Choices:Future trade-offs and plausible pathways

Policy development and management of deltas in the Anthropocene involves the consideration of trade-offs and the balancing of positive and negative consequences for delta functions and the societies that rely on them. This assessment outlines policy-driven and spatial trade-offs that dominate the landscape of choice. It highlights examples of such trade-offs using plausible delta futures and the governance choices associated with them. The analysis is based on modelling broad-scale processes and individual adaptive actions. It highlights how policy choices to maximise economic growth can, for example, have unforeseen consequences such as diminished well-being for some populations. Hence the chapter concludes that trade-offs are a crucial governance challenge for future sustainability of deltas

Media justice: Madeleine McCann, intermediatization and "trial by media" in the British press

Three-year-old Madeleine McCann disappeared on 3 May 2007 from a holiday apartment in Portugal. Over five years and multiple investigations that failed to solve this abducted child case, Madeleine and her parents were subject to a process of relentless ‘intermediatization’. Across 24–7 news coverage, websites, documentaries, films, YouTube videos, books, magazines, music and artworks, Madeleine was a mediagenic image of innocence and a lucrative story. In contrast to Madeleine’s media sacralization, the representation of her parents, Kate and Gerry McCann, fluctuated between periods of vociferous support and prolonged and libellous ‘trial by media’. This article analyses how the global intermediatization of the ‘Maddie Mystery’ fed into and fuelled the ‘trial by media’ of Kate and Gerry McCann in the UK press. Our theorization of ‘trial by media’ is developed and refined through considering its legal limitations in an era of ‘attack journalism’ and unprecedented official UK inquiries into press misconduct and criminality

The interplay between extrinsic and intrinsic factors in determining migration decisions in brown trout (Salmo trutta): An experimental study

Many species are capable of facultative migration, but the relative roles of extrinsic versus intrinsic factors in generating diverse migratory tactics remain unclear. Here we explore the proximate drivers of facultative migration in brown trout in an experimental laboratory setting. The effects of reduced food, as a putative environmental cue, were examined in two populations: one that exhibits high rates of anadromy (sea-migration) in nature, and one that does not exhibit anadromy in nature. Juveniles derived from wild-caught parents were reared for two years under four environmental treatments: low food in years 1 and 2 (Low-Low); high food in years 1 and 2 (High-High), low food in year 1 and high in year 2 (Low-High), and vice versa (High-Low). Food restriction had a significant effect on migratory tactics, with the frequency of smolts (juveniles choosing migration) highest in the Low-Low treatment in both populations. No individuals became smolts in the High-High treatment, and intermediate smolting rates were observed in the Low-High and High-Low treatments. Higher overall smolting rates in the naturally anadromous population suggested an inherited component to anadromy/migration decisions, but both populations showed variability in migratory tactics. Importantly, some fish from the naturally non-anadromous population became smolts in the experiment, implying the capacity for migration was lying ‘dormant’, but they exhibited lower hypo-osmoregulatory function than smolts from the naturally anadromous population. Tactic frequencies in the naturally anadromous population were more affected by food in the 2nd year, while food in the 1st year appeared more important for the naturally non-anadromous population. Migratory tactics were also related to sex, but underpinned in both sexes by growth in key periods, size and energetic state. Collectively these results reveal how migration decisions are shaped by a complex interplay between extrinsic and intrinsic factors, informing our ability to predict how facultatively migratory populations will respond to environmental change

High resolution observations of Cassiopeia A at meter wavelengths

Very long baseline interferometric (VLBI) observations of the supernova remnant Cassiopeia A, at 74 MHz with a 12,000-wavelength baseline and at 111 MHz with a 18,500-wavelength baseline, are reported. The fringe amplitudes are strongly varying on a time scale of about 15 to 30 minutes. The location of the extra source must lie outside the supernova remnant shell possibly associated with a concentration of emission north of the shell, or lying outside the gap in the northeastern side of the shell. The flux and spectral index deduced for the compact source depend on the assumed size, with a range of 100 Jy to 500 Jy at 74 MHz. If the source is associated with the supernova explosion, it must have been traveling at least 5000 km s/2

Hobson’s choice? Constraints on accessing spaces of creative production

Successful creative production is often documented to occur in urban areas that are more likely to be diverse, a source of human capital and the site of dense interactions. These accounts chart how, historically, creative industries have clustered in areas where space was once cheap in the city centre fringe and inner city areas, often leading to the development of a creative milieu, and thereby stimulating further creative production. Historical accounts of the development of creative areas demonstrate the crucial role of accessible low-cost business premises. This article reports on the findings of a case study that investigated the location decisions of firms in selected creative industry sectors in Greater Manchester. The study found that, while creative activity remains highly concentrated in the city centre, creative space there is being squeezed and some creative production is decentralizing in order to access cheaper premises. The article argues that the location choices of creative industry firms are being constrained by the extensive city centre regeneration, with the most vulnerable firms, notably the smallest and youngest, facing a Hobson’s choice of being able to access low-cost premises only in the periphery. This disrupts the delicate balance needed to sustain production and begs the broader question as to how the creative economy fits into the existing urban fabric, alongside the competing demands placed on space within a transforming industrial conurbation

Anti-Nirvana: crime, culture and instrumentalism in the age of insecurity

‘Anti-Nirvana’ explores the relationship between consumer culture, media and criminal motivations. It has appeared consistently on the list of the top-ten most-read articles in this award-winning international journal, and it mounts a serious neo-Freudian challenge to the predominant naturalistic notion of ‘resistance’ at the heart of liberal criminology and media studies. It is also cited in the Oxford Handbook of Criminology and other criminology texts as a persuasive argument in support of the theory that criminality amongst young people is strongly linked to the acquisitive values of consumerism and the images of possessive individualism that dominate mass media

The most creative organization in the world? The BBC, 'creativity' and managerial style

The managerial styles of two BBC directors-general, John Birt and Greg Dyke, have often been contrasted but not so far analysed from the perspective of their different views of 'creative management'. This article first addresses the orthodox reading of 'Birtism'; second, it locates Dyke's 'creative' turn in the wider context of fashionable neo-management theory and UK government creative industries policy; third, it details Dyke's drive to change the BBC's culture; and finally, it concludes with some reflections on the uncertainties inherent in managing a creative organisation

Sand in the wheels, or oiling the wheels, of international finance? : New Labour's appeal to a 'new Bretton Woods'

Tony Blair’s political instinct typically is to associate himself only with the future. As such, his explicit appeal to ‘the past’ in his references to New Labour’s desire to establish a “new Bretton Woods” is sufficient in itself to arouse some degree of analytical curiosity (see Blair 1998a). The fact that this appeal was made specifically in relation to Bretton Woods is even more interesting. The resonant image of the international economic context established by the original Bretton Woods agreements invokes a style and content of policy-making which Tony Blair typically dismisses as neither economically nor politically consistent with his preferred vision of the future (see Blair 2000c, 2001b)

Non-Markovian dynamics in a spin star system: The failure of thermalization

In most cases, a small system weakly interacting with a thermal bath will finally reach the thermal state with the temperature of the bath. We show that this intuitive picture is not always true by a spin star model where non-Markov effect predominates in the whole dynamical process. The spin star system consists a central spin homogeneously interacting with an ensemble of identical noninteracting spins. We find that the correlation time of the bath is infinite, which implies that the bath has a perfect memory, and that the dynamical evolution of the central spin must be non- Markovian. A direct consequence is that the final state of the central spin is not the thermal state equilibrium with the bath, but a steady state which depends on its initial state.Comment: 8 page