To protect their identity and values, Africans enslaved in America transformed various familiar character types to create folk heroes who offered models of behavior both recognizable to them as African people and adaptable to their situation in America.Roberts specifically examines the Afro-American trickster and the trickster tale tradition, the conjurer as folk hero, the biblical heroic tradition, and the badman as outlaw hero.

This book offers an overview of the status of the UK's clean-up program and reviews international research programs including those in Europe and the United States. Topics Include: geological disposal concepts; ILW wasteforms; glasses and glass composite materials; leaching; ceramic wasteforms; radiation effects; Pu wasteforms; spent fuel; engineered barrier systems; mobilization, migration and retention and performance assessment.

Modern semiconductor devices are principally made using the element silicon. In recent years, silicon carbide (SiC), with its wide band-gap, high thermal conductivity, and radiation resistance, has shown prospects as a semiconductor material for use in high temperature and radiation environments such as jet engines and satellites. A limiting factor in the performance of many SiC semiconductor components is the presence of lattice defects formed at oxide dielectric junctions during processing. Recent theoretical work has used small quantum mechanical systems embedded in larger molecular mechanics structures to attempt to better understand SiC surfaces and bulk materials and their oxidation. This research uses quantum mechanical models to calculate geometries and electronic properties of small SimCnO molecular clusters of silicon carbide oxides with 0 less than or equal to] m, n less than or equal to] 4. Calculations are primarily done using Hartree-Fock and Density Functional Theory (DFT) with the B3LYP exchange and correlation functionals. Meuller-Plesset Second Order Perturbation (MP2), Configuration Interaction (CI), Multi-Configurational Self-Consistent Field (MCSCF), and Coupled Cluster (CC) are used on the CSi2O molecule to confirm the accuracy of selected levels of DFT. Molecular properties examined include ground state multiplicity, vibrational modes and frequencies, and geometry for both the neutral and anion, adiabatic and vertical electron affinities, and thermodynamic heats of formation. Qualitative predictions are made regarding the photoelectron spectrum experimentalists may see. Finally, preferred geometries, functional groups, and bonding locations are qualitatively determined. Later research will be able to use these results to study the oxidation of larger SiC structures and surfaces and their defects.

The anti-animal experiments group FAAN(Free All Animals Now) has been fighting to close down the chemical company STEYN for over six years but despite constant picketing and harassing its employees has had no success. When they trick their way into STEYN'S premises one of their youngest members falls to her death when trying to spread a protest banner from the laboratory roof. Later when the FAAN member who led the group into STEYN's premises is killed in a hit and run accident the police begin a search for the killer which leads them into the East London criminal world. Meanwhile one of FAAN'S members, Miranda Woolston decides that much more drastic action is needed against STEYN. She is a chemist, specialising in the medicinal use of plants and has worked for several years in the Amazonian jungle. She believes she has developed a non-lethal version of the poison Curare and proposes that FAAN uses it against STEYN employees to debilitate them.