Making science count in government

Science is an essential component of policy-making in most areas of government, but the scientific community does not always understand its role in this process.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

The mechanical properties of saturated and partly saturated soils, with special reference to the influence of negative pore water pressures

Imperial Users onl

Characteristics of high quality ZnO thin films deposited by pulsed laser deposition

This paper show that under optimized deposition condition, films can be grown having a full width at half maximum (FWHM) value of the (002) x-ray diffraction (XRD) line a factor of 4 smaller than the previously published results using PLD and among the best reported so far by any technique. Under optimized conditions, c-axis oriented ZnO films having a FWHM value of the (002) XRD reflection line less than 15°, electrical resistivities around 5 × 10-2 Ω cm and optical transmittance higher than 85% in the visible region of the spectrum were obtained. Refractive index was around 1.98 and the Eg = 3.26 eV, values characteristic of very high quality ZnO thin films

The stuff and nonsense of open data in government

Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

The Histological Structure and Physiological Response of the Sensory Units in the Knee-Joint of the Cat

1. Using a 'single-fibre' technique, afferent discharges from single sensory units in the capsule of the knee-joint of the decerebrate cat have been recorded from the posterior articular nerve to this joint. 2. The responses are of two types - 'rapidly-adapting' and 'slowly-adapting'. 3. The rapidly-adapting responses consist of impulses during movement of the joint but not while the joint is stationary. Such responses were found on only a few occasions and are similar to those from the C organs of Matthews (1933), and also to those attributed by Gray & Matthews (1951) to Pacinian corpuscles. 4. The slowly-adapting responses were more frequently encountered. They are characterized by maintained steady discharges while the joint is stationary, with 'exaggerated' changes in frequency during movement. The degree of exaggeration depends on the rate of movement, and the exaggerated response is followed by adaptation to a new, steady impulse-frequency. 5. The steady, adapted impulse-frequency in any one position is independent of the rate, but not always of the direction, of the movement used to reach that position. If the movement is one which produces a decrease in the frequency of the impulses, the final steady value may he less than that in the same position following a movement in the direction producing an increase in impulse-frequency. The degree of this 'directional' effect varies from unit to unit. 6. The sensory units giving rise to both types of response can he made to discharge by direct pressure on the part of the capsule in which they lie. By locating them in this way, the slowly-adapting units have been found to he most numerous in the centre of the hack of the joint-capsule, whereas the rapidly-adapting units tend to lie towards the sides of the joint. 7. Using the Gairns (1930) gold chloride technique, two types of sensory unit have been demonstrated histologically in the posterior part of the knee-joint capsule, a 'spray' type and a 'lamellated' type. 8. By obtaining a single-fibre discharge from the articular nerve and, while still recording the discharge, excising the particular area of capsule containing the sensory unit responsible for the discharge, it has been possible to correlate the structure of the sensory units with their physiological response. 9. The sensory units of spray type consist of a number of sprays supplied by a single axon, and are situated in the fibrous layer of the joint-capsule; they are undoubtedly the 'typical Ruffini endings' described by Gardner (1944). They are definitely responsible for the slowly-adapting discharges in the posterior articular nerve. It is suggested that these spray sensory units are capable of providing accurate information about the relative position of the bones forming the joint. 10. The lamellated sensory units, which also lie in the fibrous capsule, are much scarcer than the spray type. They consist of several receptors supplied by a single axon. These receptors are double the length of the spray receptors, but are very much smaller, and relatively more elongated, than Pacinian corpuscles. The lamellated type of sensory unit is almost certainly responsible for the rapidly-adapting discharges in the posterior articular nerve. 11. It is doubtful if other types of organised nerve-ending exist in the capsule, but some free nerve-endings are present. On one occasion tendon-organs were found in a cruciate ligament. 12. It is suggested that the larger fibres in the articular nerve innervate tendon-organs in the ligaments of the joint, and that the response of these is similar to the response of the spray sensory units in the capsule. The possibility is discussed that the capsular spray units, the sensory units of spray type (tendon-organs) in ligaments and tendons, and the flower-spray units in muscle-spindles form a series of sensory units, graded in size, which are all basically similar in structure and in function

Dogmatics among the ruins: the relevance of German expressionism and the enlightenment as contexts for Karl Barth's theological development

The relevance of cultural history to the development of Karl Barth's theology has been greatly undervalued. Taking a short term view, Barth's development can be compared in detail with the modernist movements of the early twentieth century, and in particular with the history of German Expressionism; taking a longer view, Barth's theology can be seen as a response to the failure of the Enlightenment project. These two perspectives, moreover, yield complementary insights.Barth's earliest ventures into theological print coincided with the emergence of Expressionism; both were given direction by the First World War; both achieved success in the immediate post-War period, while simultaneously suffering significant disappointments; and in the early 1920s Expressionist writers and artists turned away from their previous forms in an effort to overcome their alienation from community, just as Barth turned away from dialectical method in favour of a discourse situated in and directed to the life of the Church. Barth's theology was effectively engaged in a dialogue with the central ideas embodied in modernist movements like Expressionism, and can be read as a development towards the dialectical inversion of the core ideas of modernism.Taking a longer view, though, both modernist culture and Barth's theology can be illuminated by placing them against the history of the Enlightenment and its aftermath. This is a history which has been analysed usefully by Alasdair Maclntyre, particularly in After Virtue and subsequent publications. In the light of Maclntyre's work, Barth's inversion of modernism appears also to constitute an inversion of the ideas embodied in the social world which emerged from the failure of the Enlightenment project.This reading of Barth can be supplemented and expanded by attention to his own analysis of the Enlightenment in his lectures on the background to and history of modern Protestant theology. Barth argued there that modern theology, down to and including his own time, had been shaped decisively by the Enlightenment. Yet like Maclntyre after him he discerned a flaw inherent in the project of Enlightenment, and believed that that project had in fact failed. Barth's theology appears, in consequence, as the attempt to re-establish dogmatic theology among the ruins of Enlightenment pride

Scorsese’s Silence: Film as Practical Theodicy

Martin Scorsese’s adaptation of Shusaku Endo’s novel Silence takes up the anguished experience of God’s silence in the face of human suffering. The main character, the Jesuit priest Sabastião Rodrigues, finds his faith gutted by the appalling silence of God as he witnesses the horrific persecution of Christians in seventeenth century Japan. Yujin Nagasawa calls the particularly intense combination of the problems of divine hiddenness and evil the problem of divine absence that resists resolution through explanations that have typically characterized the theodicies offered by philosophers. Drawing on the thought of Ignatius of Loyola, this essay explores the way Scorsese’s Silence raises the problem of divine absence for Rodrigues and, through his experience, suggests a way of living with it. This mode of response, I contend, makes what Nagasawa calls cosmic optimism—a hopeful attitude that all is good on a cosmic scale—accessible to devout believers like Rodrigues by grounding it in identification with the god-forsakenness experienced by Christ upon the cross in an experience akin to catharsis that delivers a clarifying emotional consonance. Viewed through an Ignatian lens, the film does more than illustrate a way of responding, it actively engages the imagination in a way that enables viewers to encounter the problem of divine absence and gain the intimate knowledge needed to live with it themselves. In this sense, I argue, Silence can itself be a practical theodicy