5,793 research outputs found
Calculating Risk, Denying Uncertainty: Seismicity and Hydropower Development in Nepal
If Ulrich Beckâs definition of ârisk societyâ describes societies increasingly structured by preoccupations with future environmental threats and related insecurities created by modernization, then Nepalâs hydropower community would appear to be quite the opposite, propelled into environmental denial by twin demands for domestic electricity and revenue earned through hydroelectric export. Our research reveals that prior to the April 2015 earthquake in Nepal, the hydropower community was engaging in what Eviatar Zerubavel calls âsocially organized denial,â largely ignoring the uncertainties associated with seismic activity. Earthquakes and tremors were viewed as unavoidable realities that should not impede hydropower development. This denial, we argue, was shaped not only by local political realities and demand for electricity, but also by a larger desire to capitalize on available funds from international finance, which are highly contingent upon Nepal presenting itself as a âsafeâ zone for investment. Our study focuses on the elites of Nepalâs hydro community: the developers, investors, water experts, and government officials who occupy the âupstreamâ positions at which scientific knowledge is produced and adjudicated. On one hand, the denial or omission of earthquake potential that we witnessed seems to identify the ineluctable challenges that Nepal faces in attempting to integrate its economy into global markets; on the other hand, it indicates the desire of the private sector to reap profits from hydropower in spite of obvious geophysical dangers. These dangers, we argue, are a bankable risk for these elites. However, for the people directly affected by new hydropower infrastructures, these are risks and uncertainties threatening already vulnerable livelihoods
A resource-advantage perspective on pricing: shifting the focus from ends to means-end in pricing research?
This paper contributes to a long-lasting debate between practitioners who argue that academia is unable to understand what pricing is all about and academics who criticize practitioner pricing approaches for lacking rigor or rationality. The paper conceptualizes a resource-advantage (R-A) perspective on pricing by drawing on the R-A theory of competition. After a review of R-A theory, the paper integrates the price discretion concept and pricing as a spanning competence by introducing a separation between resources that create and resources that extract value, thereby expanding R-A theory to pricing. The perspective aims to shed light on how the process of competition helps organizations to learn/benefit from pricing capabilities. The research shifts the focus of pricing research from an equilibrium-based static view to a dynamic, disequilibrium-provoking pricing competence. In this way, it draws attention to what is perhaps most relevant to pricing in practice: the actual means necessary to determine price
A New Method to Calibrate the Magnitudes of Type Ia Supernovae at Maximum Light
We present a new empirical method for fitting multicolor light curves of Type
Ia supernovae. Our method combines elements from two widely used techniques in
the literature: the delta_m15 template fitting method and the Multicolor
Light-Curve Shape method. An advantage of our technique is the ease of adding
new colors, templates, or parameters to the fitting procedure. We use a large
sample of published light curves to calibrate the relations between the
absolute magnitudes at maximum and delta_m15 in BVRI filters. We find that
individual subsamples from a given survey or publication have significantly
tighter relationships between light curve shape and luminosity than the
relationship derived from the sum of all the samples, pointing to uncorrected
systematic errors in the photometry, mainly in BV filters. Using our method, we
calculate luminosity distances and host galaxy reddening to 89 SNe in the
Hubble flow and construct a low-z Hubble diagram. The dispersion of the SNe in
the Hubble diagram is 0.20 mag, or an error of ~9% in distance to a single SN.
Our technique produces similar or smaller dispersion in the low-z Hubble
diagram than other techniques in the literature.Comment: 43 pages, 16 figures, 6 tables, accepted by ApJ. For additional
material go to
http://www.astronomy.ohio-state.edu/~prieto/paper_dm15/dm15.htm
The Forgotten Women of Toni Morrisonâs The Bluest Eye and Song of Solomon
In the afterword of The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison writes that, in the novel, she sought to focus âon how something as grotesque as the demonization of an entire race could take root inside the most delicate member of society: a child; the most vulnerable member: a femaleâ (210). Through Morrisonâs close-readings of her own novels, we know thatâat the level of formâMorrison painstakingly crafts her novels with particular goals in mind, that the gaps she leaves are just as important as the stories she tells. Morrisonâs female characters exist in these gaps, sometimes filling them and sometimes getting obscured by the literary shadows. The women on the margins of Morrisonâs novelsâmothers, daughters, and sistersâbuttress plot development and provide necessary subjectivity in regard to their gendered and raced experiences. Toni Morrisonâs treatment of certain female characters in The Bluest Eye and Song of Solomon simultaneously mirrors societal marginalization and elevates the voices of these âvulnerableâ members of society. In the pages that follow, I explore the significance of these female characters by analyzing how Morrisonâs narrative form ignores or neglects certain social actors, and by taking a closer look at the rarer moments in which Morrison gives these actors the opportunity to speak. Through an exploration of both novels, I suggest that Morrisonâs character development and narrative form challenge the reader to become more aware of oneâs own forgetting. By giving these characters limited spaceâin paragraphs, chapters, or entire sectionsâMorrison reminds us how utilizing different female voices and stories is necessary in representing the multitudes of standpoints and experiences that constitute American Blackness
- âŠ