The solar influence on the probability of relatively cold UK winters in the future

Recent research has suggested that relatively cold UK winters are more common when solar activity is low (Lockwood et al 2010 Environ. Res. Lett. 5 024001). Solar activity during the current sunspot minimum has fallen to levels unknown since the start of the 20th century (Lockwood 2010 Proc. R. Soc. A 466 303–29) and records of past solar variations inferred from cosmogenic isotopes (Abreu et al 2008 Geophys. Res. Lett. 35 L20109) and geomagnetic activity data (Lockwood et al 2009 Astrophys. J. 700 937–44) suggest that the current grand solar maximum is coming to an end and hence that solar activity can be expected to continue to decline. Combining cosmogenic isotope data with the long record of temperatures measured in central England, we estimate how solar change could influence the probability in the future of further UK winters that are cold, relative to the hemispheric mean temperature, if all other factors remain constant. Global warming is taken into account only through the detrending using mean hemispheric temperatures. We show that some predictive skill may be obtained by including the solar effect

Codes Governance and Reform Discussion Paper

This discussion paper summarises some of the key points that were raised at a recent cross industry workshop run by the Energy Policy Group on the future of gas and electricity code governance in October 2015. More details of the event are available on IGov events page. The paper provides: Background context on the main energy industry codes and standards in Great Britain A history of reform efforts A summary of the key issues raised at the Codes Governance Workshop covering: 1) Access to Information; 2) Code Simplification & Consolidation; 3) Code Governance, Administration and Architecture. Conclusion

Semiquantitative theory of electronic Raman scattering from medium-size quantum dots

A consistent semiquantitative theoretical analysis of electronic Raman scattering from many-electron quantum dots under resonance excitation conditions has been performed. The theory is based on random-phase-approximation-like wave functions, with the Coulomb interactions treated exactly, and hole valence-band mixing accounted for within the Kohn-Luttinger Hamiltonian framework. The widths of intermediate and final states in the scattering process, although treated phenomenologically, play a significant role in the calculations, particularly for well above band gap excitation. The calculated polarized and unpolarized Raman spectra reveal a great complexity of features and details when the incident light energy is swept from below, through, and above the quantum dot band gap. Incoming and outgoing resonances dramatically modify the Raman intensities of the single particle, charge density, and spin density excitations. The theoretical results are presented in detail and discussed with regard to experimental observations.Comment: Submitted to Phys. Rev.

X- and gamma-ray observations of the 15 November 1991 Solar Flare

This work expands the current understanding of the 15 November 1991 Solar Flare. The flare was a well observed event in radio to gamma-rays and is the first flare to be extensively studied with the benefit of detailed soft and hard X-ray images. In this work, we add data from all four instruments on the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory. Using these data we determined that the accelerated electron spectrum above 170 keV is best fit with a power law with a spectral index of −4.6, while the accelerated proton spectrum above 0.6 MeV is fit with a power law of spectral index −4.5. From this we computed lower limits for the energy content of these particles of∼1023 ergs (electrons) and ∼1027 ergs (ions above 0.6 MeV). These particles do not have enough energy to produce the white-light emission observed from this event. We computed a time constant of 26+20−15 s for the 2.223 MeV neutron capture line, which is consistent at the 2σ level with the lowest values of ∼70 s found for other flares. The mechanism for this short capture time may be better understood after analyses of high energy EGRET data that show potential evidence for pion emission near ∼100 MeV

Galactic cosmic ray modulation near the heliospheric current sheet

Galactic cosmic rays (GCRs) are modulated by the heliospheric magnetic field (HMF) both over decadal time scales (due to long-term, global HMF variations), and over time scales of a few hours (associated with solar wind structures such as coronal mass ejections or the heliospheric current sheet, HCS). Due to the close association between the HCS, the streamer belt, and the band of slow solar wind, HCS crossings are often associated with corotating interaction regions where fast solar wind catches up and compresses slow solar wind ahead of it. However, not all HCS crossings are associated with strong compressions. In this study we categorize HCS crossings in two ways: Firstly, using the change in magnetic polarity, as either away-to-toward (AT) or toward-to-away (TA) magnetic field directions relative to the Sun and, secondly, using the strength of the associated solar wind compression, determined from the observed plasma density enhancement. For each category, we use superposed epoch analyses to show differences in both solar wind parameters and GCR flux inferred from neutron monitors. For strong-compression HCS crossings, we observe a peak in neutron counts preceding the HCS crossing, followed by a large drop after the crossing, attributable to the so-called ‘snow-plough’ effect. For weak-compression HCS crossings, where magnetic field polarity effects are more readily observable, we instead observe that the neutron counts have a tendency to peak in the away magnetic field sector. By splitting the data by the dominant polarity at each solar polar region, we find that the increase in GCR flux prior to the HCS crossing is primarily from strong compressions in cycles with negative north polar fields due to GCR drift effects. Finally, we report on unexpected differences in GCR behavior between TA weak compressions during opposing polarity cycles

The social geography of childcare: 'making up' the middle class child

Childcare is a condensate of disparate social forces and social processes. It is gendered and classed. It is subject to an excess of policy and political discourse. It is increasingly a focus for commercial exploitation. This is a paper reporting on work in progress in an ESRC funded research project (R000239232) on the choice and provision of pre-school childcare by middle class (service class) families in two contrasting London locations. Drawing on recent work in class analysis the paper examines the relationships between childcare choice, middle class fractions and locality. It suggests that on the evidence of the findings to date, there is some evidence of systematic differences between fractions in terms of values, perspectives and preferences for childcare, but a more powerful case for intra-class similarities, particularly when it comes to putting preferences into practice in the 'making up of a middle class child' through care and education

Affective iconic words benefit from additional sound–meaning integration in the left amygdala

Recent studies have shown that a similarity between sound and meaning of a word (i.e., iconicity) can help more readily access the meaning of that word, but the neural mechanisms underlying this beneficial role of iconicity in semantic processing remain largely unknown. In an fMRI study, we focused on the affective domain and examined whether affective iconic words (e.g., high arousal in both sound and meaning) activate additional brain regions that integrate emotional information from different domains (i.e., sound and meaning). In line with our hypothesis, affective iconic words, compared to their non‐iconic counterparts, elicited additional BOLD responses in the left amygdala known for its role in multimodal representation of emotions. Functional connectivity analyses revealed that the observed amygdalar activity was modulated by an interaction of iconic condition and activations in two hubs representative for processing sound (left superior temporal gyrus) and meaning (left inferior frontal gyrus) of words. These results provide a neural explanation for the facilitative role of iconicity in language processing and indicate that language users are sensitive to the interaction between sound and meaning aspect of words, suggesting the existence of iconicity as a general property of human language

Flux transfer events at the magnetopause and in the ionosphere

On December 1, 1986 the ISEE 1 and 2 spacecraft pair passed through the dayside magnetopause at a location which mapped approximately to ionospheric field-line foot-points near the fields of view of the EISCAT radar and photometers and an all-sky camera on Svalbard. The magnetosheath magnetic field was southward and duskward at the time, and flux transfer events (FTEs) were observed at the ISEE location. At the same time, the EISCAT radar observed ionospheric flow bursts of up to 1 km s−1. The peak of each burst followed an FTE observation at ISEE by a few minutes. The bursts, each lasting ten or fifteen minutes, were comprised of first a westward then a poleward flow. An all-sky camera at Ny Ålesund observed dayside auroral breakup forms during or shortly after the flow bursts, moving westward then poleward. While these flow bursts and associated dayside auroral forms have been previously reported in association with southward IMF orientations, this is the first observation of a direct link to FTEs at the magnetopause. On this occasion, the lower limit on the inferred potential associated with the FTEs is roughly 10 kV. Their inferred east-west extent in the ionosphere ranges between 700 and 1000 km, corresponding to a 3 – 5 RE local time extent at the average magnetopause

First imaging of corotating interaction regions using the STEREO spacecraft

Plasma parcels are observed propagating from the Sun out to the large coronal heights monitored by the Heliospheric Imagers (HI) instruments onboard the NASA STEREO spacecraft during September 2007. The source region of these out-flowing parcels is found to corotate with the Sun and to be rooted near the western boundary of an equatorial coronal hole. These plasma enhancements evolve during their propagation through the HI cameras’ fields of view and only becoming fully developed in the outer camera field of view. We provide evidence that HI is observing the formation of a Corotating Interaction Region(CIR) where fast solar wind from the equatorial coronal hole is interacting with the slow solar wind of the streamer belt located on the western edge of that coronal hole. A dense plasma parcel is also observed near the footpoint of the observed CIR at a distance less than 0.1AU from the Sun where fast wind would have not had time to catch up slow wind. We suggest that this low-lying plasma enhancement is a plasma parcel which has been disconnected from a helmet streamer and subsequently becomes embedded inside the corotating interaction region

Polar cap patch segmentation of the tongue of ionization in the morning convection cell

Two types of poleward moving plasma concentration enhancements (PMPCEs) were observed during a sequence of pulsed reconnection events, both in the morning convection cell: Type L (low density) was associated with a cusp flow channel and seems likely to have been produced by ionization associated with particle precipitation, while Type H (high density) appeared to originate from the segmentation of the tongue of ionization by the processes which produced the Type L events. As a result, the Type L and Type H PMPCEs were interspersed, producing a complex density structure which underlines the importance of cusp flow channels as a mechanism for segmenting and structuring electron density in the cusp and shows the necessity of differentiating between at least two classes of electron density patches