Anticipatory logics of the smart city’s global imaginary

The smart city encompasses a broad range of technological innovations which might be applied to any city for a wide variety of reasons. In this article, I make a distinction between local efforts to reshape the urban landscape, and a global smart city imaginary which those efforts draw upon and help sustain. While attention has been given to the malleability of the smart city concept at this global scale, there remains little effort to interrogate the way that the future is used to sanction specific solutions. Through a critical engagement with smart city marketing materials, industry documents, and consultancy reports, I explore how the future is recruited, rearranged, and represented as a rationalization for technological intervention in the present. This is performed amidst three recurring crises: massive demographic shifts and subsequent resource pressures, global climate change, and the conflicting demands of fiscal austerity that motivate the desire of so many cities to attract foreign direct investment and highly skilled workers. In revealing how crises are pre-empted, precautioned, and prepared for, I argue that the smart city imaginary normalizes a style and scale of response deemed appropriate under liberal capitalism.     

Potential impact of ash eruptions on dairy farms from a study of the effects on a farm in eastern Bay of Plenty,New Zealand; implications for hazard mitigation

This paper investigates the impact ash fall would have on dairy farming, based on a study of ‘Tulachard’, a dairy farming operation at Rerewhakaaitu, North Island, New Zealand. It includes analysis of the potential effects on the dairy shed and milking machine, electrical supply and distribution, water supply and distribution, tractors and other farm vehicles, farm buildings (haysheds, pump sheds, implement sheds, etc.), milk-tanker access to the farm and critical needs of dairy cows and farm to keep milking. One of the most vulnerable areas identified in the study was the cooling of milk at the milking shed, pending dairy tanker pick-up. The cooling system’s condenser is exposed to the atmosphere and falling ash would make it highly vulnerable. Laboratory testing with wet and dry ash was conducted to determine its resilience to ash ingestion. It was found to perform satisfactorily during dry testing, but during wet testing significant clogging/blocking of the condenser’s radiator occurred, dramatically reducing airflow through the condenser. Specific mitigation recommendations have been developed that include cleaning with compressed air and adapting farm management techniques to lessen usage of the condenser during an ash-fall event. Specific recommendations for management of dairy farm operation are given to mitigate the effects of an ash-fall event.

Cosmic-ray positrons: are there primary sources?

Galactic cosmic rays consist of primary and secondary particles. Primary cosmic rays are thought to be energized by first order Fermi acceleration processes at supernova shock fronts within our Galaxy. The cosmic rays that eventually reach the Earth from this source are mainly protons and atomic nuclei, but also include electrons. Secondary cosmic rays are created in collisions of primary particles with the diffuse interstellar gas. They are relatively rare but carry important information on the Galactic propagation of the primary particles. The secondary component includes a small fraction of antimatter particles, positrons and antiprotons. In addition, positrons and antiprotons may also come from unusual sources and possibly provide insight into new physics. For instance, the annihilation of heavy supersymmetric dark matter particles within the Galactic halo could lead to positrons or antiprotons with distinctive energy signatures. With the High-Energy Antimatter Telescope (HEAT) balloon-borne instrument, we have measured the abundances of positrons and electrons at energies between 1 and 50 GeV. The data suggest that indeed a small additional antimatter component may be present that cannot be explained by a purely secondary production mechanism. Here we describe the signature of the effect and discuss its possible origin.     

Hydrodynamical non-radiative accretion flows in two dimensions

Two-dimensional (axially symmetric) numerical hydrodynamical calculations of accretion flows that cannot cool through emission of radiation are presented. The calculations begin from an equilibrium configuration consisting of a thick torus with constant specific angular momentum. Accretion is induced by the addition of a small anomalous azimuthal shear stress which is characterized by a function ν . We study the flows generated as the amplitude and form of ν are varied. A spherical polar grid which spans more than two orders of magnitude in radius is used to resolve the flow over a wide range of spatial scales. We find that convection in the inner regions produces significant outward mass motions that carry away both the energy liberated by and a large fraction of the mass participating in the accretion flow. Although the instantaneous structure of the flow is complex and dominated by convective eddies, long-time averages of the dynamical variables show remarkable correspondence to certain steady-state solutions. The two-dimensional structure of the time-averaged flow is marginally stable to the Høiland criterion, indicating that convection is efficient. Near the equatorial plane, the radial profiles of the time-averaged variables are power laws with an index that depends on the radial scaling of the shear stress. A stress in which ν ∝ r ^1/2 recovers the widely studied self-similar solution corresponding to an ' α -disc'. We find that, regardless of the adiabatic index of the gas, or the form or magnitude of the shear stress, the mass inflow rate is a strongly increasing function of radius, and is everywhere nearly exactly balanced by mass outflow. The net mass accretion rate through the disc is only a fraction of the rate at which mass is supplied to the inflow at large radii, and is given by the local, viscous accretion rate associated with the flow properties near the central object.     

Line-driven disc wind models with an improved line force

We describe an efficient method of calculating the radiation pressure resulting from spectral lines, including all the terms in the velocity gradient tensor. We apply this method to calculate the two-dimensional, time-dependent structure of winds from luminous discs. Qualitative features of our new models are very similar to those we calculated including only the dominant terms in the tensor. In particular, we find that models which displayed unsteady behaviour in our earlier paper are also unsteady with the new method, and gross properties of the winds, such as mass-loss rate and characteristic velocity, are not changed by the more accurate approach. The largest change caused by the new method is in the disc-wind opening angle: winds driven only by the disc radiation are more polar with the new method, whilst winds driven by the disc and central object radiation are typically more equatorial. In the closing discussion, we provide further insight into the way the geometry of the radiation field and consequent flow determine the time properties of the flow.     

A spatially resolved 'inside-out' outburst of IP Pegasi

We present a comprehensive photometric data set taken over the entire outburst of the eclipsing dwarf nova IP Peg in 1997 September/October. Analysis of the light curves taken over the long rise to the peak-of-outburst shows conclusively that the outburst started near the centre of the disc and moved outwards. This is the first data set that spatially resolves such an outburst. The data set is consistent with the idea that long rise times are indicative of such 'inside-out' outbursts. We show how the thickness and the radius of the disc, along with the mass transfer rate, change over the whole outburst. In addition, we show evidence of the secondary and the irradiation thereof. We discuss the possibility of spiral shocks in the disc; however, we find no conclusive evidence of their existence in this data set.