7,085 research outputs found
India: the next superpower?: corruption in India
The momentum of last year’s hunger strike by the anti-corruption campaigner Kisan ‘Anna’ Hazare currently sees India’s parliament wrestling with the formation of a national corruption ombudsman. Hazare’s campaign rests upon the proposition that the democratic ideals with which the Indian state was formed in 1947 are all too often subverted by the self-interest of public servants. Hazare’s supporters argue that this process has two primary effects. First, corruption allows wealthier citizens to access resources and preferential state treatment to which they are not entitled. Second, corruption constitutes a drain on the coffers of many ordinary Indians, in the form of demands for bribes by state functionaries, without which their services cannot necessarily be procured
Contra-rotating marine current turbines : single point tethered floating system - stabilty and performance
The Energy Systems Research Unit within the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Strathclyde has developed a novel contra-rotating tidal turbine (CoRMaT). A series of tank and sea tests have led to the development and deployment of a small stand-alone next generation tidal turbine. Novel aspects of this turbine include its single point compliant mooring system, direct drive open to sea permanent magnet generator, and two contra-rotating sets of rotor blades. The sea testing of the turbine off the west coast of Scotland in the Sound of Islay is described; the resulting stability of a single-point tethered device and power quality from the direct drive generator is reported and evaluated. It is noted that reasonably good moored turbine stability within a real tidal stream can be achieved with careful design; however even quite small instabilities have an effect on the output electrical power quality. Finally, the power take-off and delivery options for a 250kW production prototype are described and assessed
Corruption is both a symptom of the basic structures of capitalism, and a technology that supports them
As leaders gather in London for a landmark Anti-Corruption Summit hosted by David Cameron, Andrew Sanchez draws on his research in India to argue the project to eliminate criminal practices that flourish at the margins of capitalist economies is based upon a fundamental misconception. He writes that far from operating at the fringes of the state and economy, corrupt actors are usually enmeshed within the very structures of capitalism. This post forms part of our cross-blog Anti-Corruption series. Read further posts here
Cyber-nations: the Cold War contest for cybernetics and automation in the US, USSR, and divided Germany
This dissertation explores how the United States, the USSR, and a divided Germany responded to
the new science of cybernetics during the postwar. Invented by the MIT mathematician, Norbert
Wiener, cybernetics offered a new quantitative framework for studying feedback loops across
physical, biological, and sociological systems. The potential economic applications of cybernetics
promised a future of increased mechanization which threatened to undermine the role of labor in
both capitalist and socialist systems. The present study examines how thinkers across the Cold
War divide received cybernetic ideas and developed socio-political, economic, and artistic
responses to automation and productivity enhancements. Each chapter offers a case study focused
on a particular state (The United States, the Federal Republic of Germany, the Soviet Union, and
the German Democratic Republic), and analyzes socialist and liberal responses to cybernetic ideas.
The wide-ranging applicability of cybernetic concepts prompted varied responses, which ranged
from early forms of digital art in West Germany to proposals for networked computer systems in
the Soviet Union. Through tracing cybernetic reception across ideological and geographic
boundaries, this dissertation aims to uncover an important moment of cybernetic radicalism in the
1960s. This perspective provides much-needed historical context for current concerns about the
dominance of big tech and potential changes in twenty-first century labor practices
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Transformation and the Satisfaction of Work
This article suggests a new conceptual framework for understanding why some types of work are experienced in more satisfying ways than others. The analysis is based on research in an Indian scrap metal yard, where work entails disassembling things that other people no longer want. In spite of the demanding conditions of the labor and the social stigma attached to it, employees express satisfaction with the work process. This observation raises questions about theories of labor, which see satisfaction as arising from work that is creative, skilled, and task-based. The article argues that transformation is a social process that should be used as the primary analytic for explaining work satisfaction. Theories of creativity, skill, and task are secondary analytics that describe subsets of transformative action
Managing Utility Properties: Fire Risk Awareness and Mitigation
Southern California Edison is concerned with fire and the danger it poses to its equipment and employees, and their current strategies are becoming outdated. To help solve this problem, this project developed a web application that allows the user to identify the areas that might be influenced by a fire instance, retrieve information about assets in the danger zone, and display the assets and their risk levels. With this tool, the emergency response teams can more accurately decide what areas are most in need of assistance in a timely fashion. By increasing their efficiency of disaster management, lives and money can be saved
Sexual intercourse among adolescents in Santiago, Chile: a study of individual and parenting factors
OBJECTIVE: To examine a range of individual, parenting, and family factors associated with sexual intercourse among a community sample of youth and their families in Santiago, Chile.
METHODS: Data were taken from the first wave of the Santiago Longitudinal Study conducted in January 2008–November 2009. Participants were 766 youth (mean age = 14.03 years, 51% male) from municipalities of low-to mid-socioeconomic status. Variables included emotional and behavioral subscales from the Child Behavior Checklist’s Youth Self Report, parental monitoring, family involvement, parental control and autonomy, relationship with each parent, and sexual activity. Bivariate and multivariate logistic regression models were used to examine the odds of sexual intercourse initiation.
RESULTS: Seventy (9.14%) youth reported having had sex in their lifetime; the average age of first sexual intercourse among this group was 13.5 years (Standard Deviation [SD] = 1.74) for males and 14.08 (SD = 1.40) for females. Having sex was inversely associated with withdrawn-depressed symptoms (Odds Ratio [OR] = 0.84, Confidence Interval [CI] = 0.72–0.97), but positively associated with somatic complaints (OR = 1.20, CI = 1.04–1.38) and rule breaking behavior (OR = 1.21, CI = 1.08–1.36), after adjusting for demographic and other individual and parenting variables. The majority (80%) of the youth who had had sex reported using protection at the time of last intercourse.
CONCLUSIONS: Findings highlight the role that mental health problems—some of them not commonly associated with onset of sexual activity—may play in a youth’s decision to have sex. The potential protective effects of several parenting and family characteristics disappeared with youth age and youth behavioral problems.R01 HD033487 - NICHD NIH HHS; R01 DA021181 - NIDA NIH HHS; DA021181 - NIDA NIH HH
A contra-rotating marine current turbine on a flexible mooring : development of a scaled prototype
The contra-rotating marine current turbine concept developed by the Energy Systems Research Unit at the University of Strathclyde is aimed at extracting energy in a wide range of water depths by 'flying' a neutrally-buoyant device from a flexible, tensioned mooring. After successful proof of concept turbine trials, the development programme has moved on to investigate the performance of a scaled prototype of the complete system incorporating the turbine, submersible contra-rotating generator and mooring. The turbine/generator assembly has been tested in a towing tank, and the entire system is now undergoing sea trials. An investigation into turbine wake development (an area in which it is hoped that the contra-rotating turbine will have uniquely beneficial properties) has recently begun. Small single-rotor model turbines have been deployed in a flume. Trends observed so far are in accordance with those observed by other researchers
A Random Walk in a Random Environment
In this dissertation we consider a model of a random walk, (Zn}, on R(1) where the distribution of (Zn} is dependent on a stochastic process (Yn} and is given by gy(z) where Yn-1 = y . Conditions on the environmental process (Yn} are given for which transience or recurrence of the random walk (Zn} can be detennined. The probability of n absorption and mean time problems are solved when (Yn} is a finite Markov chain and (Zn} is a classical random walk on the integer lattice
Contra-rotating marine current turbines : performance in field trials and power train developments
Development of a novel contra-rotating marine current turbine has been continuing at the University of Strathclyde. Continuous monitoring of blade bending loads during trials has enabled an investigation of blade-blade and blade-structure interactions. The former are a particular concern with a contra-rotating turbine, but there is now evidence to suggest that in normal operation these are relatively small. By contrast, blade-structure effects are clearly visible. A turbine complete with single-point mooring and submersible contra-rotating generator is presently being prepared for sea trials. Details of the machine and the test programme are described
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