Elegy to an Oz Republic: First Steps in a Ceremony of Invocation towards Reconciliation

In 2012 the author completed a series of drawings that, while figurative in form, were structurally based on and derived their inspiration from Robert Motherwell’s abstract series, Elegies to the Spanish Republic (1963-1975). This wholesale 'borrowing', 'quotation' and 'citation' raises the questions addressed in this article. What does it mean to engage in acts of appropriation now? And, more importantly, can such acts of appropriation draw on the spirit of the 'original' work to make a (political) difference? 

Railway Privatisation and Regulation in Great Britain

Schienenfahrzeugbau, Privatisierung, Regulierung, Reorganisation, Großbritannien, Railway vehicles industry, Privatization, Regulation, Corporate restructuring, United Kingdom

Payment network scale economies, SEPA, and cash replacement

The goal of SEPA (Single Euro Payments Area) is to facilitate the emergence of a competitive, intra-European market by making cross-border payments as easy as domestic transactions. With crossborder inter-operability for electronic payments, card transactions will increasingly replace cash and checks for all types of payments. Using different methods, the authors estimate card and other payment network scale economies for Europe. These indicate substantial cost efficiency gains if processing is consolidated across borders rather than "piggybacked" onto existing national operations. Cost reductions likely to induce greater replacement of small value cash transactions are also illustrated.

Decoding Schemes for Foliated Sparse Quantum Error Correcting Codes

Foliated quantum codes are a resource for fault-tolerant measurement-based quantum error correction for quantum repeaters and for quantum computation. They represent a general approach to integrating a range of possible quantum error correcting codes into larger fault-tolerant networks. Here we present an efficient heuristic decoding scheme for foliated quantum codes, based on message passing between primal and dual code 'sheets'. We test this decoder on two different families of sparse quantum error correcting code: turbo codes and bicycle codes, and show reasonably high numerical performance thresholds. We also present a construction schedule for building such code states.Comment: 23 pages, 15 figures, accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.

Warm Deep Drawing of Aluminium Sheet

Aluminium sheet drawing processes can be improved by manipulating local flow behaviour\ud by means of elevated temperatures and temperature gradients in the tooling. Forming tests\ud showed that a substantial improvement is possible not only for 5xxx but also for 6xxx series\ud alloys. Finite element method simulations can be a powerful tool for the design of warm\ud forming processes and tooling. Their accuracy will depend on the availability of materials\ud models that are capable of describing the influence of temperature and strain rate on the flow\ud stresses. Two models, an adapted Nadai power law and a dislocation based Bergström type\ud model, are compared by means of simulations of a cup drawing process. Experimental\ud drawing test data are used to validate the modelling approaches, whereas the model parameters\ud follow from tensile tests

A material model for aluminium sheet forming at elevated temperatures

In order to accurately simulate the deep drawing or stretching of aluminum sheet at elevated\ud temperatures, a model is required that incorporates the temperature and strain-rate dependency of the material.\ud In this paper two models are compared: a phenomenological material model in which the parameters of a\ud Ludwik–Nadai hardening curve and a power law strain-rate influence are made temperature dependent and a\ud physically-based model according to Bergstr¨om. The model incorporates the influence of the temperature on\ud the flow stress and on the hardening rate and includes dynamic recovery aspects. Although both models can be\ud fitted quite well to monotonic tensile tests, large differences appear if strain rate jumps are applied

Environmental Education in the Public Sphere: Comparing Practice with Psychosocial Determinants of Behavior and Societal Change

Environmental education of the general public is widely practiced by a variety of types of organizations. Dedicated environmental groups, nature centers, zoos, parks, and other entities work on issues ranging from local threats to air, water, and habitat to global problems such as climate change and deforestation. A great deal of those efforts focus largely on providing information and raising awareness. Behavioral research and change models, however, suggest other factors are important in order to effect change on an individual, regional, or societal level. An analysis of environmental education in practice, examining methods and materials in use, showed the degree to which there were alignments between the content and psychosocial determinants of change, as well as how actions related to change theories. This mixed-methods study of groups doing environmental education in the public sphere compared their practices with the factors shown to help predict pro-environmental behavior, why people change their actions and habits. Through this survey research and multiple case study, increased knowledge and understanding can help inform future efforts at change on critical local, national, and world environmental problems. It can also lead to further research into environmental education, using behavior and change theories