Re use: archaeology and storytelling

Attempts to describe and characterise the re use of existing buildings in recent interior architectural theory have often centred on the language and syntax associated with literary arts. Remodelling and interior interventions are often described in terms of translation, interpretation, poetry, essay and narrative. This is not without substance and indeed it is not only the act that is described in such terms but the very thing itself. The intervention or remodelled architectural form is an essay on and narration of the existing building. It translates and interoperates a previous history and story manifest within the fabric of the existing building and act as its biographer. This act of storytelling is predetermined by the excavation of the story. As a precursor to the narration, the designer translates and adopts the behaviour of the archaeologist. It is a process of careful and predetermined removal and discovery that allows the depiction of previous lives, events and culture to become part of the present. The intervention as a mechanism for re use is a biographic interpretation of the previous and an auto biographic narration of the present. It is this ability to be both representational of the past and the present that establishes the significance of the intervention as a key contributor to place within this persistent context. This paper aims to contribution to current discourse in relation to the validity and authenticity of the built interior and the re use of the existing

Berry phase and backbending

Backbending is a typical phenomenon in the rotational spectra of superfluid nuclei. It is caused by the rotational alignment of a pair of nucleons and depends on topological properties of the Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov spectrum in the rotating frame characterized by diabolic points and Berry phases.Comment: 15 pages, 6 figures, chapter in "Fifty Years of Nuclear BCS", eds. R.A. Broglia and V.Zelevinsk

Relativistic mean-field description of the dynamics of giant resonances

The relativistic mean-field theory provides a framework in which the nuclear many-body problem is described as a self-consistent system of nucleons and mesons. In the mean-field approximation, the self-consistent time evolution of the nuclear system describes the dynamics of collective motion: nuclear compressibility from monopole resonances, regular and chaotic dynamics of isoscalar and isovector collective vibrations.Comment: LaTeX, 10 pages, 5 figures, Invited Talk, Topical Conference on Giant resonances, Varenna, May 1998, to be published in Nucl. Phys.

Fabrication of large ceramic electrolyte disks

Process for sintering compressed ceramic powders produces large ceramic disks for use as electrolytes in high-temperature electrolytic cells. Thin, strain-free uniformly dense disks as large as 30 cm squared have been fabricated by slicing ceramic slugs produced by this technique

The Write Approach to Mathematics or How I Found the Middle Way

Revising a course is a multifaceted process. Often, reform efforts are focused on a particular aspect, that of inquiry-based collaborative learning. This article discusses the implementation of another aspect of the reform of a course for pre-service elementary teachers: the use of journals and writing exercises for evaluation and assessment. The evolution of this particular reform is traced, with emphasis on the reactions of students and faculty, the issues raised by these reactions, and the solution and resolution attained by the author is outlined

Book Review: Thinking About Art

Book review for Thinking About Art, Edmund Burke Feldman, Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1985

Intergovernmental fiscal relations and regional sustainability

Regions often consist of both urban, densely populated areas and rural, more remote areas. In contrast to the acknowledged socio-economic functions of urban agglomerations, rural and remote areas usually provide ecological services for society as a whole. A number of these ecological services cause costs within the jurisdiction concerned but externally benefit others. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to analyse the role fiscal federalism and fiscal instruments can play in addressing the imbalance of socio-economic and ecological public functions assigned to urban and rural areas in regional development. For this purpose, an investigation of the different role of socio-economic and ecological functions in intergovernmental fiscal relations is carried out by way of example for the Federal Republic of Germany. Due to the significance of ecological functions for regional sustainable development, intergovernmental fiscal relations between the state and the local level of government should take into consideration appropriate ecological indicators. Based on a status quo analysis of the German state fiscal equalisation laws, the paper presents options for systematically integrating ecological functions and indicators into the existing legal framework. Environmental federalism would then be realised regarding both the ecological functions and the financial resources to secure the provision of ecological services. This would fulfil a basic prerequisite of sustainable development taking into account ecological, economic and social aspects for fiscal instruments of prime importance to the local and regional level of government, thereby helping to make regional sustainability a reality. --