Identifying and explaining framing strategies of low carbon lifestyle movement organisations

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Elsevier via the DOI in this record.Over the last decade we have seen the growth and development of low carbon lifestyle movement organisations, which seek to encourage members of the public to reduce their personal energy use and carbon emissions. As a first step to assess the transformational potential of such organisations, this paper examines the ways in which they frame their activities. This reveals an important challenge they face: in addressing the broader public, do they promote 'transformative' behaviours or do they limit themselves to encouraging 'easy changes' to maintain their appeal? We find evidence that many organisations within this movement avoid 'transformative' frames. The main reasons for this are organisers' perceptions that transformational frames lack resonance with broader audiences, as well as wider cultural contexts that caution against behavioural intervention. The analysis draws on interviews with key actors in the low carbon lifestyle movement and combines insights from the literatures on collective action framing and lifestyle movements.This research was supported by grant RES-628-25-0059 for the project “Community-based initiatives for energy saving” which is part of the RCUK Energy and Communities Programme and ESRC grant RES-595-28-0001 which funded the project “The Third Sector and the Environment” within the Third Sector Research Centre at the University of Southampton. We would like to thank Rebecca Edwards for collecting interview data on the “third sector” project, as well as our colleagues on the Energy and Communities project for their role in the wider project design, including Patrick James, Tom Rushby and Nicholas Woodman. We are also very grateful to our research participants without whom this research would not have been possible. All remaining weaknesses remain our responsibility

The hot pressing of beryllium oxide with additives.

The effect of variations in temperature, pressure and pressure cycle on the density vs grain size relationship was determined for hot pressed, sulphate-derived UOX beryllium oxide; the effects of selected additives on the final grain size using constant hot pressing conditions were also determined. A single-ended pressing technique, incorporating an incremental build-up in the pressing pressure, was developed to produce hot pressed specimens of near theoretical density with a uniform grain size of 25u. Smaller grain sizes were not obtained by this technique owing to the onset of discontinuous grain growth at a bulk density of 97 per cent theoretical. However, by introducing a 'dwell' or 'equilibration' time at temperature before the application of the load, a theoretically dense specimen (3.010 g/cm3) was produced with a uniform 8u grain size. Carbon was the only additive which consistently refined the grain size at all levels of addition. A hot pressed specimen of 99 per cent theoretical density and 2u grain size was obtained using a standard condition of 1500°C, 250 kg/cm2 for 25 minutes, 5 volume per cent of colloidal graphite additive

Characterisation of the sarcomeric myosin heavy chain multigene family in the laboratory guinea pig

BACKGROUND:Several chronic conditions leading to skeletal muscle dysfunction are known to be associated with changes in the expression of myosin heavy chain (MHC) isoforms at both the mRNA and protein level. Many of these conditions are modelled, pre-clinically, in the guinea pig due to similar disease onset and progression to the human condition, and their generally well-characterised anatomy. MHC composition is amenable to determination by protein and mRNA based methodologies, the latter quantifying the expression of MHC isoform-specific gene transcripts allowing the detection of earlier, and more subtle changes. As such, the MHC mRNAs, and specific oligonucleotide primers of all common laboratory species have been available for some time. However, due to incomplete genomic annotation, assessment of guinea pig MHC mRNA expression has not been previously possible, precluding the full characterisation of early changes in skeletal muscle in response to disease and disease modulation.The purpose of this study was to characterise the multigenic structure of the sarcomeric MHC family in the guinea pig, and to design and validate specific oligonucleotide primers to enable the assessment of the predominant adult-muscle associated MHC mRNAs in relevant disease models.RESULTS:Using a combination of ligase-mediated rapid amplification of 5' and 3' cDNA ends (RACE) and bioinformatics, mRNAs to the four main skeletal-muscle isoforms of MHC were determined. Specific oligonucleotide primers were designed, and following verification of their specificity, found to successfully determine the expression of each MHC mRNA independently.CONCLUSIONS:Because of their utilisation in the in vivo modelling of disease, there is a requirement to develop molecular methods that accurately differentiate the different MHC mRNAs in the guinea pig to enable rapid profiling of muscle composition in appropriate disease models. The methods developed here are suitable for the characterisation of muscle MHC expression at the molecular level from animal tissue samples and biopsy material. The publication of these specific oligonucleotide primers for the guinea pig MHC variants will enable researchers to rapidly and accurately quantify acute changes in MHC mRNA expression in either developmental or in guinea pig disease models where a marker of altered skeletal muscle function is required

Grape growers are adapting to climate shifts early - and their knowledge can help other farmers

Scholarly article published online.Bill Skinner, Douglas Bardsley, Georgina Dre

The 'drive and talk' as ethnographic method

Anthropologists have long embraced the value of the ‘walk and talk’ ethnographic method, which is an interactive means of generating research insights in situ – on site. In this article, we propose that there is room for an expanded appreciation of the ‘drive and talk’ method. While driving and talking with their interlocutors, researchers can elicit information prompted by features in the landscape and the environment that might be otherwise forgotten or overlooked if the interview context was set in a fixed location. To demonstrate the utility of this approach, this article explains the empirical and phenomenological (sensorial and experiential) insights yielded by driving and talking with interlocutors in a South Australian wine-growing region. Automobility has the advantage over ambulation when it comes to accessing landscapes at the scale of the farm, which is where environmental management decisions are on heightened display.Georgina Drew, William Skinner and Douglas K. Bardsle

“Half a flood’s no good”: flooding, viticulture, and hydrosocial terroir in a South Australian wine region

Published online: 08 November 2022 OnlinePublFloods generate both risks and benefits. In Langhorne Creek, South Australia, a historically-embedded system of shared floodwater management exists among farmers, who rely on semi-regular flood inundations as part of the region’s hydrosocial terroir – a dynamic conjunction of water, landscape, social relations and agricultural practice. Unruly floods coexist with a heavily regulated and precisely measured system of modern water management for viticultural irrigation across the region. Since the mid-twentieth century, groundwater extraction and new pipeline schemes have linked Langhorne Creek to the Murray Darling Basin water management system, which has displaced flooding as the primary source of irrigation water. The associated modernist shift towards the rationalization of water as a measurable resource has acted to sideline flood irrigation. Yet, floods maintain important viticultural, ecological and social roles in Langhorne Creek, adding to the flexibility and resilience of the region in response to water management challenges. The system involves technological and infrastructural components, such as flood gates and channels, but also relies upon the cooperation and coordination of community members. Local vignerons suggest that flood irrigation is environmentally as well as economically beneficial, rejuvenating riparian wetlands along watercourses. A more formal acknowledgement of the specific regional experiences of water management in a wine region like Langhorne Creek helps to fill a gap between emplaced and hydrosocial understandings of flood irrigation and broader assumptions about flooding as wasteful and inefficient.William Skinner, Georgina Drew, Douglas K. Bardsle

Final report pulsed plasma processing of effluent pollutants and hazardous chemicals

The electrical discharge techniques, called non-thermal, utilize high voltage breakdown of gases using short pulses of one to a few hundred nanoseconds. These short pulses between metal electrodes generate energetic electrons without appreciable thermal heating of the gas. The energetic electrons collide with gas molecules to form radicals. The radicals then react with pollutants to form harmless compounds. Our non-thermal experimental device used a wire in a pipe geometry. The wire was driven by a 40 kilovolt pulse 100 nanoseconds long. Gas was circulated in a loop through the pipe geometry in a closed system. This system permitted the introduction of various gas combinations prior to testing. The recirculated gas was heated to determine the effect on the electrical discharge, and chemical reactions. Additives were introduced to improve the efficiency (defined as energy input per unit molecule destroyed). The efficient was found to be the most important parameter in that the experiments generally required high energy inputs. However, we were able to significantly improve the efficiency of NO removal by the addition of hydrocarbons, nitric oxide has been removed with an energy cost of 15 ev per NO molecule. We believe the hydrocarbon additive serves by recycling the hydroxyl radicals during the oxidation of NO. The implementation of this process will depend largely on how much additives, electrical power consumption, and final NO{sub x} concentration are acceptable for a particular application

Classical Scattering for a driven inverted Gaussian potential in terms of the chaotic invariant set

We study the classical electron scattering from a driven inverted Gaussian potential, an open system, in terms of its chaotic invariant set. This chaotic invariant set is described by a ternary horseshoe construction on an appropriate Poincare surface of section. We find the development parameters that describe the hyperbolic component of the chaotic invariant set. In addition, we show that the hierarchical structure of the fractal set of singularities of the scattering functions is the same as the structure of the chaotic invariant set. Finally, we construct a symbolic encoding of the hierarchical structure of the set of singularities of the scattering functions and use concepts from the thermodynamical formalism to obtain one of the measures of chaos of the fractal set of singularities, the topological entropy.Comment: accepted in Phy. Rev.