Encountering soviet geography: oral histories of British geographical studies of the USSR and Eastern Europe 1945-1991

This paper considers the history of British geographical studies of the USSR and Eastern Europe 1945-1991, presenting material from a research project which has included thirty-two oral history interviews. Oral history is an especially fruitful research methodology in this context due to the distinct issues of formality and informality involved in researching the Soviet bloc. After discussing the nature of the subdiscipline and the Cold War context, including the role of the British state in shaping the field, the paper considers the role of formal academic meetings and exchanges, and the place of unofficial spaces of encounter in the formation of an intellectual culture. The paper concludes by reflecting on the merits of oral history in studies of the production of geographical knowledge

V.I. Vernadsky and the noosphere concept: Russian understandings of society-nature interaction

Recent Russian legislative and policy documentation concerning national progress towards sustainable development has suggested that the attainment of such a state would represent the first stage in the development of the noosphere as outlined by the Russian scientist Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadsky (1863–1945). This paper explores Vernadsky’s model of evolutionary change through a focus on his work on the biosphere and noosphere in an attempt to further understanding of the way in which Russia is approaching the concept of sustainable development in the contemporary period. It is argued that the official Russian interpretation of the noosphere idea tends to obscure the evolutionary and materialist foundations of Vernadsky’s biosphere–noosphere conceptualisation. At the same time, the concluding section of the paper suggests that the scope of Vernadsky’s work can be used to stimulate the search for a more coherent approach to work in areas of sustainable development and sustainability across the span of the social and physical sciences

Non-bisphosphonate inhibitors of isoprenoid biosynthesis identified via computer-aided drug design.

The relaxed complex scheme, a virtual-screening methodology that accounts for protein receptor flexibility, was used to identify a low-micromolar, non-bisphosphonate inhibitor of farnesyl diphosphate synthase. Serendipitously, we also found that several predicted farnesyl diphosphate synthase inhibitors were low-micromolar inhibitors of undecaprenyl diphosphate synthase. These results are of interest because farnesyl diphosphate synthase inhibitors are being pursued as both anti-infective and anticancer agents, and undecaprenyl diphosphate synthase inhibitors are antibacterial drug leads

Multilayer graphene deposited by a filtered cathodic vacuum arc

Graphene is a single layer of sp2 bonded carbon atoms; it was first practically isolated from graphite in 2004 via mechanical exfoliation and has since attracted much attention due to its remarkable properties. However, to replace existing materials in electronic and other devices, efficient methods are needed to synthesize high quality graphene directly on a range of substrates, including thermally sensitive surfaces. Although there are several methods capable of producing graphene; each technique has weaknesses, which limit their applicability. This thesis demonstrated, for the first time, that it is possible to energetically deposit graphene films onto copper foil using physical vapour deposition (PVD) in a filtered cathodic vacuum arc (FCVA) deposition system. Raman spectroscopy and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) revealed that the graphene films were of uniform thickness of ~10 layers and that these can be deposited at moderate temperatures of 750 °C. The resulting films, which can be prepared at high deposition rates, were comparable in quality to graphene films grown at 1050 °C using conventional chemical vapour deposition (CVD). This difference in growth temperature is attributed to dynamic annealing which occurs as film grows from the energetic carbon flux present in FCVA. The effect of processing gasses during the growth of FCVA deposited carbon films on copper foil was explored. It was shown that neither the presence of hydrogen or methane had a favourable influence on the growth of FCVA deposited graphene, with both leading to increased defects through ion bombardment. The growth of graphene by CVD requires the removal of the native oxide layer on the copper substrate aided by the presence of hydrogen gas. It was found that the energetic C+ ions in FCVA remove the oxide layer by sputtering without the need for any hydrogen gas. This thesis also explored the deposition of graphene on other substrates. In the case of nickel substrates, it was found that graphene films can also be prepared at moderate substrate temperatures. Much higher carbon doses were required to produce graphene films on nickel due to the solubility of carbon in this substrate. This indicates that the growth mode differs between substrates as observed in CVD grown graphene. The films deposited onto nickel were also found not to be uniform in thickness, demonstrating that the grain structure of the nickel substrate influenced the growth of graphene layers. The growth of a film by CVD is dependent on a reaction between the substrate and the processing gas. In PVD, a film can be energetically deposited onto almost any type of substrate. Hence, the possibility of depositing graphene onto hexagonal boron nitride (BN), yttrium stabilised zirconia (YSZ) and silicon carbide (SiC) was explored. It was found that carbon films deposited at 750 oC on BN adopted a graphene microstructure. However, no evidence of graphene was found when films were deposited at 750 oC on YSC and SiC. Interest in the properties of junctions between semiconductor materials and carbon allotropes is growing. Carbon films with high sp2 fractions were energetically deposited onto copper template-layers. These copper template-layers were subsequently sacrificially etched to leave carbon films supported directly on either silicon or silica. On silicon, ordered growth was inhibited by the formation of copper silicide. However, on silica, large areas of ~ 10 graphene layers were formed with orientation parallel to the substrate. Both the copper template-layers and the carbon films were energetically deposited in the same FCVA deposition system. The energetic deposition process provides dense, high quality <111> copper and conditions suitable for producing graphene layers at lower growth temperatures than those required for conventional CVD grown graphene

Jobseekers Regime and Flexible New Deal, the Six Month Offer and Support for the Newly Unemployed evaluations: An early process study

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A Russian geographical tradition? The contested canon of Russian and Soviet geography, 1884–1953

AbstractThe paper defines a ‘geographical canon’ as those texts and authors which have been regarded as authoritative by geographers active at particular points in time. The focus is on the development of a geographical canon in Russia and the Soviet Union between the establishment of the first university geography departments in the 1880s and Stalin's death in 1953. A key 1949 meeting of the Academy of Sciences, held at a crisis point in Soviet history, is initially highlighted. The meeting's purpose was to define a canon or list of ‘founding fathers’ for each of the Soviet sciences, including geography, accenting the Russian provenance of each science. In geography's case, the ‘founding father’ selected was the eminent soil scientist, V. V. Dokuchaev (1846–1903). The paper discusses Dokuchaev's scientific achievements and questions why he was considered such an important figure by the geographers of the late Stalin era. It then analyzes some of the key works of a number of prominent geographers of the pre-revolutionary and Stalinist periods to discover how far Dokuchaev's work was emphasized. The main finding is that, although Dokuchaev and his school did have an indirect influence on geographical work from early on, only from about 1930 was his importance emphasized whilst that of the Germans was largely erased by Stalinism. The conclusion is that the geographical canon defined in 1949 was less a genuine attempt to describe the history of the discipline than a response to the priorities of the late Stalin era

A finite element based formulation for sensitivity studies of piezoelectric systems

Sensitivity Analysis is a branch of numerical analysis which aims to quantify the affects that variability in the parameters of a numerical model have on the model output. A finite element based sensitivity analysis formulation for piezoelectric media is developed here and implemented to simulate the operational and sensitivity characteristics of a piezoelectric based distributed mode actuator (DMA). The work acts as a starting point for robustness analysis in the DMA technology