Supporting community energy development in Malawi : a scoping study for the Scottish Government

The Scotland and Malawi Co-operation Agreement sets out the ways in which the respective country’s governments engage and work with each other. Key elements of the Co-operation Agreement include regular discussion, learning and expertise exchange between the countries, and a Scottish Government (SG) financed International Development Fund, which supports discrete projects within Malawi. Under the auspices of the Co-operation Agreement, Ministerial discussion during the UN Climate Change Summit in Cancun in December 2010 highlighted the Government of Malawi’s target of increasing electricity access in Malawi from 8% to 15% of the population by 2015. It was agreed that the SG would consider how best it could contribute to this ambition through the Co-operation Agreement’s existing mechanisms. Against this background, the following scoping study was commissioned by the SG. The study commences with an overview of the broad energy and electricity sectors in Malawi, but its specific purpose is to understand how off-grid, community-level renewable energy technology can contribute towards meeting Malawi’s energy needs. To an extent, the scoping study also has its roots in one of the first projects to be supported through the SG’s International Development Fund. The University of Strathclyde-led Community Rural Electrification and Development (CRED) project aimed to improve the sustainability of rural solar panel deployments in Malawi by focussing on community engagement and empowerment, local responsibility and income generation. Learning captured through the project indicated that, aside from the obvious energy provision, community-level generation had the potential to bring considerable socio-economic benefits to rurally isolated Malawians. Given this grounding and experience, the SG invited the University of Strathclyde to lead this scoping study

Unfitness to Plead. Volume 1: Report.

This has been produced along with Volume 2: Draft Legislation as a combined document Presented to Parliament pursuant to section 3(2) of the Law Commissions Act 1965 Ordered by the House of Commons to be printed on 12 January 201

The SPARC Toroidal Field Model Coil Program

The SPARC Toroidal Field Model Coil (TFMC) Program was a three-year effort between 2018 and 2021 that developed novel Rare Earth Yttrium Barium Copper Oxide (REBCO) superconductor technologies and then successfully utilized these technologies to design, build, and test a first-in-class, high-field (~20 T), representative-scale (~3 m) superconducting toroidal field coil. With the principal objective of demonstrating mature, large-scale, REBCO magnets, the project was executed jointly by the MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center (PSFC) and Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS). The TFMC achieved its programmatic goal of experimentally demonstrating a large-scale high-field REBCO magnet, achieving 20.1 T peak field-on-conductor with 40.5 kA of terminal current, 815 kN/m of Lorentz loading on the REBCO stacks, and almost 1 GPa of mechanical stress accommodated by the structural case. Fifteen internal demountable pancake-to-pancake joints operated in the 0.5 to 2.0 nOhm range at 20 K and in magnetic fields up to 12 T. The DC and AC electromagnetic performance of the magnet, predicted by new advances in high-fidelity computational models, was confirmed in two test campaigns while the massively parallel, single-pass, pressure-vessel style coolant scheme capable of large heat removal was validated. The REBCO current lead and feeder system was experimentally qualified up to 50 kA, and the crycooler based cryogenic system provided 600 W of cooling power at 20 K with mass flow rates up to 70 g/s at a maximum design pressure of 20 bar-a for the test campaigns. Finally, the feasibility of using passive, self-protection against a quench in a fusion-scale NI TF coil was experimentally assessed with an intentional open-circuit quench at 31.5 kA terminal current.Comment: 17 pages 9 figures, overview paper and the first of a six-part series of papers covering the TFMC Progra

What’s happening with the reformed diminished responsibility plea?

The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link.The reformed section 2 of the Homicide Act 1957 is markedly different from the original provision. Despite this, the ‘official line’ has been that the changes to the plea were merely ones of ‘clarification’ and ‘modernisation’. This article analyses the requirements of the new section 2 in the context of the results of an empirical study into the operation of the new plea carried out by myself and Professor Barry Mitchell. In doing so, it attempts to evaluate the changes which have taken place through an analysis of a sample of 90 cases involving the new plea. The results of the study are discussed in order to assess the validity of the ‘official line’. Is it correct, or have the new elements in section 2 resulted in unintended consequences

The Insanity Defence in English Law

This chapter traces the development of the defence of insanity in English law including an analysis of the author's empirical studies into the defence

The insanity defence: international and comparative perspectives

Divulgação dos SUMÁRIOS das obras recentemente incorporadas ao acervo da Biblioteca Ministro Oscar Saraiva do STJ. Em respeito à Lei de Direitos Autorais, não disponibilizamos a obra na íntegra.Localização na estante: 343.913 I59

Insanity and blaming the mentally ill - a critique of the prior fault principle in the Law Commission’s discussion paper

In 2013, the Law Commission published important provisional proposals for replacing the current insanity defence with a new special verdict of “not criminally responsible by reason of recognised medical condition”. Despite the passage of time, the proposals are an important starting point for reforming the defence of insanity. One proposal was that the new verdict, unlike the current defence, should be subject to the prior fault principle. This article takes issue with that proposal. We argue that introducing fault and blame into mental illness is unwarranted. We conclude that instead the focus should be on strengthening the disposals available following the special verdict to ensure that suitable help and support is provided while at the same time enhancing public protection by providing that those who reject the support offered may face the prospect of adverse consequences

The Insanity Defence - International and Comparative Perspectives

Compares the theory and practice of the insanity defence in a wide variety of common law and civil law jurisdictions, including England, Wales, Scotland, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Norway, Australia, New Zealand, China, Canada, and the United States of Americ

Formalising feeling: Robert Burns's punctuation

This chapter will analyse Robert Burns’s (1759-96) punctuation practices in general, with particular reference to his engagement with the wider Enlightenment discourse of Sensibility, given particular voice by novelist and playwright Henry Mackenzie (1745-1831), but also explored in the moral philosophy of the period and the work of Thomas Reid (1710-96). Our analysis will focus on specific examples from Burns’s poetry and letters, with special attention paid to the correspondence between Burns and Agnes M’Lehose – commonly known as the Sylvander-Clarinda letters – in order to propose a way of reading Burns’s punctuation as part of his performance of sentiment and sensibility. From Reid’s theories of natural language through to recent critical approaches to the literature and language of sensibility, theorists have grappled with the ability – or otherwise – of language to communicate deep emotion, express the inexpressible and convey non-verbal sentiments and feelings on the printed page. Burns’s use of punctuation – and more specifically his variable and often eccentric use of the dash and exclamation mark – shows him engaging with the same questions and enlarging upon his sentimental literary inheritance. While his precursors were privileged in terms of class, and offer a model of feeling often criticised for its ‘top-down’ approach, Burns’s complex emotional self-representation reveals something of the insecurity of his socio-economic position, but also demonstrates that the communication of feeling and emotion through writing is not only the preserve of the literary and social elite