Corporate Offending:Are the harms caused so different as to justify the unequal levels of prosecution and scrutiny?

There exists a significant disparity between the harmful consequences of corporate crime and the level of scrutiny and attention it receives from both the media and the criminal justice system (CJS). Somewhat understandably, it is both logistically and evidentially harder to put a company on trial. However, it does not follow that this therefore justifies the paucity of sanction and penalty. This article will argue that corporate crime is being treated more favourably by the CJS when compared with other types of crimes despite causing comparable harms to individuals and communities. Part I outlines and explores the more lenient treatment, evidenced by low conviction rates and high number of settlement deals, that is borne partly from entrenched prejudicial narratives about what real crime is. Part II will argue that corporate crime should be treated with the same level of seriousness and urgency

What Lies Beneath: Treatment of Canvas-backed Pennsylvania Coal Mining Maps for Digitization

An ongoing program to preserve approximately seven hundred oversized, canvas-backed, coal mining maps from the CONSOL Energy Mining Map Collection was initiated by the University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) in 2007, supported by funding from the United States Department of the Interior Office of Surface Mining and Reclamation (OSM) and the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (PA-DEP). The main goal of this project is to stabilize and clean the mining maps for digitization at the OSM National Mine Map Repository (NMMR) located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The digitized data of the underground mines will be incorporated into Geographical Information Systems relative to mine safety, land reclamation, current mining operations, and new development

Friedrich Nietzsche's contribution to the philosophy of art: A critical examination

This thesis is an examination of the philosophy of art of Friedrich Nietzsche. Its five chapters correspond to the areas in which I have found his most philosophically rigorous and comprehensive contributions to the field. Within each chapter is an exposition and critique of the development of these contributions. Whilst it is not my aim to make a point by point reduction of the ideas of Nietzsche to those philosophies established before him, given that his philosophy of art is to an important extent either stimulated by, a reaction against, or a conscious augmentation of the theories of Immanuel Kant and Arthur Schopenhauer, an analysis and critique of the philosophical and artistic offerings of these men feature strongly in the relevant chapters. In the first two chapters I explore two general problems in the philosophy of art with which Nietzsche takes issue: the Kantian idea that the pleasure involved in making judgements of taste is disinterested, and the role of artistic form in a characterisation of beauty. But it is in addressing the nature and value of the individual art forms that Nietzsche makes his most convincing contribution to the philosophy of art. In line with his own personal and theoretical concentration, chapters three and four comprise analyses of his philosophies of music and tragic drama. I conclude my project by stepping away from the individual art forms and looking at the metaphysics that informs Nietzsche's motivation for philosophising about art. I confine myself to a single branch of metapkysics - the question of appearance versus reality - and demonstrate that the sophistication of Nietzsche's philosophy of art grows with the development of his understanding of the nature of our existence

The Sincerity Game: An Exploratory Study of Erving Goffman’s Dramaturgical Framework in Relation to Interaction and Identity Construction Online

Self-construction is an intrinsically interactionist process (Leary & Tananey, 2005). The formation and maintenance of identity is socially reliant. Understanding the ways in which interaction changes is therefore vital for recognising how the individual maintains an identity. Contemporary forms of online interaction via social media are, therefore, inescapably implicated in these larger processes. Interactionist theory and Goffman’s (1959) dramaturgical framework are grounded in the observations of face-to-face social situations. Identity construction scholarship since the introduction of technologically mediated interaction has yielded contradictory and incohesive results. Online interaction specifically has received special attention from an identity construction point of view. Implicated theories in such studies include variations of symbolic interactionism, romantic conceptions of self, idealisation, and postmodernism. Deductive reasoning through the tested application of a single identity construction theory has typically left alternative interaction theories unexplored. Online interaction has normally been considered “special, because it is technological mediated interaction” (Pinch, 2010, p. 412).And the unique treatment of online interaction has resulted in the general dismissal of Goffman’s interactionist perspective. This project attempted to re-evaluate the applicability of Goffman’s framework to online interaction. Inductive reasoning allowed alternative identity construction theories to arise naturally from in-depth interviews. Ten in-depth interviews and two case studies were conducted with users of the website Facebook. Participants were asked to discuss the ways in which they used the website to interact, and why. Coding and analysis followed by a constantly comparative approach allowed theory to develop naturally from the interview material. Goffman’s dramaturgical framework found considerable applicability in this project’s analysis of participants’ use of Facebook. The five components of the framework, the actor, the performance, the stage, the team, and the audience were each identifiable in participants’ articulation of their interaction on this social networking website. Limitations in applicability however, were found to be due to a lack of affordance recognition. Prior studies, attempting to reanalyse Goffman’s dramaturgical framework online, have found his perspective inapplicable. This reconceptualisation of identity formation has resulted in theorists exploring concepts of postmodernism and romantic idealism instead. Such stark perspectives were not articulated by this project’s interviewees. Rather, the primary finding of this project was that interviewees sought sincerity. Neither a fluid and multiple, nor a static and grounded identity was identified in participants’ Facebook selves. Interviewees instead took an approach to the social networking website best explained by adapting Giddens (1991). This project found that interviewees created a self through a narrative. By creating a trajectory of self through Facebook’s timeline and “maintaining constants of demeanor across varying settings of interaction” (Giddens, 1991, p. 100) interviewees sought perceived sincerity in their singular, evolving identity. As Facebook affords just one self to be portrayed to multiple audiences, unlike Goffman, Giddens’ perspective provided a resolution to Facebook’s lack of audience segregation and performance maintenance issues

X-Ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy to Examine Molecular Composition

The extreme ultraviolet (EUV) spectrum is becoming increasingly important. Its most promising applications include lithography for integrated circuits, space-based astronomy, and medical microscopes. Unfortunately, the optical constants of materials, particularly heavy metals, in this range are not well known. This work examines the molecular composition and oxidation rate and depth of thorium. Most of our data is collected through the use of X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS). XPS utilizes the photoelectric effect to obtain data about the exact composition of our material. X-rays are directed at the surface in question, colliding with and dispelling electrons from different energy levels of atoms. By measuring the number of electrons dispelled and their energies, the presence and quantities of elements can be determined. Depth profiling is done to examine the deeper layers of the sample, in which layers are etched off and new data is obtained. The results are then compared with existing literature. These methods are used to determine what chemical bonding occurs on the surface, whether or not it is diffused into lower layers, over what amount of time, and how the chemical composition varies with depth