"The biggest gang"? Police and people in the 2011 England riots

Conflict with the police is a staple of civil disorder and the English riots of 2011 were no exception. The antagonism towards the police expressed by the rioters varied in intensity – from a low-level anger stemming from occasional negative experiences on the one hand to outright, visceral hostility on the other – but was visible everywhere riots took place. Leading politicians dismissed this hostility as nothing more than the typical wariness criminals have of the police. Indeed, it is undoubtedly the case that the police are an easy target for rioters seeking to explain away their conduct. Nevertheless, drawing on 270 interviews with people involved in the riots this paper shows that for some involved the police were a very deliberate and specific focus of anger and resentment. The basis of such feelings was complex and variable, but included historically poor relations between the police and particular communities, an inherited distrust of the police as an institution, to more particular and immediate experiences of mistreatment and prejudice – often coalescing around the perceived misuse of police powers such as stop and search

"The best three days of my life”: pleasure, power and alienation in the 2011 riots

This article considers one the less frequently elements of riots: the emotions to which they give rise. Based on testimony from interviews with people who took part in the 2011 England riots, it explores the curiosity which drew many onto the streets, the excitement and the fear involved in such quickly unfolding and unpredictable events, the impunity that many felt being part of such large crowds together with the sense of ‘empowerment’ many experienced as a consequence of their involvement. The article suggests that a number of concepts regularly deployed within cultural criminology – most obviously ‘carnival’ and ‘edgework’ - are useful in understanding elements of the emotional world of the riot. More fundamentally, however, it is argued that what the accounts describe more than aanything else is a pervading sense of ‘alienation’ among many of those involved in the disorder

'The Biggest Gang'? Police and people in the 2011 England riots

Conflict with the police is a staple of civil disorder and the English riots of 2011 were no exception. The antagonism towards the police expressed by the rioters varied in intensity – from a low-­‐level anger stemming from occasional negative experiences on the one hand to outright, visceral hostility on the other – but was visible everywhere riots took place. Leading politicians dismissed this hostility as nothing more than the typical wariness criminals have of the police. Indeed, it is undoubtedly the case that the police are an easy target for rioters seeking to explain away their conduct. Nevertheless, drawing on 270 interviews with people involved in the riots this paper shows that for some involved the police were a very deliberate and specific focus of anger and resentment. The basis of such feelings was complex and variable, but included historically poor relations between the police and particular communities, an inherited distrust of the police as an institution, to more particular and immediate experiences of mistreatment and prejudice – often coalescing around the perceived misuse of police powers such as stop and search

Participation at exhibits: creating engagement with new technologies in science centres

There is a growing commitment within science centres and museums to deploy computer-based exhibits to enhance participation and engage visitors with socio-scientific issues. As yet however, we have little understanding of the interaction and communication that arises with and around these forms of exhibits, and the extent to which they do indeed facilitate engagement. In this paper, we examine the use of novel computer-based exhibits to explore how people, both alone and with others, interact with and around the installations. The data are drawn from video-based field studies of the conduct and communication of visitors to the Energy Gallery at London’s Science Museum. The paper explores how visitors transform their activity with and around computer-based exhibits into performances, and how such performances create shared experiences. It reveals how these performances can attract other people to become an audience to an individual’s use of the system and subsequently sustain their engagement with both the performance and the exhibit. The observations and findings of the study are used to reflect upon the extent to which the design of exhibits enables particular forms of co-participation or shared experiences, and to develop design sensitivities that exhibition managers and designers may consider when wishing to engender novel ways of engagement and participation with and around computer-based exhibits

Andreev Reflection without Fermi surface alignment in High Tc_{c}-Topological heterostructures

We address the controversy over the proximity effect between topological materials and high T$_{c}$ superconductors. Junctions are produced between Bi$_{2}$Sr$_{2}$CaCu$_{2}$O$_{8+\delta}$ and materials with different Fermi surfaces (Bi$_{2}$Te$_{3}$ \& graphite). Both cases reveal tunneling spectra consistent with Andreev reflection. This is confirmed by magnetic field that shifts features via the Doppler effect. This is modeled with a single parameter that accounts for tunneling into a screening supercurrent. Thus the tunneling involves Cooper pairs crossing the heterostructure, showing the Fermi surface mis-match does not hinder the ability to form transparent interfaces, which is accounted for by the extended Brillouin zone and different lattice symmetries

Evidence for a New Excitation at the Interface Between a High-Tc Superconductor and a Topological Insulator

High-temperature superconductors exhibit a wide variety of novel excitations. If contacted with a topological insulator, the lifting of spin rotation symmetry in the surface states can lead to the emergence of unconventional superconductivity and novel particles. In pursuit of this possibility, we fabricated high critical-temperature (Tc ~ 85 K) superconductor/topological insulator (Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8+delta/Bi2Te2Se) junctions. Below 75 K, a zero-bias conductance peak (ZBCP) emerges in the differential conductance spectra of this junction. The magnitude of the ZBCP is suppressed at the same rate for magnetic fields applied parallel or perpendicular to the junction. Furthermore, it can still be observed and does not split up to at least 8.5 T. The temperature and magnetic field dependence of the excitation we observe appears to fall outside the known paradigms for a ZBCP

Mass‐loading the Earth's dayside magnetopause boundary layer and its effect on magnetic reconnection

When the interplanetary magnetic field is northward for a period of time, O+ from the high‐latitude ionosphere escapes along reconnected magnetic field lines into the dayside magnetopause boundary layer. Dual‐lobe reconnection closes these field lines, which traps O+ and mass loads the boundary layer. This O+ is an additional source of magnetospheric plasma that interacts with magnetosheath plasma through magnetic reconnection. This mass loading and interaction is illustrated through analysis of a magnetopause crossing by the Magnetospheric Multiscale spacecraft. While in the O+‐rich boundary layer, the interplanetary magnetic field turns southward. As the Magnetospheric Multiscale spacecraft cross the high‐shear magnetopause, reconnection signatures are observed. While the reconnection rate is likely reduced by the mass loading, reconnection is not suppressed at the magnetopause. The high‐latitude dayside ionosphere is therefore a source of magnetospheric ions that contributes often to transient reduction in the reconnection rate at the dayside magnetopause.publishedVersio