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

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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

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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

Toward pesticidovigilance:Can lessons from pharmaceutical monitoring help to improve pesticide regulation?

Agricultural pesticides are an important component of intensive agriculture and, therefore, of global food production. In the European Union, ∼500 active substances used in pesticides are approved, including insecticides, fungicides, herbicides, and plant growth regulators. When used at industrial scales, pesticides can harm the environment (1), but there is a trade-off between this effect and the need to produce food. Recent uncertainties about the health and environmental effects of glyphosate herbicide and neonicotinoid insecticides underline the need for regulation to be sensitive to this trade-off (2, 3). Better regulation is needed to control how pesticides are used and affect the environment at a landscape scale.PostprintPeer reviewe