IntroductionDynamic reconfiguration of FPGAs has recently become viable with the introduction of devices that allow high speed partial reconfiguration, e.g., the Xilinx XC6200 series [14]. Dynamic reconfiguration is usually performed by a software system that decides when to reprogram part of the FPGA and with what. The simplest kind of run-time software simply selects a precompiled circuit and transmits the programming data directly to the FPGA. At the University of Glasgow's Department of Computing Science, the Reconfigurable Architecture Group (RAGE) has a number of projects examining applications of dynamic reconfiguration. These applications have highlighted the need for a more complex run-time system. Rather than developing different run-time systems for each application, as is common, we have extracted a set of common requirements from several applications. This has formed the basis of the design of a proposed, core, run-time system, able to support all of these applications. There are many parallels that can be drawn between this design and conventional operating system design-as the techniques used to manage conventional resources, such as memory and the CPU, are also applicable to the management of FPGAs.The next section of this paper describes three applications of dynamic reconfiguration and their requirements, and draws from these a set of core requirements. We follow this with an overview of the proposed system, and more detailed discussions of the rôles of the identified system components. We close with a discussion of how our system might support other applications in the field.

Journalistic representations of a suicide pact in 1957 encapsulated wider popular assumptions on, and anxieties over, nuclear technology. Through an exploration of British nuclear culture in the late 1950s, this article suggests that knowledge of nuclear danger disrupted broader conceptions of self, nationhood and existence in British life. Building on Hecht's use of the term ‘nuclearity’, the article offers an alternative definition of the term whereby nuclearity is understood to mean the collection of assumptions held by individual citizens on the dangers of nuclear technology: assumptions that were rooted firmly in context and which circulated in, and were shaped by, national discourse. The article will argue that nuclearity was an active component in the formation of British identity by the late 1950s. The article is intended as a starting point for extended reflections on the ways in which nuclearity can add to our understanding of individual experience, nuclear anxiety and Cold War culture in post-war Britain.

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ABSTRACT:Focusing on Liverpool in the early 1980s, this article argues that localized approaches to Cold War cities can help us understand the impact of national nuclear policy on cultures of local government and everyday life. After an articulation of cultural politics in the early 1980s, this article suggests that nuclear cultures that existed in Liverpool were shaped by ideas and assumptions discursively reinforced at both a national and local level.

In the extended introduction to this special issue on British nuclear culture, the guest editors outline the main historiographical and conceptual contours of British nuclear scholarship, and explore whether we can begin to define 'British nuclear culture' before introducing the contributors to this special issue, whose work we have organized into three broad areas. The first part is devoted to three articles that offer explicit and extended attempts to reconceptualize British nuclear culture, illuminating the complex links between nuclear science, the state and the individual citizen. The second part of this issue is devoted to three articles that concentrate on aspects of the history of nuclear science -focusing particularly on intellectuals, nuclear scientists and enthusiasts -alongside analysis of the popularization of nuclear science as well as the relationship between the state and nuclear science and its practitioners. In the third part, four articles examine the diverse ways in which 'official' narratives of the atomic age can be questioned, disrupted or enhanced by analysing the significance of journalistic, anti-nuclear and fictional narratives to the development of nuclear culture in Britain.In the last decade or so, humanities-based nuclear scholarship has expanded and diversified significantly, and there has been steady refinement of the conceptual and methodological frameworks used in the field. This applies to British nuclear scholarship too. To help explain this trend in the British context, we can look to the increased interest in cultural studies of the Cold War era, the continued release of official documentation under the Freedom of Information Act (2005), the emergence of new and varied source materials, the expansion of research possibilities opened up by digital archiving, and the influence of the imaginative and ambitious insights of nuclear scholars worldwide. Most recently, the aftermath of the triple meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan in March 2011 saw the re-emergence of global nuclear 'motifs' such as that of Ulrich Beck's 'risk society'. 1 Aligned with continuing uncertainty over nuclear proliferation, this special issue on British nuclear culture seems especially timely in a period when nuclear debates are being revisited.But what precisely is 'British nuclear culture'? This question lies at the heart of this special issue, which brings together specialists from various fields, including the history of science and technology, cultural and social history, political and diplomatic history,