Everyday Magic: A Linguistic Analysis of Sarah Addison Allen’s “Just So You Know”

This project diagrams and analyzes Sarah Addison Allen’s magical realism essay, “Just So You Know,” which informs readers that, just as they fall in love with books, books fall in love with them, too. I focus on two defining features: (1) second person point of view (2) grammatical features from sentence structure and vocabular

Re-engaging with the intimacy of materials through touch

In today’s retail led world consumers are suffocating through an excess of soulless products. It is time we paused to breathe. "Touch has a memory" - John Keats. [A1] It is often assumed that product designers, especially in the fashion industry, will have a deep understanding of the tactile properties of materials that they use. This tacit knowledge is also assumed to be an essential ingredient for intimate engagement with the materials, for touch is about direct contact, close and personal; it is not sensation at a distance in the way of sound and vision. Through this intimacy, the designer can fully understand the potential sensory impact on their customers and can share their knowledge of this intimacy with the customers. However the rise of fast, offshore manufacture has led to a virtual design approach where cad-cam rules and the first direct contact that the designer has with their material is often when they receive the finished goods. The approach has become embedded in teaching, where virtual-oriented design is cheap and simple as well as effective. This runs in parallel to what Black [A2] describes as "The Fashion Paradox", i.e. the tension between an industry which has become dependent on the overconsumption of the consumer society made possible by low cost design and manufacture processes with emerging imperatives of environmental and ethical issues. It has become easy to make and sell a lot of goods, but perhaps a new approach is needed before we drown in an ocean of stuff. We hypothesise that a business strategy to introduce a new intimacy with materials to consumers through goods and experiences that celebrate "the joy of touch" will a) spawn better, higher value goods with cutting-edge appeal and b) provide a positive piece in the jigsaw necessary to address the Fashion Paradox, taking the line described by Fletcher and Early in "5-Ways" [A3, A4] that touch is relevant to the production of "supersatisfiers...which begin to break the chain of consumption and dissatisfaction". There are always many old voices that decry the lack of materials knowledge in the "designers of today", and we do not wish simply to join them. To avoid this yet to achieve new thinking in the territory we take a tangential approach that does not get stuck into stuff to early. Accordingly, the method will apply a method of research and teaching based on storytelling in multidisciplinary teams developed by Smith and Sams [A5, A6]. This reflects on the role of designer-storytellers described by Seah [A7] and Erikson [A8]. Thus, perhaps counter-intuitively, we seek to stimulate word-based approaches to a physical effect. The resultant project vehicle "Touch Stories" is inspired by the observations of experimental psychologist Charles Spence, e.g. [A9], that people have difficulty in detecting and remembering touch, but can be taught touch skills. This builds on earlier design projects "Touch Gourmet" by Torres and Sams [A10]. We provide below a short summary of the science context as well as the more usual design context for the project. The work described here is our first experiment using this method in the touch context with a fashion student community of young business and design professionals. In recognition, we report in the style of a science experiment - which also reflects the background of the second author. We are at the very start of a journey which we intend to take well beyond fashion (for the challenge of new materials and "too much stuff" spreads well beyond Fashion and its Paradox), thus to stretch and develop the territory, through the processes described in [A5, A6]. It’s a journey the design world needs to ‘touch on’

Twitter in local government: A study of Greater London authorities

Copyright @ 2011 SIG eGOVMicroblogging services are considered an emerging opportunity for authorities seeking to establish new communication channels with their public. Potential benefits evolve around enhancing transparency and interactivity, as well as sharing information regularly or during emergency events. The purpose of this exploratory study is to advance our empirical understanding of microblogging in local government. In particular, we reflect on online data collected to profile the use of Twitter by 29 Greater London local authorities (LAs). The study shows that London LAs have been accumulating significant experience with Twitter mainly over the past two years. In fact, many of them appear to incorporate conversational characteristics in their Tweets other than simply disseminating information. Furthermore, an analysis of Tweets during the August 2011 riots in England indicates the usefulness of the medium for responsibly informing the public and preventing rumours. Nevertheless, the study also identifies several points of improvement in the way public authorities are building their online networks; for example, in terms of connecting with each other and exploiting even more the conversational characteristics of Twitter

An overview study of twitter in the UK local government

Copyright @ 2012 Brunel UniversityMicroblogging applications are becoming a momentous element of the public sector social media agenda. The potential of Twitter to update the public with frequent, concise and real-time content has motivated many pubic authorities to create their accounts, thus generating an interesting topic for research. This paper seeks to make an empirical and methodological contribution to this new body of knowledge by presenting an overview study of general Twitter accounts maintained by UK local government authorities. Over 296,000 tweets were collected from the 187officially listed local government accounts. The analysis was conducted in two stages: an examination of the Twitter networks developed by the accounts was followed by a structural analysis of the tweets. The combination of online research and social media analytics techniques enabled us to reach important conclusions about the use of Twitter by those authorities. The findings indicate high level of maturity of Twitter in the UK local government and point to several directions for further increasing the impact and visibility of those accounts within a social media strategy

Experimental Investigation of Average Heat-Transfer and Friction Coefficients for Air Flowing in Circular Tubes Having Square-Thread-Type Roughness

An investigation of forced-convection heat transfer and associated pressure drops was conducted with air flowing through electrically heated Inconel tubes having various degrees of square-thread-type roughness, an inside diameter of 1/2 inch, and a length of 24 inches. were obtained for tubes having conventional roughness ratios (height of thread/radius of tube) of 0 (smooth tube), 0.016, 0.025, and 0.037 over ranges of bulk Reynolds numbers up to 350,000, average inside-tube-wall temperatures up to 1950deg R, and heat-flux densities up to 115,000 Btu per hour per square foot. Data The experimental data showed that both heat transfer and friction increased with increase in surface roughness, becoming more pronounced with increase in Reynolds number; for a given roughness, both heat transfer and friction were also influenced by the tube wall-to-bulk temperature ratio. Good correlation of the heat-transfer data for all the tubes investigated was obtained by use of a modification of the conventional Nusselt correlation parameters wherein the mass velocity in the Reynolds number was replaced by the product of air density evaluated at the average film temperature and the so-called friction velocity; in addition, the physical properties of air were evaluated at the average film temperature. The isothermal friction data for the rough tubes, when plotted in the conventional manner, resulted in curves similar to those obtained by other investigators; that is, the curve for a given roughness breaks away from the Blasius line (representing turbulent flow in smooth tubes) at some value of Reynolds number, which decreases with increase in surface roughness, and then becomes a horizontal line (friction coefficient independent of Reynolds number). A comparison of the friction data for the rough tubes used herein indicated that the conventional roughness ratio is not an adequate measure of relative roughness for tubes having a square-thread-type element. The present data, as well as those of other investigators, were used to isolate the influence of ratios of thread height to width, thread spacing to width, and the conventional roughness ratio on the friction coefficient. A fair correlation of the friction data was obtained for each tube with heat addition when the friction coefficient and Reynolds number were defined on the basis of film properties; however, the data for each tube retained the curve characteristic of that particular roughness. The friction data for all the rough tubes could be represented by a single line for the complete turbulence region by incorporating a roughness parameter in the film correlation. No correlation was obtained for the region of incomplete turbulence

Microquasars: disk-jet coupling in stellar-mass black holes

Microquasars provide new insights into: 1) the physics of relativistic jets from black holes, 2) the connection between accretion and ejection, and 3) the physical mechanisms in the formation of stellar-mass black holes. Furthermore, the studies of microquasars in our Galaxy can provide in the future new insights on: 1) a large fraction of the ultraluminous X-ray sources in nearby galaxies, 2) gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) of long duration in distant galaxies, and 3) the physics in the jets of blazars. If jets in GRBs, microquasars and Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) are due to a unique universal magnetohydrodynamic mechanism, synergy of the research on these three different classes of cosmic objects will lead to further progress in black hole physics and astrophysics.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures. To appear in Proceedings of IAU Symp. No 238 "Black Holes: from Stars to Galaxies - across the Range of Masses. Held in Prague, August 21-25, 2006. Eds. V. Karas & G. Mat

Best Practice in Developing Critical Analyses: An Empirical Study of Self-Efficacy from an Interdisciplinary Perspective

Despite substantial usage of case study analyses as learning tools in diverse fields of study, business graduate students often arrive with little to no prior knowledge in how to effectively use this tool. Using the Sams efficacy model (2009) strategic to business education this study identified a dearth in the usage of case study analyses in business graduate courses and also provides a step-by-step process to increase critical analysis and efficacy through the usage of case studies. Findings demonstrate that critical analysis is developed through a combination of teaching tools through additive strategies to impact more learning modalities at the graduate education level. A counter-intuitive finding was that formative written feedback did not significantly increase the development of case study analyses skills; this finding supports the additive model. This research brings forward universal best practices for developing critical analysis, as self-efficacy in business applications also increases

Refan program. Phase 1: Summary report

The Refan Program is aimed at a large reduction in aircraft approach and takeoff noise in the vicinity of airports caused by the JT3D-powered 707's and DC-8's and the JT8D-powered 727's, 737's and DC-9's. These aircraft represent a major part of the existing commercial fleet. The noise reductions can be achieved by engine and nacelle modifications in the form of aircraft retrofit kits. Engine turbomachinery noise is reduced by replacing the current two-stage fan with a larger single-stage fan and by nacelle acoustic treatment. Jet noise is reduced by the reduction on jet velocity caused by additional turbine work extraction to drive the larger bypass fan. The predicted net effect of these modifications on installed performance is large noise reductions on both approach and takeoff, increased takeoff thrust, decreased takeoff field length, and maintained or improved aircraft range depending on the amount of acoustic treatment included. The Refan Program is being conducted in two phases under contracts with one engine and two airframe companies. Results of the Phase I work are summarized in this report which describes the refan nacelle configurations studied, the airplane modifications required to install the nacelles, and the resulting airplane performance and noise reductions predicted for all five aircraft

Do social networking groups support online petitions?

This article is the post-print version of the final paper that has been accepted for publication and is forthcoming in Transforming Government: People, Process and Policy. Copyright @ Emerald Group Publishing LimitedEPetitioning has been emerging as arguably the most important eParticipation institutional activity. This paper aims to provide some insights into how ePetitions are perceived and supported by social networking sites. The connection between the UK government’s ePetitioning system and social networking groups linking to governmental petitions was investigated. Online data from Facebook were collected and analysed with respect to numbers of supporters compared to official signatures. The results indicate that although the process of signing an official petition is not more complex than joining a Facebook group, the membership of respective Facebook groups can be much higher. In particular, certain topics experienced very high support on Facebook which did not convert to signatures. The paper raises interesting questions about the potential uptake of citizen-government interactions in policy making mechanisms.The online research tool used for data collection in this paper was developed by Steven Sams who acknowledges support by the World Class University (WCU) program through the National Research Foundation of Korea. The program is funded by the Korean Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (No. 515-82-06574