‘Don't let him take Britain back to the 1980s’: Ashes to Ashes as postfeminist recession television

This article interrogates postfeminism and recessionary discourse in the time travel police series Ashes to Ashes (BBC, 2008-2010). Viewing the series as an early example of ‘recession television,’ it explores how the resident gender discourse of postfeminism established in the pre-recession first series, and attendant cultural priorities, shifted over time in tandem with the onset of recession, following the 2008 global financial crisis, and in line with tendencies of emergent recessionary media culture. In early episodes it over-determines the characterization of female detective protagonist Alex Drake as a postfeminist subject, drawing her to well-worn cultural scripts of femininity. Later this gives way to the discursive centralization of her boss, Gene Hunt, already an iconic figurehead of recidivist masculinity from the earlier Life on Mars (BBC, 2006-2007), one of several gendered responses to the drastically changed economic environment in which the series was produced and received

Virtual social network-mediated English language learning in a Saudi tertiary EFL context : innovation and agency : a thesis presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Applied Linguistics at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand

The study explores the nature and roles of virtual social network (VSN) within a Saudi tertiary EFL (English as a foreign language) context, and the trajectory of the students’ experiences and perceptions of Twitter inside the classroom and of WhatsApp outside the classroom throughout a 12-week semester. The study draws on the three broad phases of Fullan’s change process (Fullan, 2001, 2007, 2016) for its underpinning theoretical framework and utilizes agency theory (van Lier, 2004, 2008, 2010) as an analytical tool for developing a deep understanding of the ways the innovative use of a VSN can aid students in and outside the classroom by allowing them to practice and collaborate in English learning. The study utilizes a mixed methods approach for data collection, divided into two stages; one designed to gather background information and another for a longitudinal study. The data collection instruments employed for the background stage included a questionnaire, interviews, and classroom scenarios, to gather data from 93 English language teacher trainees and 84 Preparatory Year Program (PYP) students from three different colleges at Qassim University (QU) in Saudi Arabia. The data collection instruments for the longitudinal study stage, which consisted of initial and post-project interviews, focus group participation, research log observations in and outside the classroom, and a post-project questionnaire, were employed to gather data from 25 PYP students throughout the 12-week semester. The study results revealed that VSN in the Saudi EFL context is divided into two types, private- and public-based, and that participants’ use and activity in each type varies depending on the platform affordances. It also suggests that, while students may have a positive attitude toward the use of a VSN in their daily lives, contextual constraints could mean that classroom use may fail to be sustained over a relatively long period of time. Within the study, although Twitter’s affordances in terms of anonymity and perceived newness initially motivated the students to exercise their agency in English learning, their anxiety, the teacher’s role, and the university infrastructure all played a crucial role in the failure of Twitter’s use to be sustained inside the classroom beyond the ninth week. However, WhatsApp’s implementation exhibited its sustainability by continuing even after the study ended and until the end of the semester. WhatsApp allowed the students to collaborate, practice what they were learning, develop autonomy, and transit from being passive to active learners, not only in English but also in other subjects. Finally, this thesis concludes by illustrating the value of interpreting the complex and dynamic nature of the innovation’s implementation process using agency theory from an ecological perspective. It also recommends ways in which teachers could implement VSN in the language classroom

Finite Elements for a Beam System With Nonlinear Contact Under Periodic Excitation

Solar arrays are structures which are connected to satellites; during launch, they are in a folded position and submitted to high vibrations. In order to save mass, the flexibility of the panels is not negligible and they may strike each other; this may damage the structure. To prevent this, rubber snubbers are mounted at well chosen points of the structure; a prestress is applied to the snubber; but it is quite difficult to check the amount of prestress and the snubber may act only on one side; they will be modeled as one sided springs (see figure 2). In this article, some analysis for responses (displacements) in both time and frequency domains for a clamped-clamped Euler-Bernoulli beam model with a spring are presented. This spring can be unilateral or bilateral fixed at a point. The mounting (beam +spring) is fixed on a rigid support which has a sinusoidal motion of constant frequency. The system is also studied in the frequency domain by sweeping frequencies between two fixed values, in order to save the maximum of displacements corresponding to each frequency. Numerical results are compared with exact solutions in particular cases which already exist in the literature. On the other hand, a numerical and theoretical investigation of nonlinear normal mode (NNM) can be a new method to describe nonlinear behaviors, this work is in progress

Impact of Financial Liberalization on Financial Depth in Iraq

This paper examines the Mackinnon-Show hypothesis i.e. financial liberalization promotes financial depth in case of Iraq. Iraq launched a comprehensive program of economic and financial liberalization since 2003. Thus, this paper aims to answer the key question that “is financial liberalization stimulated the financial depth in Iraq?”. By applying the ARDL Autoregressive Distributed Lag model on quarterly data during the period 2005- 2010, the paper finds that the liberalization of interest rates as a proxy of financial liberalization stimulated the financial depthonly in the long-run in the case of Iraq.