Generative AI as a Democratizing Force in Fine Arts: Navigating the New Landscape of Creation and Consumption

This thesis explores how Generative AI serves as a democratizing force in the world of art by enhancing accessibility and diversity in its creation and consumption. Generative AI challenges traditional barriers such as technical skill requirements, financial costs, and the inertia of artistic expression. It argues that Generative AI not only opens up the art world to new voices and perspectives, leading to increased diversity of expression, but also fosters a novel form of consumption where individuals can instantly realize their creative visions, redefining the relationship between creator and consumer. This thesis acknowledges the potential negative impact on livelihoods of professional artists, though argues that these challenges echo historical transitions in art mediums and practices. It posits that, like past innovations, Generative AI will eventually integrate into the accepted collection of art-making tools. The following is the chain of logic used in order to make this claim: 1) Generative AI lowers traditional barriers to artistic expression such as technical skills and financial costs, 2) Enabling a wider range of people to participate in creating and consuming art (who do meaningfully engage with art in this new paradigm), 3) Thereby increasing the diversity and richness of the art world, 4) And redefining traditional dynamics between creators and consumers, making these roles more fluid.Plan II Honors Progra

Securitisation as Depoliticisation: Depoliticisation as Pacification

This article considers the development of the liberal state’s approach to national security in the era of the ‘war on terror’. The analysis focuses on state security strategies, considering how the state positions the politics of security historically through its representation of the current security ‘environment’. Drawing upon a critical analysis of the various layers of official strategy produced by the UK, US and Australia in this era, the article considers in the first instance the process of depoliticisation that defines the official understanding of security threats. The effects of depoliticising the issues and individuals deemed to constitute a threat to national security are subsequently considered through the theory of pacification plotting the links between securitization, depoliticisation and pacification. In doing so the analysis demonstrates how the framing of national security is pivotal to the official representation of ‘extremism’ and to the subsequent policing of protest and political activity. The article therefore suggests that the liberal state’s politics of security are defined by a pacification process that seeks to produce citizen-subjects who are unable and unwilling to resist the current social order

Cerenkov's Effect and Neutrino Oscillations in Loop Quantum Gravity

Bounds on the scale parameter {\cal L} arising in loop quantum gravity theory are derived in the framework of Cerenkov's effect and neutrino oscillations. Assuming that {\cal L} is an universal constant, we infer {\cal L}> 10^{-18}eV^{-1}, a bound compatible with ones inferred in different physical context.Comment: 6 pages, no figures, in print on MPL

A Great Nuclear Rejuvenation: What China can do with an Expanded Nuclear Arsenal

China\u27s hypersonic glide vehicle test in October 2021 prompted widespread concern in the general public and within the defense intelligence community. General Mark A. Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the test was very close to a Sputnik moment.1 More than mere power projection by the People\u27s Republic of China (PRC) and Chinese Communist Party ( CCP), the hypersonic test is an exemplification of rapid advancements in Chinese strategic nuclear forces writ large. Improved nuclear weapons capabilities will offer Beijing greater leverage in regional and international disputes with an increased capacity to coerce and compel adversaries into submission. As China\u27s nuclear capabilities increase, so too should its deterrence strategy in terms of overall nuclear beliefs, objectives, force requirements, and subsequent targeting policies. This paper outlines what China is capable of doing with their nascent nuclear triad and how it impacts their international relations strategy by providing an overview of China\u27s nuclear modernization efforts applied to a conceptual framework of nuclear weapons and nuclear deterrence. This paper demonstrates what China may do with an expanded nuclear arsenal, and presents an argument on why the US should care about these policy perspectives

Gendering Pacification : Policing Women at Anti-Fracking Protests

This article seeks to consider the policing of anti-fracking protests at Barton Moss, Salford from November 2013 to April 2014.We argue that women at Barton Moss were considered, by the police, to be transgressing the socio-geographical boundaries which establish the dominant cultural and social order, and were thus responded to as disruptive and disorderly subjects. The article draws upon recent work on pacification, which views police power as having both destructive and productive dimensions, to consider the impact of police violence on women involved in protest. We seek to explore the ways in which this violence impacts not only on those involved in protest but also those on the peripheries. The article suggests that the threat and use of sexual violence by police towards women aims to enforce compliance within the protest movement and to send a message, specifically to those on the fringes of the movement, that protest is illegitimate and inherently dangerous. As such, sexual violence forms part of the social production and construction of gender and is instrumental in the making and remaking of subjectivities. The case study suggests that police brutality towards women at Barton Moss, therefore, operated as a disciplinary function to regulate acceptable forms of protest and acceptable forms of femininity

Taking Saratoga from Space-Based Ground Sensors to Ground-Based Space Sensors

The Saratoga transfer protocol was developed by Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd (SSTL) for its Disaster Monitoring Constellation (DMC) satellites. In over seven years of operation, Saratoga has provided efficient delivery of remote-sensing Earth observation imagery, across private wireless links, from these seven low-orbit satellites to ground stations, using the Internet Protocol (IP). Saratoga is designed to cope with high bandwidth-delay products, constrained acknowledgement channels, and high loss while streaming or delivering extremely large files. An implementation of this protocol has now been developed at the Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) for wider use and testing. This is intended to prototype delivery of data across dedicated astronomy radio telescope networks on the ground, where networked sensors in Very Long Baseline Interferometer (VLBI) instruments generate large amounts of data for processing and can send that data across private IP- and Ethernet-based links at very high rates. We describe this new Saratoga implementation, its features and focus on high throughput and link utilization, and lessons learned in developing this protocol for sensor-network applications.Comment: Preprint of peer-reviewed conference paper accepted by and to appear at the IEEE Aerospace 2011 conference, Big Sky, Montana, March 201

Qualitative Analysis of Universes with Varying Alpha

Assuming a Friedmann universe which evolves with a power-law scale factor, $a=t^{n}$, we analyse the phase space of the system of equations that describes a time-varying fine structure 'constant', $\alpha$, in the Bekenstein-Sandvik-Barrow-Magueijo generalisation of general relativity. We have classified all the possible behaviours of $\alpha (t)$ in ever-expanding universes with different $n$ and find new exact solutions for $\alpha (t)$. We find the attractors points in the phase space for all $n$. In general, $\alpha$ will be a non-decreasing function of time that increases logarithmically in time during a period when the expansion is dust dominated ($n=2/3$), but becomes constant when $n>2/3$. This includes the case of negative-curvature domination ($n=1$). $\alpha$ also tends rapidly to a constant when the expansion scale factor increases exponentially. A general set of conditions is established for $\alpha$ to become asymptotically constant at late times in an expanding universe.Comment: 26 pages, 6 figure

Instantaneous interaction in massive gravity

In general relativity, the instantaneous contributions to the gravitational potentials cancel each other in observable, leaving the theory free of physical instantaneous interactions. In models where these subtle cancellations are spoiled by the presence of fields that break Lorentz invariance, physical instantaneous interactions are possible. Such interactions are studied for a model of Lorentz- violating massive gravity

Go home? The politics of immigration controversies

In July 2013, the UK government arranged for a van to drive through parts of London carrying the message 'In the UK illegally? GO HOME or face arrest.' This book tells the story of what happened next. The vans were short-lived, but they were part of an ongoing trend in government-sponsored communication designed to demonstrate toughness on immigration. The authors set out to explore the effects of such performances: on policy, on public debate, on pro-migrant and anti-racist activism, and on the everyday lives of people in Britain. This book presents their findings, and provides insights into the practice of conducting research on such a charged and sensitive topic