memory, hope, and despair intersect. My reading of the novels enables me to trace important themes in recent discourses on the nature of contemporary capitalism, including notions of resistance and universality. I also show how Berger?s work points to a writing that can break free from the curious capacity of capitalism to absorb and feed of its critique

Highgate Cemetery heterotopia: A Creative Counterpublic Space

Highgate Cemetery is nominally presented as a heterotopia, constructed, and theorized through the articulation of three “spaces.” First, it is configured as a public space which organizes the individual and the social, where the management of death creates a relationship between external space and its internal conceptualization. This reveals, enables, and disturbs the sociocultural and political imagination which helps order and disrupt thinking. Second, it is conceived as a creative space where cemetery texts emplace and materialize memory that mirrors the cultural capital of those interred, part of an urban aesthetic which articulates the distinction of the metropolitan elite. Last, it is a celebritized counterpublic space that expresses dissent, testimony to those who have actively imagined a better world, which is epitomized by the Marx Memorial. Representation of the cemetery is ambiguous as it is recuperated and framed by the living with the three different “spaces” offering heterotopic alliances

Literacy practices of primary education children in Andalusia (Spain): a family-based perspective

Primary school children develop literacy practices in various domains and situations in everyday life. This study focused on the analysis of literacy practices of children aged 8–12 years from the perspec- tive of their families. 1,843 families participated in the non-experimental explanatory study. The children in these families speak Spanish as a first language and are schooled in this language. The instrument used was a self-report questionnaire about children’s home-literacy practices. The data obtained were analysed using categorical principal components analysis (CATPCA) and analysis of variance (ANOVA). The results show the complex relationship between literacy practices developed by children in the domains of home and school and the limited development of a literacy-promoting ‘third space’. In conclusion, the families in our study had limited awareness of their role as literacy- promoting agents and thought of literacy learning as restricted to formal or academic spaces

Please mind the gap: students’ perspectives of the transition in academic skills between A-level and degree level geography

This paper explores first-year undergraduates’ perceptions of the transition from studying geography at pre-university level to studying for a degree. This move is the largest step students make in their education, and the debate about it in the UK has been reignited due to the government’s planned changes to A-level geography. However, missing from most of this debate is an appreciation of the way in which geography students themselves perceive their transition to university. This paper begins to rectify this absence. Using student insights, we show that their main concern is acquiring the higher level skills required for university learning

Dialectics and difference: against Harvey's dialectical post-Marxism

David Harvey`s recent book, Justice, nature and the geography of difference (JNGD), engages with a central philosophical debate that continues to dominate human geography: the tension between the radical Marxist project of recent decades and the apparently disempowering relativism and `play of difference' of postmodern thought. In this book, Harvey continues to argue for a revised `post-Marxist' approach in human geography which remains based on Hegelian-Marxian principles of dialectical thought. This article develops a critique of that stance, drawing on the work of Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. I argue that dialectical thinking, as well as Harvey's version of `post-Marxism', has been undermined by the wide-ranging `post-' critique. I suggest that Harvey has failed to appreciate the full force of this critique and the implications it has for `post-Marxist' ontology and epistemology. I argue that `post-Marxism', along with much contemporary human geography, is constrained by an inflexible ontology which excessively prioritizes space in the theory produced, and which implements inflexible concepts. Instead, using the insights of several `post-' writers, I contend there is a need to develop an ontology of `context' leading to the production of `contextual theories'. Such theories utilize flexible concepts in a multilayered understanding of ontology and epistemology. I compare how an approach which produces a `contextual theory' might lead to more politically empowering theory than `post-Marxism' with reference to one of Harvey's case studies in JNGD

Culture Wars, Revanchism, Moral Panics and the Creative City. A Reconstruction of a Decline of Tolerant Public Policy: The Case of Dutch Anti-squatting Legislation

Squatting became illegal in the Netherlands on 1 October 2010. The paper examines the dynamics involved. Theoretically drawing on debates about culture wars, revanchism, moral panics and the creative city, it is based on participant observation in squatter meetings, debates with politicians, a parliament hearing, lobbying meetings and various informal encounters, on a survey and on a collection of documents. A key mechanism that the paper explores is the following. Strategies of resistance that seem more or less manageable in the local context of a creative city can, when they backfire, cause a moral panic on the national level. This provides ammunition for revanchist politicians

Challenging notions of gendered game play: teenagers playing `The Sims`

This paper challenges notions of gendered game playing practice implicit in much research into young women\u27s involvement with the computer gaming culture. It draws on a study of Australian teenagers playing The Sims Deluxe as part of an English curriculum unit and insights from feminist media studies to explore relationships between gender and game playing practices. Departing from a reliance on predetermined notions of &ldquo;gender&rdquo;, &ldquo;domestic space&rdquo;, and &ldquo;successful game play&rdquo;, it conceptualizes The Sims as a game in which the boundaries between gender and domestic space are disturbed. It argues that observing students\u27 constructions of gender and domestic space through the act of game play itself provides a more productive insight into the gendered dimensions of game play for educators wishing to work computer games such as The Sims into curriculum development.<br /