Hauntology, or the cultural logic of Neoliberalism

Mark Fisher argued that twenty-first century neoliberal culture is haunted by “lost futures” – futures that were “cancelled” and thus failed to happen. This was evident in the way that popular culture from the 2000s onwards had resorted to recycling and reusing old styles whilst appearing “new”. His thesis proposed that this haunted culture was made possible by the disappearance of the conditions enabling artists to produce genuinely new culture. By the mid-2000s Fisher identified certain artists that had picked up on this condition, producing artwork and albums that could be considered “hauntological” in their mixing of past, present and future together in a way that postmodernism had failed to do. Importantly, Fisher had adapted the idea of hauntology from the French Philosopher Jacques Derrida, who had confined its use to the strictly philosophical realm, where it appeared to be somewhat detached from reality. Fisher therefore introduced hauntology to a more popular audience. With specific reference to the artist Laura Grace Ford, the musician Burial, and various vaporwave artists I use Fredric Jameson’s method of analysing texts through the ‘political unconscious’, arguing that more than declaring culture to be “haunted”, the “hauntologists” actually attempt to restore a sense of history and class politics (although not always successfully or coherently) to a culture and society trying so hard to suppress those things; and that further to this, the texts in question even try to present an “imaginary resolution” to Fisher’s “Capitalist Realism”: the idea that “there is no alternative” to our current socioeconomic system

Test program for transmitter experiment package and heat pipe system for the communications technology satellite

The test program is described for the 200 watt transmitter experiment package and the variable conductance heat pipe system which are components of the high-power transponder aboard the Communications Technology Satellite. The program includes qualification tests to demonstrate design adequacy, acceptance tests to expose latent defects in flight hardware, and development tests to integrate the components into the transponder system and to demonstrate compatibility

Bootstrap-Optimised Regularised Image Reconstruction for Emission Tomography

Supporting data and MATLAB code for the paper: A. J. Reader and S. Ellis, "Bootstrap-Optimised Regularised Image Reconstruction for Emission Tomography," in IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging (2020) DOI: 10.1109/TMI.2019.2956878 Instructions for use (tested on MATLAB R2017a): - unzip the file bootstrap_optimised_PET_image_reconstruction.zip Dependencies - add the utils directory to your path before running the scripts. Figures - there is a directory for each figure, not including those figures which do not contain experimental results. Each directory contains a .m script file and a .mat data file. Running the .m file produces the figure roughly as it appears in the manuscript. Independent exploration of the data can be performed if desired. Sample code - Running the example.m file will perform example 2D reconstructions with MLEM, bootstrap optimised guided quadratic MAPEM, and bootstrap optimised unweighted quadratic MAPEM. The reconstruction code is contained in the @reconClass folder. This work was supported by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) [EP/M020142/1]; and the Wellcome/EPSRC Centre for Medical Engineering [WT 203148/Z/16/Z]

Precision measurement of the branching ratio in the 6P3/2 decay of BaII with a single trapped ion

We present a measurement of the branching ratios from the 6P3/2 state of BaII into all dipoleallowed decay channels (6S1/2, 5D3/2 and 5D5/2). Measurements were performed on single 138Ba+ ions in a linear Paul trap with a frequency-doubled mode-locked Ti:Sapphire laser resonant with the 6S1/2->6P3/2 transition at 455 nm by detection of electron shelving into the dark 5D5/2 state. By driving a pi Rabi rotation with a single femtosecond pulse, a absolute measurement of the branching ratio to 5D5/2 state was performed. Combined with a measurement of the relative decay rates into 5D3/2 and 5D5/2 states performed with long trains of highly attenuated 455 nm pulses, it allowed the extraction of the absolute ratios of the other two decays. Relative strengths normalized to unity are found to be 0.756+/-0.046, 0.0290+/-0.0015 and 0.215+/-0.0064 for 6S1/2, 5D3/2 and 5D5/2 respectively. This approximately constitutes a threefold improvement over the best previous measurements and is a sufficient level of precision to compare to calculated values for dipole matrix elements.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures, 1 tabl

At the end: a vignette-based investigation of strategies for managing end-of-life decisions in the intensive care unit

Background: Decision-making on end-of-life is an inevitable, yet highly complex, aspect of intensive care decision-making. End-of-life decisions can be challenging both in terms of clinical judgement and social interaction with families, and these two processes often become intertwined. This is especially apparent at times when clinicians are required to seek the views of surrogate decision makers (i.e., family members) when considering palliative care.  Methods: Using a vignette-based interview methodology, we explored how interactions with family members influence end-of-life decisions by intensive care unit clinicians (n = 24), and identified strategies for reaching consensus with families during this highly emotional phase of care.  Results: We found that the enactment of end-of-life decisions were reported as being affected by a form of loss aversion, whereby concerns over the consequences of not reaching a consensus with families weighed heavily in the minds of clinicians. Fear of conflict with families tended to arise from anticipated unrealistic family expectations of care, family normalization of patient incapacity, and belief systems that prohibit end-of-life decision-making.  Conclusions: To support decision makers in reaching consensus, various strategies for effective, coherent, and targeted communication (e.g., on patient deterioration and limits of clinical treatment) were suggested as ways to effectively consult with families on end-of-life decision-making