Guest Artist Recital: Dr. Kevin Sanders

Kemp Recital HallFebruary 28, 2014Friday Evening7:30 p.m

APPLICATION OF UNCERTAINTY ANALYSIS TO MAAP4 ANALYSES FOR LEVEL 2 PRA PARAMETER IMPORTANCE DETERMINATION

MAAP4 is a computer code that can simulate the response of a light water reactor power plant during severe accident sequences, including actions taken as part of accident management. The code quantitatively predicts the evolution of a severe accident starting from full power conditions given a set of system faults and initiating events through events such as core melt, reactor vessel failure, and containment failure. Furthermore, models are included in the code to represent the actions that could mitigate the accident by in-vessel cooling, external cooling of the reactor pressure vessel, or cooling the debris in containment.A key element tied to using a code like MAAP4 is an uncertainty analysis. The purpose of this paper is to present a MAAP4 based analysis to examine the sensitivity of a key parameter, in this case hydrogen production, to a set of model parameters that are related to a Level 2 PRA analysis. The Level 2 analysis examines those sequences that result in core melting and subsequent reactor pressure vessel failure and its impact on the containment. This paper identifies individual contributors and MAAP4 model parameters that statistically influence hydrogen production. Hydrogen generation was chosen because of its direct relationship to oxidation. With greater oxidation, more heat is added to the core region and relocation (core slump) should occur faster. This, in theory, would lead to shorter failure times and subsequent “hotter” debris pool on the containment floor

Commodification of the Information Profession: A Critique of Higher Education Under Neoliberalism

The structures that govern society’s understanding of information have been reorganised under a neoliberal worldview to allow information to appear and function as a commodity. This has implications for the professional ethics of library and information labour, and the need for critical reflexivity in library and information praxes is not being met. A lack of theoretical understanding of these issues means that the political interests governing decision-making are going unchallenged, for example the UK government’s specific framing of open access to research. We argue that building stronger, community oriented praxes of critical depth can serve as a resilient challenge to the neoliberal politics of the current higher education system in the UK and beyond. Critical information literacy offers a proactive, reflexive and hopeful strategy to challenge hegemonic assumptions about information as a commodity

Quantum walks on circles in phase space via superconducting circuit quantum electrodynamics

We show how a quantum walk can be implemented for the first time in a quantum quincunx created via superconducting circuit quantum electrodynamics (QED), and how interpolation from quantum to random walk is implemented by controllable decoherence using a two resonator system. Direct control over the coin qubit is difficult to achieve in either cavity or circuit QED, but we show that a Hadamard coin flip can be effected via direct driving of the cavity, with the result that the walker jumps between circles in phase space but still exhibits quantum walk behavior over 15 steps.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures, 2 table

Libraries and research support in small and teaching-led universities: Contextual problems around nascent services in dynamic times

In recent years many academic libraries have been developing research support services. Much of this has emerged in response to the increasing demands and mandates of research funders to manage research data more effectively and to make research publications openly available through either gold or green open access (OA). The exciting prospect of helping to transform research practices by ensuring that there is transparency, accountability and reproducibility has also demonstrated a number of complexities and problems for research support services. In this paper we shall discuss some of the challenges and opportunities for libraries to engage substantively in developing research support services for their higher educational institutions (HEIs) and the wider communities they serve