Cultural Technology and Sporting Value: A Philosophical Investigation

Few people would dispute that today’s world is highly technological. But what do we mean when we talk of ‘technology’, and is it possible to quantify its effect on human beings? This thesis considers the relationship between technology and humanity as being one of symbiosis - we shape our tools and in turn, our tools shape us. The nature of this relationship is described by ‘essentialist’ critics of technology as narrowing the focus of human endeavour towards a technological value-set dominated by efficiency, to the detriment of other values important to the human animal. Sport provides an excellent framework for examining the impact of technology defined in this way, as it is a ubiquitous and highly technological arena. If it can be plausibly argued that an increasingly technological and performance-centred approach to sport is detrimental to an holistic understanding of sport’s potential to benefit both the individual and society as a whole, it may be the case that sport provides accessible and irrefutable evidence for the truth of the essentialists’ claims regarding the impact on society of technology writ large. This thesis presents such an argument. Furthermore, if we grant the essentialist critics their contention and admit the impossibility of returning to an ‘untechnological’ world, we have to find some way of restoring and maintaining an holistic existence in the face of the restricted value-set imposed by our technology and our interactions with it. To this end, the latter part of this thesis promotes ‘metaphysical’ sporting values (freedom, self-affirmation and beautiful, harmonious action) as a way to counter-balance the impact of technology in sport and suggest ways to solve the ‘technological problem’ more generally

DNA unzipped under a constant force exhibits multiple metastable intermediates

Single molecule studies, at constant force, of the separation of double-stranded DNA into two separated single strands may provide information relevant to the dynamics of DNA replication. At constant applied force, theory predicts that the unzipped length as a function of time is characterized by jumps during which the strands separate rapidly, followed by long pauses where the number of separated base pairs remains constant. Here, we report previously uncharacterized observations of this striking behavior carried out on a number of identical single molecules simultaneously. When several single lphage molecules are subject to the same applied force, the pause positions are reproducible in each. This reproducibility shows that the positions and durations of the pauses in unzipping provide a sequence-dependent molecular fingerprint. For small forces, the DNA remains in a partially unzipped state for at least several hours. For larger forces, the separation is still characterized by jumps and pauses, but the double-stranded DNA will completely unzip in less than 30 min

Performance of prototypes for the ALICE electromagnetic calorimeter

The performance of prototypes for the ALICE electromagnetic sampling calorimeter has been studied in test beam measurements at FNAL and CERN. A $4\times4$ array of final design modules showed an energy resolution of about 11% /$\sqrt{E(\mathrm{GeV})}$ $\oplus$ 1.7 % with a uniformity of the response to electrons of 1% and a good linearity in the energy range from 10 to 100 GeV. The electromagnetic shower position resolution was found to be described by 1.5 mm $\oplus$ 5.3 mm /$\sqrt{E \mathrm{(GeV)}}$. For an electron identification efficiency of 90% a hadron rejection factor of $>600$ was obtained.Comment: 10 pages, 10 figure

Structural and magnetic properties of BiFeO3 PbTiO3 polycrystals

In this manuscript, microstructural, structural and magnetic properties of pure and La doped 0.6 BiFeO 3 0.4 PbTiO 3 polycrystals were investigated. X ray diffraction, transmission and scanning electron microscopy results reveal morphologically uniform particles of rhombohedral and rhombohedral tetragonal symmetries for pure and La doped samples. An enhanced magnetization, characterized by slim loop hysteretic curves of null remnant magnetization and 2 emu g saturation 15 kOe magnetization, is observed at room temperature for samples with average particle size close to 5 n

NanoSIMS: Insights to biogenicity and syngeneity of Archaean carbonaceous structures

NanoSIMS is a relatively new technology that is being applied to ancient carbonaceous structures to gain insight into their biogenicity and syngeneity. NanoSIMS studies of well preserved organic microfossils from the Neoproterozoic (similar to 0.8Ga) Bitter Springs Formation have established elemental distributions in undisputedly biogenic structures. Results demonstrate that sub-micron scale maps of metabolically important elements (carbon [C], nitrogen [measured as CN ion], and sulfur [S]) can be correlated with kerogenous structures identified by optical microscopy. Spatial distributions of C, CN, and S in individual microfossils are nearly identical, and variations in concentrations of these elements parallel one another. In elemental maps, C, CN, and S appear as globules, aligned to form remnant walls or sheaths of fossiliferous structures. The aligned character and parallel variation of C and CN are the strongest indicators of biogenicity