6,676 research outputs found
More than a Match: The Role of Football in Britain’s Deaf Community
The University of Central Lancashire has undertaken a major research project into the role of
football within the deaf community in Britain. As well as reconstructing the long history of deaf
involvement in football for the first time, the project has also focused on the way in which
football has provided deaf people with a means of developing and maintaining social contacts
within the community, and of expressing the community’s cultural values. This article will
draw on primary data gathered from interviews conducted with people involved in deaf football
in a variety of capacities. During the course of these interviews, a number of themes and issues
emerged relating to the values and benefits those involved with deaf football place on the game,
and it is these which are explored here
Suspending test masses in terrestrial millihertz gravitational-wave detectors: a case study with a magnetic assisted torsion pendulum
Current terrestrial gravitational-wave detectors operate at frequencies above
10 Hz. There is strong astrophysical motivation to construct low-frequency
gravitational-wave detectors capable of observing 10 mHz - 10Hz signals. While
space-based detectors provide one means of achieving this end, one may also
consider terretrial detectors. However, there are numerous technological
challenges. In particular, it is difficult to isolate test masses so that they
are both seismically isolated and freely falling under the influence of gravity
at millihertz frequencies. We investigate the challenges of low-frequency
suspension in a hypothetical terrestrial detector. As a case study, we consider
a Magnetically Assisted Gravitational-wave Pendulum Intorsion (MAGPI)
suspension design. We construct a noise budget to estimate some of the required
specifications. In doing so, we identify what are likely to be a number of
generic limiting noise sources for terrestrial millihertz gravitational-wave
suspension systems (as well as some peculiar to the MAGPI design). We highlight
significant experimental challenges in order to argue that the development of
millihertz suspensions will be a daunting task. Any system that relies on
magnets faces even greater challenges. Entirely mechanical designs such as
Zollner pendulums may provide the best path forward.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figure
The light in the darkness: an assessment of the retributive urge
In this thesis I examine in detail the retributive emotions, or the retributive urge, which typically precede retributive punishment. The four main chapters are dedicated to individual issues regarding the retributive urge: its genealogy, its schematic structure, its rationality, and its moral status. These issues draw together three philosophical fields: emotion theory, virtue ethics, and sociobiology. My conclusions are as follows. (1) Retribution and revenge are distinct forms of behaviour with different emotional bases. (2) The retributive urge has a genetic heritage, and evolved as a means to aid survival in the face of environmental pressures. (3) It consists of a complex conglomeration of components provided by its three constituent emotions: anger, fear, and disgust. (4) The common perception that the retributive urge is irrational is unjustified. (5) The manifestation of the retributive emotions suggests a virtuous character. Hence these -emotions should be encouraged within reason, rather than repressed or condemned
Protostellar Disk Evolution Over Million-Year Timescales with a Prescription for Magnetized Turbulence
Magnetorotational instability (MRI) is the most promising mechanism behind
accretion in low-mass protostellar disks. Here we present the first analysis of
the global structure and evolution of non-ideal MRI-driven T-Tauri disks on
million-year timescales. We accomplish this in a 1+1D simulation by calculating
magnetic diffusivities and utilizing turbulence activity criteria to determine
thermal structure and accretion rate without resorting to a 3-D
magnetohydrodynamical (MHD) simulation. Our major findings are as follows.
First, even for modest surface densities of just a few times the minimum-mass
solar nebula, the dead zone encompasses the giant planet-forming region,
preserving any compositional gradients. Second, the surface density of the
active layer is nearly constant in time at roughly 10 g/cm2, which we use to
derive a simple prescription for viscous heating in MRI-active disks for those
who wish to avoid detailed MHD computations. Furthermore, unlike a standard
disk with constant-alpha viscosity, the disk midplane does not cool off over
time, though the surface cools as the star evolves along the Hayashi track. The
ice line is firmly in the terrestrial planet-forming region throughout disk
evolution and can move either inward or outward with time, depending on whether
pileups form near the star. Finally, steady-state mass transport is a poor
description of flow through an MRI-active disk. We caution that MRI activity is
sensitive to many parameters, including stellar X-ray flux, grain size,
gas/small grain mass ratio and magnetic field strength, and we have not
performed an exhaustive parameter study here.Comment: Accepted for publication in Astrophysical Journal. 19 pages,
including 8 figure
Cosmic Ray Spallation in Radio-Quiet Active Galactic Nuclei: A Case Study of NGC 4051
We investigate conditions for and consequences of spallation in radio-quiet
Seyfert galaxies. The work is motivated by the recent discovery of significant
line emission at 5.44 keV in Suzaku data from NGC 4051. The energy of the new
line suggests an identification as Cr I Ka emission, however the line is much
stronger than would be expected from material with cosmic abundances, leading
to a suggestion of enhancement owing to nuclear spallation of Fe by low energy
cosmic rays from the active nucleus. We find that the highest abundance
enhancements are likely to take place in gas out of the plane of the accretion
disk and that timescales for spallation could be as short as a few years. The
suggestion of a strong nuclear flux of cosmic rays in a radio-quiet Seyfert
galaxy is of particular interest in light of the recent suggestion from Pierre
Auger Observatory data that ultra-high-energy cosmic rays may originate in such
sources.Comment: 14 pages, 1 figure. Accepted for publication in The Astrophysical
Journa
340 years of atmospheric circulation characteristics reconstructed from an eastern Antarctic Peninsula ice core
Copyright @ 2006 American Geophysical Union (AGU)Precipitation delivery mechanisms for Dolleman Island (DI), located off the east coast of the Antarctic Peninsula, are investigated using reanalysis and back trajectory data. The Southern Annular Mode (SAM) and ENSO are both shown to influence precipitation delivery and event size. Precipitation delivery variability is compared against the interannual variation of chemical data from two DI ice cores. Nitrate concentration in the cores is strongly linked with the ratio of easterly to westerly back trajectories arriving at DI, as described by a Cross-Peninsula Index (CPI) defined in this paper. This CPI is used subsequently to reconstruct the atmospheric circulation characteristics for the 340-year ice core record. The analysis highlights a period of increased easterlies during 1720–1780 and an increase in westerlies for 1950–1980, the latter concomitant with a positive SAM trend and western Peninsula warming. The reconstruction also reveals periods when polynyas may have been present in the Weddell Sea
Metis: an object-oriented toolkit for constructing virtual reality applications
Virtual reality systems provide realistic look and feel by seamlessly integrating three-dimensional input and output devices. One software architecture approach to constructing such systems is to distributethe application between a computation-intensive simulator back-end and a graphics-intensive viewer front-end which implements user interaction. Inthis paper we discuss Metis, a toolkit we have been developing based on such a software architecture, which can be used for building interactiveimmersive virtual reality systems with computationally intense components. The Metis toolkit defines an application programming interface on thesimulator side, which communicates via a network with a standalone viewer program that handles all immersive display and interactivity. Networkbandwidth and interaction latency are minimized, by use of constraint network on the viewer side that declaratively defines much of dynamic andinteractive behavior of the application.121-13
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