Bowled out for a duck before picking up a bat: identifying women’s perceived barriers and lived experiences of cricket within the City of Lincoln

Gender inequality in sport has received significant attention from sports development initiatives and sociologists of sport. Gender inequality describes the structuring of aspects of society that favours one gender over another. Feminist academic literature is heavily focused around how the inequality is perpetuated in society (Hargreaves, J. (2000) Heroines of Sport: ‘The politics of difference and identity’. London: Routledge.). The prevalence of gender inequality is reflected in women’s participation levels in typically masculine sports such as cricket. Approximately 0.08% of the female population take part in cricket in the UK, which suggests there are inherent barriers to women’s participation (Sport England, 2011, Active People Survey 2011). This problem is something that has been highlighted as a substantial aim that the legacy of the 2012 London Olympics can help overcome (London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympics games Ltd (2008) Diversity and Inclusion strategy). The present study builds on previous work to increase opportunities for women to participate in cricket (Hibberd et al 2011; ‘Not Just a Boys Game’: Programme evaluation of a multi-agency cricket intervention designed to reduce gender inequity in a city in the East of England.’Paper presented at the student BASES 2011 conference). The principal aim of this study is to investigate the perceived barriers that active women feel prevent or inhibit their participation in cricket. A case study approach will be adopted, focusing on six women’s community and University sports clubs in Lincoln, in conjunction with Lincolnshire Cricket board (LCB). Women will be recruited from an array of social backgrounds, with different abilities, ages and experiences of sport. A mixed method approach utilising both questionnaires and semi-structured group interviews will be employed (Bryman, A. (1988) Quantity and Quality in Social Research. London: Routledge). A theory driven approach to understanding women’s perceived barriers to participation in cricket will be adopted. The project will enable researchers to gain a better understanding of the reasons why women find access to certain sports easier than others. This information will allow researchers to make recommendations for widening participation in women’s cricket, with a view to increasing the viability of women’s participation in cricket locally

The Inversion Transformation and Some of Its Applications

It is the purpose of this paper to show that the inversion transformation is a useful transformation for simplifying plane figures. The paper is an outgrowth of proving Ptolemy\u27s Theorem (In a cyclic convex quadrilateral the product of the diagonals is equal to the sum of the product of the two pairs of opposite sides). This theorem can be used to prove a fundamental trigonometric identity; namely, sin( A - B ) = sin A cos B - cos A sin B, which will be proved later in the paper. The writer found an interesting and concise proof of Ptolemy\u27s theorem in Geometry, Volume I by H. Eves, which led him to become interested in the inversion transformation of which Ptolemy\u27s Theorem is one such application. The writer will now prove Ptolemy\u27s theorem without using inversion. Later in the paper the writer will prove Ptolemy\u27s theorem using inversion

Erik Satie's Trois Gnossiennes in the French fin de siècle

A majority of modern studies of Erik Satie’s Trois Gnossiennes seem to consider the French composer’s early piano music as a form of anti-Wagnerian nihilism. This view is misinformed. From Ravel’s first staging of Satie’s early piano music at the Société Musicale Indépendante in 1910, to John Cage’s lecture on the ‘Defence of Satie’ in 1948, composers from both waves of the modernist period (1890-1914 and post 1940s) have often given too much attention to Satie’s apparently anti-romantic and anti-Germanic mentality, failing to consider his early symbolist identity in the French fin de siècle. As a result, numerous studies today examine Satie as a precursor to the light-hearted nihilism of Les Six, Dadaism and the later John Cage. However, this dissertation argues that Satie’s initial behaviour in the fin de siècle period may have been influenced by mysticism, closely associated with the ideals of late-romanticism. Examining the period 1886-1893 (the years of Satie’s youth), this thesis offers a reinterpretation of some of the primary characteristics of Satie’s early piano music, taking into consideration the contextual evidence available on the anti-establishment of Montmartre. In this case, Satie’s aim was to use symbolist means to resist modern rationality, while also ascetically restraining himself from the grandiose subjectivity of late-romantic rhetoric

Shocks, Superconvergence, and a Stringy Equivalence Principle

We study propagation of a probe particle through a series of closely situated gravitational shocks. We argue that in any UV-complete theory of gravity the result does not depend on the shock ordering - in other words, coincident gravitational shocks commute. Shock commutativity leads to nontrivial constraints on low-energy effective theories. In particular, it excludes non-minimal gravitational couplings unless extra degrees of freedom are judiciously added. In flat space, these constraints are encoded in the vanishing of a certain "superconvergence sum rule." In AdS, shock commutativity becomes the statement that average null energy (ANEC) operators commute in the dual CFT. We prove commutativity of ANEC operators in any unitary CFT and establish sufficient conditions for commutativity of more general light-ray operators. Superconvergence sum rules on CFT data can be obtained by inserting complete sets of states between light-ray operators. In a planar 4d CFT, these sum rules express (a-c)/c in terms of the OPE data of single-trace operators.Comment: 93 pages plus appendice

Looking for a bulk point

We consider Lorentzian correlators of local operators. In perturbation theory, singularities occur when we can draw a position-space Landau diagram with null lines. In theories with gravity duals, we can also draw Landau diagrams in the bulk. We argue that certain singularities can arise only from bulk diagrams, not from boundary diagrams. As has been previously observed, these singularities are a clear diagnostic of bulk locality. We analyze some properties of these perturbative singularities and discuss their relation to the OPE and the dimensions of double-trace operators. In the exact nonperturbative theory, we expect no singularity at these locations. We prove this statement in 1+1 dimensions by CFT methods

Identifying Better Effective Higgsless Theories via W_L W_L Scattering

The three site Higgsless model has been offered as a benchmark for studying the collider phenomenology of Higgsless models. In this talk, we present how well the three site Higgsless model performs as a general representative of Higgsless models in describing W_L W_L scattering, and which modifications can make it more representative. We employ general sum rules relating the masses and couplings of the Kaluza-Klein (KK) modes of the gauge fields in continuum and deconstructed Higgsless models as a way to compare the different theories. After comparing the three site Higgsless model to flat and warped continuum Higgsless models, we analyze an extensions of the three site Higgsless model, namely, the Hidden Local Symmetry (HLS) Higgsless model. We demonstrate that W_LW_L scattering in the HLS Higgsless model can very closely approximate scattering in the continuum models, provided that the parameter `a' is chosen to mimic rho-meson dominance of pi-pi scattering in QCD

Khalifa University Reachback Program Supporting Prevention of Illicit Nuclear and Radiological Material Smuggling in the United Arab Emirates

Trafficking of Illicit nuclear or radiological materials is a global threat which can involve and adversely affect any country. Ultimately, it is the responsibility of each state to prevent and combat illicit nuclear trafficking by screening all cargo and travelers entering, exiting, and transiting through its borders. As a part of the national radiation detection infrastructure of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), a reachback program was established at Khalifa University (KU) to provide capabilities for adjudication of radiation alarms at Khalifa Port and other radiation portal monitor (RPM) locations. In addition to the main mission, KU Reachback aims to educate and prepare local talent to lead these vital efforts in the future. This is particularly important because the UAE, similar to other newcomers to the nuclear industry, faces human capital challenges which can be addressed using domestic or regional solutions