David Ferguson’s mineral prospecting expedition to South Georgia in 1912

The mineral exploration work in the Falkland Islands by the Scottish geologist and mineral prospector David Ferguson, during the 1913-1914 austral summer, was described in the 2013 issue of Falkland Island Journal (Volume 10, Part 2). But that was Ferguson’s second expedition to the South Atlantic region on behalf of the Christian Salvesen Whaling Company. During 1912 he had visited South Georgia to assess the rocks there for the possible presence of economic minerals. When the Salvesen Company established their onshore whaling station in Stromness Bay in 1909, naming it Leith Harbour after the company’s home port in Scotland, negotiations for mineral rights were promptly begun with the Falkland Islands Government (at that time South Georgia was a Dependency of the Falkland Islands). These were successfully concluded and a formal license allowing prospecting was signed on 31 May 1911 by the Governor of the Falklands, William Allardyce. A copy of the license is preserved in the Salvesen Archive, now held by the University of Edinburgh Library’s Centre for Research Collections, along with other material relevant to Ferguson’s survey including his geological report and some of his photographic prints and glass-plate negatives

Identifying and managing asbestiform minerals in geological collections

Asbestos is widely recognised as a serious hazard, and its industrial use is now banned within the UK, and EU, and strict regulations govern the use of older manufactured materials which may contain asbestos. However, asbestos is also a natural geological material, and may occur in museum collections as minerals or constituents of rock specimens. In the UK the Control of Asbestos Regulations 2012 (CAR 2012) provides the legal framework for the safe identification, use and disposal of asbestos. However, these regulations, and other EU regulations, provide no specific guidance on dealing with potentially asbestos-containing natural materials. CAR 2012 specifies just six asbestos minerals although a number of other minerals in museum collections are known to have asbestiform structures and be hazard-ous, including other amphiboles, and the zeolite erionite. Despite the lack of specific guid-ance, museums must comply with CAR 2012, and this paper outlines the professional ad-vice, training and procedures which may be needed for this. It provides guidance on identifi-cation of potential asbestos-bearing specimens and on procedures to document them and store them for future use, or to prepare them for professional disposal. It also makes sug-gestions how visitors, employees and others in a museum can be protected from asbestos as incoming donations and enquiries, managed in the event of an emergency, and safely included in displays

ANN-Benchmarks: A Benchmarking Tool for Approximate Nearest Neighbor Algorithms

This paper describes ANN-Benchmarks, a tool for evaluating the performance of in-memory approximate nearest neighbor algorithms. It provides a standard interface for measuring the performance and quality achieved by nearest neighbor algorithms on different standard data sets. It supports several different ways of integrating $k$-NN algorithms, and its configuration system automatically tests a range of parameter settings for each algorithm. Algorithms are compared with respect to many different (approximate) quality measures, and adding more is easy and fast; the included plotting front-ends can visualise these as images, $\LaTeX$ plots, and websites with interactive plots. ANN-Benchmarks aims to provide a constantly updated overview of the current state of the art of $k$-NN algorithms. In the short term, this overview allows users to choose the correct $k$-NN algorithm and parameters for their similarity search task; in the longer term, algorithm designers will be able to use this overview to test and refine automatic parameter tuning. The paper gives an overview of the system, evaluates the results of the benchmark, and points out directions for future work. Interestingly, very different approaches to $k$-NN search yield comparable quality-performance trade-offs. The system is available at http://ann-benchmarks.com .Comment: Full version of the SISAP 2017 conference paper. v2: Updated the abstract to avoid arXiv linking to the wrong UR

Caring for a loved one with a malignant fungating wound

Erworben im Rahmen der Schweizer Nationallizenzen (http://www.nationallizenzen.ch)Purpose: Caring for a loved one with a malignant fungating wound is very challenging and causes extreme physical and psychological distress. The aim of this study was to explore the experiences of carers who care for a loved one with a fungating breast wound. Method: To explore the lived experiences of carers, a methodological framework using Heideggerian hermeneutic phenomenology and semi-structured interviews was used. Seven carers were interviewed from January until November 2009. Results: Having to deal with a situation of a loved one with a visible cancer was hard for all the carers. The visibility of the cancer was one of the most shocking aspects to deal with from the perspective of the patient and the carer. The presence of the visible wound and a cancer at an advanced stage contributed to a change in the relationship and extreme suffering for both the patient and the carer. Despite many problems such as wound odour and copious discharge from the wound, which was difficult to control, carers did their best to help their loved one with the wound. Gradually, the wound became the centre of the patient and carer’s life, and a great deal of time was spent trying to control the wound symptoms. All carers managed the wound on their own without help and advice from health care practitioners. For all of them, it was a major burden and they felt isolated. Conclusion: This study contributes to an understanding that the care of women and their carers needs strategies that are integrated in palliative wound care that takes a holistic and empathic approach that responds to patients’ and carers’ psychosocial and emotional needs and a practical need for information to help carers assist in managing the wound-related symptoms

Coqoon - An IDE for Interactive Proof Development in Coq

User interfaces for interactive proof assistants have always lagged behind those for mainstream programming languages. Whereas integrated development environments—IDEs—have support for features like project management, version control, dependency analysis and incremental project compilation, “IDE”s for proof assistants typically only operate on files in isolation, relying on external tools to integrate those files into larger projects. In this paper we present Coqoon, an IDE for Coq developments integrated into Eclipse. Coqoon manages proofs as projects rather than isolated source files, and compiles these projects using the Eclipse common build system. Coqoon takes advantage of the latest features of Coq, including asynchronous and parallel processing of proofs, and—when used together with a third-party OCaml extension for Eclipse—can even be used to work on large developments containing Coq plugins

Caring for a loved one with a malignant fungating wound

Purpose: Caring for a loved one with a malignant fungating wound is very challenging and causes extreme physical and psychological distress. The aim of this study was to explore the experiences of carers who care for a loved one with a fungating breast wound. Method: To explore the lived experiences of carers, a methodological framework using Heideggerian hermeneutic phenomenology and semi-structured interviews was used. Seven carers were interviewed from January until November 2009. Results: Having to deal with a situation of a loved one with a visible cancer was hard for all the carers. The visibility of the cancer was one of the most shocking aspects to deal with from the perspective of the patient and the carer. The presence of the visible wound and a cancer at an advanced stage contributed to a change in the relationship and extreme suffering for both the patient and the carer. Despite many problems such as wound odour and copious discharge from the wound, which was difficult to control, carers did their best to help their loved one with the wound. Gradually, the wound became the centre of the patient and carer's life, and a great deal of time was spent trying to control the wound symptoms. All carers managed the wound on their own without help and advice from health care practitioners. For all of them, it was a major burden and they felt isolated. Conclusion: This study contributes to an understanding that the care of women and their carers needs strategies that are integrated in palliative wound care that takes a holistic and empathic approach that responds to patients' and carers' psychosocial and emotional needs and a practical need for information to help carers assist in managing the wound-related symptom

Effects of rural tourism development on poverty alleviation: a grounded theory

Tourism has been accredited as a significant sector by the Namibian government because it is one of the highest income earners and ranks third after mining and agriculture. This research paper explores the key determinants of poverty in the Northern region of Namibia (Kunene and Zambezi) and the effects of rural tourism development on poverty alleviation. The research adopted grounded theory and phenomenological approaches and data were collected through in-depth interviews and focus group discussions with various tourism stakeholders in the two regions. The research findings reveal the importance of all stakeholders in identifying the causes of poverty in each region/constituency before implementing poverty alleviation strategies. This study, therefore, concludes that providing the same tourism strategies to different geographical locations does not work, because some communities are extremely deprived. This research, therefore, recommends a flexible framework which takes a pragmatic approach to move away from the “one size fits all” approach

PALINDROME:Reflections in the Scottish Landscape in Print, Place and Process

PALINDROME REFLECTIONS IN THE SCOTTISH LANDSCAPETheir physical and spiritual manifestations in printmaking process and concept, with particular focus on David Young Cameron’s 'Ben Ledi’Palindromos: Running back again (Greek)The Landscape of Scotland has always been a contradiction of romantic sentimentalism and/or cultural integ-rity with physical exploitation and/or land management. From the majestic rolling hills and glens of deforested natural woodland to the relentless march of pylons across the heather, it is a land of inconsistencies and dichotomies.And like the print that generally requires the artist to reverses or flip their view of that landscape, the engraved plate and flipped image, the lithography stone and inverted paper sheet, the picture plane becomes a visual pal-indrome running backwards and forwards, like a mirrored reflection of place and space.Landscape artists through the centuries have investigated these dichotomies, a synthesis of process led question and image led answer (1, 2), but in this paper I aim to investigate this further. Can the artist/printmaker gain more legitimacy or validation through this transformation of palindromic and mirrored picture plane?Does this palindromic inversion create an obstacle or an opportunity for the artist/printmaker to explore the landscape of Scotland providing an authentic filter for creativity, representation and expression. I am particularly interested in David Young Cameron’s 'Ben Ledi’ (1911), which as well as requiring the artist/to reverse the plane, the visual content of mountain reflected in heathland pool is also curiously inverted. The profile of the peak being almost bitten out of the pool’s muddy edge in symmetrically flipped composition (Gar-ton 1988) (3).I would advocate that this is no coincidence of the contemporary viewers' framework, but a conscious concept of this early 20th century artist. Interestingly the original working sketch in pencil, crayon and conte (4) depicts Ben Ledi as a larger mass and the corresponding reflection matches this complementary depiction in scale and form, only differing in shade, from the rich/dark coloured tonal mass of peak to the light ephemeral form of the pool.Here the cast shadow and gnomon are reversed, defying the physical weight of the geological mass of moun-tain, an elemental transmutation in the reflection from earth to water, or volcanic fire to air – the background reflected becomes the foreground or conversely the pool’s form becomes the solid metamorphic entity, Ben Ledi – the Hill of God.I venture that this palindromic inversion, this sublime reflection in the pool is intentional and as well as a physi-cal manifestation of the transfer of reversed image to plate, by the artist/engraver, provides an opportunity for the artist to express and convey a deeper poignancy between the viewer and the traditional picture plane. David Faithfull REFERENCES:(1) Turner inverts the geological structure in ‘Fingal’s Cave’ in his series of Scott’s Poetical Works (1834), to exploit his view of the setting sun.(2) Richard Long and Hamish Fulton in tracing their progress through the landscape also create this running narrative from conception to conclusion and paradoxically from finish to start, back to front. (3) Garton (1988) Visions of Landscape Garton & Co, London(4) http://www.allinsongallery.com/cameron/benlediwc.htmlhttps://art.nationalgalleries.org/art-and-artists/3096

Trace-element abundances in the shallow lithospheric mantle of the North Atlantic Craton margin: implications for melting and metasomatism beneath Northern Scotland

Bulk rock geochemistry and major- and trace-element compositions of clinopyroxene have been determined for three suites of peridotitic mantle xenoliths from the North Atlantic Craton (NAC) in northern Scotland, to establish the magmatic and metasomatic history of subcontinental lithospheric mantle (SCLM) below this region. Spinel lherzolites from the southernmost locality (Streap Com'laidh) have non-NAC mantle compositions, while the two northern xenolith suites (Loch Roag and Rinibar) are derived from the thinned NAC marginal keel. Clinopyroxene compositions have characteristic trace-element signatures which show both 'primary' and 'metasomatic' origins. We use Zr and Hf abundances to identify ancient cryptic refertilization in 'primary' clinopyroxenes. We suggest that Loch Roag and Rinibar peridotite xenoliths represent an ancient Archaean-Palaeoproterozoic SCLM with original depleted cratonic signatures which were overprinted by metasomatism around the time of intrusion of the Scourie Dyke Swarm (∼2.4 Ga). This SCLM keel was preserved during Caledonian orogenesis, although some addition of material and/or metasomatism probably also occurred, as recorded by Rinibar xenoliths. Rinibar and Streap xenoliths were entrained in Permo-Carboniferous magmas and thus were isolated from the SCLM ∼200 Ma before Loch Roag xenoliths (in an Eocene dyke). Crucially, despite their geographical location, lithospheric mantle peridotite samples from Loch Roag show no evidence of recent melting or refertilization during the Palaeogene opening of the Atlantic