Old truths and new politics:Does truth commission 'publicness' impact democratization?

This article analyzes the relationship between truth and politics by asking whether the 'publicness' of a truth commission - defined by whether it has public hearings, releases a public report, and names perpetrators - contributes to democratization. The article reviews scholarship relevant to the potential democratizing effects of truth commissions and derives mechanisms that help explain this relationship. Work from the transitional justice field as well as democratization and political transition more generally is considered. Using a newly-constructed Truth Commission Publicness Dataset (TCPD), the analysis finds that even after statistically controlling for initial levels of democracy, democratic trends in the years prior to a commission, level of wealth, amnesties and/or trials, the influence of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and different cutoff points for measuring democratization across a number of models, more publicness predicts higher levels of democracy years after the commission has finished its work. The more public a truth commission is, the more it will contribute to democratization. The finding that more public truth commissions are associated with higher levels of democratization indicates particular strategies that policymakers, donors, and civil society activists may take to improve prospects for democracy in a country planning a truth commission in the wake of violence and/or government abuse. © The Author(s) 2012.

State defining experiment in chemical kinetics. Primary characterization of catalyst activity in a TAP experiment

This paper presents a new strategy, “state-by-state transient screening”, for kinetic characterization of states of a multicomponent catalyst as applied to TAP pulse-response experiments. The key idea is to perform an insignificant chemical perturbation of the catalytic system so that the known essential characteristics of the catalyst (e.g. oxidation degree) do not change during the experiment. Two types of catalytic substances can be distinguished: catalyst state substances, which determine the catalyst state, and catalyst dynamic substances, which are created by the perturbation. The general methodological and theoretical framework for multi-pulse TAP experiments is developed, and the general model for a one-pulse TAP experiment is solved. The primary kinetic characteristics, basic kinetic coefficients, are extracted from diffusion–reaction data and calculated as functions of experimentally measured exit-flow moments without assumptions regarding the detailed kinetic mechanism. The new strategy presented in this paper provides essential information, which can be a basis for developing a detailed reaction mechanism. The theoretical results are illustrated using furan oxidation over a VPO catalyst.

Modeling X-ray photoionized plasmas produced at the Sandia Z-facility

In experiments at the high-power Z-facility at Sandia National Laboratory in Albuquerque, New Mexico, we have been able to produce a low density photoionized laboratory plasma of Fe mixed with NaF. The conditions in the experiment allow a meaningful comparison with X-ray emission from astrophysical sources. The charge state distributions of Fe, Na and F are determined in this plasma using high resolution X-ray spectroscopy. Independent measurements of the density and radiation flux indicate unprecedented values for the ionization parameter xi = 20-25 erg cm s(-1) under nearly steady-state conditions. First comparisons of the measured charge state distributions with X-ray photoionization models show reasonable agreement, although many questions remain.

Ellerman Bombs - Evidence for Magnetic Reconnection in the Lower Solar Atmosphere

The presence of photospheric magnetic reconnection has long been thought to give rise to short and impulsive events, such as Ellerman bombs (EBs) and Type II spicules. In this article, we combine high-resolution, high-cadence observations from the Interferometric BIdimensional Spectrometer and Rapid Oscillations in the Solar Atmosphere instruments at the Dunn Solar Telescope, National Solar Observatory, New Mexico, with co-aligned Solar Dynamics Observatory Atmospheric Imaging Assembly and Hinode Solar Optical Telescope (SOT) data to observe small-scale events situated within an active region. These data are then compared with state-of-the-art numerical simulations of the lower atmosphere made using the MURaM code. It is found that brightenings, in both the observations and the simulations, of the wings of the Hα line profile, interpreted as EBs, are often spatially correlated with increases in the intensity of the Fe I λ6302.5 line core. Bipolar regions inferred from Hinode/SOT magnetic field data show evidence of flux cancellation associated, co-spatially, with these EBs, suggesting that magnetic reconnection could be a driver of these high-energy events. Through the analysis of similar events in the simulated lower atmosphere, we are able to infer that line profiles analogous to the observations occur co-spatially with regions of strong opposite-polarity magnetic flux. These observed events and their simulated counterparts are interpreted as evidence of photospheric magnetic reconnection at scales observable using current observational instrumentation.

Infra-Éireann: Making Ireland Modern - Irish Pavilion for the 14th Architectural biennale, Venice 2014.

After an open competition, we were selected to commission, curate and design the Irish pavilion for the Venice biennale 2014. Our proposal engage with the role of infrastructure and architecture in the cultural development of the new Irish state 1914-2014. This curatorial programme was realised in a demountable, open matrix pavilion measuring 12 x 5 x 6 metres.

How modernity is absorbed into national cultures usually presupposes an attachment to previous conditions and a desire to reconcile the two. In an Irish context, due to the processes of de-colonisation and political independence, this relationship is more complicated.

In 1914, Ireland was largely agricultural and lacked any significant industrial complex. The construction of new infrastructures after independence in 1921 became central to the cultural imagining of the new nation. The adoption of modernist architecture was perceived as a way to escape the colonial past. As the desire to reconcile cultural and technological aims developed, these infrastructures became both the physical manifestation and concrete identity of the new nation with architecture an essential element in this construct.

Technology and infrastructure are inherently cosmopolitan. Beginning with the Shannon hydro-electric facility at Ardnacrusha (1929) involving the German firm of Siemens-Schuckert, Ireland became a point of various intersections between imported international expertise and local need. By the turn of the last century, it had become one of the most globalised countries in the world, site of the European headquarters of multinationals such as Google and Microsoft. Climatically and economically expedient to the storing and harvesting of data, Ireland has subsequently become an important repository of digital information farmed in large, single-storey sheds absorbed into dispersed suburbs. In 2013, it became the preferred site for Intel to design and develop its new microprocessor board, the Galileo, a building block for the internet of things.

The story of the decades in between, of shifts made manifest in architecture and infrastructure, from the policies of economic protectionism to the embracing of the EU is one of the influx of technologies and cultural references into a small country on the edges of Europe: Ireland as both a launch-pad and testing ground for a series of aspects of designed modernity.