La motivación de la fe y efectividad: la experiencia católica

La capacidad de la Agencia Católica para el Desarrollo de Ultramar (CAFOD, por sus siglas en inglés) de asociarse con otras organizaciones confesionales y comunidades religiosas les supone importantes ventajas en su trabajo con personas desplazadas y con otras comunidades afectadas por el conflicto. Sin embargo, el humanitarismo actual no siempre está cómodo con algunas de las prácticas y enfoques de las principales religiones

Smart city as anti-planning in the UK

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from SAGE Publications via the DOI in this recordCritical commentaries have often treated the smart city as a potentially problematic ‘top down’ tendency within policy-making and urban planning, which appears to serve the interests of already powerful corporate and political actors. This article, however, positions the smart city as significant in its implicit rejection of the strong normativity of traditional technologies of planning, in favour of an ontology of efficiency and emergence. It explores a series of prominent UK smart city initiatives (in Bristol, Manchester and Milton Keynes) as bundles of experimental local practices, drawing on the literature pointing to a growing valorisation of the ‘experimental’ over strong policy commitments in urban governance. It departs from this literature, however, by reading contemporary ‘smart experiments’ through Shapin and Schafer’s work on the emergence of 17th-century science, to advance a transhistorical understanding of experimentation as oriented towards societal reordering. From this perspective, the UK smart city merits attention primarily as an indicator of a wider set of shifts in approaches to governance. Its pragmatic orientation sits uneasily alongside ambitions to ‘standardise’ smart and sustainable urban development; and raises questions about the conscious overlap between the stated practical ambitions of smart city initiatives and pre-existing environmental and social policies.This paper was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) [grant number ES/L015978/1] “Smart eco-cities for a green economy: a comparative study of Europe and China”

A revised comparison of distant and nearby solar twins

Properties of solar twins reported by Lehmann et al. (2023) at kiloparsec distances from the local standard of rest (LSR) are compared to solar twins within 100 pc of the Sun. These have velocity distributions closely similar to those of the nearby twins in addition to closely matching $T_{\rm eff}$, $\log{(g)}$ and $[Fe/H]$. The new twins are at slightly higher galactic latitudes, and are somewhat closer to the Galactic center. Additionally, they may be significantly older than nearby solar twins.Comment: Revised and updated version of 2023 RNAAS 7, 8

The relation of metal-poor stars to nearby solar analogues

Sun-like dwarf stars in the solar neighborhood reflect ages, an ``average'' chemical evolution, and departures from that average. We show the chemical, and kinematic properties of four groups of Sunlike dwarfs form a continuum related to age. We plot [Fe/H] vs. age, as well as kinematical values for the four groups. The vertical (negative) scatter in [Fe/H] increases with age in a systematic way: as the age increases, [Fe/H] decreases. The sets of Solar and metal-poor stars in the solar neighborhood are related by distributions in [Fe/H] vs. age, as well as in Galactic position (XYZ) and velocity space (UVW). Among the samples there are no clusters of points that set one sample apart from the others. The distributions vary slowly from one set to the next, suggesting a mixture of stellar populations. A plot in Energy vs angular momentum phase space, with coordinate origin moved to the Galactic center, highlights different aspects of the kinematics of the four groups of stars. We finally compare the kinematic properties of these four groups with those of two sets of ultra metal-poor stars.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figure

Trends in region-based localism among MPs: 2010-2019

Voters typically want their elected representatives to have roots in their local area, yet a large number of British MPs lack close ties with their constituency. Drawing on new research, Rob Gandy, Philip Cowley and Scott Foster illustrate trends in localism among MPs between the 2010 and 2019 general elections

An examination and interpretation of narrative features in 'A Rake's Progress'

A Rake's Progress is examined to discover in what ways a pictorial narrative can be narrative in a literary sense. The personality, actions, and background of the central character are considered from established literary-dramatic points of view in the body of the thesis. The Rake is seen as both a well-defined individual and a universal study of a reactionary who aspires towards ancient ideals; a mock-hero in a complex work. An explanation of misunderstood and neglected details is attempted and it is shown how they contribute effectively to what is thought to be a coherent work. It is argued that the heroine is not a pathetic and unfortunate addition to the story, but that she is an integral part of Hogarth's imaginative thought. His detached attitude towards her is considered as major evidence of a comic and melodramatic style. In the third part Hogarth's treatment of recurrent emblems is compared to the poetic purposes of iterative imagery and it is claimed that Hogarth's religious "imagery" shows that the progress is a multi-layered allegory. It is claimed in the conclusion that Hogarth manipulates his authorial viewpoint and chooses what he is prepared to disclose or not to disclose like a writer; that the symmetry of the work is comparable to the appearance of a short poem; that Hogarth's progresses offer a unique quality of multiplicity to the concept of narrative; that there is evidence which shows that Hogarth maintained a close relationship with his subscribers, anticipating that of Dickens; that A Rake's Progress represents a transitional work between simple, picaresque fictions and philosophically more complex ones

A review of William Hogarth's Marriage à la Mode with particular reference to character and setting

The thesis has been prepared on the assumption that Hogarth's picture series are essentially narrative works. They are considered in the Introduction in the light of recent definitions of the narrative strip, a medium in which Hogarth was a considerable innovator. The first six chapters consist of an analysis of each of the pictures in Marriage á la Mode. The analysis was undertaken as a means of exploring the nature of Hogarth's imagination and to discover how coherent a work the series is. There is an emphasis on characterization and setting because Hogarth himself chose to isolate character as a feature in the subscription ticket to Marriage á la Mode. The figures acquire their depth through their interaction with the setting. The interaction compensates for the lack of physical movement in Hogarth's picture narratives and is a source of much of his humour. A number of sections are concerned with relevant background information, such as the traditional rivalry between the cities of London and Westminster, and the medical details of the quack doctor's laboratory. The seventh chapter is concerned with the literary allusion in Marriage á la Mode, particularly to the popular drama of the time. The eighth is concerned with the extensive and ironic use of analogies. The ninth chapter is concerned with the subject of structure, including the delineation of the rôle of the projected spectator as defined by the work which contains him. The tenth is about theme and includes the use made of the traditional elements and 'humours'. It is concluded that Marriage á la Mode is a tragi-comic and melodramatic work, and that Hogarth in what are here termed periphrastic sequences came close to making images behave like words without their becoming dependent on any verbal form. His achievement lay in the ability intelligently to organize diversity into a unified structure, similar to that of situation comedy