The dragon’s head or Athens’ sacrifice zone? Spatiotemporal disjuncture, logistical disruptions, and urban infrastructural justice in Piraeus port, Greece

Piraeus Port is the biggest port in Greece and ranks among the world’s largest passenger ports. By drawing on four years of in-depth ethnographic research and a deep familiarity with the area, I aim to elucidate the paradoxical juxtaposition between the allure of prosperity and rapid growth, intricately interwoven with the expansion of port and logistical infrastructures, and the concurrent escalation of adverse consequences for human and nonhuman life in the urban landscape. Bringing together literature on logistics and sacrifice zones, I introduce the notion of spatiotemporal disjuncture, to shed light on the coexistence of divergent realities within a single locale, rooted in the deliberate obfuscation of everyday truths inherent to these evolving infrastructural spaces. I conclude by emphasizing the necessity of placing the concept of urban infrastructural justice at the forefront of contemporary urban scholarship, both as a theoretical framework and a political demand capable of addressing infrastructural inequities exacerbated by the logistical revolution of the twenty-first century and fostering a collective imagination for radically different urban futures within and beyond port cities

Magnetic field effects on the corrosion behavior of magnetocaloric alloys LaFe13.9Si1.4Hy under ferromagnetic states

La(Fe,Si)13-based alloys, with giant magnetocaloric effect, still encounter significant degradation issues prior to commercial viability. In this work, the corrosion behavior of ferromagnetic La(Fe,Si)13Hy was investigated with electrochemical linear polarization resistance measurements under conditions with zero, 1 T parallel, and perpendicular magnetic fields, mimicking practical application scenarios. The results demonstrated that both parallel and perpendicular magnetic fields had a suppressive effect on corrosion rates due to the combined influence of magnetohydrodynamic forces and magnetic field gradient forces. The inhibiting efficiency of the parallel field decreased with increasing exposure period, while that of the perpendicular field continued to increase over time. The magnetic field also affected the relative proportion of rust phases, and thereby the protectiveness of the rust layer. This highlights the importance of conducting experiments under service conditions to understand the degradation mechanisms of magnetic cooling devices

Integrating genomic methods with C. elegans phenotypic screening to identify bioactive natural products

Natural products derived from bacteria have long driven the discovery of drugs and other compounds. Genomic methods and synthetic biology have made it possible to engineer large bacterial libraries that produce diverse natural products in the lab. However, there is a lack of high-throughput approaches to screen these libraries in vivo. Here we show that Caenorhabditis elegans can be used to discover bioactive natural products by feeding them engineered microbes and tracking and quantifying their behaviour. Natural products with strong behavioural effects on C. elegans were identified from the targeted activation of biosynthetic gene clusters in entomopathogenic bacteria. The mechanisms of action behind these behavioural changes were explored. Functional screening of a soil metagenomic library of 11,880 samples was performed for the first time to identify behaviour-modifying clones. Additionally, genetic and chemical strategies to maximise the sensitivity of C. elegans to natural products were evaluated. This work highlights the potential of C. elegans in accelerating the discovery of natural products with significant effects on animal physiology.Open Acces

House Sparrows (Passer domesticus) Encode Contextual Information in Three Main Types of Calls

Imperial Users onl

FPHC Wellbeing Charter: the ‘whys’ and ‘hows’ of the Charter

In 2022 the Faculty of Pre-hospital Care (FPHC) report on “Valuing Staff, Valuing Patients” was published, outlining the need to “seek out and remedy secondary stressors”, such as training burdens or financial costs. Since that original publication, COVID-19 and the increased demand for healthcare have presented additional challenges, and staff wellbeing remains an increasing concern. The aim of the FPHC Wellbeing Group was to develop a FPHC Wellbeing Charter, to put the recommendations of the report into practice in a document that outlines achievable measures for all pre-hospital organisations to improve their staff and volunteers’ wellbeing. Methods Questionnaires and focus groups, alongside a literature search and the original FPHC report were utilised to develop the Charter. This was led by the FPHC Wellbeing Group. Participants were sought from a range of pre-hospital organisations including National Health Service ambulance trusts, air ambulance organisations and voluntary organisations such as Mountain Rescue. The Charter has been reviewed by the FPHC Executive Committee. Results 281 responses to the questionnaire were obtained and six focus groups were held representing the majority of pre-hospital organisations. As a result of this a FPHC Wellbeing Charter has been developed with four main sections: policies for a good organisation; facilities for a good organisation; support for colleagues in a good organisation and continued professional development, study leave and examination support in a good organisation. Within the policies section there are four sub-sections: rotas and rest; illness/return to work; patient outcome follow-up and parental leave (including maternity policies). Conclusion The FPHC Wellbeing Charter outlines ‘why’ and ‘how’ organisations can take measures to improve their staff and volunteer’s wellbeing. Much of the emphasis of the Charter is on reducing secondary stressors by improving simple things, recognising that whilst pre-hospital clinicians and volunteers are often involved in difficult events, daily stresses have a significant cumulative impact. It is anticipated that this will not be a static document; however, a minimum baseline has been set

Project leadership for future making

The question of how project leadership can achieve desirable futures through projects is timely and important, yet under-explored. We synthesize recent insights on future making and socialized project leadership to address it. Our contribution is to frame project leadership for future making as the set-up and maintenance of organizational contexts for participation in collective practices of inquiry to identify desirable futures and achieve project outcomes. We argue that throughout the project life cycle, participants engage with incomplete representations of possible futures, and ask questions that identify and include diverse people, materials, and places to make ethical judgments for better futures

Unvortex lattice and topological defects in rigidly rotating multicomponent superfluids

By examining rotating ferromagnetic spinor condensates through the perspective of large spin, we identify a novel type of topological point defects in the magnetization texture. These defects are not predicted by conventional homotopy analysis but rather by the Riemann-Hurwitz formula. The magnetization texture in the system is described by an equal-area mapping from the plane to the sphere of magnetization, forming a lattice of uniformly charged Skyrmions. This lattice contains doubly-quantized (winding number = 2) point defects arranged on the sphere in a tetrahedral configuration. The fluid found to be rotating rigidly, except at the point defects, where the vorticity vanishes. This vorticity structure describes an unconventional "unvortex" lattice, which contrasts with the well-known vortex lattice in scalar rotating superfluids, where vorticity is concentrated exclusively within defect points. Numerical results are presented, confirming these predictions and demonstrating their persistence in smaller-spin condensates