Politics of Imagination

In a democratic society where elections are held to decide the holders of political office or referendums formulated to get a majority vote on national issues, the ability to get the most votes from eligible citizens remains a primary concern of politicians. I put forward the view that factual information alone is not enough to motivate voters. There is a need to consider the influence of the imagination on voting behaviour. This thesis is first an attempt to locate the imagination within the political sphere, and examine how political behaviour can be influenced through the imagination. The 2016 Brexit Referendum will be the example used to analyse how the imagination plays an important part in politics. If one desires to have a good understanding on voting behaviour, a theory that includes the imagination should be considered. Thus I argue for adopting the conceptual framework of David Hume over the standard rational choice theory in providing a framework of how imagination can influence voter behaviour, and at the same time, provide a framework towards my conception of the politics of imagination

The Integration of the Morphological Aspects of Sand to It's Shear Strength and Dilatancy Characteristics.

The integration of geological and morphological features to the geotechnical characteristics of coarse grain soils can lead via statistical methods to determinie correlations between strength and its physical properties. The shape and sizes of sand particles reflect the formation history of the grains where it results from the disintegration of rocks due to water, weather and glaciers. The particle interactions of sand due to shear deformation and also seismic reactions of different shape and sizes would result in various sedimentological macroscale behaviour. Clean sands are cohesionless (c = 0) but have a finite friction angle (Ø) and its shear strength is entirely dependent on the density, normal stress and interlocking particle structure. The latter is associated with the property of the angle of dilatancy (ψ) in particular with sands. Direct shear box testing is done on samples of well graded sand (SW) and poorly graded uniform sand (SPuKahang) from Kahang Malaysia and also (SPuL.Buzzard) uniform Leighton Buzzard sand from the UK. The shapes of the sand particles were quantified using images obtained from a digital microscope. Øpeak, Øcr and ψ are the highest for (SW) when compared with others. SPuL.Buzzard sands showed a significant decrease in the values with similar relative density (Dr). High normal stresses give very little variations in the angle of dilatancy (ψ) between the samples tested as compared to the lower normal stress that was used. This research contributes to furthering the understanding of the engineering behaviour of sand and also helps in predicting the occurrence of dilation based on sand morphology in dynamic soil structure interaction

The behaviour of remolded Batu Pahat soft clay with different OCR values under cyclic loading

The Batu Pahat Soft Clay, (BPSC) of Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia, (UTHM) were low in shear strength, bearing capacity, and suffer large settlements when subjected to loading. They undergo varies of dynamic cyclic loadings during their design lifetime and the response was typically more complex, requiring engineers to investigate the dynamic behaviour of soils thoroughly in the laboratory. The objectives of this research were to simulate remolded Batu Pahat Soft Clay (RBPSC) samples with different σv’, to study the dynamic shear modulus, G and damping ratio, D of (RBPSC) under cyclic loading with different f, OCRs, σv’ and σc’ and to analyses the correlation between G and D of the (RBPSC) with the OCR values under cyclic loading. As result, the 100 x 50 mm of remoulded samples are succeed simulated by using large strain consolidation apparatus of 50, 80 and 100 kPa of pre consolidation stress, contain moisture ranging within 42 to 55%. The series of remolded consolidated undrained dynamic cyclic triaxial test were ran under OCR of 1, 2, 3.85 and 4. Hence, it could be concluded that the G decreased when increasing of f and OCRs subjected to increasing axial strain while the G corresponding to each σv’ increases slightly as the σv’ becomes higher. The D shows minor increased when increasing of the f, OCRs and σv’ when subjected to increasing axial strain. Thus, input of parameter G and D can be review as technical values to key design structure on top of soil layer

Arch Structure Concept in Lightweight Fill Design

Construction of road embankment over soft soils can cause significant non uniform excessive settlements that contribute to uneven road surfaces. This is due to the properties of soft soil which have low shear strength, high water content and high compressibility. These properties of soil are quite difficult and challenging to work with. This research is focused on how to mitigate the non-uniform settlement of embankments on soft soil using an innovative arch structure concept design incorporating with the current construction method of expanded polystyrene (EPS) as lightweight fill material. EPS are lightweight fill materials which are low density, stable, inert, environmentally safe fill rigid mats for road construction. However, they are large bulky blocks and have high buoyancy characteristics which will be unstable when high water table arises. The arch structure design reduces the use of EPS block while achieving almost the same performance as the conventional design. Physical modelling is used in this research to analyse the performance of this conceptual arch structure using a test box, sandy soil as embankment and wooden blocks as EPS. The concept of arch structure is implemented by removing some of the blocks at the base and setting up three different layout arrangement of spacing and thickness of the blocks which are called mixed staggering (a), mixed staggering (b) and lateral staggering. The performance of the design was measured by analyzing the settlement of the three arrangement layouts. The settlement observed was monitored photographically and measured with markings labelled on the test box. It was found that the layouts of mixed staggering (b) have is proven to reduce the excessive non-uniform settlements compared to the lateral staggering and mixed staggering (a). Hence, this research has established a suitable design guide using a mixed staggering arch structure fill material which is light and strong to withstand heavy loading to reduce ground settlement

Estimating Linear Mixed Effects Models with Truncated Normally Distributed Random Effects

Linear Mixed Effects (LME) models have been widely applied in clustered data analysis in many areas including marketing research, clinical trials, and biomedical studies. Inference can be conducted using maximum likelihood approach if assuming Normal distributions on the random effects. However, in many applications of economy, business and medicine, it is often essential to impose constraints on the regression parameters after taking their real-world interpretations into account. Therefore, in this paper we extend the classical (unconstrained) LME models to allow for sign constraints on its overall coefficients. We propose to assume a symmetric doubly truncated Normal (SDTN) distribution on the random effects instead of the unconstrained Normal distribution which is often found in classical literature. With the aforementioned change, difficulty has dramatically increased as the exact distribution of the dependent variable becomes analytically intractable. We then develop likelihood-based approaches to estimate the unknown model parameters utilizing the approximation of its exact distribution. Simulation studies have shown that the proposed constrained model not only improves real-world interpretations of results, but also achieves satisfactory performance on model fits as compared to the existing model