Ethnographies of the imagined, the imaginary and the critically real: Blackness, whiteness, the north of England and rugby league

Rugby league is part of the white, working-class (male) culture of the north of England, and is a sport that is used by its supporters to (re)produce both an imagined community of nostalgic northernness and an imaginary community of locally situated hegemonically masculine belonging. The invented traditions of its origins link the game to a white, working-class twentieth-century culture of mills, pits, terraced houses and pubs; a culture increasingly marginalised, reshaped and challenged in this century. In this paper we use two medium-term, ethnographic research projects on rugby league (one from Spracklen; the other an on-going project by Timmins) to explore northernness, blackness, whiteness and our own roles in the ethnographies as 'black' and 'white' researchers researching 'race' and identity in a community that remains (but not exclusively) a place for a working-class whiteness to be articulated. We argue that our own histories and identities are pivotal in how we are accepted as legitimate ethnographers and insiders, but those histories and identities also posea critically real challenge to us and to those in the community of rugby league with whom we interact. © 2010 Taylor & Francis

Precipitation detector Patent

Precipitation detector and mechanism for stopping and restarting machinery at initiation and cessation of rai

Application for the 4W Model of Drowning for Prevention, Rescue and Treatment, Research and Education

Previous research has been published about the 4W model of drowning and its four constituent variables (Avramidis, Butterly & Llewellyn, 2007; 2009a; 2009b; 2009c; 2009d; Avramidis, McKenna, Long, Butterly, & Llewellyn, 2010). We presently summarize and suggest applications of the model for the general public, aquatic safety professionals, injury epidemiologists and policy makers

Systematic Review of the Literature on Black and Minority Ethnic Communities in Sport and Physical Recreation

The Carnegie Research Institute was commissioned by Sporting Equals and the Sports Councils to conduct an independent systematic review of the literature on participation in sport and recreation by Black and minority ethnic (BME) communities. The brief was to focus on UK material from the past ten years, to compile an electronic, bibliographic database and use that evidence to assess the policy significance of existing knowledge in the drive to widen and increase participation. Although the field might still be considered under-researched over 300 items were identified. Judgements were made on the quality of the research on the basis of the methodological and theoretical soundness and the credibility of the link between the conclusions and the data. The various items were collated in an electronic, bibliographic database and coded as: substantive research of good quality; related public statistics and policy documents; and other related materials of interest. The research, policy and practice contained in this body of work is set within an expanding national and international framework of policy and legislation concerned with human rights and principles of equality. The Sports Councils and Sporting Equals have played a significant part in this through initiatives like the Equality Standard. They have not been acting in isolation, but have received support from other sports bodies with initiatives both to challenge discrimination and inequality and to promote participation and inclusion. Nonetheless, there still seems to be a measure of disconnection between research, sports policies and equality policies. Indeed, sports policies are sometimes based on limited representations of racism and so are inhibited in the way they address racial equality

Emergency braking for free piston energy converters

Free piston energy converters are a potential technology for future hybrid vehicles, as well as stationary power generation applications. A candidate 2-stroke system comprises of two opposing combustion chambers with a common piston rod, and integrated with a tubular permanent magnet electrical machine for the conversion of mechanical to electrical energy. A key issue for the ultimate adoption of such systems, however, is their robustness in the event of a fault to enable a safe shutdown, with minimal mechanical or electrical damage. The paper considers system braking issues and the importance of early fault detection. Results are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of passive and active braking techniques for a range of dc-link supply voltage and operating output power

Macromolecular separation through a porous surface

A new technique for the separation of macromolecules is proposed and investigated. A thin mesh with pores comparable to the radius of gyration of a free chain is used to filter chains according to their length. Without a field it has previously been shown that the permeability decays as a power law with chain length. However by applying particular configurations of pulsed fields, it is possible to have a permeability that decays as an exponential. This faster decay gives much higher resolution of separation. We also propose a modified screen containing an array of holes with barb-like protrusions running parallel to the surface. When static friction is present between the macromolecule and the protrusion, some of the chains get trapped for long durations of time. By using this and a periodic modulation of an applied electric field, high resolution can be attained.Comment: 18 pages latex, 6 postscript figures, using psfi

A search for X-ray polarization in cosmic X-ray sources

Fifteen strong X-ray sources were observed by the X-ray polarimeters on board the OSO-8 satellite from 1975 to 1978. The final results of this search for X-ray polarization in cosmic sources are presented in the form of upper limits for the ten sources which are discussed elsewhere. These limits in all cases are consistent with a thermal origin for the X-ray emission

Single and Many Particle Correlation Functions and Uniform Phase Bases for Strongly Correlated Systems

The need for suitable many or infinite fermion correlation functions to describe some low dimensional strongly correlated systems is discussed. This is linked to the need for a correlated basis, in which the ground state may be postive definite, and in which single particle correlations may suffice. A particular trial basis is proposed, and applied to a certain quasi-1D model. The model is a strip of the 2D square lattice wrapped around a cylinder, and is related to the ladder geometries, but with periodic instead of open boundary conditions along the edges. Analysis involves a novel mean-field approach and exact diagonalisation. The model has a paramagnetic region and a Nagaoka ferromagnetic region. The proposed basis is well suited to the model, and single particle correlations in it have power law decay for the paramagnet, where the charge motion is qualitatively hard core bosonic. The mean field also leads to a BCS-type model with single particle long range order.Comment: 23 pages, in plain tex, 12 Postscript figures included. Accepted for publication in J.Physics : Condensed Matte