The importance of being privileged: Digital entrepreneurship as a class project

Established professional occupations can become the preserve of elites when fitting in is driven by class-based criteria. In contrast, digital entrepreneurship has been proposed as a means by which people may emancipate themselves from societal constraints. We interrogate digital entrepreneurship’s meritocratic foundations by way of a 36-month ethnography of a start-up incubator. Attending to the dispositions of digital entrepreneurs, we reveal they use cultural tastes and manners to create the incubator as a place where members of the privileged class can reinvent themselves at their leisure, all the while adopting the meritocratic mythologies of digital entrepreneurship to disavow their own privilege. This opens up a two-fold contribution to the study of professions and occupations. Firstly, we demonstrate how professional and occupational roles are epiphenomenal to class positioning. Secondly, the parallels between the legitimating discourses of entrepreneurs and more established professional jurisdictions attest to a community that is in the process of professionalization

The importance of being privileged:Digital entrepreneurship as a class project

Established professional occupations can become the preserve of elites when fitting in is driven by class-based criteria. In contrast, digital entrepreneurship has been proposed as a means by which people may emancipate themselves from societal constraints. We interrogate digital entrepreneurship’s meritocratic foundations by way of a 36-month ethnography of a start-up incubator. Attending to the dispositions of digital entrepreneurs, we reveal they use cultural tastes and manners to create the incubator as a place where members of the privileged class can reinvent themselves at their leisure, all the while adopting the meritocratic mythologies of digital entrepreneurship to disavow their own privilege. This opens up a two-fold contribution to the study of professions and occupations. Firstly, we demonstrate how professional and occupational roles are epiphenomenal to class positioning. Secondly, the parallels between the legitimating discourses of entrepreneurs and more established professional jurisdictions attest to a community that is in the process of professionalization

Directionally Sensitive Neutron Detector For Homeland Security Applications

With an increase in the capabilities and sophistication of terrorist networks worldwide comes a corresponding increase in the probability of a radiological or nuclear device being detonated within the borders of the United States. One method to decrease the risk associated with this threat is to interdict the material during transport into the US. Current RPMS have limitations in their ability to detect shielded nuclear materials. It was proposed that directionally sensitive neutron detectors might be able to overcome many of these limitations. This thesis presents a method to create a directionally sensitive neutron detector using a unique characteristic of 10B. This characteristic is the Doppler broadening of the de-excitation gamma-ray from the 10B(n, alpha) reaction. Using conservation principles and the method of cone superposition, the mathematics for determining the incoming neutron direction vector from counts in a boron loaded cloud chamber and boron loaded semiconductor were derived. An external routine for MCNPX was developed to calculate the Doppler broaden de-excitation gamma-rays. The calculated spectrum of Doppler broadened de-excitation gamma-rays was then compared to measured and analytical spectrums and matched with a high degree of accuracy. MCNPX simulations were performed for both a prototype 10B loaded cloud chamber and prototype 10B loaded semiconductor detector. These simulations assessed the detectors' abilities to determine incoming neutron direction vectors using simulated particle reactant data. A sensitivity analysis was also performed by modifying the energy and direction vector of the simulated output data for 7Li* particles. Deviation coefficients showed a respective angular uncertainty of 1.86 degrees and 6.07 degrees for the boron loaded cloud chamber and a boron loaded semiconductor detectors. These capabilities were used to propose a possible RPM design that could be implemented

Phoenix: A Reactor Burnup Code With Uncertainty Quantification

Codes for accurately simulating the core composition changes for nuclear reactors have developed as computing technology developed. The desire to understand neutronics, material compositions, and reactor parameters as a function of time has been, and will continue to be, an area of great interest in nuclear research. Several methods have been developed to simulate reactor burnup; however, quantifying the uncertainty in reactor burnup simulations is in its relative infancy. This research developed a fundamentally different approach to calculate burnup simulation uncertainty using perturbations and regression methods. In this work, a computer software package called PHOENIX was developed that simulates reactor burnup and provides a quantitative prediction of the systematic uncertainty associated with simulation modeling parameters. PHOENIX is a “linkage” code that connects the Monte Carlo N-Particle transport code MCNP6 to the buildup and depletion code ORIGEN-S. A verification and validation analysis was performed on four different reactor configurations using PHOENIX. The validation analysis consisted of two separate components: a code-to-code validation with MONTEBURNS 2.0 and a perturbation validation analysis using two different perturbation methods. Each analysis observed differences in reactor parameters and gram compositions for a selected isotopic suite, and compared them to a pre-determined validation criteria. For the code-to-code validation component, every reactor configuration simulated in PHOENIX produced reactor parameter values within five percent of the values provided by MONTEBURNS 2.0. A majority of the isotopes simulated in each code also produced gram quantities with differences of less than five percent. Similarly, the perturbation validation analysis confirmed that the simulation parameters produced by PHOENIX using each perturbation method contained differences of less than five percent for a majority of the cases. The outlying instances where a reactor parameter or isotopic composition did not pass validation criteria are explained in detail. The results from the validation analysis showed that PHOENIX produces valid estimates of reactor core compositions throughout burnup