Country Report: United Kingdom: Energy, badgers and noise pollution

The full version of the report can be viewed at the link below.The United Kingdom (UK), like many other industrialised countries, faces a multitude of challenges balancing its consumptive needs, the management of its ecosystems and ecological footprint. This Country Report will focus on these challenges in the context of the Energy Act (2011), the Government’s proposed changes to Feed-in-Tariffs (FITS) for renewable energy and the National Ecosystem Assessment. This Report will also provide a brief update on the Welsh badger cull discussed in issue 2(1) of the eJournal

The trade in water services: How does GATS apply to the water and sanitation services sector ?

Copyright @ 2009 The University of SydneyThis paper explores the potential impact of the General Agreement on Trade in Services (‘GATS’) on the water and sanitation services sector. It argues that water and sanitation require special consideration in the liberalisation debate given their essential role in promoting human health and survival and their position as a human right. GATS has the potential to benefit the sector through creating increased efficiencies and encouraging additional funds to expand dilapidated infrastructure. Conversely, the at times punitive nature of trade laws risk undermining individual human rights and national legislation. At present there is some uncertainty as to how the Agreement will apply to the sector as no WTO Members have nominated their water sectors for liberalisation. The recent US — Gambling decision demonstrates the power of the WTO to define and potentially to extend a Member State’s original commitment. Similarly, it has been argued that certain provisions have the scope to trigger a commitment without the consent of the Member State. This paper argues that given the essential role of water and sanitation, greater certainty must be provided to ensure the effective operation of trade laws, the validity of national legislation and the protection of water consumers

An introduction to the person-centred approach as an attitude for participatory design

This paper is one of three talks which reflect on the use of participatory design methods, especially in the context of design for mental health and wellbeing. In them we: introduce the Person-Centred Approach as a framework for conducting Participatory Design; outline the method of Interpersonal Process Recall (IPR); and present a heuristic case study of these approaches being developed by a multidisciplinary design research team with Mind, a UK mental health charity. In this paper, we introduce the Person-Centred Approach (PCA) as found in psychotherapy, education and conciliation processes. We propose that this approach can help the field of Participatory Design recognise that researchers and research teams constructively inform their practice through the attitudes they bring to what is necessarily a relational situation. The PCA will be of interest to researchers working with mental health and wellbeing communities in particular, but may also be valuable in offering a framework for Participatory Design as a broad field of practice. The paper describes different modes of practice to be found in psychotherapy and outlines key aspects of the PCA, before discussing its implications for doing Participatory Design

Effects of Quantized Scalar Fields in Cosmological Spacetimes with Big Rip Singularities

Effects of quantized free scalar fields in cosmological spacetimes with Big Rip singularities are investigated. The energy densities for these fields are computed at late times when the expansion is very rapid. For the massless minimally coupled field it is shown that an attractor state exists in the sense that, for a large class of states, the energy density of the field asymptotically approaches the energy density it would have if it was in the attractor state. Results of numerical computations of the energy density for the massless minimally coupled field and for massive fields with minimal and conformal coupling to the scalar curvature are presented. For the massive fields the energy density is seen to always asymptotically approach that of the corresponding massless field. The question of whether the energy densities of quantized fields can be large enough for backreaction effects to remove the Big Rip singularity is addressed.Comment: PRD version. References added. Several minor corrections and changes. 22 pages, 3 figure

An introduction to IPR as a Participatory Design research method

This paper outlines the method of Interpersonal Process Recall (IPR) as a Participatory Design method, especially in the context of design for mental health and wellbeing. IPR is more commonly used in psychotherapy and other helping professions to help trainees and practitioners and their clients reflect on their process, using AV recordings of interactions for the facilitation of deep and accurate recall. We propose that it can provide a mechanism for reflection on team working and relational aspects of Participatory Design. The paper discusses the rationale for using IPR and the ways in which the method relate to phenomenological inquiry (including the Person-Centred Approach); it describes an IPR research method protocol, and finishes with a discussion of the implications for Participatory Design methodologies

A technique for solving certain Wiener-Hopf type boundary value problems Technical report no. 9

Technique for solving Weiner-Hopf type boundary value problem

An alternative approach to the solution of a class of Wiener-Hopf and related problems Technical report no. 8

Alternative method to Weiner-Hopf approach for solving radiation and diffraction problem

Helix untwisting and bubble formation in circular DNA

The base pair fluctuations and helix untwisting are examined for a circular molecule. A realistic mesoscopic model including twisting degrees of freedom and bending of the molecular axis is proposed. The computational method, based on path integral techniques, simulates a distribution of topoisomers with various twist numbers and finds the energetically most favorable molecular conformation as a function of temperature. The method can predict helical repeat, openings loci and bubble sizes for specific sequences in a broad temperature range. Some results are presented for a short DNA circle recently identified in mammalian cells.Comment: The Journal of Chemical Physics, vol. 138 (2013), in pres