Essays on the growth of Birmingham and other contributions to the geographical study of the Birmingham district

This thesis explores how Birmingham developed from a village of little note at the time of the Doomsday book to become the dominant settlement of the West Midlands conurbation. Central to Birmingham's development was its role in trade and industry and Birmingham's growth in this area is traced back to the mid-eighteenth century. Various different sectors of industry are examined; including the development of the jewellery industry. Part three of the thesis examines the South Staffordshire and Cannock Chase coalfields in terms of their historical development and impact on the wider region

Adhesive latching and legless leaping in small, worm-like insect larvae

Jumping is often achieved using propulsive legs, yet legless leaping has evolved multiple times. We examined the kinematics, energetics, and morphology of long-distance jumps produced by the legless larvae of gall midges (Asphondylia sp.). They store elastic energy by forming their body into a loop and pressurizing part of their body to form a transient “leg”. They prevent movement during elastic loading by placing two regions covered with microstructures against each other, which likely serve as a newly-described adhesive latch. Once the latch releases, the transient “leg” launches the body into the air. Their average takeoff speeds (mean: 0.88 m s-1; range: 0.38-1.33 m s-1) and horizontal travel distances (up to 36 times body length or 121 mm) rival those of legged insect jumpers and their mass specific power density (mean: 1390 W kg-1; range: 240-2950 W kg-1) indicates the use of elastic energy storage to launch the jump. Based on the forces reported for other microscale adhesive structures, the adhesive latching surfaces are sufficient to oppose the loading forces prior to jumping. Energetic comparisons of insect larval crawling versus jumping indicate that these jumps are orders of magnitude more efficient than would be possible if the animals had crawled an equivalent distance. These discoveries integrate three vibrant areas in engineering and biology - soft robotics, small, high acceleration systems, and adhesive systems - and point toward a rich, and as-yet untapped area of biological diversity of worm-like, small, legless jumpers

A method for isolating and culturing placental cells from failed early equine pregnancies

Early pregnancy loss occurs in 6–10% of equine pregnancies making it the main cause of reproductive wastage. Despite this, reasons for the losses are known in only 16% of cases. Lack of viable conceptus material has inhibited investigations of many potential genetic and pathological causes. We present a method for isolating and culturing placental cells from failed early equine pregnancies. Trophoblast cells from 18/30 (60%) failed equine pregnancies of gestational ages 14–65 days were successfully cultured in three different media, with the greatest growth achieved for cells cultured in AmnioChrome™ Plus. Genomic DNA of a suitable quality for molecular assays was also isolated from 29/30 of these cases. This method will enable future investigations determining pathologies causing EPL

B-->pi and B-->K transitions in standard and quenched chiral perturbation theory

We study the effects of chiral logs on the heavy-->light pseudoscalar meson transition form factors by using standard and quenched chiral perturbation theory combined with the static heavy quark limit. The resulting expressions are used to indicate the size of uncertainties due to the use of the quenched approximation in the current lattice studies. They may also be used to assess the size of systematic uncertainties induced by missing chiral log terms in extrapolating toward the physical pion mass. We also provide the coefficient multiplying the quenched chiral log, which may be useful if the quenched lattice studies are performed with very light mesons.Comment: 33 pages, 8 PostScript figures, version to appear in PR

Electromagnetic Decays of Heavy Baryons

The electromagnetic decays of the ground state baryon multiplets with one heavy quark are calculated using Heavy Hadron Chiral Perturbation Theory. The M1 and E2 amplitudes for S^{*}--> S gamma, S^{*} --> T gamma and S --> T gamma are separately computed. All M1 transitions are calculated up to O(1/Lambda_chi^2). The E2 amplitudes contribute at the same order for S^{*}--> S gamma, while for S^{*} --> T gamma they first appear at O(1/(m_Q \Lambda_\chi^2)) and for S --> T gamma are completely negligible. The renormalization of the chiral loops is discussed and relations among different decay amplitudes are derived. We find that chiral loops involving electromagnetic interactions of the light pseudoscalar mesons provide a sizable enhancement of these decay widths. Furthermore, we obtain an absolute prediction for the widths of Xi^{0'(*)}_c--> Xi^{0}_c gamma and Xi^{-'(*)}_b--> Xi^{-}_b gamma. Our results are compared to other estimates existing in the literature.Comment: 17 pages, 3 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev.

Rare charm meson decays D->Pl^+l^- and c->ul^+l^- in SM and MSSM

We study the nine possible rare charm meson decays D->Pl^+l^- (P=pi,K,eta,eta') using the Heavy Meson Chiral Lagrangians and find them to be dominated by the long distance contributions. The decay D^+ -> pi^+l^+l^- with the branching ratio 1*10^(-6) is expected to have the best chances for an early experimental discovery. The short distance contribution in the five Cabibbo suppressed channels arises via the c->ul^+l^- transition; we find that this contribution is detectable only in the D->pi l^+l^- decay, where it dominates the differential spectrum at high-q^2. The general Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model can enhance the c->ul^+l^- rate by up to an order of magnitude; its effect on the D->Pl^+l^- rates is small since the c->ul^+l^- enhancement is sizable in low-q^2 region, which is inhibited in the hadronic decay.Comment: 17 page

Partial-wave analysis of the eta pi+ pi- system produced in the reaction pi-p --> eta pi+ pi- n at 18 GeV/c

A partial-wave analysis of 9082 eta pi+ pi- n events produced in the reaction pi- p --> eta pi+ pi- n at 18.3 GeV/c has been carried out using data from experiment 852 at Brookhaven National Laboratory. The data are dominated by J^{PC} = 0^{-+} partial waves consistent with observation of the eta(1295) and the eta(1440). The mass and width of the eta(1295) were determined to be 1282 +- 5 MeV and 66 +- 13 Mev respectively while the eta(1440) was observed with a mass of 1404 +- 6 MeV and width of 80 +- 21 MeV. Other partial waves of importance include the 1++ and the 1+- waves. Results of the partial wave analysis are combined with results of other experiments to estimate f1(1285) branching fractions. These values are considerably different from current values determined without the aid of amplitude analyses.Comment: 22 pages, 8 figure

'Making Friends or Making Things?': Interfirm Transactions in the Sheffield Metal-working Cluster

The paper comprises an examination of the material inputs of a sample of 70 small firms in the Sheffield metal-working cluster and an assessment of the extent to which purchases are accompanied by face-to-face (embodied) transactions. It is shown that there are no significant differences between the level of embodied transactions accompanying local (intra-cluster) material links and those associated with non-local flows. It seems that, on this measure at least and within this cluster, the Sheffield metal-working cluster lacks the dense network of embodied transactions with local suppliers suggested in the wider literature. The lower-than-expected measures of embodied transactions suggest that one of the mechanisms for the transfer of knowledge between buyers and suppliers within an industrial cluster is poorly developed in this particular case.Yeshttps://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/manuscript-submission-guideline