Recent Results on K-Shell Ionization by Ion Collisions
The experimental K-shell ionization cross sections of 48Cd, 50Sn, 52Te, 53I and 56Ba for alpha particles, between 2.2 MeV and 2.8 MeV, and of 52Te for protons, between 1.6 and 3 MeV, are presented. The justification for making these measurements comes, on the one hand, in filling a region where, at present, data are sparse: for example, 52Te ionization cross sections by alpha particles have never been reported before, and, on the other hand, checking between previously reported and diverging sets of experimental results: for example, for alpha particles on tin. In addition, the K-shell ionization cross sections of 52Te for protons can be considered as an extension of Khelill's measurements.
Relativistic corrections to the binary encounter approximation for ionisation of atoms by collisions with ions
Relativistic wavefunctions for K-shell electrons have been introduced in the binary encounter approximation for atomic ionisation together with an approximate relativistic correction of the collision dynamics. A comparison with experiment is given.
Pedagogy of the “Not”: Negation, Exodus, and Postdigital Temporal Regimes
Postdigital capitalist time is an incessant acceleration that acts to homogenize time and wed us to the present, to which we have to constantly catch up. While the impulse of this is no doubt economic (the realization of value), it is crucially undergirded by a pedagogical logic wherein we have to perpetually learn and re-learn the latest apps, social media configurations, operating systems, and so on. Political strategies of resistance thus need to be bolstered by an alternative mode of educational life, and I propose a pedagogy of the “not” as one possibility. Such a pedagogy is an act of suspension that sustains a detachment from the present, clearing out oppositions and thereby exposing us to a radical indeterminacy and potentiality that is always untimely. Suspension is the praxis of negation, which means that negation operates by keeping sense indeterminate to meaning and signification. Rather than suppressing, disavowing, or annihilating the stated content, negation retains even that which is negated. While this would appear as a form of exopedagogy, which withdraws from the dialectic of the private/public, I instead argue that it redefines the terms of any dialectic, redefining the very categories exopedagogy withdraws from. Before concluding, I spend some time with Sandy Grande’s important critiques of Eurocentrism and progress in Western critical education, demonstrating how negation as suspension circumvents these errors through its accommodation of—or, better, insistence on—variegated temporalities and forms of life.