Molecular Dynamics Simulations of the O2- Ion Mobility in Dense Ne Gas at Low Temperature: Influence of the Repulsive Part of the Ion-Neutral Interaction Potential

New Molecular Dynamics simulations have been carried out in order to get an insight on the physical mechanisms that determine the drift mobility of negative Oxygen ions in very dense Neon gas in the supercritical phase close to the critical point. Two ion-neutral interaction potentials have been used that differ by their repulsive part. We have observed that the potential with a harder repulsive part gives much better agreement with the experimental data. The differences with the softer repulsive potential previously used are discussed. We propose that the behavior of the ion mobility as a function of the gas density is related to the number of neutral atoms loosely bound in the first solvation shell around the ion.Comment: submitted to IEEE-TDEI, 6 pages, 9 figure

The ‘transaction X-ray’: understanding construction procurement

This paper presents the results of a case study, the Construction Case, which examines procurement practices within the UK construction supply chain and compares these with a more general UK sample taken from non-construction sectors. Using a qualitative methodology, the approaches to relationship management and buyer value perception are graphically mapped, using an innovative ‘transaction X-ray’ technique. The Construction Case considers procurement transactions conducted at various points along the construction value chain: the client, the construction firm and the specialist contractor. Recognising that the research design favours a small sample size, and thus limits generalisability beyond the boundaries of the case, the paper finds that construction industry procurement operates in an adversarial and largely arm’s-length manner. While procurement practice is found to share common aspects with other industrial sectors, the case demonstrates that the construction industry is more adversarial and less collaborative than is the average found across the other sectors examined. The paper outlines a useful framework whereby construction practitioners can evaluate elements of procurement practice within their own organisations, and also signposts the required direction for future research in order to reflect the gap, suggested by the case, between current normative theory and construction procurement practice

Professional buyers and the value proposition

Lusch (2011) considers Service-Dominant Logic (S-DL) to be an appropriate lens through which to view supply chain research, and suggests it be used to better understand value. The authors, accepting a founding premise of S-DL that value is phenomenologically determined by the recipient, adopt a qualitative methodology to penetrate the inherent complexity and commercial confidentiality of the buyer-seller relationship. In particular the authors make a comparative evaluation as to how the wider, psychological needs of the buyer interact with the effects of the organisational goals of their businesses. The study uses a longitudinal research design, involving web-based diaries and follow-up interviews to develop the empirical understanding of the dominant patterns of buyer value perception that, within the context of the investigation, both challenge extant thinking and informs the debate regarding the approaches to combining value creation and value capture (Skilton, 2014). The explanations offered suggest that exchange value achieves a greater buyer focus than utility value, and acknowledges the relative importance of buyer value perceptions that are not directly aligned with organisational objectives. These findings, it is argued, may cause organisations to reflect on their procurement policies and procedures as they seek to engage with potential suppliers

Digital curation and the cloud

Digital curation involves a wide range of activities, many of which could benefit from cloud deployment to a greater or lesser extent. These range from infrequent, resource-intensive tasks which benefit from the ability to rapidly provision resources to day-to-day collaborative activities which can be facilitated by networked cloud services. Associated benefits are offset by risks such as loss of data or service level, legal and governance incompatibilities and transfer bottlenecks. There is considerable variability across both risks and benefits according to the service and deployment models being adopted and the context in which activities are performed. Some risks, such as legal liabilities, are mitigated by the use of alternative, e.g., private cloud models, but this is typically at the expense of benefits such as resource elasticity and economies of scale. Infrastructure as a Service model may provide a basis on which more specialised software services may be provided. There is considerable work to be done in helping institutions understand the cloud and its associated costs, risks and benefits, and how these compare to their current working methods, in order that the most beneficial uses of cloud technologies may be identified. Specific proposals, echoing recent work coordinated by EPSRC and JISC are the development of advisory, costing and brokering services to facilitate appropriate cloud deployments, the exploration of opportunities for certifying or accrediting cloud preservation providers, and the targeted publicity of outputs from pilot studies to the full range of stakeholders within the curation lifecycle, including data creators and owners, repositories, institutional IT support professionals and senior manager

Writing the hybrid : Asian imaginaries in Australian literature

University of Technology, Sydney. Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences.This thesis addresses the representation of transcultural exchange between Anglo-Europeans and Asian-Australians. It presents my fictionalised autobiography/novel The Fire Sermon, and discusses its key influences: novels concerned with the representations of Anglo/Asian relationships and the "mixed blood" Eurasian subject. My exigesis explores my "factional" (or ficto-critical) methodology for writing about cultural hybridity, and considers the practice of textual metissage, an approach to writing about cross-cultural identities in an Australian-Asian Imaginary, which I define as a field of commodified, ambivalent, and anxious representations of Asian and Eurasian subjects. This exegesis addresses the influence of touristic Anglo-European narratives of Australians in Asia; these include subjects who may "go native" in an Orientalist way. Demonised Eurasians also appear as "tragic" figures of split identity. These narratives make/unmake boundaries that signify cultural and racial difference; these address desire for and/or aversion to racialised bodies and minds, and I argue that these texts promote a nascent multiculturalism and mobilise hybridity as an intentional artistic strategy in order to deconstruct racism, but in the process may perpetuate stereotypes of the Eurasian, and may recycle dominant views of Eurasian hybridity's cultural and psychological inferiority to whiteness. I also explore novels that focus on Asian-Australian second-generation children and their migrant parents, in particular, how Asian subjects repudiate their own ethnicity in an effort to fit into Anglo culture. Contrary to naive understandings of hybridity as undifferentiated heteroglossia, this thesis argues against perpetuating uncritical celebrations of hybridity as cultural mix-and-match within an idealised vision of globalised world culture where all subjects have equal access to the cultural resources available to fashion identity. The appropriation of Asian and Eurasian subjectivities may in fact perpetuate an uncritical Orientalist discourse that perpetuates the dominant ontology of whiteness. My story explores whiteness primarily through the voice of the Asian migrant whose desire to celebrate Western forms of identity waxes and wanes. The last chapter appraises Brian Castro's approach to hybrid identity, the debate over fact versus fiction, and the issue of authenticity in migrant writing. By adopting parody, self- Orientalisation, and metissage, writers can decouple the Australian Imaginary from hegemonic nationalisms and open the literature of migrancy to new, more fluid subject positions

Permian palynomorphs from the number 5 seam, Ecca Group, Witbank/Highveld coalfields, South Africa

A palynological study of the number 5 seam in the Ecca group has yielded a wide variety of miospores, with a lateral and vertical consistency in their relative abundance, diversity and composition. Striate bisaccate pollen genera predominate, particularly Protohaploxypinus Samoilovich emend. Morbey 1975, Striatopodocarpites Zoricheva & Sedova ex Sedova emend. Hart 1964 and Weylandites Bharadwaj & Srivastava 1969. On a regional scale the number 5 seam palynomorphs correlate both quantitatively and qualitatively with Biozone F of MacRae (1988) from the Waterberg and Pafuri coal-bearing basins, and Hammanskraal plant locality. Broad palaeoenvironmental inferences drawn from both the palynology and sedimentology of this seam, support a flood plain setting, comprising shallow wide open pans and peat swamps interspersed with wide water-logged mud flats . The surrounding highlands would have been forested mostly by plants adapted to wind dispersal with colonisation of the levees and margins of smaIl ponds by spore producers. The age of the number 5 seam is tentatively suggested as Guadalupian, which in turn is equated with the Tatarian (European Standard usage); Midian to Dzhulfian (Tethys usage).University of the Witwatersrand; Bernard Price Institute for Palaeontological Researc

Attack/Affect: System of a Down and Genocide Activism

This article problematizes the affective capacities of popular music to perform tactical and sometimes violent disruptions in conventional thought, especially when these capacities are oriented toward political activism. I offer a critical analysis of “Attack” and “Holy Mountains” (Hypnotize 2005), two songs by Los Angeles heavy metal band System of a Down. I also examine the melding of the disruptive aesthetics of heavy metal with socially conscious lyrics, and contestations over historical memory, specifically the recognition of the Armenian genocide. I ask what potential this music has to signal new and different ways of (re)thinking history and inquire into the questions that arise from such a strategy