A Direct Comparison of Lyman-Alpha and Neutral Hydrogen Morphologies

The Lyman-Alpha Reference Sample (LARS) and its extension (eLARS) represent an exhaustive campaign to reverse-engineer galaxies. The main goal is to understand how \lya radiation is transported within galaxies: what fraction of it escapes, and what physical properties affect the \lya morphology and radiative transport (e.g., dust and gas content, metallicity, kinematics, properties of the producing and underlying stellar populations). Two galaxies from the sample, LARS02 and LARS09, were observed using the B and C configurations of the Very Large Array to examine the neutral hydrogen emission, which can be used to determine a galaxy\u27s neutral hydrogen (HI) structure and kinematics. Images of the \HI mass surface density and of the intensity weighted \HI velocity field were created at angular scales of $\sim$8 arcseconds, which corresponds to $\sim$5 kpc for LARS02 and $\sim$8 kpc for LARS09. Extended \HI gas is detected at high significance up to $\sim$30 kpc from the optical body of LARS02. LARS09 has a severely disturbed optical morphology; our new \HI observations reveal that LARS09 is interacting with the nearby field galaxy SDSS J082353.65+280622.2. By combining these moment maps with direct imaging of the \lya morphology from the Hubble Space Telescope, this program has produced the first direct comparison of \lya and \HI morphologies. These observations demonstrate concept for a significant observational campaign to produce similar comparisons in the remaining 40 LARS and eLARS galaxies

Ireland’s decision to retain the Seanad is not the end of the country’s political reform process

On 4 October the Irish electorate voted against the abolition of Ireland’s upper house of parliament, the Seanad, in a referendum. John Fitzgibbon assesses the outcome of the referendum, noting that the campaign was largely framed around the idea of ensuring the political class received its fair share of cutbacks in the context of austerity policies. The fact that voters rejected the proposal, however, does not mean an end for Ireland’s political reform process. Almost all of those arguing in favour of retaining the Seanad advocated future reforms to strengthen its role as a check on executive power

Eurosceptic protest movements: a comparative analysis between Ireland, the UK, Estonia and Denmark

The aim of this thesis is to add to the growing literature on Euroscepticism by providing an in-depth comparative study of groups in civil society that actively campaign against European integration in Denmark, Estonia, Ireland and the United Kingdom. This study labels these groups as ‘Eurosceptic Protest Movements’ (EPMs). Five explanatory factors drawn from the literature on Euroscepticism and social movements are used to ask the research question of why EPMs are formed. These are namely, Euroscepticism in the party system, the number of referendums in each case study, the availability of resources, the openness of the policy making process, and the perceived pro-EU bias of the media. Empirically it proceeds on a case by case basis, providing an in-depth account of each state’s relationship with the EU from party system, public opinion, referendums to case specific factors to allow for an appreciation of the environment in which EPMs are formed. Data is gathered primarily from interviews with the founders and both current and former members of EPMs, with additional information coming from EPM documents, referendum manifestos and posters. Contextual information is provided by interviews with academics, journalists and pro-European activists, and secondary literature in EU studies and social movements. The thesis comes to two key conclusions. Firstly, in relation to the literature on social movements, EPMs conform strongly to the political opportunity structure paradigm in that body of work. More specifically is the importance of referendums to EPM formation, an element of the political opportunity structure that has not been researched in relation to social movements. Secondly, with regard to Euroscepticism the thesis concluded that EPMs emerge because of a lack of available space for contestation on the EU issue and the inability of political parties to act as an interlocutor between the electorate and the EU

Discussant\u27s response to current developments in United Kingdom Auditing research

https://egrove.olemiss.edu/dl_proceedings/1150/thumbnail.jp

Breaking the populism 'doom loop'

Is liberal democracy under threat from the rise of populist politics? John Fitzgibbon argues that with citizens voting in increasing numbers for populist parties, a concerted effort to make the value of liberal democracy clear to citizens and to involve them more closely in the policy-making process is sorely needed

Projective Bundle Adjustment from Arbitrary Initialization Using the Variable Projection Method

Bundle adjustment is used in structure-from-motion pipelines as final refinement stage requiring a sufficiently good initialization to reach a useful local mininum. Starting from an arbitrary initialization almost always gets trapped in a poor minimum. In this work we aim to obtain an initialization-free approach which returns global minima from a large proportion of purely random starting points. Our key inspiration lies in the success of the Variable Projection (VarPro) method for affine factorization problems, which have close to 100% chance of reaching a global minimum from random initialization. We find empirically that this desirable behaviour does not directly carry over to the projective case, and we consequently design and evaluate strategies to overcome this limitation. Also, by unifying the affine and the projective camera settings, we obtain numerically better conditioned reformulations of original bundle adjustment algorithms

Climate change as a wicked problem : an evaluation of the institutional context for rural water management in Ghana

Understanding complexity suggests that some problems are more complex than others and defy conventional solutions. These wicked problems will not be solved by the same tools and processes that are complicit in creating them. Neither will they be resolved by approaches short on explicating the complex interconnections of the multiple causes, consequences, and cross-scale actors of the problem. Climate change is one such wicked problem confronting water management in Ghana with a dilemma. The physical consequences of climate change on Ghana’s water resources are progressively worsening. At the same time, existing institutional arrangements demonstrate weak capacities to tackle climate change–related complexities in water management. Therefore, it warrants a dynamic approach imbued with complex and adaptive systems thinking, which also capitalizes on instrumental gains from prior existing institutions. Adaptive Co-Management offers such an opportunity for Ghana to adapt its water management system to climate change

Contested governance of drinking water provisioning services in Nepal’s transboundary river basins

Governance and management of ecosystem services involve a diversity of institutional mechanisms and policy processes from voluntary to regulatory and collaborative approaches. The governance structures and policy processes are often contested, particularly when stakeholder concerns are insufficiently addressed, particularly of those who are most affected by policy decisions. This research examines how collaborative governance enables the ecosystem services approach to source water protection, thereby addressing contested governance problems and policy processes in transboundary river basins in central Nepal. The data were collected using key informant interviews, policy workshops, policy document review, and direct observation. Research results suggest that the state established collaborative governance institutions to improve already adversarial situations rather than in the co-management of water provisioning and other ecosystem services. We conclude that collaborative governance should focus on empowering vulnerable communities to speak for themselves and for the natural environment, particularly to maintain the sustainable flow of multiple ecosystem services for current and future generations

Surface Laplacian of Central Scalp Electrical Signals is Insensitive to Muscle Contamination

Author version made available in accordance with the publisher's policy. "(c) 20xx IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other users, including reprinting/ republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted components of this work in other works."Abstract—Objective: To investigate the effects of surface Laplacian processing on gross and persistent electromyographic (EMG) contamination of electroencephalographic (EEG) signals in electrical scalp recordings. Methods: We made scalp recordings during passive and active tasks, on awake subjects in the absence and in the presence of complete neuromuscular blockade. Three scalp surface Laplacian estimators were compared to left ear and common average reference (CAR). Contamination was quantified by comparing power after paralysis (brain signal, B) with power before paralysis (brain plus muscle signal, B+M). Brain:Muscle (B:M) ratios for the methods were calculated using B and differences in power after paralysis to represent muscle (M). Results: There were very small power differences after paralysis up to 600 Hz using surface Laplacian transforms (B:M> 6 above 30 Hz in central scalp leads). Conclusions: Scalp surface Laplacian transforms reduce muscle power in central and peri-central leads to less than one sixth of the brain signal, 2-3 times better signal detection than CAR. Significance: Scalp surface Laplacian transformations provide robust estimates for detecting high frequency (gamma) activity, for assessing electrophysiological correlates of disease, and also for providing a measure of brain electrical activity for use as a ‘standard’ in the development of brain/muscle signal separation methods