bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Symmetry, Unification and Developments on Long-Range Gravitational Field and Electromagnetic Field
Authors: Chang Yi-Fang
Published: October 2024

First, there has similar electrodynamics in general relativity. Next, the electromagnetic general relativity may be obtained. By the same method of equivalence principle for the electromagnetic field, whose curvatures are different for different ratios of charge to mass. We discussed the four possible tests. Third, for long-range gravitational field and electromagnetic field we research various unifications. Fourth, we discuss the quantization of these unified theories. Finally, nonlinearity and the negative matter are discussed. We believe that these investigations are all a broad space for exploration, and some potential application values.
Qualitative and Quantitative Determination of Hydroquinone Content in Skin Whitening Cosmetics Sold in Lafia-Nigeria
Authors: Augustine U. A. , Akpomie T. M. , Abubakar M. S. , Onipede A. S.
Published: October 2024

Hydroquinone (HQ) is a whitening or therapeutic constituent in many cosmetic products, but only allowable at a very low concentration. The abuse of HQ via frequent and prolonged usage can lead to health issues such as damage to skin and the sensitive area on the face. In Nigeria, National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) on its cosmetic products prohibition of bleaching agents regulations 2019, stated that no cosmetic products should contain more than 2 % of HQ alone or 1 % in combination with other lightening ingredients. This study aimed at qualitative and quantitative determination of HQ content in selected skin whitening cosmetics sold in Lafia. A total of twenty-four (24) various skin bleaching cosmetics were sampled from Lafia modern market. Thin Layer Chromatography (TLC) and uv/visible spectrophotometry were used for qualitative (identification) and quantitative (quantitation) determination of their HQ concentration, respectively. Ethanol (96 %) was used to extract HQ, and then TLC analysis at two different laboratories. At the two laboratories,nine samples (same) out of 24 were found to contain hydroquinone. The uv/visible spectrophotometric analysis indicated that the concentration of hydroquinone ranged from 0.99 % to 1.47 % in the cosmetic products studied.This study revealed that some of the products were labelled free from HQ or not labelled, and yet contained HQ, unknown to the consumers. In general, percentage hydroquinone in all the samples was less than 2 % maximum permissible limit recommended by US FDA and NAFDAC.
Binary Third degree Diophantine Equation 5 (x-y)3 = 8xy
Authors: Thiruniraiselvi N , Gopalan M A
Published: October 2024

This article emphasizes on finding non-zero different integer solutions to binary third degree Diophantine equation 5 (x-y)3 = 8xy . Two different sets of solutions in integers are presented. Some fascinating relations from the solutions are obtained. The method to get second order Ramanujan numbers is illustrated.
Mechanism research of elastic fixation promoting fracture healing based on proteomics and fracture microenvironment
Authors: Wu Weiyong , Zhao Zhihui , Wang Yongqing , Liu Meiyue , Zhu Genbao , Li Lili
Published: October 2024

Aims

This study aimed to demonstrate the promoting effect of elastic fixation on fracture, and further explore its mechanism at the gene and protein expression levels.

Methods

A closed tibial fracture model was established using 12 male Japanese white rabbits, and divided into elastic and stiff fixation groups based on different fixation methods. Two weeks after the operation, a radiograph and pathological examination of callus tissue were used to evaluate fracture healing. Then, the differentially expressed proteins (DEPs) were examined in the callus using proteomics. Finally, in vitro cell experiments were conducted to investigate hub proteins involved in this process.

Results

Mean callus volume was larger in the elastic fixation group (1,755 mm3 (standard error of the mean (SEM) 297)) than in the stiff fixation group (258 mm3 (SEM 65)). Pathological observation found that the expression levels of osterix (OSX), collagen, type I, alpha 1 (COL1α1), and alkaline phosphatase (ALP) in the callus of the elastic fixation group were higher than those of the stiff fixation group. The protein sequence of the callus revealed 199 DEPs, 124 of which were highly expressed in the elastic fixation group. In the in vitro study, it was observed that a stress of 200 g led to upregulation of thrombospondin 1 (THBS1) and osteoglycin (OGN) expression in bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells (BMSCs). Additionally, these genes were found to be upregulated during the osteogenic differentiation process of the BMSCs.

Conclusion

Elastic fixation can promote fracture healing and osteoblast differentiation in callus, and the ability of elastic fixation to promote osteogenic differentiation of BMSCs may be achieved by upregulating genes such as THBS1 and OGN.

Cite this article: Bone Joint Res 2024;13(10):559–572.
Self-Defending Ordre Public and an Over Protecting Laïcité: The Twin Foundations of ‘Legal’ Discrimination in France Victimize the Muslim Minorities
Authors: Akhtar Zia
Published: October 2024

The emanation of the concept of ordre public or public order in France is based on the principle of self-affirmation, and civil law of the republic against alien infringement. There has been a separation of the temporal and spiritual power in Europe that dates back to the concept of laïcité which was a concept established by the French revolution by its Civil Constitution of the Clergy 1791 and later consecrated into law in 1905. The issue of discrimination against Muslims has arisen because of the cultural discrimination in religious formalism, such as the prohibition against the burkini and rejection of religious dress in schools. This has been achieved by superimposing the code of laïcité upon the communities’ expression of their laws and by upholding the concept of ordre public that is vigorous and stringent against the practices of the Muslim community. The concept of ordre public imposes conformity on the Muslims, reinforcing stereotypes and increasing Islamophobia in France. The argument of this article is that by legally enforcing the imposition of majoritarian customs the French state is ignoring the adoption of the comparative legal method and human rights that acknowledges normative pluralism that serves to eradicate the colonial prejudices that are restricting the understanding and application of tolerant approaches to religious expression.
Islamophobia and the Benefits and Challenges for Prison Imams
Authors: Gacek James , Asfari Amin
Published: October 2024

Increasingly, religion plays a significant role in the rehabilitation of inmates across the US and Canada. While there is no shortage of literature on the effects of religion within penal institutions, there is a lacuna of scholarship dealing with Islam in carceral spaces. American and Canadian prisons offer unique opportunities to understand the relationship between Muslim chaplains and the prison experience more broadly. Based upon a substantive review of the literature, our conceptual article will examine ongoing challenges with prison chaplaincy within US and Canadian prisons. Broadly, findings suggest that existing structures for religious services for Muslim inmates are neither unified nor systemic, often lacking in funding and resources. Moreover, we find that Muslim chaplains often perceive inequitable treatment by prison authorities due to their historic underrepresentation as well as their religious affiliation. Our discussion will highlight the disparities in penal settings and make recommendations, including but not limited to the need to increase public investment in prison chaplaincy, the need to pay imams-as-chaplains a living wage to help prisoners, and the deradicalization effects of a well-funded and well-trained Muslim chaplaincy, among others.
Introduction to Part I
Authors: Leigh Jennifer
Published: October 2024

The life I lived beyond academia as a scientist, therapist, teacher, and artist taught me lessons about intention and impact imperative for all qualitative researchers, particularly those using creative and embodied methods. It showed me how art, education, therapy, and qualitative research share borders and lie adjacent to science. Part I sets out the structure of this book, and acts as an introduction to the qualitative, creative, and embodied research methods I use, why I use them, and my reflective and autoethnographic approach.
Introduction to Part II
Authors: Leigh Jennifer
Published: October 2024

The first part of this book touched on ways in which qualitative research borders onto psychotherapy, education, and embodiment. In Part II, I address the lessons a qualitative researcher or educator might learn from art and science, and the differences between a ‘scientific approach’ incorporating objectivity and meritocracy and one that might be more associated with qualitative, or embodied qualitative research. I explore the lessons that can be learned from art, the challenging terrain that represents the no-man’s land between science and qualitative research, and the practical and ethical implications of creative and embodied research.
Lessons from art
Authors: Leigh Jennifer
Published: October 2024

What does it mean to be an artist? An art researcher? Or a researcher who uses art? Is the definition of an artist someone who ‘makes art’, or is artistic expression an integral aspect of human identity open to everyone? If artists draw from their experiences to facilitate their own and others’ creative processes, how and where is this process different from or the same as the ideas of reflection, awareness, and relationship? This chapter explores what it means to be an artist, how art intersects with research, and my own arts-based research.
Working with scientists
Authors: Leigh Jennifer
Published: October 2024

This case study draws on work with the international Women in Supramolecular Chemistry network. It exemplifies the borders of qualitative research with science and therapy. This work felt at times like either teaching or group therapy, and definitely required my full set of therapeutic skills and holding, particularly as the bulk of the work was undertaken online throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.
The cultural politics of educational stratification
Authors: Powell Fred , Scanlon Margaret , Leahy Patrick , Jenkinson Hilary , Byrne Olive
Published: October 2024

This chapter offers an overarching analysis of the relationship between class, race and culture and how these influences shape individual educational trajectories for the privileged in society, while consigning the working class and minority ethnic groups to a separate disadvantaged status in a system of targeted community schools that aspire to pursue a positive discrimination agenda in order to redress the consequences of social inequality.
Public education, universities and widening participation
Authors: Powell Fred , Scanlon Margaret , Leahy Patrick , Jenkinson Hilary , Byrne Olive
Published: October 2024

This chapter explores the meaning and role of public education and universities in civil society. Adult education and the importance of public libraries are a key focus. Widening participation is analysed in terms of both policy and practice with reference to student experiences.
Using Poststructural Policy Analysis for social justice
Authors: McMahon Sinead
Published: October 2024

For progressive social change to be achieved, social justice advocates are often required to engage in policy work, and critical policy research and analysis can be key to this. This chapter focuses on one approach to critical policy analysis - poststructural policy analysis and outlines its key conceptual features.. In particular, the chapter gives details about how the analytical tool devised by Carol Bacchi called ‘What’s the problem represented to be?’ or WPR could be applied to social justice-oriented projects. The WPR method focuses on analysing policies as types of ‘problematisations’ and examines the ways in which policy can help to produce or socially construct ‘problems’. The chapter pays attention to research that focuses on using policy documents as rich sources of discourse and data for social justice research and analysis.
Sanctuary : trespassing the enclosure of rights
Authors: Donovan David
Published: October 2024

This chapter explores the use of the arts as a means of trespass into the enclosure of rights. Galway-based Blue Teapot Theatre Company used both the play and film Sanctuary as a means of researching and critiquing the closing off of the rights of people with an intellectual disability to an intimate life of their own choosing. This right was immured under Section 5 (1) of the Criminal Justice (Sexual Offences) Act 1993. The existence of this provision was one among several factors that stood in the way of the Irish state’s ratification of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Both the play and the film helped to inform and shape the conversation taking place around the reform of the 1993 Act. This Act was finally reformed in 2017.
An expanded conceptualisation and definition of engaged research
Authors: Hearne Rory
Published: October 2024

The dominant view within the academy, universities and among policymakers is that research is a process involving knowledge generation by academic experts. There is growing interest in, and increased university support for, ‘engaged’ research, which deepens research approaches to involve communities and civil society. However, such engaged research is too often limited to conceptualisations within the ‘extractive’ paradigm of research and places insufficient priority on participatory action research. Such forms of participatory research are processes involving the co-construction of knowledge and social action with disadvantaged groups. There is a need, therefore, for a more expansive conceptualisation, definition and practice of engaged research, which is normatively critical, social justice-and social change-orientated, participatory in both process and outcome. This chapter provides such a framework for engaged, co-constructed, action research. It makes the case that this has an important value which enables the co-construction of new knowledge about inequality but within the research process also aims at the empowerment of marginalised groups, through co-producing policy analysis, proposing solutions and bringing them into the policy and public spheres in forms of action research.
Combined methods of poverty measurement
Authors: Boltvinik Julio
Published: October 2024

The chapter includes analysis of the seven combined poverty measurement methods (PMM), identifying a central difference between Latin American and European PMM. In the latter, direct measurement aims at identifying deprivation due to income restrictions. In sharp contrast, in both the Integrated PMM (IPMM) and Social Progress Index (SPI), the point of departure is that direct and indirect methods are complementary, as they consider different well-being sources (WBS) and identify deprivation in different dimensions. This difference explains the divergent P criteria which are applied in both groups of PMM methods (in both regions). In this chapter, a typology of such criteria is built. Whereas ‘truly poor’ PMM identify as poor only those who are poor both in the direct and indirect dimensions (the intersection of both sets), the IPMM and SPI do not restrict P to this intersection, as they use a weighted average of each dimension’s scores to obtain the overall P index. The conclusion arrived at is that combined methods which can be grouped under the heading ‘truly poor’ end up reducing their field of study to the consequences of a low level of current income, reducing the six WBS to one, leaving the hope for an integrated approach only to the IPMM and SPI.
The Integrated Poverty Measurement Method (IPMM)
Authors: Boltvinik Julio
Published: October 2024

The chapter narrates the genesis of the IPMM’s improved variant (IV), describing two leaps: first, from independent unsatisfied basic needs (UBN) PMM and poverty line (PL) PMM, to their combination, adding a P criterium, to form IPMM’s original variant (OV); then, from the OV to the improved variant, IV-IPMM, for which UBN-IV was developed as well as the time-poverty procedure. The discussion explores how IV-IPMM overcomes OV-IPMM’s limitations. A figure depicting IV-IPMM shows a HH/individual’s final score results from combining UBN, income (Y) and time (T) scores and that UBN comprises eight components: health, social security, education, housing, sanitary conditions, communication services, durable goods, and energy. A table lists which N are verified by UBN, which by a mixed procedure, and which by PL. A synthesis of T methodology; defines PL as the cost of the normative basket of essential satisfiers (NBES) minus the cost of the items verified by UBN/mixed procedure. Pertinent Y for items included in PL is available Y after expenditures on UBN. The equation (specifying weights) to calculate IV-IPMM score from the scores of the three components is presented. All indicators were restricted so they can only vary from 0 to 2; scores above 2 were rescaled and if necessary truncated. The detailed description of the IPMM employs over 80 equations, presenting empirical illustrative results in 12 tables.
A behavioural model of heuristics and biases in frontline policy implementation
Authors: Moseley Alice , Thomann Eva
Published: October 2024

This chapter theorises how behavioural public administration can help improve our understanding of frontline policy implementation. The human factors that characterise policy implementation remain undertheorised: individual variation in policy implementation is dismissed as mere “noise” that hinders predictability in policy implementation. This chapter aims to fill this gap. We provide a model for street level decision-making which outlines the role of heuristics and biases in frontline workers’ allocation of resources and sanctions. Based on an analysis of the behavioural and street-level bureaucracy literature, we present 11 testable propositions that point to predictable patterns in the ways that bounded rationality influences policy implementation and outcomes. Heuristics can help hard-pressed frontline public service workers to make decisions but may also produce social inequity or inefficient or ineffective service. Therefore, we need to improve understanding of biases that are common among frontline workers in order to inform the development of appropriate mitigation strategies, such as de-biasing or even ‘re-biasing’ (nudging).
Can street-level bureaucrats be nudged to increase effectiveness in welfare policy?
Authors: Visintin Emilio Paolo , Bonvin Jean-Michel , Varone Frédéric , Butera Fabrizio , Lovey Max , Rosenstein Emilie
Published: October 2024

This chapter investigates whether street-level bureaucrats can be incentivised to process information in ways that lead to more effective implementation decisions. It draws on the literatures on behavioural public policy (BPP) and street-level bureaucracy to analyse how civil servants implement disability insurance policy in Switzerland. We conducted a field experiment to assess whether a thought-provoking nudge improves the decisional effectiveness of street-level bureaucrats (SLBs). SLBs were assigned to either a ‘business-as-usual’ control condition, or to an experimental condition, where they were called to pay attention to vulnerability processes along the beneficiaries’ life course when making decisions. While we did not find that the thought-provoking nudge directly improved effectiveness, we found that it increased beneficiaries’ humanisation. In particular, there was some evidence for indirect positive effects of the thought-provoking nudge on effectiveness via humanisation. These findings encourage BPP researchers to consider additional dimensions such as humanisation to nudge SLBs into processing information in better ways.
How can better monitoring, reporting and evaluation standards advance behavioural public policy?
Authors: Cotterill Sarah , John Peter , Johnston Marie
Published: October 2024

Behavioural public policy interventions have been implemented across the world, targeting citizens, professionals, politicians and policymakers. This chapter examines poor quality reporting of interventions and methods in some behavioural public policy research. We undertake a review of existing reporting standards to assess their suitability for the behavioural public policy context. Our findings reveal that the adoption of standards can improve the reliability and reproducibility of research; provide a more robust evidence base from which to generalise findings; and convince sceptics of the value of behavioural public policy research. We conclude that use of the Template for Intervention Description and Replication (TIDieR) checklist and the Behaviour Change Technique Taxonomy (BCTTv1) would add rigour to intervention reporting. We argue there is a need for a combined tool to guide the design and reporting of randomised controlled trials, incorporating elements from the Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials (CONSORT) checklist and other sources.
The Rise of Omega
Authors: Ganapathy Narayanan
Published: October 2024

This chapter explores the emergence of the Omega gang within the context of a racialized postcolonial society. It delves into how gang members navigate their racial, religious, gendered and gang identities while grappling with the complexities and contradictions of racialization, particularly within the prison setting. It begins by situating the empirical study of the Omega gang within the theoretical field of prison sociology, given that Omega is primarily a prison gang. It questions the effectiveness of traditional models of prisonization, such as the importation and deprivation models proposed by Donald Clemmer in 1960. Additionally, contemporary frameworks like governance theory, as proposed by David Skarbek in 2014, are examined for their applicability. The second part of the chapter focuses on the structure, culture and activities of the Omega gang. It emphasizes that understanding this gang requires acknowledging the intertwined nature of their experiences as racialized and hypermasculinized marginalized minorities, both within prisons and on the streets. Furthermore, it introduces the concept of ‘reverse importation’ or ‘exportation’, challenging the linear praxis of importation and deprivation models. It documents how gangs and gang subcultures originating in prisons impact the social organization of the underground economy on the streets.
Paper Tigers and Local Perseverance: Wildlife Protection in Germany
Authors: Stefes Christoph H.
Published: October 2024

Germany is the biggest transshipment and destination country for endangered wildlife in Europe. It has signed all relevant treaties for the protection of wildlife and has dutifully implemented these treaties and EU legislation into national law. Yet, Germany lacks adequate enforcement mechanisms due to the country’s federal system, which fosters decentralization of authority. In some of Germany’s 16 federal states enforcement authority is delegated all the way down to the municipal level. Here, street-level bureaucrats (SLBs) are overwhelmed. Resources, such as training sessions, are spread thin. Moreover, a low caseload as well as frequent job rotation hamper the development of routine and expertise. However, some SLBs overcome these hurdles through the building of networks and other informal means. As the quantitative and qualitative analysis of this chapter demonstrates, Germany’s enforcement of wildlife laws resembles a patchwork of over- and underperforming states and municipalities. Finally, the chapter discusses ways to improve enforcement.
Rewilding in the UK: Harm or Justice?
Authors: Wyatt Tanya
Published: October 2024

The UK considers itself to be an animal-loving nation, but it has one of the most nature-depleted landscapes in all of Europe if not the world. To reverse the damaged state of nature, a rewilding movement is gaining momentum around the country. This chapter explores efforts in the UK to rewild the lynx to Scotland and Northern England. The exploration is twofold – first, the chapter examines the narratives of opposition and support for return of the lynx, focusing on the non-human animal and environmental harms and benefits that are predicted. Second, the chapter analyses how the Bern Convention and CITES as they are transposed in UK legislation can account for rewilding.
Introduction: Migration and Labour Turnover
Authors: Alberti Gabriella , Sacchetto Devi
Published: October 2024

The question of labour turnover has been variously examined across labour and organization studies, but it has not been studied systematically in relation to international migration. In this book we tackle the question of labour turnover (the churning of workers in and out of workplace organizations) from the perspective of migrant labour. Here we build on the critical strands of labour and migration studies to shift our gaze to the social composition of labour (Wright, 2002), focusing on the specific drivers and subjective and social dynamics that link the phenomenon of labour instability to international migration. We consider the relationship between labour migration and turnover as emblematic of the wider effects of the intersectional differentiation of work and employment on workers’ lives and action for change in capitalist societies. Since the pioneering work of Hirschman (1970), the act of workers quitting their job, described as labour mobility or exit, has indeed been countered to worker voice and presented as an individualistic, opportunistic behaviour taken autonomously by workers, as opposed to engaging in labour collective voice over effort bargaining (usually expressed through trade union representation). The tendency to see turnover as a primarily individualistic behaviour can be found especially in the field of industrial relations, which privileges collective forms of action in the workplace, whether or not institutionally mediated by trade unions (see Smith, 2006; Beynon, 1973). In the field of organization and management studies, scholars have tended to favour a functionalist approach both to the question of turnover and the role of migration in flexible labour markets revolving around costs and efficiency issues for employers, while employment studies have concentrated on the impact of labour mobility on collective bargaining in the workplace.
Introduction
Authors: Creutzfeldt Naomi , Kyprianides Arabella , Bradford Ben , Jackson Jonathan
Published: October 2024

This is a book about institutions in the administrative justice system (AJS), their users and pathways to justice. The AJS is made up of institutions that help individuals when the government acts in ways that are unfair or unjust. The institutions that form the AJS are complaint schemes, ombuds, tribunals and the Administrative Court. They influence our lives in areas of housing, health care, education, social security and taxation, for example. This book is based on a Nuffield-funded research project and is about people who administer institutions of the AJS, about people who use institutions of the AJS, and about those who do not access institutions of the AJS. We explore these different positions in the AJS through two distinct pathways to seek redress: housing and special educational needs and disabilities (SEND).
Conclusion
Authors: Creutzfeldt Naomi , Kyprianides Arabella , Bradford Ben , Jackson Jonathan
Published: October 2024

Chapter 9, Conclusion: Digital Journeys, brings together the empirical findings of the project and critically assesses what we have learned from doing research with marginalized groups and how we might rethink the approaches to understanding access to justice. We offer a more nuanced understanding of people’s digital journeys through bringing procedural justice to the concept of digital legal consciousness, as well as three dimensions that came out of our data: digital, affective and compound. This wider perspective can help identify barriers to access and inform strategies to improve access to justice. Ultimately, a more fine-grained understanding of digital legal consciousness will require ongoing research and collaboration between legal practitioners, policymakers and technology experts.
Politics and Administrative Justice
Authors: O'Brien Nick
Published: October 2024

Everyday citizen grievances about public authorities appear remote from mainstream political debate. The means of responding to them through administrative justice institutions such as ombuds, tribunals and forms of civic mediation are similarly marginalized from political debate. This book offers an alternative perspective: public authorities, and the street-level bureaucrats who work in them, are instead the linchpins of democratic practice, and administrative justice institutions a central vehicle for bridging the social distance that consistently resurfaces between state and citizen. A key obstacle to the realization of this alternative perspective is liberal legalism, whose formalism and proceduralism sap political energy and build around administrative justice a defensive wall that is impermeable to political comprehension. Postliberal politics displaces legalism from its throne; disability rights, as a legal, philosophical and political force, offer a concrete expression of an alternative postliberal model that can frame the reimagining of administrative justice as a key agent of a reawakened and participatory democracy. This book is an exploration of that process of reimagining.
Citizen Grievance and the Spectre of Legalism
Authors: O'Brien Nick
Published: October 2024

The interwar years were in Britain a period during which the public administration literature advanced debates about the response to citizen grievance that were wary of liberal legalism and held out the prospect of a tribunal system that was to be very different from the civil court system. Similarly, in postwar Britain, there were aspirations for an innovative, informal and democratic means of shaping relationships between citizen and state that were based on the Scandinavian, especially Danish, institution of the ‘Ombudsman’. In the case of both tribunals and ombuds, liberal legalism posed an insurmountable obstacle to the achievement of an alternative founded on an incipiently responsive form of legality. Instead, tribunals became increasingly judicialized, and public ombuds settled into a court substitute function that characterized them as essentially a constitutional and legal office.
Postliberal Accountability: The Challenge of Disability Human Rights
Authors: O'Brien Nick
Published: October 2024

The emergence of disability human rights since the 1990s offers a new impetus to the revival of previously incipient aspirations for a postliberal response to citizen grievance. The development of disability rights in Britain, the strategic practice of the Disability Rights Commission between 2000 and 2007 and the ratification of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities are critical moments in the construction of a postliberal and responsive legality that emphasizes the positive function of the ethical state, the importance of partnership and co-production between citizen and state, the dignity of the human person and the pragmatic aspiration of purposive problem-solving at the moment of crisis when the citizen–state relationship is in danger of breaking down.
Where (and When) is Policy?
Authors: Lewis Steven , Spratt Rebecca
Published: October 2024

This chapter considers the first orientation for thinking of a conjoined policy mobilities and assemblage theory (PMAT) approach: Space is produced through relations. Rather than taking spaces, places and times as fixed entities in which policy takes place, a PMAT approach considers policy and space-times as recursively and mutually co-constituted. Thus, this chapter explores and problematizes assumptions around the question, where (and when) is policy? It considers how policy problems produce certain configurations and categories of space (and, at the same time, not others). The chapter explains how PMAT offers different ways of thinking about existing policy spaces and scales (for example, the role of the State and State power in shaping the mobilization of policy). Using the worked example of Pacific Regional Education Policy (PREP), the chapter demonstrates how these different ways of thinking enable us to ask new questions about education policy, including: how a given policy assemblage produces certain spaces through policy; how these spaces are then held in relation to one another; and what is actualized by the recursive relationship between these spaces and policy.
Content Warning
Authors: Butler Nick
Published: October 2024

Chapter 1 examines the relation between reactionary humour and subversive humour. The chapter begins by outlining Plato and Aristotle’s ethics of humour. Despite their philosophical differences, both thinkers warn us about humour at the same time as they seek to harness its power for their own ends. The key question they raise – where do we draw the line between good-natured humour and outright offence? – is one that preoccupies philosophers to this day. Some offer a bleaker answer than others. For Freud, humour provides an insight into our unwholesome appetites and aggressive instincts. Post-Freudian philosophers have sought to paint humour in a more positive, emancipatory light. But, as the chapter shows, it’s impossible to clearly demarcate between conservative humour and rebellious humour, between humour that reinforces our existing prejudices and humour that shatters our common-sense assumptions. What jokes want to do, more than anything else, is to kick up a stink and make us laugh – and the surest way to do this is to violate our moral sentiments, albeit with a nod and a wink.
Gender Reveal
Authors: Butler Nick
Published: October 2024

Chapter 6 explores the link between humour and gender-based discrimination. There’s a long-standing myth that men are funnier than women, which is another way of saying that women ought not to be funny – and in fact should just keep their mouths shut. For this reason, radical feminist theorists like Cixous and Irigaray view uproarious laughter as a way to undermine gender norms and contest androcentrism. But laughter works just as effectively in the opposite direction, as a tool of male domination. This is especially true when misogynists reproduce the stereotype of ‘humourless feminists’, a sexist trope that singles out women who are said to take life too seriously and who can’t even take a joke (especially a smutty one). Underlying the myth of the humourless feminist is a fear that women will deprive men of their pleasure, a pleasure that – as Freud reminds us – is often aggressive in nature and sexual in content. As the chapter shows, obscene jokes make visible what normally remains opaque in all types of offensive jokes: humour is violation, and your consent is optional.
Identitarian Socialism
Authors: Harrison Graham
Published: October 2024

This chapter explores the proto-ideology of Identitarian Socialism. It defines socialism as distinct and, to a fair degree, apart from Marxism. Socialism is more inclusive and relativistic. It seeks to identify a radical place in relation to diverse political debates and is therefore less ‘foundational’. The second core concept is intersectionality, which works to make Identitarian Socialism open-ended in relation to its conceptual priorities. Race, gender, sexuality and other identities are expressions of class. They shift concerns with exploitation into a more multifarious set of concerns with injustice, recognition, and rights. This is what gives this proto-ideology its foundational pluralism, something that is also present in the way it identifies capitalism as one of many different major injustice structures to be combatted. Adjacent concepts develop these core concepts in a strongly aesthetic way. Crisis serves as an intensifier and means to draw different injustice concerns together. Technology serves to frame arguments about progress in the future. Lifestyle drives a set of cultural symbols concerning argot, youth, and coolness. Peripheral concepts are less well ordered. Post-coloniality orients the historical framing of political debate and livelihood focuses in a validating fashion community organisation.
People Making Change
Authors: Roth Silke , Saunders Clare
Published: October 2024

Chapter 5 turns to the undoubtedly most important resource of SCOs: SCMs, the people who found, run and participate in SCOs. Participation in SCOs is embedded in everyday life and matters for the recruitment as well as for the sustainability of SCO involvement throughout the life course of SCMs. The chapter discusses recruitment and participation in SCOs as well as professionalisation processes. Furthermore, the chapter addresses the factors that motivate SCMs and how preventing burnout can contribute to the sustainability of organising for change. SCMs might stay in the same SCO for many decades, but they also might engage in multiple SCOs engaging in different causes and tactics over their lifetime. Different patterns of participation, which include the boundary crossing between different causes, strategies, and SCOs are explored.
Introduction: The Enduring ‘Point’ and Value of Industrial Relations Research
Authors: Mustchin Stephen , Hodder Andy
Published: October 2024

This chapter outlines the rationale for the edited collection, before discussing the contemporary nature of industrial relations in Britain. The chapter considers the boundaries of industrial relations as a field of study, reflecting on the importance of having the employment relationship at the heart of industrial relations research. In doing so, the chapter outlines how the developments, tensions and social changes of relevance to work and employment in recent years remain central to the concerns and ongoing research within industrial relations as a field of study.
Capitalist Crises and Industrial Relations Theorizing
Authors: Meardi Guglielmo
Published: October 2024

This chapter provides a reflection on theoretical framing and contributions within the field of industrial relations, notably, system and stability theories, and the importance of the role of crises within them. The chapter argues that the main theoretical contributions in industrial relations have appeared on the idea of crisis as the focal point of the 'labour problem' notion at the centre of the field of industrial relations. The lack of a 'grand theory' of industrial relations is counterpoised with the significant existing and future theoretical contributions industrial relations can make to understandings of economic crisis, inequality and technological change.
(Un)crafting Ecologies: Actions Involving Special Skills at (Un)making Things Humans with Your hands
Authors: Sánchez-Aldana Eliana
Published: October 2024

Craft (noun): [countable, uncountable] an activity involving a special skill at making things with your handsI crafted this piece (which is both textile and text) from diverse threads. One thread is made of a myriad of threads and brings the story of the making of a textile piece. An activity that produces the cloth and shapes relations, humans, knowledge, textile materials and subjectivities within it. The crafting of a hand-made ecology. The second thread is spun of fictional voices of various theorists and my reflexive voice. It is aimed to (un)make in order to understand what happens while weaving. And the third thread tells my personal story of grief and how I (un)make myself through crafting.Therefore, the meaning of craft was modified for this piece. Here, it is both verb and noun. It is an activity involving special skills not only to make, but to (un)make; and not only things, but humans. And it is also a textile woven.
Technological Black Boxing versus Ecological Reparation: From Encased-Industrial to Open-Renewable Wind Energy
Authors: Tympas Aristotle
Published: October 2024

Building on the history of technology, science, technology and society studies and environmental history, the chapter compares wind energy that is based on small-scale, local storage, and care for saving, and, on the other hand, wind energy that relies on large-scale generation, long distance transmission and profiting through consumption. This is further linked to the difference between open wind structures, which are explicit about their dependence on physical labour/agency (human and that of the rest of nature), and partially black-boxed/encased ones, which conceal it. On the grounds of this difference, ecological reparation, based as it is on a transition from consuming to saving, becomes an issue of social resistance to the technological encasement of physical agency. In the vocabulary of STS, ecological reparation is about opening technology’s black-box. To elaborate on the technological encasement/concealment of the physical, the chapter briefly points to the similarities between soft/renewable energy and analog/software computing.
"A Different Kind of Hardship": Landscapes of Japanese American Resettlement During World War II
Authors: Littmann William
Published: October 2024

abstract: At the beginning of World War II, the United States illegally imprisoned 120,000 Japanese Americans and placed them in concentration camps for the duration of the war. What is less known about the incarceration is that more than one-quarter of the camp population, or approximately thirty-five thousand individuals, was encouraged to leave the camps and relocate to rural communities, small towns, and cities largely in the Mountain West, Midwest, and East Coast. This article focuses on the living conditions and experiences of Japanese Americans during this wartime resettlement period as they adjusted to life outside the camps and encountered a wide range of housing types, including tent camps, rooming houses, college dormitories, hostels, and, often, crowded and substandard apartments located in urban areas. Many Japanese Americans faced numerous challenges in these new environments, notably a discriminatory real estate industry and limited job opportunities. This discussion of the physical landscapes encountered during the resettlement period helps provide a more complete and richer understanding of the imprisonment of Japanese Americans during the war.
Race on the Moon: Bodies, Spaces, and Science in Poe's and Locke's Moon Stories
Authors: Saltz Laura
Published: October 2024

ABSTRACT: I focus on the deployment of scientific discourses in Poe's "Hans Phaall—A Tale" (1835) and Richard Adams Locke's "Moon Hoax" (1835) in a shared racial project. I draw on Charles W. Mills's theory of the "Racial Contract," which posits that the historical invention of the "state of nature"—outside and opposed to the social contract of the civil state—created new categories of space and persons to be colonized. I argue that in Poe's and Locke's texts, the moon functions as such a space: conquered visually and epistemologically by science, it is also the home of unmistakably racialized lunar bodies. Figured as monstrous hybrids, the lunarians embody the texts' fears about racial mixing. Yet the tales offer different responses to these anxieties. Locke's fictionalized Sir John Herschel acts as an agent of the imperializing state, overseeing a lunar Eden of racial harmony, while Poe's Hans Phaall is a settler-outlaw whose identity threatens to merge with the native, hybridized lunarian. Contextualizing "Hans Phaall" within contemporaneous debates in racial science, I show that Hans and his lunarian conjure the specter of racial "degeneracy," casting doubt in the text on the social contract and its promise of human freedom.
Apparatus and method for measuring individual color-matching functions
Authors: Ragoo Luvin Munish , Farup Ivar , Wold Jan Henrik
Published: October 2024

This article presents a compact visual colorimeter for the purpose of measuring color-matching functions (CMFs) of individual observers through psychophysical experiments. Constructed from 3D-printed parts, optical elements, and LED-based light engines, the colorimeter facilitates the juxtaposition of two fields to create a bipartite field. The system underwent characterization to evaluate factors that may impact color-matching experiments, such as LED-light stability, spatial homogeneity of the bipartite field, and potential stray-light leakage. The study aimed to assess the accuracy and performance of the system in measuring individual observer CMFs. Results indicate that the system is stable enough to measure both intra- and inter-observer variations in CMFs.
Attosecond-precision timing jitter measurement based on temporal sampling method
Authors: Liu Keyang , Li Jinhui , Wang Xingguo , Wang Xianglin , Wang Yishan , Zhao Wei , Cao Huabao , Fu Yuxi
Published: October 2024

We propose a timing jitter measurement scheme based on the temporal sampling method. This scheme offers a wide dynamic range and high measurement accuracy for measuring timing jitter between pulses, allowing for attosecond precision in measuring timing jitter of ultrashort pulses with short and long pulse duration. By utilizing a balanced measuring configuration, this scheme is naturally immune to the environmental and laser amplitude noises, and has been successfully used to measure timing jitter of two femtosecond pulses. This scheme can be utilized to measure and control timing jitter in the beam combining systems for generation of ultrafast laser, with high average and peak powers.
Development of sustainable alkali activated composite incorporated with sugarcane bagasse ash and polyvinyl alcohol fibers
Authors: Iqbal Munir , Ashraf Muhammad , Alkhattabi Loai , Nazar Sohaib , Alam Jihad , Alabduljabbar Hisham , Husnain Ali
Published: October 2024

The infrastructure boom has driven up cement demand to 30 billion tons annually. To address this and promote sustainable construction, researchers are developing solutions for carbon-neutral building practices, aiming to transform industrial waste into an eco-friendly alternative. This study aims to develop and enhance the mechanical and durability properties of alkali-activated composites (AACs) by incorporating varying amounts (5, 10, 15, and 20%) of finely ground bagasse ash (GBA) and polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) fibers. Results indicate that higher GBA content initially reduces the 7th and 14th-day strength but results in increased strength at later ages. The optimum 28-day strength is achieved with a 10% GBA content, leading to a 10% increase in compressive strength, 8% increase in tensile strength, and 12% increase in flexural strength. Additionally, the incorporation of GBA enhanced the resistance of the composite to chloride ingress, thus reducing its conductance and increasing the overall durability. This study demonstrated the potential of GBA as an eco-friendly material, emphasizing the significance of tailored AACs formulations for durable and sustainable construction practices.