An annotated bibliography and webography of sources related to practice research

This document was primarily created by Sophie Stone during June and July 2017 as a research assistant to the Centre for Practice Based Research in the Arts at Canterbury Christ Church University as part of a project examining the resources available to support Practice Researchers. The purpose of the bibliography and webography is to assist Practice Researchers (both new and experienced) in their research within academia and beyond, for example, within a methodological review chapter; when preparing written work for journals that publish Practice Research; when preparing documentation for research assessment exercises; when learning about documentation, presentation and dissemination

The beautiful and the political

Competing and polarised positions related to the possible political nature of material in contemporary music are exemplified by the work of postmodern composers and of post-war modernist composers. Whilst the former argue for the political nature of their compositions by the inclusion of contemporary issues and imagery, the latter argue for the political nature of their manipulation of otherwise politically neutral musical material. This opposition can be understood as a dialectic between content and form, and is expressed by Adorno as the opposition between representational and ‘committed’ work. This paper examines one example of each type of work—Luigi Nono’s Il Canto Sospeso (1955-56) and Johannes Kreidler’s Audioguide—and their relationship to a conception of the ‘beautiful’ in music. These expressions of the ‘political’ offer a framework through which the musically beautiful can be interrogated in the opposition of committed and autonomous artworks, and understood as an experience of alienation. Eco's exploration of Entfremdung and Kristeva's concept of abjection can both be employed to argue that the ‘political’ dimension of autonomous works offers the potential for a radical experience of beauty as a transcendence derived from present conditions, whilst committed works negate beauty as a condition of re-presenting the present

Modelling a Particle Detector in Field Theory

Particle detector models allow to give an operational definition to the particle content of a given quantum state of a field theory. The commonly adopted Unruh-DeWitt type of detector is known to undergo temporary transitions to excited states even when at rest and in the Minkowski vacuum. We argue that real detectors do not feature this property, as the configuration "detector in its ground state + vacuum of the field" is generally a stable bound state of the underlying fundamental theory (e.g. the ground state-hydrogen atom in a suitable QED with electrons and protons) in the non-accelerated case. As a concrete example, we study a local relativistic field theory where a stable particle can capture a light quantum and form a quasi-stable state. As expected, to such a stable particle correspond energy eigenstates of the full theory, as is shown explicitly by using a dressed particle formalism at first order in perturbation theory. We derive an effective model of detector (at rest) where the stable particle and the quasi-stable configurations correspond to the two internal levels, "ground" and "excited", of the detector.Comment: 13 pages, references added, final versio

Proposed direct test of a certain type of noncontextuality in quantum mechanics

The noncontextuality of quantum mechanics can be directly tested by measuring two entangled particles with more than two outcomes per particle. The two associated contexts are "interlinked" by common observables.Comment: 9 pages 2 figure

The Free Will Theorem

On the basis of three physical axioms, we prove that if the choice of a particular type of spin 1 experiment is not a function of the information accessible to the experimenters, then its outcome is equally not a function of the information accessible to the particles. We show that this result is robust, and deduce that neither hidden variable theories nor mechanisms of the GRW type for wave function collapse can be made relativistic. We also establish the consistency of our axioms and discuss the philosophical implications.Comment: 31 pages, 6figure

Neurology

Contains reports on five research projects.United States Navy, Office of Naval Research (Nonr-609(39))United States Army Chemical Corps (DA-18-108-405-Cml-942)United States Air Force (Contract AF33(616)-7282)United States Public Health Service (B-3055, B-3090

Affordable Care Act (ACA) and the Appropriations Process: FAQs Regarding Potential Legislative Changes and Effects of a Government Shutdown

This report provides background information on the Affordable Care Act (ACA). It discusses the ACA and the annual appropriations process and the potential impact of a shutdown on ACA implementation

On the dynamics of social hierarchy: A longitudinal investigation of the rise and fall of prestige, dominance, and social rank in naturalistic task groups

The pursuit of social rank pervades all human societies and the position that an individual occupies within a hierarchy has important effects on their social and reproductive success. Whilst recent research has indicated that there are two distinct routes to rank attainment—dominance (through the induction of fear) and prestige (through respect and admiration)—this empirical evidence has generally provided only a cross-sectional snapshot of how the two processes operate in human hierarchy. Whether dominance and prestige are potentially viable long-term strategies, rather than more effective short-term tactics, for acquiring rank in groups remains an open question. The current research addresses this gap by examining the temporal dynamics between prestige, dominance and social rank using a dynamic, evolutionary approach to understanding human social hierarchy, and thus supplies the first longitudinal empirical assessment of these variables’ relationships. Using naturalistic student project groups comprised of 3-5 teammates, the present research tracks the temporal relationships between prestige, dominance and social rank— provided through round-robin teammate-ratings—from the initial formation of collaborative task groups through to the end of a 16-week long academic semester. Results indicate that, whilst dominance and prestige both promoted social rank in unacquainted groups initially and were distinct processes throughout the period examined, only prestige had a positive effect on social rank over time. Further results reveal that the temporal relationship between prestige and social rank was bidirectional, such that acquiring social rank further perpetuates future prestige. Overall, findings present a framework for the longitudinal distinction between prestige and dominance

Free Will in a Quantum World?

In this paper, I argue that Conway and Kochen’s Free Will Theorem (1,2) to the conclusion that quantum mechanics and relativity entail freedom for the particles, does not change the situation in favor of a libertarian position as they would like. In fact, the theorem more or less implicitly assumes that people are free, and thus it begs the question. Moreover, it does not prove neither that if people are free, so are particles, nor that the property people possess when they are said to be free is the same as the one particles possess when they are claimed to be free. I then analyze the Free State Theorem (2), which generalizes the Free Will Theorem without the assumption that people are free, and I show that it does not prove anything about free will, since the notion of freedom for particles is either inconsistent, or it does not concern our common understanding of freedom. In both cases, the Free Will Theorem and the Free State Theorem do not provide any enlightenment on the constraints physics can pose on free will