Social Class and Education in England and Japan : Examining Middle-Class Boys’ Schools

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Atmospheric electric charge transfer in precipitation and associated synoptic conditions

Measurements of Atmospheric Electricity have been made in the unpolluted air of Weardale during conditions of precipitation and in fair weather. An automatic recording system has been built to digitize instrument outputs on paper-tape for subsequent computer analysis. The system ivas installed and run at Lanehead Field Centre and was also used to process magnetic tape recordings from the LandRover mobile station. The system was expanded to include an 1-hour smoothing and sampling action for recording aveiaged values of fair weather Atmospheric Electricity. At times of electrically quiet precipitation, measurements have been made of potential gradient, precipitation current density, space charge density and both polar conductivities. A new method of compensation for displacement currents has been used. Conductivity measurements have revealed a charge separation process close to the ground in rain, but not in snow. Techniques of variance spectrum analysis have been adopted for the precipitation work. Coherency spectra of potential gradient with precipitation current have indicated electrical 'cells' in nimbostratus and their relevance to weather forecasting is discussed. The phase spectra for these two parameters have been examined to measure the height of electrical activity and this is found to coincide with the melting level, and an estimate is made of the conductivity of the charging region of the cloud. Digital filtering of records has disclosed a mechanical-transfer current of space charges, to an exposed rain receiver, opposite to the precipitation current. The diurnal variation of potential gradient at Lanehead has been refined with a further year's continuous observations in fair weather and seasonal differences in the diurnal variations of potential gradient, air- earth -current density and space charge density have been explained by increased convection in summer. The conduction current has been estimated, by the indirect method and the difference between this and the total air-earth current to an exposed plate is attributed to a mechanical-transfer current of space charges. Measurements in light winds have evinced the influence of the electrode effect

Estimating seismic fragility of a semi-buried square RC water tank using expert judgement

The assessment of the seismic fragility of water networks is the key to characterizing their risk exposure to strong earthquakes. In the HORIZON2020 IMPROVER project, we focused our attention on the water network of Barreiro, a municipality close to Lisbon, Portugal. To determine vulnerability to ground shaking, the seismic fragility of each key component of the network needed to be determined. To exemplify our approach, we concentrate here on assessing the fragility of a semi-buried RC square water tank; previous studies have overwhelmingly focused on the seismic fragility of cylindrical (and mainly steel) water tanks. Relevant fragility parameters are inevitably uncertain, and our study made use of a sample of experts’ judgements, pooled using the Cooke’s Classical Model. This structured approach derives performance weights for experts’ abilities to quantify uncertainty in a statistically accurate sense and informatively, and then applies these weights to their uncertainty judgements on modelling parameters of concern. The unique empirical control in this procedure ensures an objective, rational consensus is obtained on the uncertainties to ascribe to different contributory factors. The main challenge in our study is to construct a suitable discrete damage scale, and to explore the possibility the tank might suffer liquefaction damage, given its proximity to the River Tagus and groundwater conditions at site. Provisional findings from the exercise are presented here and compared to existing fragility curves constructed for cylindrical RC tanks. The square tank was found to be more vulnerable than a cylindrical one

A Semantic Basis for Proof Queries and Transformations

We extend the query language PrQL, designed for inspecting machine representations of proofs, to also allow transformation of proofs. PrQL natively supports hiproofs which express proof structure using hierarchically nested labelled trees, which we claim is a natural way of taming the complexity of huge proofs. Query-driven transformations enable manipulation of this structure, in particular, to transform proofs produced by interactive theorem provers into forms that assist their understanding, or that could be consumed by other tools. In this paper we motivate and define basic transformation operations, using an abstract denotational semantics of hiproofs and queries. This extends our previous semantics for queries based on syntactic tree representations.We define update operations that add and remove sub-proofs, and manipulate the hierarchy to group and ungroup nodes. We show tha

Amortised resource analysis with separation logic

Type-based amortised resource analysis following Hofmann and Jost—where resources are associated with individual elements of data structures and doled out to the programmer under a linear typing discipline—have been successful in providing concrete resource bounds for functional programs, with good support for inference. In this work we translate the idea of amortised resource analysis to imperative languages by embedding a logic of resources, based on Bunched Implications, within Separation Logic. The Separation Logic component allows us to assert the presence and shape of mutable data structures on the heap, while the resource component allows us to state the resources associated with each member of the structure. We present the logic on a small imperative language with procedures and mutable heap, based on Java bytecode. We have formalised the logic within the Coq proof assistant and extracted a certified verification condition generator. We demonstrate the logic on some examples, including proving termination of in-place list reversal on lists with cyclic tails

Limits to the Internationalisation of Higher Education in Island Nations: Nationalism and foreign language education policy in universities in Japan and England

Japan and Great Britain are both island nations with long histories. Nationalists in both nations like to emphasise the things that separate members of ‘our’ nation from others across the sea, and this includes language. In the British case the arrogant assumption that ‘everyone else can learn English’ has led to a serious decline in the number of students who study foreign languages. In Japan, a certain amount of English is understood to be necessary for practical purposes, but nationalists warn against too much immersion in the language of an alien culture. These attitudes have helped to undermine the provision of advanced foreign language education that is necessary in a globalized world

Memory usage verification using Hip/Sleek.

Embedded systems often come with constrained memory footprints. It is therefore essential to ensure that software running on such platforms fulfils memory usage specifications at compile-time, to prevent memory-related software failure after deployment. Previous proposals on memory usage verification are not satisfactory as they usually can only handle restricted subsets of programs, especially when shared mutable data structures are involved. In this paper, we propose a simple but novel solution. We instrument programs with explicit memory operations so that memory usage verification can be done along with the verification of other properties, using an automated verification system Hip/Sleek developed recently by Chin et al.[10,19]. The instrumentation can be done automatically and is proven sound with respect to an underlying semantics. One immediate benefit is that we do not need to develop from scratch a specific system for memory usage verification. Another benefit is that we can verify more programs, especially those involving shared mutable data structures, which previous systems failed to handle, as evidenced by our experimental results

Understanding causality and uncertainty in volcanic observations: an example of forecasting eruptive activity on Soufrière Hills Volcano, Montserrat

Following a cessation in eruptive activity it is important to understand how a volcano will behave in the future and when it may next erupt. Such an assessment can be based on the volcano's long-term pattern of behaviour and insights into its current state via monitoring observations. We present a Bayesian network that integrates these two strands of evidence to forecast future eruptive scenarios using expert elicitation. The Bayesian approach provides a framework to quantify the magmatic causes in terms of volcanic effects (i.e., eruption and unrest). In October 2013, an expert elicitation was performed to populate a Bayesian network designed to help forecast future eruptive (in-)activity at Soufrière Hills Volcano. The Bayesian network was devised to assess the state of the shallow magmatic system, as a means to forecast the future eruptive activity in the context of the long-term behaviour at similar dome-building volcanoes. The findings highlight coherence amongst experts when interpreting the current behaviour of the volcano, but reveal considerable ambiguity when relating this to longer patterns of volcanism at dome-building volcanoes, as a class. By asking questions in terms of magmatic causes, the Bayesian approach highlights the importance of using short-term unrest indicators from monitoring data as evidence in long-term forecasts at volcanoes. Furthermore, it highlights potential biases in the judgements of volcanologists and identifies sources of uncertainty in terms of magmatic causes rather than scenario-based outcomes

Emergency planning and mitigation at Vesuvius: A new evidence-based approach

Disasters from explosive volcanic eruptions are infrequent and experience in emergency planning and mitigation for such events remains limited. The need for urgently developing more robust methods for risk assessment and decision making in volcanic crises has become increasingly apparent as world populations continue to expand in areas of active explosive volcanism. Nowhere is this more challenging than at Vesuvius, Italy, with hundreds of thousands of people living on the flanks of one of the most dangerous volcanoes in the world. We describe how a new paradigm, evidence-based volcanology, has been applied in EXPLORIS to contribute to crisis planning and management for when the volcano enters its next state of unrest, as well as in long-term land-use planning. The analytical approach we adopted enumerates and quantifies all the processes and effects of the eruptive hazards of the volcano known to influence risk, a scientific challenge that combines field data on the vulnerability of the built environment and humans in past volcanic disasters with theoretical research on the state of the volcano, and including evidence from the field on previous eruptions as well as numerical simulation modelling of eruptive processes. Formal probabilistic reasoning under uncertainty and a decision analysis approach have provided the basis for the development of an event tree for a future range of eruption types with probability paths and hypothetical casualty outcomes for risk assessment. The most likely future eruption scenarios for emergency planning were derived from the event tree and elaborated upon from the geological and historical record. Modelling the impacts in these scenarios and quantifying the consequences for the circumvesuvian area provide realistic assessments for disaster planning and for showing the potential risk–benefit of mitigation measures, the main one being timely evacuation, but include for consideration protecting buildings against dilute, low dynamic pressure surges, and temporary roof supports in the most vulnerable buildings, as well as hardening infrastructure and lifelines. This innovative work suggests that risk-based methods could have an important role in crisis management at cities on volcanoes and small volcanic islands