Most Popular Books by David Hobbs

Memories of early childhood told by a grandfather, Papa D, recalled after attending his brother''s wedding.

The current design of the Salt Waste Processing Facility (SWPF) includes an auxiliary facility, the Actinide Finishing Facility, which provides a second contact of monosodium titanate (MST) to remove soluble actinides and strontium from waste if needed. This treatment will occur after cesium removal by Caustic-Side Solvent Extraction (CSSX). Although the process changes and safety basis implications have not yet been analyzed, provisions also exist to recover the MST from this operation and return to the initial actinide removal step in the SWPF for an additional (third) contact with fresh waste. A U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) request identified the need to study the following issues involving this application of MST: Determine the effect of organics from the solvent extraction (CSSX) process on radionuclide sorption by MST; Determine the efficiency of re-using MST for multiple contacts; and Examine fissile loading on MST under conditions using a waste containing significantly elevated concentrations of plutonium, uranium, neptunium, and strontium. This report describes the results of three experimental studies conducted to address these needs: (1) Addition of high concentrations of entrained CSSX solvent had no noticeable effect, over a two week period, on the sorption of the actinides and strontium by MST in a direct comparison experiment. (2) Test results show that MST still retains appreciable capacity after being used once. For instance, reused MST--in the presence of entrained solvent--continued to sorb actinides and strontium. (3) A single batch of MST was used to sequentially contact five volumes of a simulant solution containing elevated concentrations of the radionuclides of interest. After the five contacts, we measured the following solution actinide loadings on the MST: plutonium: 0.884 {+-} 0.00539 wt % or (1.02 {+-} 0.0112) E+04 {micro}g/g MST, uranium: 12.1 {+-} 0.786 wt % or (1.40 {+-} 0.104) E+05 {micro}g/g MST, and neptunium: 0.426 {+-} 0.00406 wt % or (4.92 {+-} 0.0923) E+03 {micro}g/g MST. (4) Over the duration of an experiment with the sequential strikes, the ability of MST to sorb actinides improved with additional strikes. This trend is counter-intuitive, but is confirmed by replicate experiments for plutonium, uranium, and neptunium. Conversely, over the duration of the experiment, the ability of MST to sorb strontium decreased the more it was used. This trend is confirmed by replicate experiment.

In this dissertation, I detail how capitalism has turned pollution into a generally accepted form of violence perpetuated in the name of economic health. Complete with a corps of risk managers and environmental consultants, neoliberal capitalism has fashioned pollution into a universal standard that functions as an ambient form of socialization. Pollution, I contend, serves as a social apparatus, an atmospheric example of what Jacques Rancire refers to as distributing the sensible (2004). Instead of being simply a by-product or unavoidable consequence, pollution serves as a constant reminder of the production/flow of capital and of modernitys dependency on heavy industries. But beyond its obvious emissions, spills, dumps, and tailing ponds, much of the fallout of pollution remains hidden. Thus, in mapping the social significance of pollution, the dissertation stresses these two conflicting principles: pollution is constantly present but also invisible. Pollution exists in the form of microscopic particles that travel on the wind and in waterways, penetrating ecosystems, neighbourhoods, homes, and bodies so that people are exposed to its poisons as a matter of fact, as a condition of the everyday, as an emblem of ones modernity. To counter this general acceptance of pollution, I engage in an ecological storytelling that utilizes comic book imagery, along with a mixture of archival and everyday material (government reports, tourist guides, newspaper clippings, postcards, and childrens drawings), to situate the specific harm done by the ambient toxins, chemicals emitted from specific polluting industries and imposed on specific people and ecologies. I concentrate on two ethnographic sites and two polluting industries, as half of the dissertation examines the politics of lead in Toronto (tracing its historical influence and public acceptance in two working class neighbourhoods), while the other half focuses on a massive petrochemical corridor that is located in and around the small city of Sarnia (in southwestern Ontario) and immediately adjacent to the First Nation of Aamjiwnaang. In addition to the more traditional ethnographic methods adopted in the textual chapters, the comics provide a stream of countermemories that refute neoliberal capitalism and its demand for more of the same.

Abstract: The Turkish Olympics Final is an annual two-week long cultural festival bringing together non-Turkish international students from Gulenist schools in other nations to compete in a variety of performances throughout Turkey. The performances tend to have international school children singing in Turkish, dancing villager dances from Anatolia, reciting Turkish poetry and acting in Turkish plays. International school children can also perform in English or their own native languages but much of the Turkish media attention is given to the school children/performers that learn Turkish. Also important at the Turkish Olympics – while the majority of performers are international non-Turkish children – there is a space given for Turkish children who go to Gulenist schools outside of Turkey. The Turkish Islamist “Gulen Movement” sponsors and organizes the Turkish Olympics Final and also organizes smaller semi-final contests in which students from their international school network compete in home countries to represent each nation at the final. In Egypt, Gulenists have organized a semi-final Turkish Olympics festival at the largest Gulenist school in the country, Salahaldin International School in Cairo. The focus of my thesis is on the Gulenist educational/dormitory/business network in Egypt. The Egyptian Gulenist network is the focus of this study for two reasons. The first reason is utilitarian in nature. As a master’s student at the American University in Cairo, I spent several years in Egypt after I lived and worked with Gulenists in Istanbul. The second reason is geopolitical. Turkey and Egypt are seminal nations in the Middle East. The only other country with a similar population size as well as cultural and economic import would be Iran. As such research on the Gulenists’ actions and business/education network in Egypt – especially after the ouster of President Morsi and the rise of President El Sisi – is an important study which touches on issues of politics, economics, Islamism and education between Turkey and Egypt.