The play's the thing

For very understandable reasons phenomenological approaches predominate in the field of sensory urbanism. This paper does not seek to add to that particular discourse. Rather it takes Rorty’s postmodernized Pragmatism as its starting point and develops a position on the role of multi-modal design representation in the design process as a means of admitting many voices and managing multidisciplinary collaboration. This paper will interrogate some of the concepts underpinning the Sensory Urbanism project to help define the scope of interest in multi-modal representations. It will then explore a range of techniques and approaches developed by artists and designers during the past fifty years or so and comment on how they might inform the question of multi-modal representation. In conclusion I will argue that we should develop a heterogeneous tool kit that adopts, adapts and re-invents existing methods because this will better serve our purposes during the exploratory phase(s) of any design project that deals with complexity

Increased Oxidative Burden Associated with Traffic Component of Ambient Particulate Matter at Roadside and Urban Background Schools Sites in London

As the incidence of respiratory and allergic symptoms has been reported to be increased in children attending schools in close proximity to busy roads, it was hypothesised that PM from roadside schools would display enhanced oxidative potential (OP). Two consecutive one-week air quality monitoring campaigns were conducted at seven school sampling sites, reflecting roadside and urban background in London. Chemical characteristics of size fractionated particulate matter (PM) samples were related to the capacity to drive biological oxidation reactions in a synthetic respiratory tract lining fluid. Contrary to hypothesised contrasts in particulate OP between school site types, no robust size-fractionated differences in OP were identified due high temporal variability in concentrations of PM components over the one-week sampling campaigns. For OP assessed both by ascorbate (OPAA m−3) and glutathione (OPGSH m−3) depletion, the highest OP per cubic metre of air was in the largest size fraction, PM1.9–10.2. However, when expressed per unit mass of particles OPAA µg−1 showed no significant dependence upon particle size, while OPGSH µg−1 had a tendency to increase with increasing particle size, paralleling increased concentrations of Fe, Ba and Cu. The two OP metrics were not significantly correlated with one another, suggesting that the glutathione and ascorbate depletion assays respond to different components of the particles. Ascorbate depletion per unit mass did not show the same dependence as for GSH and it is possible that other trace metals (Zn, Ni, V) or organic components which are enriched in the finer particle fractions, or the greater surface area of smaller particles, counter-balance the redox activity of Fe, Ba and Cu in the coarse particles. Further work with longer-term sampling and a larger suite of analytes is advised in order to better elucidate the determinants of oxidative potential, and to fuller explore the contrasts between site types.\ud \u

Formalising Mathematics in Simple Type Theory

Despite the considerable interest in new dependent type theories, simple type theory (which dates from 1940) is sufficient to formalise serious topics in mathematics. This point is seen by examining formal proofs of a theorem about stereographic projections. A formalisation using the HOL Light proof assistant is contrasted with one using Isabelle/HOL. Harrison's technique for formalising Euclidean spaces is contrasted with an approach using Isabelle/HOL's axiomatic type classes. However, every formal system can be outgrown, and mathematics should be formalised with a view that it will eventually migrate to a new formalism

Magnetic unmixing of first-order reversal curve diagrams using principal component analysis

We describe a quantitative magnetic unmixing method based on principal component analysis (PCA) of first-order reversal curve (FORC) diagrams. For PCA we resample FORC distributions on grids that capture diagnostic signatures of single-domain (SD), pseudo-single-domain (PSD), and multidomain (MD) magnetite, as well as of minerals such as hematite. Individual FORC diagrams are recast as linear combinations of end-member (EM) FORC diagrams, located at user-defined positions in PCA space. The EM selection is guided by constraints derived from physical modeling and imposed by data scatter. We investigate temporal variations of two EMs in bulk North Atlantic sediment cores collected from the Rockall Trough and the Iberian Continental Margin. Sediments from each site contain a mixture of magnetosomes and granulometrically distinct detrital magnetite. We also quantify the spatial variation of three EM components (a coarse silt-sized MD component, a fine silt-sized PSD component, and a mixed clay-sized component containing both SD magnetite and hematite) in surficial sediments along the flow path of the North Atlantic Deep Water (NADW). These samples were separated into granulometric fractions, which helped constrain EM definition. PCA-based unmixing reveals systematic variations in EM relative abundance as a function of distance along NADW flow. Finally, we apply PCA to the combined dataset of Rockall Trough and NADW sediments, which can be recast as a four-EM mixture, providing enhanced discrimination between components. Our method forms the foundation of a general solution to the problem of unmixing multi-component magnetic mixtures, a fundamental task of rock magnetic studies.The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP/2007-2013)/ERC grant agreement 320750.This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Wiley via http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/2015GC00590

Islands of change vs. islands of disaster: Managing pigs and birds in the Anthropocene of the North Atlantic

The offshore islands of the North Atlantic were among some of the last settled places on earth, with humans reaching the Faroes and Iceland in the late Iron Age and Viking period. While older accounts emphasizing deforestation and soil erosion have presented this story of island colonization as yet another social–ecological disaster, recent archaeological and paleoenvironmental research combined with environmental history, environmental humanities, and bioscience is providing a more complex understanding of long-term human ecodynamics in these northern islands. An ongoing interdisciplinary investigation of the management of domestic pigs and wild bird populations in Faroes and Iceland is presented as an example of sustained resource management using local and traditional knowledge to create structures for successful wild fowl management on the millennial scale

Resolving the Origin of Pseudo-Single Domain Magnetic Behavior

The term “pseudo-single domain” (PSD) has been used to describe the transitional state in rock magnetism that spans the particle size range between the single domain (SD) and multidomain (MD) states. The particle size range for the stable SD state in the most commonly occurring terrestrial magnetic mineral, magnetite, is so narrow (~20–75 nm) that it is widely considered that much of the paleomagnetic record of interest is carried by PSD rather than stable SD particles. The PSD concept has, thus, become the dominant explanation for the magnetization associated with a major fraction of particles that record paleomagnetic signals throughout geological time. In this paper, we argue that in contrast to the SD and MD states, the term PSD does not describe the relevant physical processes, which have been documented extensively using three-dimensional micromagnetic modeling and by parallel research in material science and solid-state physics. We also argue that features attributed to PSD behavior can be explained by nucleation of a single magnetic vortex immediately above the maximum stable SD transition size. With increasing particle size, multiple vortices, antivortices, and domain walls can nucleate, which produce variable cancellation of magnetic moments and a gradual transition into the MD state. Thus, while the term PSD describes a well-known transitional state, it fails to describe adequately the physics of the relevant processes. We recommend that use of this term should be discontinued in favor of “vortex state,” which spans a range of behaviors associated with magnetic vortices.We thank the Australian Research Council for financial support through grant DP160100805

BIOSAFETY. Safeguarding gene drive experiments in the laboratory.

Multiple stringent confinement strategies should be used whenever possibleThis is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from AAAS via http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.aac793

Planck 2013 results. XXII. Constraints on inflation

We analyse the implications of the Planck data for cosmic inflation. The Planck nominal mission temperature anisotropy measurements, combined with the WMAP large-angle polarization, constrain the scalar spectral index to be ns = 0:9603 _ 0:0073, ruling out exact scale invariance at over 5_: Planck establishes an upper bound on the tensor-to-scalar ratio of r < 0:11 (95% CL). The Planck data thus shrink the space of allowed standard inflationary models, preferring potentials with V00 < 0. Exponential potential models, the simplest hybrid inflationary models, and monomial potential models of degree n _ 2 do not provide a good fit to the data. Planck does not find statistically significant running of the scalar spectral index, obtaining dns=dln k = 0:0134 _ 0:0090. We verify these conclusions through a numerical analysis, which makes no slowroll approximation, and carry out a Bayesian parameter estimation and model-selection analysis for a number of inflationary models including monomial, natural, and hilltop potentials. For each model, we present the Planck constraints on the parameters of the potential and explore several possibilities for the post-inflationary entropy generation epoch, thus obtaining nontrivial data-driven constraints. We also present a direct reconstruction of the observable range of the inflaton potential. Unless a quartic term is allowed in the potential, we find results consistent with second-order slow-roll predictions. We also investigate whether the primordial power spectrum contains any features. We find that models with a parameterized oscillatory feature improve the fit by __2 e_ _ 10; however, Bayesian evidence does not prefer these models. We constrain several single-field inflation models with generalized Lagrangians by combining power spectrum data with Planck bounds on fNL. Planck constrains with unprecedented accuracy the amplitude and possible correlation (with the adiabatic mode) of non-decaying isocurvature fluctuations. The fractional primordial contributions of cold dark matter (CDM) isocurvature modes of the types expected in the curvaton and axion scenarios have upper bounds of 0.25% and 3.9% (95% CL), respectively. In models with arbitrarily correlated CDM or neutrino isocurvature modes, an anticorrelated isocurvature component can improve the _2 e_ by approximately 4 as a result of slightly lowering the theoretical prediction for the ` <_ 40 multipoles relative to the higher multipoles. Nonetheless, the data are consistent with adiabatic initial conditions

Light Sterile Neutrinos and Short Baseline Neutrino Oscillation Anomalies

We study two possible explanations for short baseline neutrino oscillation anomalies, such as the LSND and MiniBooNE anti-neutrino data, and for the reactor anomaly. The first scenario is the mini-seesaw mechanism with two eV-scale sterile neutrinos. We present both analytic formulas and numerical results showing that this scenario could account for the short baseline and reactor anomalies and is consistent with the observed masses and mixings of the three active neutrinos. We also show that this scenario could arise naturally from an effective theory containing a TeV-scale VEV, which could be related to other TeV-scale physics. The minimal version of the mini-seesaw relates the active-sterile mixings to five real parameters and favors an inverted hierarchy. It has the interesting property that the effective Majorana mass for neutrinoless double beta decay vanishes, while the effective masses relevant to tritium beta decay and to cosmology are respectively around 0.2 and 2.4 eV. The second scenario contains only one eV-scale sterile neutrino but with an effective non-unitary mixing matrix between the light sterile and active neutrinos. We find that though this may explain the anomalies, if the non-unitarity originates from a heavy sterile neutrino with a large (fine-tuned) mixing angle, this scenario is highly constrained by cosmological and laboratory observations.Comment: 25 pages, 6 figure