Coming of Age at Bullworth Academy: Bully and Narratives of Youth Violence

The 1999 rampage at Columbine High School, and the high-profile school shootings that preceded it, dramatically heightened pre-existing cultural anxieties about the consumption of violent media in childhood. In particular, videogames received unprecedented public scrutiny, and even now the spectre of Columbine continues to hang over any discussion of violent videogames. When Rockstar Games, developer of the ultraviolent Grand Theft Auto series, announced Bully, a similarly styled game that would take place in a school, controversy predictably ensued. Rockstar made no effort to dispel this controversy, and might have actually encouraged it, but the game itself bears little relation to an archetypal school shooting. As a text, Bully represents a much different narrative of adolescence, one that questions the morality of adult institutions and problematizes the very idea of “growing up.” This essay compares and contrasts Bully with other narratives of youth violence, ranging from the popularly accepted telling of the Columbine shootings to William Golding’s Lord of the Flies

Tertiary welded tuffs of the Ryan Spring area, Needle Range, Beaver County, Utah

The Needle Range of southwestern Utah is composed of Paleozoic sediments overlain by a thick sequence of Tertiary volcanic rocks primarily of the welded tuff class. The area has undergone at least four stages of post-eruptive structural deformation. The most significant stage is that which formed the range by normal Basin and Range type faulting. The faults strike northwest and tilt the volcanic layers northeast. The volcanic section is composed primarily of the Needles Range Formation (Oligocene) overlain by the Isom Formation and underlain by several flows and ash flows, one of which has been tentatively correlated to the Escalante Valley Tuff. Between the Lund and Wah Wah Springs members of the Needles Range Formation, a previously unnamed crystal-poor, vitric-lithic welded tuff of unknown lateral extent occurs. Because of its good exposure and apparent lack of faulting near Ryan Spring, Beaver County, Utah, the writer proposes to name this unit the Ryan Spring Tuff. At its type section the Ryan Spring Tuff is1120 feet thick and primarily dellenitic with an average partial chemical composition of: SiO₂ , 73.8%; K₂O, 5.1%; CaO, 2.7%; TiO₂ , 0.3%; and Fe₂O₃ , 2.4%. The average mineral composition is: quartz, trace; alkali feldspar, absent; plagioclase, 9.1%, biotite, 1.5%; hornblende, trace; and opaque oxides, 0.6%, The total crystal content is 11.2% with the remainder being composed primarily of glass, pumice, and lithic fragments. The tuff has an average bulk density of 2.240 gm./cc., an average grain density of 2.449 gm./cc., and an average porosity of 8.51%. Vertical variations in chemistry, mineralogy, density, and porosity have led to some interesting hypotheses concerning preemptive changes in the magma and post-eruptive changes in the tuff due to alteration and compaction. There is no definite explanation to account for the variations in chemical and mineralogical composition. These variations may be due to pre-eruptive stratification of the magma chamber. Still another possibility might be post-eruptive deuteric alteration and leaching of ions by weathering. Variations in density and porosity are caused by multiple eruption and compaction phases --Abstract, pages ii-iii

Leaching studies of soda-lime-silica glass using deuterium- and 18O-enriched solutions

With a glass of composition (in mol%) 74 SiO2, 16 Na2O, 10 CaO, various leaching experiments were conducted, in which besides solutions of normal isotopic composition deuterium- and 18O-enriched solutions were used. The concentration profiles of deuterium, hydrogen, and 18O in the sample were measured with nuclear analyzing techniques. Α distinct H/D isotope effect was observed, showing that hydrogen takes part in the rate-determining step of leaching. The measured ratio of 18O uptake to hydrogen uptake during leaching gives evidence for exchange of oxygen between the glass network and water molecules contained in the leached layer. From measurements on the exchange of hydrogen and oxygen between solution and leached layer, a high mobility of water molecules in the leached layer and evidence for condensation of silanol groups was found

The Terminal Location Problem in the Forest Fuels Supply Network

Being sustainably available and CO2-neutral, woody biomass is becoming increasingly more important as an alternative energy source on a worldwide basis. However, despite broad acceptance of bioenergy plants in Austria, more and more neighboring residents are lodging a protest because of the noise and dust burden during wood-chipping operations. These circumstances force plant operators to utilize separate terminals for storing and chipping forest wood, in turn resulting in a redesigning of the forest fuel supply chains. The present paper focuses on the choice of spatial arrangement and the type of terminals used. For redesigning the forest fuels supply network, a Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP) model was developed and subsequently implemented for a study region. The network consists of direct supplies from the forest for combined heat and power facilities (CHP) and indirect supply lines via terminals. The MILP model provides a cost-optimal spatial arrangement of terminals by considering different terminal types with respect to spatial context, chipping technology, and the volume processed. Different scenarios are used to test the robustness of the network design. A simulation of a transportation cost increase shows that the optimal network design is stable within an increase of 20 to 50% and between 70 and 110%. At other levels of increase, the number of terminals used decreases. Furthermore, the number of terminals decreases as the domestic forest timber utilization rate increases. It was possible to demonstrate that industrial terminals offer considerable saving potentials. Therefore, the cooperation of CHP operators with a forest-based industry partner as a terminal provider is one of main management implications of the study results

Measuring Hidden Higgs and Strongly-Interacting Higgs Scenarios

Higgs couplings can be affected by physics beyond the Standard Model. We study modifications through interactions with a hidden sector and in specific composite Higgs models accessible at the LHC. Both scenarios give rise to congruent patterns of universal, or partially universal, shifts. In addition, Higgs decays to the hidden sector may lead to invisible decay modes which we also exploit. Experimental bounds on such potential modifications will measure the concordance of an observed Higgs boson with the Standard Model.Comment: 12 pages, 7 figures; version to be published in Phys. Lett.

Reengineering the Romanian Timber Supply Chain from a Process Management Perspective

Implementation of process management in the forest supply chains has a great potential for organizational and managerial improvement, at least by resource saving. Nevertheless, techniques of process management have been scarcely used to improve the forest supply chains in many parts of the world. In this study, for both Romanian state and private forests, the processes of the timber supply chain – from the harvest site to the forest-based industry plant – are mapped and analyzed. The main objectives of this work were to identify process optimization potentials and to redesign processes in order to improve the performance of the Romanian timber supply chain. Results show that particularly inter-organizational processes offer great saving potentials, mainly due to the existing multi-level hierarchy and multi-level control obligations. Therefore, introducing a web-based platform to enhance a collaborative workflow can considerably decrease the time needed for providing harvest sites or logs to customers via auctions. Further process optimization can be reached by the empowerment of lower level hierarchies facilitating the reduction of hierarchy levels of involved state organizations

Adenine Nucleotide Translocase 1 Expression is Coupled to the HSP27-Mediated TLR4 Signaling in Cardiomyocytes

The cardiac-specific overexpression of the adenine nucleotide translocase 1 (ANT1) has cardioprotective effects in various experimental heart disease models. Here, we analyzed the link between ANT1 expression and heat shock protein 27 (HSP27)-mediated toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4) signaling, which represents a novel communication pathway between mitochondria and the extracellular environment. The interaction between ANT1 and HSP27 was identified by co-immunoprecipitation from neonatal rat cardiomyocytes. ANT1 transgenic (ANT1-TG) cardiomyocytes demonstrated elevated HSP27 expression levels. Increased levels of HSP27 were released from the ANT1-TG cardiomyocytes under both normoxic and hypoxic conditions. Extracellular HSP27 stimulated TLR4 signaling via protein kinase B (AKT). The HSP27-mediated activation of the TLR4 pathway was more pronounced in ANT1-TG cardiomyocytes than in wild-type (WT) cardiomyocytes. HSP27-specific antibodies inhibited TLR4 activation and the expression of HSP27. Inhibition of the HSP27-mediated TLR4 signaling pathway with the TLR4 inhibitor oxidized 1-palmitoyl-2-arachidonoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphocholine (OxPAPC) reduced the mitochondrial membrane potential (∆ψm) and increased caspase 3/7 activity, which are both markers for cell stress. Conversely, treating cardiomyocytes with recombinant HSP27 protein stimulated TLR4 signaling, induced HSP27 and ANT1 expression, and stabilized the mitochondrial membrane potential. The activation of HSP27 signaling was verified in ischemic ANT1-TG heart tissue, where it correlated with ANT1 expression and the tightness of the inner mitochondrial membrane. Our study shows a new mechanism by which ANT1 is part of the cardioprotective HSP27-mediated TLR4 signaling

In-depth analysis of elements and properties of hydrated subsurface layers on optical surfaces of a SiO2-BaO-B2O3 glass with SIMS, IBSCA, RBS and NRA Part 2. Discussion of results

In the second part of this contribution it was derived from the comparison of the sputter yields with the specific energy losses within the bulk glass and within the various subsurface layers, that the differences in the matrix effects for SIMS and IBSCA between the bulk glass and the subsurface layers are caused by a decrease of the atomic densities and of the mean atomic bond energies within the subsurface layers as well. The knowledge of the matrix effects and their origin was most important for the interpretation of the SIMS and IBSCA in-depth profiles recorded for samples prepared with variations of the production parameters. E. g., various degrees of hydration and swelling could be distinguished by the influence of the different matrix effects on the in-depth profiles of the elements. The variations in the degrees of hydration of the subsurface layers could be ascribed to the influence of the thermal treatment before coating, to the interaction with slurries of different pH values and to the duration of storage before coating with λ/4-MgF2 layers. It is of importance for the fabrication of optical surfaces that the analysis results and the optical properties of the subsurface layers could be correlated with each other and with respective changes of the production parameters. The results illustrate that the properties of hydrated subsurface layers depend sensitively on a great variety of parameters which may be difficult to keep constant during processing. It is recommended, therefore, that such subsurface layers should be avoided whenever possible in optical fabrication to make it easier to attain the high reproducibility required for the optical properties

In-depth analysis of elements and properties of hydrated subsurface layers on optical surfaces of a SiO2-BaO-B2O3 glass with SIMS, IBSCA, RBS and NRA Part 1. Experimental procedures and results

The formation of thin subsurface layers was studied which occurred during the chemical interaction of polished and cleaned optical surfaces with different slurries before and after covering them with λ/4-MgF2 coatings. By a suitable selection of the parameters for these chemical interactions a thickness of the subsurface layers was produced which allowed to meet the requirements of the various surface analysis methods. The thicknesses and the refractive indices of the subsurface layers could be calculated from the measured spectral reflectances. Slurries with a pH value < 9 were applied so that a leaching of glass components from the subsurface layers occurred. This was indicated by the refractive indices and was studied in detail by analyzing the in-depth distributions of the glass components. Distinct matrix effects could be disclosed from the in-depth profiles for SIMS and IBSCA by a comparison with the results of the quantitative analysis with RBS and NRA. These matrix effects were different within the subsurface layers from those observed for the bulk glass. The quantitative analysis of the hydrogen in-depth distributions by NRA allows for the first time to link differences in the matrix effects with a different hydrogen content within the subsurface layers

A Note on the Economic Implications of A Focused Tourism Event: Bikers in Myrtle Beach

As we have graphically seen since September 11, 2001, areas which depend heavily upon tourism as a primary source of income face a host of challenges. South Carolina\u27s Grand Strand area is a good example of just such an area. A number of focused tourism-related events intended to attract a certain segment of the population have evolved over the years. Two such events revolve around the attraction of motorcyclists. One occurs during early to mid-May (with a burgeoning repeat presence in the Fall), while the other occurs over Memorial Day weekend. Both events have proven to be successful in terms of attracting participants, but are also seen as being somewhat problematic. Of course, proof of economic success rests with demonstrating the overall impact that each event has on the area. This study seeks to examine spending patterns of three important and relatively diverse tourist groups (i.e., including tourists who would ordinarily be attracted to the area regardless of the event) to gain some appreciation for possible benefits or pitfalls