Matching Items (1,105)
Description
Amidst studies attempting to fix the U.S., China, and their relationship into preconceived frameworks of international relations, presupposed definitions, and models of reality, this dissertation adopts an identity centric approach to understanding the nature of U.S.-China relations and, more generally, international politics. This approach involves utilizing an interpretive method to understanding, analyzing the narratives of self and other expressed by political actors and how their identities--expressed through narratives--interact with one another and thus how they influence or reflect social behavior. Striving for greater understanding and a more intellectually honest approach to the study of international politics, this study seeks not theory building or generalizability in a traditional "scientific" sense. Rather, informed by thinkers from Karl Popper through those more recent, this dissertation develops and outlines an in-depth, contextual approach to understanding, applying this approach to analyzing the nature of U.S.-China relations. Ultimately, this study argues that U.S. and Chinese identities and how their identities interact influence the nature of U.S.-China relations, whether the relationship tends towards cooperation or conflict, and that in order to glimpse this nature researchers must delve into the details of their subjects of study. Attempting to do so, this study analyzes U.S.-China relations surrounding the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, relations regarding the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands dispute between China and Japan as it pertains to U.S. relations with China, and relations regarding encounters between the U.S. and China in cyber space (paying special note to attempts to define this "space" itself).
ContributorsKoehler, Clifford Eugene (Author) / Simon, Sheldon (Thesis advisor) / Doty, Roxanne (Committee member) / Ashley, Richard (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
Since 9/11 a wide range of violent practices including indefinite detention, torture, and targeted killing have been employed by the United States and the "international community" against "international terrorism." Modern laws of war are portrayed as the bright line that distinguishes the "international community" from "unlawful combatants." The threat posed by unlawful combatants has been portrayed as so exceptionally grave that the international community is justified in the transgression of those very laws of war that constitute the distinction between "us" and "them." In consequence the efficacy of modern laws of war to provide humanitarian protections has been cast into doubt and many characterize humanitarian laws of war as obsolete. Existing work on the politics of exception and the exclusion of Guantánamo Bay detainees from US federal law does not frame the problem of the exception in terms of international law. Though many consider the prerequisites for politics of exception absent in the international system, I argue that a dispersed notion of sovereignty and constructivist approaches to law resolve obstacles to considering the exception at the level of the state system. I explore system level exceptional politics through a critical reading of modern laws of war. Rejecting essentialist historical narratives, I first conduct a genealogical study of laws of war from ancient Greece through the Middle Ages. I then conduct a critical reading of three texts from the War on Terrorism; Barack Obama's 2009 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, John Brennan's "The Ethics and Efficacy of the President's Counterterrorism Strategy," and Medea Benjamin's interruption of John Brennan. I argue that modern narratives of war law venerate codification and textually privilege a "mystical" figure of modern law. This figure empowers a universalized "international community" as law's privileged agent. Violence employed by this archetypal community, even when outside the law, is rendered ethically pure and historically necessary. In consequence modern humanitarian law as a bright line always permits excluded archetypal identities and vast powers of violence are mobilized by the "international community" against discrete individual human bodies who are identified with this excluded archetype, or who simply find themselves in the way.
ContributorsHickman, Peter L (Author) / Doty, Roxanne (Thesis advisor) / Ashley, Richard (Committee member) / Thomas, George (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
The state of exception in Rwanda did not spontaneously occur in Rwanda, it was initially developed by German and Belgian colonizers, adopted by two successive Hutu regimes, and nurtured and fed for 35 years of Rwandan independence until its final realization in the 1994 genocide. Political theory regarding the development of the "space devoid of law" and necropolitics provide a framework with which to analyze the long pattern of state action that created a milieu in which genocide was an acceptable choice of action for a sovereign at risk of losing power. The study of little-known political theories such as Agamben's and Mbembe's is useful because it provides a lens through which we can analyze current state action throughout the world. As is true in many genocidal regimes, the Rwandan genocide did not just occur as a "descent into hell." Rather, state action over the course of decades in which the subjects of the state (People) were systematically converted into mere flesh beings (people), devoid of political or social value, creates the setting in which it is feasible to seek to eliminate those beings. A question to be posed to political actors and observers around the world today is at what point in the process of one nation's creation of the state of exception and adoption of necropolitics does the world have a right, and a duty, to intervene? Thus far, it has always occurred too late for the "people" in that sovereign to realize their political and social potential to be "People."
ContributorsSinema, Kyrsten (Author) / Johnson, John (Thesis advisor) / Quan, Helen (Committee member) / Gomez, Alan (Committee member) / Doty, Roxanne (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
This research compares shifts in a SuperSpec titanium nitride (TiN) kinetic inductance detector's (KID's) resonant frequency with accepted models for other KIDs. SuperSpec, which is being developed at the University of Colorado Boulder, is an on-chip spectrometer designed with a multiplexed readout with multiple KIDs that is set up for a broadband transmission of these measurements. It is useful for detecting radiation in the mm and sub mm wavelengths which is significant since absorption and reemission of photons by dust causes radiation from distant objects to reach us in infrared and far-infrared bands. In preparation for testing, our team installed stages designed previously by Paul Abers and his group into our cryostat and designed and installed other parts necessary for the cryostat to be able to test devices on the 250 mK stage. This work included the design and construction of additional parts, a new setup for the wiring in the cryostat, the assembly, testing, and installation of several stainless steel coaxial cables for the measurements through the devices, and other cryogenic and low pressure considerations. The SuperSpec KID was successfully tested on this 250 mK stage thus confirming that the new setup is functional. Our results are in agreement with existing models which suggest that the breaking of cooper pairs in the detector's superconductor which occurs in response to temperature, optical load, and readout power will decrease the resonant frequencies. A negative linear relationship in our results appears, as expected, since the parameters are varied only slightly so that a linear approximation is appropriate. We compared the rate at which the resonant frequency responded to temperature and found it to be close to the expected value.
ContributorsDiaz, Heriberto Chacon (Author) / Mauskopf, Philip (Thesis director) / McCartney, Martha (Committee member) / Department of Physics (Contributor) / School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-05
Description
Supernovae are vital to supplying necessary elements to forming bodies in our solar systems. This project studies the creation of a subset of these necessary elements, called short-lived radionuclides (SLRs). SLRs are isotopes with relatively short half-lives and can serve as heat sources for forming planetary bodies, and their traces can be used to date stellar events. Computational models of asymmetric supernovae provide opportunities to study the effect of explosion geometry on the SLR yields. We are most interested in the production of \iso{Al}{26}, \iso{Fe}{60}, and \iso{Ca}{41}, whose decayed products are found in our own solar system. To study the effect of explosion asymmetries in supernovae, we use TYCHO stellar evolution code, SNSHP smooth particle hydrodynamics code for 3D explosion simulations, Burn code for nucleosythesis post-processing, and Python code written to analyze the output of the post-processing code.
ContributorsJohnson, Charlotte (Author) / Young, Patrick (Thesis director) / Lunardini, Cecilia (Committee member) / Department of Physics (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-05
Description
We hypothesized that recurrent exposure to a temporal discounting task would habitize participants, so that they become insensitive to framing effects. Temporal discounting is a behavioral trend which describes how people discount the value of a reward dependent on the time until receipt. Participants completed a temporal discounting task weekly for five weeks, to promote formation of a habitual decision strategy. Concomitant with this, we expected that people would shift their decision process from a deliberate, goal-oriented approach that is sensitive to changes in reward outcomes and environmental context, to a simplified, automatic approach that minimizes cognitive effort. We expected that this shift in decision strategy would be evident in a reduced influence of contextual effects on choice outcomes. We tested this hypothesis by leveraging two framing effects \u2014 the date/delay effect and the decimal effect. Consistent with our hypothesis, we find that the date/delay effect is significant on week 1, shows significant changes in week 1 to week 5, and is no longer significant on week 5. The results for the decimal effects were not significant. We discuss these results with respect to the cognitive processes that underlie temporal discounting and self-control.
ContributorsSt Amand, Jesse Dean (Author) / McClure, Samuel (Thesis director) / Sanabria, Federico (Committee member) / School of Molecular Sciences (Contributor) / Department of Physics (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
A problem of interest in theoretical physics is the issue of the evaporation of black holes via Hawking radiation subject to a fixed background. We approach this problem by considering an electromagnetic analogue, where we have substituted Hawking radiation with the Schwinger effect. We treat the case of massless QED in 1+1 dimensions with the path integral approach to quantum field theory, and discuss the resulting Feynman diagrams from our analysis. The results from this thesis may be useful to find a version of the Schwinger effect that can be solved exactly and perturbatively, as this version may provide insights to the gravitational problem of Hawking radiation.
ContributorsDhumuntarao, Aditya (Author) / Parikh, Maulik (Thesis director) / Davies, Paul C. W. (Committee member) / Department of Physics (Contributor) / School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
Observations of four times ionized iron and nickel (Fe V & Ni V) in the G191-B2B white dwarf spectrum have been used to test for variations in the fine structure constant, α, in the presence of strong gravitational fields. The laboratory wavelengths for these ions were thought to be the cause of inconsistent conclusions regarding the
variation of α as observed through the white dwarf spectrum. This thesis presents 129 revised Fe V wavelengths (1200 Å to 1600 Å) and 161 revised Ni V wavelengths (1200 Å to 1400 Å) with uncertainties of approximately 3 mÅ. A systematic calibration error
is identified in the previous Ni V wavelengths and is corrected in this work. The evaluation of the fine structure variation is significantly improved with the results
found in this thesis.
variation of α as observed through the white dwarf spectrum. This thesis presents 129 revised Fe V wavelengths (1200 Å to 1600 Å) and 161 revised Ni V wavelengths (1200 Å to 1400 Å) with uncertainties of approximately 3 mÅ. A systematic calibration error
is identified in the previous Ni V wavelengths and is corrected in this work. The evaluation of the fine structure variation is significantly improved with the results
found in this thesis.
ContributorsWard, Jacob Wolfgang (Author) / Treacy, Michael (Thesis director) / Alarcon, Ricardo (Committee member) / Nave, Gillian (Committee member) / Department of Physics (Contributor) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
In fan fiction, fans utilize different elements in an original work and incorporate them into their fanfics; elements such as the characters and setting of an original work are frequently used in fan fiction. A different element is investigated: time travel. The physics behind time travel is not yet understood, so authors have to create their own time travel physics in their works to account for this lack of understanding. Therefore, for fan authors to incorporate time travel into their fanfic, they must study the time travel physics in the original work the same way that characters from an original work are studied. Three original works and three fanfics are examined: the television show My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic and its fanfic "The Fall and Rise of the Alicorn", the Harry Potter book series and its fanfic "Back to the Time of the Unknown", and the webcomic Homestuck and its fanfic "Like a Bug on a Windshield".
ContributorsClark, Michael Robert (Author) / Ingram-Waters, Mary (Thesis director) / Scott, Suzanne (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences (Contributor) / Department of Physics (Contributor)
Created2014-05
Description
The influence of mix design on the structural properties of FAU-type (faujasite) zeolite was studied. Samples were synthesized in a forced convection oven using various proportions of coal fly ash, sodium hydroxide (NaOH), and sodium chloride (NaCl). Three faujasite varieties, labeled X, P and S, were prepared for each mix design. Samples were characterized using Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy and thermo-gravimetric analysis (TGA). Mercury intrusion porosimetry (MIP) was used to obtain porosity information on the samples. Mechanical strength testing was performed on solid blocks of the zeolite samples prepared in a mold. It was found that the S variety in mix design (iv) had the most desirable balance of porosity and strength for engineering applications.
ContributorsRuta, Francesco Luigi (Author) / Neithalath, Narayanan (Thesis director) / Ramakrishna, Bindiganavale (Committee member) / Civil, Environmental and Sustainable Engineering Programs (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences (Contributor) / Department of Physics (Contributor)
Created2015-05