Sounding Fragilities enacts a polyphony of writing on contemporary composition, music and performing arts in relation to music theatre. Co-edited by a theatre and performance scholar and by a composer and artistic researcher, this anthology considers its field of investigation through the lens of positionalities. Irene Lehmann and Pia Palme invite readers into intimate encounters with an artist's practice, feminist and queer perspectives, and personal explorations into aspects of musicology, theatre studies, technology and ecology. By presenting female* composers who write (...) with/through/about their own practice, Sounding Fragilities is a remarkable contribution to an interdisciplinary debate around the agency of artistic research. With this synthesis, the editors evaluate how moving beyond the binary of art and science reveals the rich yet fragile territories of artistic knowledge-production and literacy in music theatre. Sounding Fragilities: An Anthology brings together essays, discussions and interventions on contemporary music, dance and music theatre to offer a polyphony of new approaches to listening, watching, composing and performing. Artistic and academic researchers present reflections and insights into the fragilities of artistic materials, collaborations and the communities that build around live performances. Challenging the idea of isolated composers, choreographers, audience members and academic researchers, they stress instead the interconnectedness of these positions as indispensable elements of thriving performance and research. This feature of all live performance is envisaged by several of the book's contributors as linked to political, democratic thought and ecological or feminist thinking. (shrink)

This thesis focuses on the use of intelligent tutoring system for education and training of students specialized in electricity in the field of technical and vocational education. The use of modern systems in training and education will have a great positive impact in improving the level of students receiving training and education; this will improve the level of the local economy by producing students of professionals who are able to engage in society efficiently, especially for those who have specialized (...) in electricity. It is known that students in electrical specialties face many problems because of time and cost. Learning and training is not as easy as you imagine, so intelligence is how to overcome these limitations effectively. Motivating the Intelligent Tutorial System (ITS) for this type of training. This system consists of a student model, which in turn will contain lessons, exercises and examples that will be used by the student in addition to the user interface model which makes the teacher to be able to manage lessons, examples, and questions and make changes to the system. Expert System (ES) model representing the Artificial Intelligence (AI) here has been used to determine the level of the student and gives him the results, directions and levels. The program was implemented and was used by trainees to show the extent of its impact. The students expressed their surprise and admiration in this way of education as the system used focuses on individual education which can be used at any time and without restrictions. After this experience, the dedicated (ITS) system needs to be developed in several ways such as to be used on mobile systems and web systems in addition to linking some of the specialized programs in the field of electricity. (shrink)

In the last decade there has been an upsurge in the popularity of electric mountain bikes. However, opinion is divided regarding the implications of this emerging technology. Critics warn of the dangers they pose to landscapes, habitats, and ecological diversity, whilst advocates highlight their potential in increasing the accessibility of the outdoors for riders who would otherwise be socially and/or physically excluded. Drawing on interview data with 30 electric mountain bike users in England, this paper represents one of the first (...) attempts to empirically explore the experiential, ecological and socio-cultural implications of this activity. Utilising Stiegler’s (2013a) account of the pharmakon, in which technology is positioned as both remedy and poison, we suggest that the e-mountain bike’s role in the promotion of social and environmental responsibility is both complex and contradictory. Specifically, findings indicate that while this assistive technology can play a key role in facilitating deeper connections between riders as well as an ethic of care towards others, it can, at the same time, generate more individualised and automated experiences of recreational mobility in outdoor environments. (shrink)

Electricity deregulation was meant to improve the quality of people’s lives by lowering the cost of a critical commodity. In every state that has chosen deregulation, however, power companies, free from the oversight of state regulators, have increased prices and, in California’s case, have driven a utility to bankruptcy. It is clear that deregulation was intended to benefit the energy industry more than consumers by removing cost-based regulations that restricted corporate profits but guaranteed low prices and reliable service to (...) consumers. Deregulation proponents argued that California’s commitment to strong air quality standards prevented development of adequate power plant construction and that not a single power plant was constructed in California in the 1990s. This claim is refuted through an examination of California Energy Commission data. Although other states’ experiences are not as dramatic as California’s, serious problems will emerge if deregulation continues to dominate the policy agenda. (shrink)

Galvani's discovery provoked an animated debate that lasted for about a decade. So far, historians have studied only the controversy between Volta and Galvani. I show that a more extensive examination of the response to Galvani's treatise reveals a number of important issues that were characteristic of the contemporary physics and physiology but have not much attracted the attention of historians. In particular, the analysis shows the need to reappraise Galvani's role in establishing animal electricity.

The present article focuses on the conceptual structures of two Arabic words which are used in both everyday life and science: كَهْرَبَاء (kahrabāʾ) (electricity) and ضَوْء (ḍawʾ) (light). Under a cognitive linguistics approach, the polysemy of these terms, revealed in the citations extracted from ArabiCorpus, is studied. More specifically, the analysis of the terms involves the polysemy or ‘radial category’ along with its prototypical and peripheral meanings, and the main factors in projecting the idealised cognitive models (ICMs) where the (...) radial categories are formed: conceptual metaphor and conceptual metonymy. The results indicate that power and knowledge motivate the conceptualisations that underpin the categories كَهْرَبَاء (kahrabāʾ) (electricity) and ضَوْء (ḍawʾ) (light) respectively. Using such non-scientific conception in understanding the scientific senses of these terms leads to students’ confusion and failure to understand them. To ensure that students construe the scientific concepts correctly, they must be mindful of the inconsistency between their non-scientific and scientific meanings. (shrink)

In recent years a number of scholars have argued that Faraday's theories of matter and force were founded on concepts which were derived from Boscovich'sTheoria Philosophiae Naturalis(1758). The notion that Faraday's ideas display Boscovichean tendencies is not a new one: it was proposed by several of Faraday's immediate successors and has been noted by more recent commentators. Statements of this kind are not implausible as assertions of a general correspondence between Faraday's views on matter, as expressed in the “Speculation touching (...) Electric Conduction and the Nature of Matter” of 1844, and Boscovich's theory of point atomism, but Professor L. Pearce Williams has made much stronger claims for the dependence of Faraday's ideas on Boscovich's theory of matter. Williams' interpretation has been questioned by recent scholarship, and in this paper I wish to advance an alternative interpretation of Faraday's ideas on electricity and the nature of matter. (shrink)

Projects energy usage in the United States to the year 2000 and analyzes the technical practicality and economic viability of the photovoltaic conversion of solar energy.

The importance of electrical signalling in bacteria is an emerging paradigm. Bacillus subtilis biofilms exhibit electrical communication that regulates metabolic activity and biofilm growth. Starving cells initiate oscillatory extracellular potassium signals that help even the distribution of nutrients within the biofilm and thus help regulate biofilm development. Quorum sensing also regulates biofilm growth and crucially there is convergence between electrical and quorum sensing signalling axes. This makes B. subtilis an interesting model for cell signalling research. SpoOF is predicted to act (...) as a logic gate for signalling pathway convergence, raising interesting questions about the functional nature of this gate and the relative importance of these disparate signals on biofilm behaviour. How is an oscillating signal integrated with a quorum signal? The model presented offers rich opportunities for future experimental and theoretical modelling research. The importance of direct cell‐to‐cell electrical signalling in prokaryotes, so characteristic of multicellular eukaryotes, is also discussed. (shrink)

The electric dipole moments of elementary particles, atoms, molecules, and their connection to the electric susceptibility are discussed for stationary states. Assuming rotational invariance, it is emphasized that, for such states, only in the case of a parity and time-reversal-violating interaction can the considered particles exhibit a nonvanishing expectation value for the electric dipole moment.

The study of an electric charge in hyperbolic motion is an important aspect of Minkowski’s geometrical formulation of electrodynamics. In “Space and Time”, his last publication before his premature death, Minkowski gives a brief geometrical recipe for calculating the four-force with which an electric charge acts on another electric charge. The subsequent work of Born, Sommerfeld, Laue, and Pauli filled in the missing derivation details. Here, we bring together these early contributions, in an effort to provide a more modern, accessible, (...) and unified exposition of the early history of the electric charge in hyperbolic motion. (shrink)

With concerns regarding climate change rising, companies and policy makers seek to understand the precursors to environmentally-friendly consumer choice. Decision modes are the qualitatively different psychological processes employed to arrive at decisions. Across six studies, the present project establishes (a) which decision modes are employed by consumers to decide between electricity plans that differ in environmental impact, and (b) how employed decision modes affect those choices. We demonstrate that consumers are most likely to use Calculation Modes when facing such (...) choices. Importantly, we find that Affect or Role Modes promote more environmentally-friendly choices, while Calculation Modes decrease environmentally-friendly choices. Experimentally promoting use of a Role Mode over a Calculation Mode increases selection of environmentally-friendly alternatives, and the relative degree of employing the Role Mode mediates this effect. Our findings provide insight into how decision mode usage can alter environmental decisions, and suggest mechanisms and tools for marketers and policy makers to influence consumer choice. (shrink)

This paper argues that cultural analyses of electric light, including aspects of actor-network theory, may raise the spectre of complexity, but do not do it justice when they omit to provide analysis of the intertwined roles of culture and political economy in the formation of the provision and use of electric light. The essay looks at the marketization of electric power, at outages in the eastern and western US megacities, at the collapse of the public utility model and chaotic implementation (...) of market models in Mumbai, Lagos and other poor megacities, and concludes that while theft of power provides a temporary solution, abandoning centralized market models in favour of microgrids is the only sure way to return agency to slum dwellers. (shrink)

The potential of a static electric charge located in a Schwarzschild gravitational field is given by Linet. The expressions for the field lines derived from this potential are calculated by numerical integration and drawn for different locations of the static charge in the gravitational field. The field lines calculated for a charge located very close to the central mass can be compared to those calculated by Hanni–Ruffini. Maxwell equations are used to analyze the dynamics of the falling electric field in (...) a gravitational field. (shrink)

Investigations with electrometers in the 1770s led Volta to envision mobile charge in electrical conductors as a compressible fluid. A pressure-like condition in this fluid, which Volta described as the fluid’s “effort to push itself out” of its conducting container, was the causal agent that makes the fluid move. In this paper I discuss Volta’s use of analogy and imagery in model building, and compare with a successful contemporary conceptual approach to introducing ideas about electric potential in instruction. The concept (...) that today is called “electric potential” was defined mathematically by Poisson in 1811. It was understood after about 1850 to predict the same results in conducting matter as Volta’s pressure-like concept—and to predict electrostatic effects in the exterior space where Volta’s concept had nothing to say. Complete quantification in addition to greater generality made the mathematical concept a superior research tool for scientists. However, its spreading use in instruction has marginalized approaches to model building based on the analogy and imagery resources that students bring into the classroom. Data from pre and post testing in high schools show greater conceptual and confidence gains using the new conceptual approach than using conventional instruction. This provides evidence for reviving Volta’s compressible fluid model as an intuitive foundation which can then be modified to include electrostatic distant action. Volta tried to modify his compressible fluid model to include distant action, using imagery borrowed from distant heating by a flame. This project remained incomplete, because he did not envision an external field mediating the heating. However, pursuing Volta’s strategy of model modification to completion now enables students taught with the new conceptual approach to add distant action to an initial compressible fluid model. I suggest that a partial correspondence to the evolving model sequence that works for beginning students can help illuminate Volta’s use of intermediate explanatory models. (shrink)

It may be seen, then, that if one was prepared to accept the existence of insulating sheaths on the nerves, all the arguments raised against the proposed identification of the nervous and electrical fluids, except one, could be answered satisfactorily. The single exception involved the question of how an electrical disturbance in the brain could be confined to a single nerve, and, as was indicated earlier, it was scarcely fair to hold this sort of objection against the electrical theory alone. (...) In that case, there remained no convincing argument to show why one should not accept the identification of the two fluids. On the other hand, of course, it remained an open question as to whether there was any convincing argument to show why one should accept the identification either. Galvani thought that his experiments provided just such an argument. (shrink)

Zusammenfassung Im März 1959 wurde die kleine Gemeinde Oldbury-on-Severn in Gloucestershire als Standort für einen der letzten Reaktoren der ersten ‚Generation‘ von Atomkraftwerken im Vereinigten Königreich ausgewählt. Die ersten Reaktionen waren zwiegespalten. Die lokale Bevölkerung befürchtete den Verlust von Land, von traditionellen Fischereirechten im nahe gelegenen Severn und radioaktiven Fallout. Der Gemeinderat lehnte das Projekt ab, akzeptierte aber, dass die Mehrheit des Thornbury Rural District, zu dem sie gehörte, es als etwas begrüßte, das von nationalem Interesse war, von Experten als (...) sicher eingestuft wurde und etwas war, auf das man stolz sein konnte. Im Mai wurde in Thornbury eine Ausstellung über Kernenergie eröffnet, um die Menschen vor Ort von den Vorteilen der Technologie zu überzeugen. Sie war ein erster Schritt in einer langen Reihe von Maßnahmen, die für das Kraftwerk werben und es als positiv für die Region darstellen sollten. Dieser Aufsatz zeigt, dass das Central Electricity Generating Board, mithin der britische Staat als Vorreiter in der kommerziellen Nutzung der Kernenergie, immer wieder um die Akzeptanz der Technologie kämpfte. Dabei sah es sich mit Herausforderungen konfrontiert, die von anfänglicher, lokaler Skepsis bis hin zu transnationalen Katastrophen wie Tschernobyl reichten. Deshalb griff es auf eine Vielzahl von Maßnahmen zurück, von der genannten Ausstellung bis hin zu volksfestartigen Tagen der offenen Tür. Auch profitierte es von institutionalisierten Maßnahmen, namentlich der Tradition der „Public Inquiries“ und einem „Local Liaison Committee“, das als Scharnier zwischen dem Kraftwerk und seiner Umgebung fungierte. Der Aufsatz demonstriert dabei die oft profanen Praktiken, mit denen die Akzeptanz der Technologie vor Ort hergestellt und aufrechterhalten wurde. (shrink)

In the mid-twentieth century, the identity of those who oversaw the UK electricity grid tentatively and slowly began to shift from those who joined the electricity industry directly from secondary school to a university-educated elite with a higher level of technical education. At the same time, electricity infrastructure became increasingly centralised, leading to the creation of a national grid in 1938, meaning that control of electricity became concentrated in the hands of an ever-smaller group and increasing (...) the stakes in debates over strategy. By using the case studies of power engineer Paul Schiller and mathematician Maurice Davies, this paper traces how the boundaries of what mathematics could or could not be used for were renegotiated between factions within the UK electricity industry. Schiller unsuccessfully attempted to use mathematics, including the authority of academic mathematicians, to reinforce controversial arguments about the strategic direction of the industry in the 1940s. Such arguments failed to resonate with a class of, as Schiller put it, “practical men” that still held considerable influence. Davies on the other hand was employed by the industry in the 1950s to improve efficiency, and was able to implement lasting measures in this effort by using the weather to forecast electricity demand, and successfully defended the usefulness of his work in the 1970s against colleagues who felt that forecasting could be done better with mathematical models without weather inputs. The contrast between these two stories shows how the influence of mathematical thinking was contingent upon existing power dynamics, and reinforce how the history of mathematics should be socially embedded. (shrink)

This chapter explores the impact of electricity access on socio-economic development, with a particular focus on educational outcomes in India, Nepal, and Pakistan. Access to energy is a significant determinant of education outcomes, and there has been a substantial increase in electricity access within the region from the 1980s to 2023. Utilising data from the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS) Demographic and Health Surveys, the study examines how increased electrification has influenced educational attainment across different socio-economic groups. (...) Findings indicate improvements in both electricity access and educational achievements, particularly among lower-income households and women. However, the analysis highlights the need for further research to establish causal relationships and consider the broader socio-economic and policy contexts. This work underscores the importance of equitable energy distribution in fostering sustainable development and addressing educational disparities. (shrink)

Access to modern energy sources is a crucial aspect of energy justice. Utilizing data from 66 countries, covering over 1.67 million households from the Demographic and Health Survey, I provide insights into the percentage of households with access to modern energy sources. The findings underscore persistent challenges in accessing electricity and clean cooking fuels, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Subsequently, I explore the association between socioeconomic status, rural residence, education and the gender of household heads with access to these (...) two energy sources. Socioeconomic status and urban location are significant correlates of access to modern energy sources, even when comparing households within the same regions in the country. Additionally, households led by more educated individuals and women exhibit higher rates of using modern energy sources, highlighting the importance of education and gender in promoting energy access and equity. (shrink)

ConclusionHistorians of science have usually assumed that the science of electricity developed in the period prior to Franklin, or at least prior to Nollet, in what amounted to a theoretical vacuum. It has been my aim in this paper to demonstrate the falsity of that assumption. I have shown, I hope, that Hauksbee's important researches were guided throughout by strong theoretical considerations, and I have indicated that Dufay's even more important studies were guided by exactly the same considerations. Nor (...) was their theory in any sense a stagnant one. As it was developed by Hauksbee, it could give a fairly adequate explanation of almost all the known electrical phenomena; it even enabled him to predict the outcome of experiments such as the one involving the rubbing of a globe while it was positioned near a second, exhausted, globe. With the discovery of so many new phenomena in the 1730's, the theory turned out to be no longer adequate, but it is not at all surprising that it was a few years before the full extent of its inadequacies was appreciated, nor is it surprising that a strong continuity is evident between it and the theory which eventually replaced it. In the meantime, the theory continued to serve a useful function by suggesting new lines of research to its adherents. The theory functioned, then, in the same way as any other scientific theory, and it deserves a more serious treatment than it has usually received. This paper, I hope, can serve as a beginning. (shrink)

This chapter is inspired by interesting experiences concerning electricity infrastructures facing local uprisings in two towns separated by a great distance: to address the hostile face building fossil-fuel power plants in mobilized citizen localities. Hostility levels are presented as different pulses, in which unexpected public demonstrations invade the public arena, possibly resulting from socio-technical closures in environmental impact evaluations. They mirror secret energy alliances, showing the influences and pressures of these transnational businesses. We also consider collective actions, incorporating interpretations (...) and new and unexpected alliances. Our proposal draws on two qualitative, ethnographic studies about local socio-environmental conflicts contrary to the construction of fossil-fuel power plants, one of which arose in the Basque region of Spain, and the other in Coquimbo, Chile. Finally, we maintain that these geographically disperse studies, with their differing results, contribute to the discussion of locality as a framework of resistance against violent infrastructures, which goes beyond normalized processes and unfolds on other levels of action. (shrink)

The focus of this paper is one of James Prescott Joule’s scientific contributions: the laws of heat production by electric currents in conductors. In 1841, the 22 years old Joule published a paper with the title “On the heat evolved by metallic conductors of electricity, and in the cells of a battery during electrolysis” where he presented an experimental study of that phenomenon and proposed two laws that were allegedly supported by his trials. On closer inspection, both his laboratory (...) work and his inferences can be challenged. The emphasis of this article is an attempt to understand Joule’s experimental undertaking, its highpoints and shortcomings, by a detailed analysis of this specific episode and by studying the precedents of his work and subsequent advancements. It is possible to point out several serious deficiencies of that investigation, and Joule’s contemporaries, such as Edmond Becquerel and Heinrich Lenz, did criticize some of his flaws and undertook new experiments to provide a sound basis for those laws. Besides providing a historical examination of that specific episode, this article uses this case study to tackle some features of the nature of science that may contribute to scientific education. (shrink)

With the further acceleration of urbanization in China, the proportions of both urban residents’ energy consumption and energy-consuming terminal electricity are showing an increasing trend at the same time. In view of the dynamic and time-varying complex system characteristics of power system, it is of great significance to study the impact mechanism of urbanization residents’ electricity consumption on the realization of demand-side management and environmental protection. Based on the one-year follow-up survey data obtained from household meter reading, this (...) paper studies the impact mechanism of urban residents’ electricity consumption in different seasons and terminals by descriptive analysis and multiple linear regression model. The results show that, on the whole, electricity is a necessity for urban households and does not change significantly with changes in income. At the turn of summer and autumn and the turn of winter and spring, high-income families tend to use higher levels of energy in pursuit of comfort, while low- and middle-income families do not have luxury consumption. In different seasons, the influence mechanism of household electricity consumption at different terminals is different. (shrink)

This study presents an empirical field analysis of the organizational conditions underlying the deregulatory turmoil in the United States electricity sector during the late 1990s and early 2000s. Set in a regional electric utility, this work examines the operational, cultural, and stakeholder dilemmas arising within this representative industrial organization during the shift from a regulated environment to one dominated by the dictates of “free market” economics.

We comment on and translate Gustav Kirchhoff's important paper of 1857 entitled On the motion of electricity in conductors. The significance of this paper is that Kirchhoff proved with action at a distance that electric disturbances travel along wires of negligible resistance with the velocity of light. He accomplished this with the laws of Newtonian electrodynamics (Coulomb, Ampere, F. Neumann and Weber) before Maxwell had formulated his equations.

The ArgumentThe impressive growth of the Swiss electricity supply industry in the late nineteenth cestury has usually been explained by Switzerland's abundant waterpower resouces, its well-equipped financial markets, and the mechanical skills of its Swiss workers and engineers. This article does not aim to deny the importance of these factors. Rather it seeks to explain how they developed synergetic effects and how they were knit together. The argument is put forward in three steps: First, I show the importance of (...) the new technology's discursive integration, arguing that the development of specialized electric discourse led to a social shaping of technology that was highly compatible with generalized cultural patterns of late nineteenth-century Swiss society. The expressive dispositions and instituted means of expression that constitiute the elextric discourse were constantly pursuing and achieving effective resonances in other discursive fields. This allowed for a solid integration of the electrotechnical discourse in late nineteenth-century Swiss society.Second, I argue that electrotechnology was modeled in such a way that it became coupled with existing technological practices, such as the national mapping endeavor, the urban gas and water supply, the sewer system, and the telegraphic networks. It is noteworthy that making electrotechnology compatible with other technological practices led not only to similar patterns in the design and management of both the old and the new technologies but also to operated with the existing water supply station.Using the example of the electrification of Zurich, I then, in a third step, combine the two elements – discursive accommodation and practical assimilation – to demonstrate their effects on the selection and construction of technology. The article's somewhat complex argumentative strategy allows for a differentiated interpretation of the phenomenon and shows the importance of taking into consideration the sociocultural dimension of economic growth that had its roots in the diffusion of a new technology. (shrink)

In recent years, a growing number of small-to-medium-enterprises are embracing wind turbine projects not only as part of their cost reduction strategy but also to actively play their part in the global fight against climate change. However, it would appear there are currently limited empirical studies carried out in this emerging industry. This case study analyses the cost effectiveness of one such wind turbine initiative by a company in the Republic of Ireland, who invested in a 300 kW embedded wind (...) turbine project at the end of 2013. The research methodology which is primarily a case study analysis included comparing historical electricity utility bills which allowed the 2013 quantity of electrical energy units imported, i.e. the year before the turbine was installed to be compared with the 2014 value, i.e. the year after the turbine was installed. Numerous site visits were undertaken over a four-year period, during which electric meter readings were recorded and stored. The findings of this piece of research indicate that the installation of the embedded wind turbine had minimal positive effect on the annual electricity costs for the company. Indeed the turbine appears to have significant negative effects such as a need for an increased maximum import capacity and also it appeared to contribute to a deteriorating utility power factor. While the aesthetic nature of the on-site turbine seemed to create a positive image of the company, it would appear that caution should be exercised when business owners select alternative energy providers who claim to be experts in the energy field but may have limited knowledge in this area of wind energy, which as of yet has minimal robust research into all aspects of its benefits/attributes. (shrink)