"We are GREAT Britain": British newspaper narratives during the London 2012 Olympic Games

British newspaper narratives were examined during the 2012 London Olympic Games to discern how the British press promoted specific “narratives of the nation.” For the London-based British press, the home Olympics became the ideal medium not only to sell newspapers and electronic format subscriptions, but also to (re)present their views on Britain and what it stood for. Using a qualitative textual analysis methodology, this study drew on Anderson’s theory of the “imagined community” and Edmunds and Turner’s concepts of benign and malign nationalism to provide insights about how Britishness was framed. For a country struggling to shake off the economic recession, early narratives about the Games were imbued with concerns about the escalating costs of hosting the Games and fears of terrorism. However, the critical early tone of British newspaper narratives was supplanted with uplifting, inspirational stories about the unprecedented success of Team GB athletes. This provided British journalists with an opportunity to reengineer Britishness to reinforce some traditional values and inject some new inclusive ones. Although at times, complex, contested and contradictory, the narratives generally linked the internationalism of the Olympics with a progressive, benign version of Britishness that emphasized inclusion, tolerance, and creativity and, at least temporarily, redefined how Britain regarded itself and was viewed.</jats:p

Test of nuclear level density inputs for Hauser-Feshbach model calculations

The energy spectra of neutrons, protons, and alpha-particles have been measured from the d+59Co and 3He+58Fe reactions leading to the same compound nucleus, 61$Ni. The experimental cross sections have been compared to Hauser-Feshbach model calculations using different input level density models. None of them have been found to agree with experiment. It manifests the serious problem with available level density parameterizations especially those based on neutron resonance spacings and density of discrete levels. New level densities and corresponding Fermi-gas parameters have been obtained for reaction product nuclei such as 60Ni,60Co, and 57Fe

Product Service System Innovation in the Smart City

Product service systems (PSS) may usefully form part of the mix of innovations necessary to move society toward more sustainable futures. However, despite such potential, PSS implementation is highly uneven and limited. Drawing on an alternate socio-technical perspective of innovation, this paper provides fresh insights, on among other things the role of context in PSS innovation, to address this issue. Case study research is presented focusing on a use orientated PSS in an urban environment: the Copenhagen city bike scheme. The paper shows that PSS innovation is a situated complex process, shaped by actors and knowledge from other locales. It argues that further research is needed to investigate how actors interests shape PSS innovation. It recommends that institutional spaces should be provided in governance landscapes associated with urban environments to enable legitimate PSS concepts to co-evolve in light of locally articulated sustainability principles and priorities

The impact of mass-loss on the evolution and pre-supernova properties of red supergiants

The post main-sequence evolution of massive stars is very sensitive to many parameters of the stellar models. Key parameters are the mixing processes, the metallicity, the mass-loss rate and the effect of a close companion. We study how the red supergiant lifetimes, the tracks in the Hertzsprung-Russel diagram (HRD), the positions in this diagram of the pre-supernova progenitor as well as the structure of the stars at that time change for various mass-loss rates during the red supergiant phase (RSG), and for two different initial rotation velocities. The surface abundances of RSGs are much more sensitive to rotation than to the mass-loss rates during that phase. A change of the RSG mass-loss rate has a strong impact on the RSG lifetimes and therefore on the luminosity function of RSGs. At solar metallicity, the enhanced mass-loss rate models do produce significant changes on the populations of blue, yellow and red supergiants. When extended blue loops or blue ward excursions are produced by enhanced mass-loss, the models predict that a majority of blue (yellow) supergiants are post RSG objects. These post RSG stars are predicted to show much smaller surface rotational velocities than similar blue supergiants on their first crossing of the HR gap. The position in the HRD of the end point of the evolution depends on the mass of the hydrogen envelope. More precisely, whenever, at the pre-supernova stage, the H-rich envelope contains more than about 5\% of the initial mass, the star is a red supergiant, and whenever the H-rich envelope contains less than 1\% of the total mass the star is a blue supergiant. For intermediate situations, intermediate colors/effective temperatures are obtained. Yellow progenitors for core collapse supernovae can be explained by the enhanced mass-loss rate models, while the red progenitors are better fitted by the standard mass-loss rate models.Comment: 19 pages, 11 figures, 6 tables, accepted for publication in Astronomy and Astrophysic

Hemiparasitic plant impacts animal and plant communities across four trophic levels

1.Understanding the impact of species on community structure is a fundamental question in ecology. There is a growing body of evidence that suggests that both sub-dominant species and parasites can have a disproportionately large impact. 2.Here we report the impacts of an organism that is both subdominant and parasitic, the hemiparasite Rhinanthus minor. Whilst the impact of parasitic angiosperms on their hosts and, to a lesser degree, co-existing plant species, have been well characterized, much less is known about their impacts on higher trophic levels. 3.We experimentally manipulated field densities of the hemiparasite Rhinanthus minor in a species rich grassland, comparing the plant and invertebrate communities in plots where it was removed, at natural densities or at enhanced densities. 4.Plots with natural and enhanced densities of R. minor had lower plant biomass than plots without the hemiparasite, but enhanced densities almost doubled the abundance of invertebrates within the plots across all trophic levels, with effects evident in herbivores, predators and detritivores. 5.The hemiparasite R. minor, despite being a sub-dominant and transient component within plant communities that it inhabits, has profound effects on four different trophic levels. These effects persist beyond the life of the hemiparasite, emphasizing its role as a keystone species in grassland communitie

Level density of 56^{56}Fe and low-energy enhancement of γ\gamma-strength function

The $^{55}$Mn$(d,n)^{56}$Fe differential cross section is measured at $E_d=7$ MeV\@. The $^{56}$Fe level density obtained from neutron evaporation spectra is compared to the level density extracted from the $^{57}$Fe$(^3$He,$\alpha\gamma)^{56}$Fe reaction by the Oslo-type technique. Good agreement is found between the level densities determined by the two methods. With the level density function obtained from the neutron evaporation spectra, the $^{56}$Fe $\gamma$-strength function is also determined from the first-generation $\gamma$ matrix of the Oslo experiment. The good agreement between the past and present results for the $\gamma$-strength function supports the validity of both methods and is consistent with the low-energy enhancement of the $\gamma$ strength below $\sim 4$ MeV first discovered by the Oslo method in iron and molybdenum isotopes.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figure

Search for LBV Candidates in the M33 Galaxy

A total of 185 luminous blue variable (LBV) candidates with V < 18.5 and B-V < 0.35 are selected based on the photometrical Survey of Local Group Galaxies made by P. Massey et al. 2006. The candidates were selected using aperture photometry of H-alpha images. The primary selection criterion is that the prospective candidate should be a blue star with H-aplha emission. In order not to miss appreciably reddened LBV candidates, we compose an additional list of 25 presumably reddened (0.35 < B-V < 1.2, V < 18.5) emission star candidates. A comparison with the list of known variables in the M33 galaxy showed 29% of our selected candidates to be photometrically variable. We also find our list to agree well with the lists of emission-line objects obtained in earlier papers using different methods.Comment: 6 figure

Density Functional Theory for the Photoionization Dynamics of Uracil

Photoionization dynamics of the RNA base Uracil is studied in the framework of Density Functional Theory (DFT). The photoionization calculations take advantage of a newly developed parallel version of a multicentric approach to the calculation of the electronic continuum spectrum which uses a set of B-spline radial basis functions and a Kohn-Sham density functional hamiltonian. Both valence and core ionizations are considered. Scattering resonances in selected single-particle ionization channels are classified by the symmetry of the resonant state and the peak energy position in the photoelectron kinetic energy scale; the present results highlight once more the site specificity of core ionization processes. We further suggest that the resonant structures previously characterized in low-energy electron collision experiments are partly shifted below threshold by the photoionization processes. A critical evaluation of the theoretical results providing a guide for future experimental work on similar biosystems

The Mass Function of Newly Formed Stars (Review)

The topic of the stellar "original mass function" has a nearly 50 year history,dating to the publication in 1955 of Salpeter's seminal paper. In this review I discuss the many more recent results that have emerged on the initial mass function (IMF), as it is now called, from studies over the last decade of resolved populations in star forming regions and young open clusters.Comment: 9 pages, 1 figure; to appear in "The Dense Instellar Medium in Galaxies -- 4'th Cologne-Bonn-Zermatt-Symposium" editted by S. Pfalzner, C. Kramer, C. Straubmeier and A. Heithausen, Springer-Verlag (2004

Heteronuclear ionizing collisions between laser-cooled metastable helium atoms

We have investigated cold ionizing heteronuclear collisions in dilute mixtures of metastable (2 3S1) 3He and 4He atoms, extending our previous work on the analogous homonuclear collisions [R. J. W. Stas et al., PRA 73, 032713 (2006)]. A simple theoretical model of such collisions enables us to calculate the heteronuclear ionization rate coefficient, for our quasi-unpolarized gas, in the absence of resonant light (T = 1.2 mK): K34(th) = 2.4*10^-10 cm^3/s. This calculation is supported by a measurement of K34 using magneto-optically trapped mixtures containing about 1*10^8 atoms of each species, K34(exp) = 2.5(8)*10^-10 cm^3/s. Theory and experiment show good agreement.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figure