From Marx to Heidegger: Oscar del Barco and the crisis of Marxism

This article traces the path from Marx to Heidegger along which the Argentine philosopher Oscar del Barco responded to the crisis of Marxism. Interrogating Heidegger’s own suggestion of a ‘fruitful dialogue’ with Marx’s thinking of history and alienation, Del Barco gradually moved to a critique of Marxism as being part and parcel of the twice millenarian tradition of Western metaphysics. If, in an earlier collection such as El otro Marx, he still believed in the possibility of retrieving the ‘other side’ of capitalist reason in the margins of Marx’s texts, starting in the collection El abandono de las palabras this hope gives way to a mystical or messianic expectation to welcome the sheer ‘there is’ of being through an attitude of non-doing that would be neither nihilist nor conformist. In this sense Del Barco’s itinerary can be considered paradigmatic of the way in which a whole school of radical theory and philosophy responded to the crisis of Marxism as part of a much vaster, epochal or civilisational crisis of reason and technology in the West

The “design event” : The anti-design- historian and a poetics of the object

What happens when a sudden encounter with a design-object calls into question traditional approaches to the history of design? Or, alternatively, when such moments make manifest how the symbolic roles we occupy as design historians can serve to obstruct our singular relationship to the object? Beginning with what is cautiously termed the “design event,” this article seeks to explore how an examination of how our own unconscious fascinations and obsessions that encircle the material object, can offer the potential for a self-reflective approach to design history, one that locates the reasons for our passionate preoccupations at the very heart of our analysis. Furthermore, it is argued that a focus on what is singular to the self, on the intersubjective relationships that have shaped our attachments to certain objects, can serve to form part of a broader challenge to the carefully constructed symbolic identities we are interpellated by in our professional roles as historians.Peer reviewe

Rethinking Radical Democracy

Over the course of three decades, vocabularies of radical democracy have pressed their stamp on democratic thought. Trading on the intuition that there is more to democracy than elections, they have generated critical insights into the important role that practices of pluralisation and critique play in bettering institutional politics. As a result, few would today deny the radical democratic contribution to democratic thought. What many might question, however, is its continuing traction. The paper probes this question, focusing on the nuanced place of democracy in contemporary radical work. It grapples with the difficulties that this poses for radical democrats and it suggests that a way of overcoming these difficulties – that threaten to undermine the coherence of radical democracy – is to rethink and reconstruct the distinctiveness of its vocabulary. The paper attempts such a reconstruction. It develops the idea of the promissory rule of the many and it discusses the ways it rejuvenates broader democratic thought

An Experimental Area for Short Baseline Neutrino Physics on the CERN Neutrino Beam to Gran Sasso

A new neutrino beam line from the CERN SPS to the Gran Sasso laboratory in Italy is presently under study. The new neutrino beam will allow both long baseline and short baseline neutrino oscillation experiments to be performed. This report presents a conceptual design of the short baseline experimental area to be located at a distance of 1858 m from the neutrino target

Fluorocarbon evaporative cooling developments for the ATLAS pixel and semiconductor tracking detectors

Heat transfer coefficients 2-5.103 Wm-2K-1 have been measured in a 3.6 mm I.D. heated tube dissipating 100 Watts - close to the full equivalent power (~110 W) of a barrel SCT detector "stave" - over a range of power dissipations and mass flows in the above fluids. Aspects of full-scale evaporative cooling circulator design for the ATLAS experiment are discussed, together with plans for future development

The rationale of opportunistic bilateral salpingectomies (OBS) during benign gynaecological and obstetric surgery : a consensus text of the Flemish Society of Obstetrics and Gynaecology (VVOG)

Ovarian cancer (OC), is a disease difficult to diagnose in an early stage implicating a poor prognosis. The 5-year overall survival in Belgium has not changed in the last 18 years and remains 44 %. There is no effective screening method (secondary prevention) to detect ovarian cancer at an early stage. Primary prevention of ovarian cancer came in the picture through the paradigm shift that the fallopian tube is often the origin of ovarian cancer and not the ovary itself. Opportunistic bilateral salpingectomy (OBS) during benign gynaecological and obstetric surgery might have the potential to reduce the risk of ovarian cancer by as much as 65 %. Bilateral risk-reducing salpingectomy during a benign procedure is feasible, safe, appears to have no impact on the ovarian function and seems to be cost effective. The key question is whether we should wait for a RCT or implement OBS directly in our daily practice. Guidelines regarding OBS within our societies are therefore urgently needed. Our recommendation is to inform all women without a child wish, undergoing a benign gynaecological or obstetrical surgical procedure about the pro’s and the con’s of OBS and advise a bilateral salpingectomy. Furthermore, there is an urgent need for a prospective registry of OBS. The present article is the consensus text of the Flemish Society of Obstetrics and Gynaecology (VVOG) regarding OBS

Beyond the ontological turn: affirming the relative autonomy of politics

In this article, I critically evaluate a characteristic tendency that is found across the various traditions of poststructuralism, both narrowly and more broadly defined. This is an increasing propensity to be preoccupied with ontological questions and seemingly at the expense of either a refinement of political concepts or a concrete analysis of forms of power and domination. I consider the reasons for this development and stress how this characteristic feature of poststructuralism appears to follow from the very fact of ontological pluralism. What we see in contemporary continental thought is a proliferation of different traditions, and each side seeks to defend their position in ontological terms. Following this, I advance the idea of a relative autonomy between ontology and politics, where the former does not determine the latter in any direct or straightforward fashion. I argue that we need to stress this relative autonomy to open a little space between ontology and politics, space where we can return poststructuralism to a more concrete engagement with ‘the political’

Expected Performance of the ATLAS Experiment - Detector, Trigger and Physics

A detailed study is presented of the expected performance of the ATLAS detector. The reconstruction of tracks, leptons, photons, missing energy and jets is investigated, together with the performance of b-tagging and the trigger. The physics potential for a variety of interesting physics processes, within the Standard Model and beyond, is examined. The study comprises a series of notes based on simulations of the detector and physics processes, with particular emphasis given to the data expected from the first years of operation of the LHC at CERN

The COMPASS Experiment at CERN

The COMPASS experiment makes use of the CERN SPS high-intensitymuon and hadron beams for the investigation of the nucleon spin structure and the spectroscopy of hadrons. One or more outgoing particles are detected in coincidence with the incoming muon or hadron. A large polarized target inside a superconducting solenoid is used for the measurements with the muon beam. Outgoing particles are detected by a two-stage, large angle and large momentum range spectrometer. The setup is built using several types of tracking detectors, according to the expected incident rate, required space resolution and the solid angle to be covered. Particle identification is achieved using a RICH counter and both hadron and electromagnetic calorimeters. The setup has been successfully operated from 2002 onwards using a muon beam. Data with a hadron beam were also collected in 2004. This article describes the main features and performances of the spectrometer in 2004; a short summary of the 2006 upgrade is also given.Comment: 84 papes, 74 figure