The Montreal Protocol: Confronting the Threat to Earth\u27s Ozone Layer

From a deep sleep, I slowly open my eyes and roll off my foam mattress—the foam padding made with chlorofluorocarbons ( CFCs ). My feet touch the carpet-the underlay also made with CFCs. I stumble into the kitchen, to the refrigerator. With the summertime heat, the motor is working overtime. Its coolant, made of CFCs, is keeping my orange juice cold; the foam egg carton, also of CFCs, is keeping my eggs fresh. And there is my breakfast steak: resplendent in its CFC foam package. Time to get to work Jumping into the car, I land in the CFC foam cushion seat, and switch on the CFC-cooled air conditioner. I\u27m caught in a vicious cycle, I contemplate. The more CFCs I use, the warmer the Earth\u27s temperatures become because of the greenhouse effect. The warmer the greenhouse temperatures, the more I need this air conditioner. That means more CFCs. I walk into my office building-the central air system using CFCs to cool the entire skyscraper. Before entering my office (the walls containing CFC insulation), and before turning on my computer terminal (made with CFC-cleaned semiconductors and chips), I turn first to pour a cup of coffee (into a CFC-made Styrofoam cup). Finally, I sit down to work, settling down, of course, in my CFC foam-padded chair

Stone of Power: Dighton Rock, Colonization and the Erasure of an Indigenous Past

This dissertation examines the historiography of Dighton Rock, one of the most contested artifacts of American antiquity. Since first being described in 1680, the forty-ton boulder on the east bank of the Taunton River in Massachusetts has been the subject of endless speculation over who created its markings or “inscription.” Interpretations have included Vikings, Phoenicians and visitors from Atlantis. In its latest incarnation the rock is celebrated in a dedicated state park museum as an artifact of a lost Portuguese explorer, Miguel Corte-Real. I accept the Indigenaiety of its essential markings, which has never been seriously contested, and show how antiquarians and scholars into the twentieth century pursued an eccentric range of Old World attributions. I contend that the misattribution of Dighton Rock (and other Indigenous petroglyphs, as well as the so-called Mound Builder materials) has been part of the larger Euro-American/Anglo-American colonization project and its centuries-long conceptualization of Indigenous peoples. As with colonization itself, the rock’s historiography is best understood through the criteria of belonging, possession and dispossession. The rock’s historiography not only reflects that colonization project and its shifting priorities over time, but its interpretation has also played a significant role in defining and advancing it. By disenfranchising Indigenous peoples from their own past in the interpretations of Dighton Rock and other seeming archaeological puzzles, colonizers have sought to answer to their own advantage two fundamental questions: to whom does America belong, and who belongs in America

The Montreal Protocol: Confronting the Threat to Earth\u27s Ozone Layer

From a deep sleep, I slowly open my eyes and roll off my foam mattress—the foam padding made with chlorofluorocarbons ( CFCs ). My feet touch the carpet-the underlay also made with CFCs. I stumble into the kitchen, to the refrigerator. With the summertime heat, the motor is working overtime. Its coolant, made of CFCs, is keeping my orange juice cold; the foam egg carton, also of CFCs, is keeping my eggs fresh. And there is my breakfast steak: resplendent in its CFC foam package. Time to get to work Jumping into the car, I land in the CFC foam cushion seat, and switch on the CFC-cooled air conditioner. I\u27m caught in a vicious cycle, I contemplate. The more CFCs I use, the warmer the Earth\u27s temperatures become because of the greenhouse effect. The warmer the greenhouse temperatures, the more I need this air conditioner. That means more CFCs. I walk into my office building-the central air system using CFCs to cool the entire skyscraper. Before entering my office (the walls containing CFC insulation), and before turning on my computer terminal (made with CFC-cleaned semiconductors and chips), I turn first to pour a cup of coffee (into a CFC-made Styrofoam cup). Finally, I sit down to work, settling down, of course, in my CFC foam-padded chair

Understanding lived experiences of navigating supermarket foodscapes when living on a low income.

Despite being a public health priority for over 30 years, the prevalence of obesity in the UK remains high. Strategies to tackle obesity have typically focused on behaviour change at the individual level, ignoring wider health and social inequities that can increase an individual's risk of developing obesity and decrease responsiveness to interventions. Many people living on low incomes face food insecurity: the inability to afford or reliably access food that meets recommended nutritional requirements. Ultra processed foods, often high in fat, salt and sugar which tend to be cheaper than healthier alternatives can become a sensible economic choice, however, repeated consumption can present challenges for weight management. Interventions helping support the purchase and consumption of healthy food which move beyond individual responsibility to consider the existing socio-economic factors that contribute to weight gain and prevent weight reduction are required. Additionally, research suggests eating a healthy diet, in line government recommendations (i.e., the Eatwell Guide), would also bring about environmental benefits, through associated reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, helping tackle climate change. Individuals in high income countries purchase the majority of their food in supermarkets, making this the ideal context for research into and the delivery of 'upstream' social and economic level interventions. This study aims to provide a starting point for intervention development by exploring the experiences of people living with obesity and food insecurity when shopping in the supermarket environment, to help identify the instrumental factors and environmental cues that currently influence the purchase of healthy, environmentally sustainable food. Semi-structured interviews and focus groups will be conducted to explore broad experiences of shopping, choice of retailer, the receipt of emergency food provision and its impact on purchasing behaviour and external influences (i.e. others they shop for). The ways in which people living with obesity and food insecurity believe supermarkets can help support them purchase healthy, environmentally sustainable food will also be examined. Interviews will be audio recorded and transcribed verbatim, and data subject to thematic analysis. Findings will be used to inform intervention development as part of the FIO (Food Insecurity in People Living with Obesity) Food project

Vannotea: A collaborative video indexing, annotation and discussion system for broadband networks

A number of research groups and software companies have developed digital annotation tools for textual documents, web pages, images, audio and video resources. By annotations we mean subjective comments, notes, explanations or external remarks that can be attached to a document or a selected part of a document without actually modifying the document. When a user retrieves a document, they can also download the annotations attached to it from an annotation server to view their peer’s opinions and perspectives on the particular document or to add, edit or update their own annotations. The ability to do this collaboratively and in real time during group discussions is of great interest to the educational, medical, scientific, cultural, defense and media communities. But it is extremely challenging technically and demands significant bandwidth, particularly for video documents. In this paper we describe a unique prototype application developed over the Australian GrangeNet broadband research network, which combines videoconferencing over access grid nodes with collaborative, real-time sharing of an application which enables the indexing, browsing, annotation and discussion of video content between multiple groups at remote locations

Monte Carlo cluster algorithm for fluid phase transitions in highly size-asymmetrical binary mixtures

Highly size-asymmetrical fluid mixtures arise in a variety of physical contexts, notably in suspensions of colloidal particles to which much smaller particles have been added in the form of polymers or nanoparticles. Conventional schemes for simulating models of such systems are hamstrung by the difficulty of relaxing the large species in the presence of the small one. Here we describe how the rejection-free geometrical cluster algorithm (GCA) of Liu and Luijten [Phys. Rev. Lett 92, 035504 (2004)] can be embedded within a restricted Gibbs ensemble to facilitate efficient and accurate studies of fluid phase behavior of highly size-asymmetrical mixtures. After providing a detailed description of the algorithm, we summarize the bespoke analysis techniques of Ashton et al. [J. Chem. Phys. 132, 074111 (2010)] that permit accurate estimates of coexisting densities and critical-point parameters. We apply our methods to study the liquid--vapor phase diagram of a particular mixture of Lennard-Jones particles having a 10:1 size ratio. As the reservoir volume fraction of small particles is increased in the range 0--5%, the critical temperature decreases by approximately 50%, while the critical density drops by some 30%. These trends imply that in our system, adding small particles decreases the net attraction between large particles, a situation that contrasts with hard-sphere mixtures where an attractive depletion force occurs.Comment: 11 pages, 10 figure

Understanding lived experiences of navigating supermarket foodscapes of people living with obesity on a low income: the Food insecurity in people living with obesity (FIO) food project.

Approximately 8 million adults and 3 million children in the UK are experiencing food insecurity in 2024. In the UK, healthier foods are three times more expensive per calorie than unhealthy foods. This limits dietary choices to a low-price, high-energy combination, which can promote weight gain. Sustainable, healthy diets should be promoted and affordable for all. The FIO Food Project's overall aim is to provide actionable evidence for policy on retail strategies to address dietary inequalities in people living with obesity and food insecurity, to support sustainable and healthier food choices in the UK food system

Feeding the 45 million

A global population increasing both in number and in resource consumption per capita has resulted in food, livestock feed and energy crop demands that are increasingly difficult to meet on rapidly degrading soils within a diminishing available area of arable land. With further expansion of agricultural land infeasible and yield increases through further intensification insufficient to meet the scale of predicted crop demand, the use of insects as an animal feed has gained traction as a method of not only reducing competition for arable land, but also some of the detrimental environmental consequences of livestock and conventional feed production. However, while recent years have seen an explosion of academic studies investigating aspects of the use of insects as a livestock feed, there has been very little work investigating the potential ramifications of insect production and use at a scale on par with existing livestock feed products. With soybean one of the most popular livestock feed components, the EU one of the largest soy importers in the world and chickens the largest consumer of compound livestock feed, this study substitutes soybean meal-based protein utilised within EU poultry and egg production with protein from three insect species - each proven to be a viable dietary substitute for soybean protein - at ratios of up to 100%. The results of this study indicate that the protein currently provided to EU poultry & egg production through soybean meal could be entirely replaced with insect-based meal using less than 1% of the land currently used for protein production. This would represent the saving of over 4.6 Mha of soybean crop or fertile arable land that could potentially be made available for alternative uses. Further, this study finds the redundant soybean crop able to meet the complete annual calorific requirements of up to 45 million people, with further potential benefits of large-scale insect production including significant quantities of biofertiliser and biodiesel, as well as the possible aiding of the implementation of carbon-sequestering and soil-retaining alternative farming methods. With the use of waste side-stream substrates during insect production key to potential land-use reductions, sourcing sufficient amounts of appropriate waste side-streams without compromising alternative waste uses is likely to be a major obstacle to a large-scale substitution, despite EU regulations and public opinion increasingly accepting of the use of insects as a livestock feed. Other problems such as significant energy usage and technological barriers are largely considered to be a result of the burgeoning nature of the industry, though the poikilothermic nature of insects implies possible limitations to insect production in colder climates. This study concludes that substitution of soybean meal-based protein with insect-based protein has the potential to positively impact a variety of upcoming global issues such as diminishing arable lands, increasing resource consumption and increasing crop demand, with a lack of published academic data regarding large-scale insect production providing exciting future research opportunities

Investigating trends in the growth of five demersal fish species from the Firth of Clyde and the wider western shelf of Scotland

Demersal fish landings from the Firth of Clyde peaked in 1973, then declined rapidly until the targeted demersal fishery ceased in 2005. The abundance of large fish decreased during this period, and their numbers have not recovered since 2005. We aim to determine whether changing growth rates have con- tributed to the decline in the abundance of large fish. Bottom trawl survey data from 1980–2012 was used to calculate the annual mean length-at-age and time series of von Bertalanffy growth parameters of five demersal species; cod, haddock, whiting, Norway pout and saithe. Two regions were considered: the Firth of Clyde and the neighbouring seas west of Scotland (the western shelf). There have been substantial decreases in the lengths of most age groups of Clyde haddock and whiting due to declines in both asymptotic length and von Bertalanffy growth rate. Lengths-at-age have also declined in western shelf populations, but at markedly slower rates than within the Clyde. Trends in temperature and year class strength tended to contribute little to changes in the growth parameters, so declines in length-at-age have been largely due to other factors. Fishing intensity is greater in the Clyde than western shelf, and the size selectivity of the fisheries differ as more Clyde vessels use Nephrops trawling gear. Since trends in growth were also more extreme in the Clyde, it appears as though size-selective fishing may have caused reductions in the lengths of these fish. If the changes in growth are partially due to fishing induced evolution then it may take many generations for the changes to reverse