Betwixt spaces: Students’ accounts of turning point experiences in first-year transitions

'Not belonging' is becoming a prevalent theme within accounts of the first-year student experience at university. In this study the notion of not belonging is extended by assuming a more active role for the idea of liminality in a student's transition into the university environments of academic and student life. In doing so, the article suggests that the transition between one place (home) and another (university) can result in an 'in-between-ness' - a betwixt space. Through an interpretative methodology, the study explores how students begin to move from this betwixt space into feeling like fully-fledged members of university life. It is concluded that there is a wide range of turning points associated with the students' betwixt transition, which shapes, alters or indeed accentuates the ways in which they make meaningful connections with university life. Moreover, transitional turning point experiences reveal a cast of characters and symbolic objects; capture contrasting motivations and evolving relationships; display multiple trajectories of interpersonal tensions and conflicts; highlight discontinuities as well as continuities; and together, simultaneously liberate and constrain the students' transition into university life.

Care Leavers’ Experiences of Transition and Turning Points: Findings from a Biographical Narrative Study

This paper reports on the findings of a PhD research project that set out to explore how young people leaving out of home care experienced and made sense of their transition to adulthood. Using the Biographical Narrative Interpretative Method, in-depth accounts were collected and analysed for eight care leavers. The data suggest that in addition to care leavers living their lives as a series of biographical events, their ‘care career’, they also experience changes in the way they make sense of their lives which form a ‘subjective pathway’. Influenced by the literature on resilience, the research had anticipated that ‘turning point’ events would play a significant role in the young people’s subjective pathways. But the findings show a more gradual, phased shifting of subjectivity. It is suggested that legislation, policy, services and care practices need to facilitate this more drawn out ‘subjective pathway’. Attachment, resilience and humanistic social psychology are proposed as useful theoretical underpinnings for that work

Semiclassical treatment of Wannier's theory when the exponent diverges

We consider a non-standard application of the Wannier model. A physical example is the single ionization of a hydrogenic beryllium ion with a fully stripped beryllium ion, where the ratio of the charge of the third particle to the charges of the escaping particles is 1/4; we investigate the single ionization by an electron of an atom comprising an electron and a nucleus of charge 1/4. An infinite exponent is obtained suggesting that this process is not tractable within the Wannier model. A modified version of Crothers' uniform semiclassical wavefunction for the outgoing particles has been adopted, since the Wannier exponents and are infinite for an effective charge of Z = 1/4. We use Bessel functions to describe the Peterkop functions u and u and derive a new turning point ?. Since u is well behaved at infinity, there exists only the singularity in u at infinity, thus we employ a one- (rather than two-) dimensional change of dependent variable, ensuring that a uniform solution is obtained that avoids semiclassical breakdown on the Wannier ridge. The regularized final-state asymptotic wavefunction is employed, along with a continuum-distorted-wave approximation for the initial-state wavefunction to obtain total cross sections on an absolute scale. © 2006 IOP Publishing Ltd.

Zipf and Type-Token rules for the English, Spanish, Irish and Latin languages

The Zipf curves of log of frequency against log of rank for a large English corpus of 500 million word tokens, 689,000 word types and for a large Spanish corpus of 16 million word tokens, 139,000 word types are shown to have the usual slope close to –1 for rank less than 5,000, but then for a higher rank they turn to give a slope close to –2. This is apparently mainly due to foreign words and place names. Other Zipf curves for highlyinflected Indo-European languages, Irish and ancient Latin, are also given. Because of the larger number of word types per lemma, they remain flatter than the English curve maintaining a slope of –1 until turning points of about ranks 30,000 for Irish and 10,000 for Latin. A formula which calculates the number of tokens given the number of types is derived in terms of the rank at the turning point, 5,000 for both English and Spanish, 30,000 for Irish and 10,000 for Latin.

Foraging-farming transitions at the Niah Caves, Sarawak, Borneo

The Niah Caves in Sarawak, Borneo, have captured evidence for people and economies of 8000 and 4000 years ago. Although not continuous on this site, these open two windows on to life at the cultural turning point, broadly equivalent to the transition from Mesolithic to Neolithic. They have much in common, inferring that the occupants, perhaps belonging to an older maritime dispersal, had a choosy appetite for the Neolithic package.

Developing an integrated hydrograph separation and lumped modelling approach to quantifying hydrological pathways in Irish river catchments

An appreciation of the quantity of streamflow derived from the main hydrological pathways involved in transporting diffuse contaminants is critical when addressing a wide range of water resource management issues. In order to assess hydrological pathway contributions to streams, it is necessary to provide feasible upper and lower bounds for flows in each pathway. An important first step in this process is to provide reliable estimates of the slower responding groundwater pathways and subsequently the quicker overland and interflow pathways. This paper investigates the effectiveness of a multi-faceted approach applying different hydrograph separation techniques, supplemented by lumped hydrological modelling, for calculating the Baseflow Index (BFI), for the development of an integrated approach to hydrograph separation. A semi-distributed, lumped and deterministic rainfall runoff model known as NAM has been applied to ten catchments (ranging from 5 to 699 km2). While this modelling approach is useful as a validation method, NAM itself is also an important tool for investigation. These separation techniques provide a large variation in BFI, a difference of 0.741 predicted for BFI in a catchment with the less reliable fixed and sliding interval methods and local minima turning point methods included. This variation is reduced to 0.167 with these methods omitted. The Boughton and Eckhardt algorithms, while quite subjective in their use, provide quick and easily implemented approaches for obtaining physically realistic hydrograph separations. It is observed that while the different separation techniques give varying BFI values for each of the catchments, a recharge coefficient approach developed in Ireland, when applied in conjunction with the Master recession Curve Tabulation method, predict estimates in agreement with those obtained using the NAM model, and these estimates are also consistent with the study catchments’ geology. These two separation methods, in conjunction with the NAM model, were selected to form an integrated approach to assessing BFI in catchments.

1916-2016. The 1916 Easter Rising

Commissioned by An Post to commemorate the centenary of the Easter Rising, this illustrated book draws on eye-witness accounts to assess this key turning-point in modern Irish history. Leading historian Fearghal McGarry explores the impact of events at the General Post Office, as well as setting the rebellion in its wider historical context. His account concludes with an assessment of the Rising's commemoration since 1916 and a commentary on the definitive stamps issued by An Post to mark the formative event in the emergence of an independent Irish nation.

The EC Commission?s New Adopted Baby

This article looks into the emerging field of health care rights in the EU. The developments in this area seem to have come to a turning point. The EU Commission now wants to consolidate the case law of the European Court of Justice that has had a major impact upon this field of law. In order to provide a contribution to this discussion, this article highlights the shortcomings in the Court?s case law and the aspects which have to be addressed in order to improve the overall situation of EU patients seeking healthcare in other Member States.

Molecular dynamics simulation model for the quantitative assessment of tool wear during single point diamond turning of cubic silicon carbide

Silicon carbide (SiC) is a material of great technological interest for engineering applications concerning hostile environments where silicon-based components cannot work (beyond 623 K). Single point diamond turning (SPDT) has remained a superior and viable method to harness process efficiency and freeform shapes on this harder material. However, it is extremely difficult to machine this ceramic consistently in the ductile regime due to sudden and rapid tool wear. It thus becomes non trivial to develop an accurate understanding of tool wear mechanism during SPDT of SiC in order to identify measures to suppress wear to minimize operational cost.

In this paper, molecular dynamics (MD) simulation has been deployed with a realistic analytical bond order potential (ABOP) formalism based potential energy function to understand tool wear mechanism during single point diamond turning of SiC. The most significant result was obtained using the radial distribution function which suggests graphitization of diamond tool during the machining process. This phenomenon occurs due to the abrasive processes between these two ultra hard materials. The abrasive action results in locally high temperature which compounds with the massive cutting forces leading to sp3–sp2 order–disorder transition of diamond tool. This represents the root cause of tool wear during SPDT operation of cubic SiC. Further testing led to the development of a novel method for quantitative assessment of the progression of diamond tool wear from MD simulations.

The development of a surface defect machining method for hard turning processes

Hard turning (HT) is a material removal process employing a combination of a single point cutting tool and high speeds to machine hard ferrous alloys which exhibit hardness values over 45 HRC. In this paper, a surface defect machining (SDM) method for HT is proposed which harnesses the combined advantages of porosity machining and pulsed laser pre-treatment processing. From previous experimental work, this was shown to provide better controllability of the process and improved quality of the machined surface. While the experiments showed promising results, a comprehensive understanding of this new technique could only be achieved through a rigorous, in depth theoretical analysis. Therefore, an assessment of the SDM technique was carried out using both finite element method (FEM) and molecular dynamics (MD) simulations.
FEM modelling was used to compare the conventional HT of AISI 4340 steel (52 HRC) using an Al2O3 insert with the proposed SDM method. The simulations showed very good agreement with the previously published experimental results. Compared to conventional HT, SDM provided favourable machining outcomes, such as reduced shear plane angle, reduced average cutting forces, improved surface roughness, lower residual stresses on the machined surface, reduced tool–chip interface contact length and increased chip flow velocity. Furthermore, a scientific explanation of the improved surface finish was revealed using a state-of-the-art MD simulation model which suggested that during SDM, a combination of both the cutting action and rough polishing action help improve the machined surface finish.

Turning the categories inside-out: Complex identifications and multiple interactions in religious ethnography

This paper challenges the fixed boundaries that ethnographers have often constructed between religious insiders and outsiders. Drawing on Neitz's observations, it argues that the main task of reflexive fieldwork is locating the self in relation to ambiguous and shifting boundaries. We offer a comparative analysis of the experiences of two differently socially located researchers to illustrate how religious identity emerges as a continuum, on which one's place is negotiated with one's research participants. We also examine the importance of intersecting multiple identities. Finally, the paper questions whether social identity categories are the primary way that we relate with our respondents. It explores the spiritual and emotional dimensions of research relationships and argues that these may transform, reinforce and generally interact with social identities. Comparing our experiences, we outline the consequences of these reflections for data gathering and analysis.