Contemporary poetic ecologies and a return to form

Ecology is currently coming under increasing poetic scrutiny in a range of terms (landscape, place, environment). Critical responses to this poetry commonly assume a relationship between form and content, wherein textual ecology – the shape of the poem on the page, the spatial and sonic relationship that its parts bear to one another – mimics or otherwise expresses the ecology that the poem describes. Most often, this has been taken to mean that a freer verse style reflects real-world ecologies better by escaping the artificial, cultural constructs of metered verse, and replacing them with more ‘natural’ free verse rhythms. The role of the lyric ‘I’ has also come under examination in much of this poetry and in accompanying criticism: experimental landscape poetry often dispenses with its explicit presence in the poem (even if its implicit influence is much more difficult to eradicate). However, these lines of thinking might not take advantage of the fullest sense of ‘ecology’. This article argues that the continued presence of inherited (‘traditional’) poetic forms (metres and rhythms) has been overlooked in contemporary poetry addressing this set of concerns. A number of poets are noticing the way in which form can be harnessed – adapted rather than slavishly adhered to – in creating poetic ecologies. In particular, I look at sonnets or sonnet-like forms in recent poems explicitly concerned with nature, place, and environment by Jo Shapcott, Jen Hadfield, and Kathleen Jamie. In light of the environmental concerns that these poets address, the ghost of metre to be found in their work might signal an uneasy relationship between human, ‘cultural’ and non-human, ‘natural’ actors in ecology. I aim to notice a trend in contemporary poetic ecologies and offer redress to the ways in which a return to form might have been overlooked in critical discussions of the topic

Counter-Insurgency against ‘kith and kin’?: the British Army in Northern Ireland, 1970–76

This article argues that state violence in Northern Ireland during the period 1970–1976—when violence during the Troubles was at its height and before the re-introduction of the policy of police primacy in 1976—was on a greatly reduced scale from that seen in British counterinsurgency campaigns in the colonies after the Second World War. When the army attempted to introduce measures used in the colonies—curfews, internment without trial—these proved to be extremely damaging to London's political aims in Northern Ireland, namely the conciliation of the Catholic minority within the United Kingdom and the defeat of the IRA. However, the insistence by William Whitelaw, secretary of state for Northern Ireland (1972–73), on ‘throttling back'—the release of internees and the imposition of unprecedented restrictions on the use of violence by the army—put a serious strain on civil-military relations in Northern Ireland. The relatively stagnant nature of the conflict—with units taking casualties in the same small ‘patch’ of territory without opportunities for the types of ‘positive actions’ seen in the colonies—led to some deviancy on the part of small infantry units who sought informal, unsanctioned ways of taking revenge upon the local population. Meanwhile, a disbelieving and defensive attitude at senior levels of command in Northern Ireland meant that informal punitive actions against the local population were often not properly investigated during 1970–72, until more thorough civilian and military investigative procedures were put in place. Finally, a separation of ethnic and cultural identity between the soldiers and the local population—despite their being citizens of the same state—became professionally desirable in order for soldiers to carry out difficult, occasionally distasteful work

Multiwavelength studies of MHD waves in the solar chromosphere: An overview of recent results

The chromosphere is a thin layer of the solar atmosphere that bridges the relatively cool photosphere and the intensely heated transition region and corona. Compressible and incompressible waves propagating through the chromosphere can supply significant amounts of energy to the interface region and corona. In recent years an abundance of high-resolution observations from state-of-the-art facilities have provided new and exciting ways of disentangling the characteristics of oscillatory phenomena propagating through the dynamic chromosphere. Coupled with rapid advancements in magnetohydrodynamic wave theory, we are now in an ideal position to thoroughly investigate the role waves play in supplying energy to sustain chromospheric and coronal heating. Here, we review the recent progress made in characterising, categorising and interpreting oscillations manifesting in the solar chromosphere, with an impetus placed on their intrinsic energetics.Comment: 48 pages, 25 figures, accepted into Space Science Review

The Frequency-dependent Damping of Slow Magnetoacoustic Waves in a Sunspot Umbral Atmosphere

High spatial and temporal resolution images of a sunspot, obtained simultaneously in multiple optical and UV wavelengths, are employed to study the propagation and damping characteristics of slow magnetoacoustic waves up to transition region heights. Power spectra are generated from intensity oscillations in sunspot umbra, across multiple atmospheric heights, for frequencies up to a few hundred mHz. It is observed that the power spectra display a power-law dependence over the entire frequency range, with a significant enhancement around 5.5 mHz found for the chromospheric channels. The phase-difference spectra reveal a cutoff frequency near 3 mHz, up to which the oscillations are evanescent, while those with higher frequencies propagate upwards. The power-law index appears to increase with atmospheric height. Also, shorter damping lengths are observed for oscillations with higher frequencies suggesting frequency-dependent damping. Using the relative amplitudes of the 5.5 mHz (3 minute) oscillations, we estimate the energy flux at different heights, which seems to decay gradually from the photosphere, in agreement with recent numerical simulations. Furthermore, a comparison of power spectra across the umbral radius highlights an enhancement of high-frequency waves near the umbral center, which does not seem to be related to magnetic field inclination angle effects

The relationship between parental socio-economic status and episodes of drunkenness among adolescents: findings from a cross-national survey

BACKGROUND: Behavioral factors such as (excessive) alcohol consumption play a major role in the explanation of social inequalities in health. The unequal distribution of health risk behaviors among socio-economic groups has important consequences for both the current and future health status of the younger generation. However, little is known about socio-economic differences in unhealthy lifestyles during adolescence. The purpose of the present study is to investigate socio-economic differences in adolescent drinking behaviour among 11–15 year old adolescents in Europe and North America. METHODS: Data was obtained from the Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC) study 2001/02, a cross-national survey conducted in collaboration with the World Health Organization. The present analysis is based on 69249 male and 73619 female students from 28 countries. The effect of parental occupation and family affluence on episodes of drunkenness was assessed using separate logistic regression models controlling for age. RESULTS: Socio-economic circumstances of the family had only a limited effect on repeated drunkenness in adolescence. For girls only in one out of 28 countries a significant association between family affluence and repeated drunkenness was observed, while boys from low and/or medium affluent families in nine countries faced a lower risk of drunkenness than boys from more affluent families. Regarding parental occupation, significant differences in episodes of drunkenness were found in nine countries for boys and in six countries for girls. Compared to family affluence, which was positively related to risk of drunkenness, a decreasing occupational status predicted an increasing risk of drunkenness. This pattern was identified within a number of countries, most noticeably for boys. CONCLUSION: Parental socio-economic status is only of limited importance for episodes of drunkenness in early adolescence, and this very limited role seems to apply for girls more than for boys and for parental occupation more than family affluence. For future studies it might be important to look at the effects of socio-economic status within the context of other peer, family and school related factors in order to assess to what extent those factors might mediate the effects of social class background

Wave Damping Observed in Upwardly Propagating Sausage-mode Oscillations contained within a Magnetic Pore

We present observational evidence of compressible MHD wave modes propagating from the solar photosphere through to the base of the transition region in a solar magnetic pore. High cadence images were obtained simultaneously across four wavelength bands using the Dunn Solar Telescope. Employing Fourier and wavelet techniques, sausage-mode oscillations displaying significant power were detected in both intensity and area fluctuations. The intensity and area fluctuations exhibit a range of periods from 181 to 412 s, with an average period ~290 s, consistent with the global p-mode spectrum. Intensity and area oscillations present in adjacent bandpasses were found to be out of phase with one another, displaying phase angles of 6fdg12, 5fdg82, and 15fdg97 between the 4170 Å continuum–G-band, G-band–Na i D1, and Na i D1–Ca ii K heights, respectively, reiterating the presence of upwardly propagating sausage-mode waves. A phase relationship of ~0° between same-bandpass emission and area perturbations of the pore best categorizes the waves as belonging to the "slow" regime of a dispersion diagram. Theoretical calculations reveal that the waves are surface modes, with initial photospheric energies in excess of 35,000 W m−2. The wave energetics indicate a substantial decrease in energy with atmospheric height, confirming that magnetic pores are able to transport waves that exhibit appreciable energy damping, which may release considerable energy into the local chromospheric plasma

Writing in Britain and Ireland, c. 400 to c. 800

No abstract available

Magnetohydrodynamic waves in multi-layered asymmetric waveguides : solar magneto-seismology theory and application

Diagnosing the solar atmospheric plasma is one of the major challenges in solar physics. Magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) waves, by means of applying the powerful concept of solar magneto-seismology (SMS), provide a tool to obtain diagnostic insight into the magnetized solar plasma in MHD waveguides. This paper provides a road-map of simple but applicable models of solar atmospheric waveguides in the framework of Cartesian geometry. We focus on exploiting the diagnostic potential of waveguide asymmetry and consider the effects of steady flow. In particular, the dispersion relation describing linear MHD wave propagation along a multi-layered MHD waveguide is derived. Aiming at lower solar atmospheric applications of SMS, the special case of a single magnetic slab embedded in an asymmetric magnetized plasma environment is revisited. As a proof of concept, the Amplitude Ratio Method is used to make a seismological estimate of the local Alfvén speed in several chromospheric fibrils that exhibit asymmetric oscillations. Absolute ratios of boundary oscillations between 1.29 and 3.42 are detected and, despite the significant errors expected, the local Alfvén speed estimates agree with previously derived estimates from magnetic field extrapolations. Finally, the effects of asymmetric shear flows present in these slab MHD waveguides are considered as a suitable model of Kelvin-Helmholtz instability initiation that is applicable, for example, to coronal mass ejection flanks

CETP Deficiency and Concerns in CETP Inhibitor Development

Although some CETP-lowering SNPs in the CETP gene are variably associated with improved clinical outcomes in patients with coronary artery disease (CAD), three low molecular weight oral CETP inhibitors (torcetrapib, dalcetrapib, and evacetrapib) have not shown any clinical benefits despite remarkable increases in HDL-cholesterol levels ranging 31-138%. Potential causes for that failure are discussed in terms of off-target effects of some inhibitors, potential misleading interpretation of genetic epidemiological surveys in CETP gene, and inadequate alteration in HDL function induced by the inhibitors. Possible modalities of CETP inhibition such as antisense nucleotides and monoclonal antibodies are discussed.A part of the boo