What factors will motivate voters in the Scottish Parliamentary Elections?

In the run up to May’s crucial Scottish Parliamentary Elections, Jim Gallagher previews the contest and what factors may motivate voters

The UK can’t secure Brexit by March 2019 – it will need an EEA-style deal

Over five months on from the UK’s referendum, it is still unclear what sort of Brexit deal the British government intends to seek. Jim Gallagher writes that Article 50 will be triggered in March without a coherent or deliverable plan. He argues that this means neither the UK or the EU are likely to be able to implement a bespoke Brexit arrangement by the deadline of March 2019. An interim EEA-style deal for the UK is therefore the most likely outcome from the Article 50 process

Kicking the bucket down the road to Norway: EEA is back

Many months after it was ruled out by the government, membership of the European Economic Area (the 'Norway option') is being mooted once again. Given Theresa May's procrastination and the obstacle of the Northern Ireland border, writes Jim Gallagher (Centre on Constitutional Change), it may be that - over time - what is effectively continued economic but not political union is broadly acceptable to British public opinion

Chequers produces the best and most elaborate fudge available

Does the text the cabinet agreed at Chequers amount to a soft Brexit or a soft-ish Brexit? Neither, says Jim Gallagher (Centre on Constitutional Change): it is yet another fudge that defers a decision on the final shape of the deal into the transitional period, and beyond

Nanoscale mosaicity revealed in peptide microcrystals by scanning electron nanodiffraction.

Changes in lattice structure across sub-regions of protein crystals are challenging to assess when relying on whole crystal measurements. Because of this difficulty, macromolecular structure determination from protein micro and nanocrystals requires assumptions of bulk crystallinity and domain block substructure. Here we map lattice structure across micron size areas of cryogenically preserved three-dimensional peptide crystals using a nano-focused electron beam. This approach produces diffraction from as few as 1500 molecules in a crystal, is sensitive to crystal thickness and three-dimensional lattice orientation. Real-space maps reconstructed from unsupervised classification of diffraction patterns across a crystal reveal regions of crystal order/disorder and three-dimensional lattice tilts on the sub-100nm scale. The nanoscale lattice reorientation observed in the micron-sized peptide crystal lattices studied here provides a direct view of their plasticity. Knowledge of these features facilitates an improved understanding of peptide assemblies that could aid in the determination of structures from nano- and microcrystals by single or serial crystal electron diffraction