On the Status of Conservation Laws in Physics: Implications for Semiclassical Gravity

We start by surveying the history of the idea of a fundamental conservation law and briefly examine the role conservation laws play in different classical contexts. In such contexts we find conservation laws to be useful, but often not essential. Next we consider the quantum setting, where the conceptual problems of the standard formalism obstruct a rigorous analysis of the issue. We then analyze the fate of energy conservation within the various viable paths to address such conceptual problems; in all cases we find no satisfactory way to define a (useful) notion of energy that is generically conserved. Finally, we focus on the implications of this for the semiclassical gravity program and conclude that Einstein's equations cannot be said to always hold

Highland planned villages : the architecture of the British Fisheries Society

The British Fisheries Society, founded in 1786, was a semi-charitable joint stock company, similar to other improvement trusts of the period established to fund the construction of roads, bridges, canals and hospitals. The Society was however unique in the breadth of its ambition to create a chain of complete settlements or villages the length of the northern Scottish coastline from Dornoch on the east to Oban on the west. These new settlements were intended to be fishing stations focussed on the perceived wealth to be gained from the herring fishery. Four settlements were established at Ullapool, Wester Ross, Tobermory, Mull, Lochbay, Skye and Pulteneytown, Wick, Caithness and the specific intention of this thesis has been to examine those four built environments created by the Society. This includes all elements of the building and design process necessary to 'create' a fishing village incorporating town planning, civil engineering, industrial and vernacular buildings as well as 'architecture' by Robert Mylne and Telford. The construction of each village is followed from the design of the street plan, contracting for works through to the design and construction of diverse works such as inns, storehouses, harbours and bridges. Varying circumstance resulting in each settlement developing its own architectural character despite the Society's standardised plans and policies the settlements are also considered within the wider context of planned villages, New Towns ports, and harbours with specific analysis of individual buildings and types such as Robert Mylne's inn at Tobermory

Digital Surveillance: Foucault, the Internet, and the Meaning for Democracy

In this paper, we discuss digital surveillance and ways it enhances and changes the surveillance society Foucault described. Digital technology often has positioned itself as being a new media formation that will enhance democracy through peer-to-peer networks that highlight user-generated content and user-generated prioritization. Often hidden, however, is the relationship between the user and the owner of the proprietary digital space. Here, we explore the ways that the phenomenon digital surveillance actually differs from Foucault\u27s interpretation as the social context has changed

On the Status of Conservation Laws in Physics: Implications for Semiclassical Gravity

We start by surveying the history of the idea of a fundamental conservation law and briefly examine the role conservation laws play in different classical contexts. In such contexts we find conservation laws to be useful, but often not essential. Next we consider the quantum setting, where the conceptual problems of the standard formalism obstruct a rigorous analysis of the issue. We then analyze the fate of energy conservation within the various viable paths to address such conceptual problems; in all cases we find no satisfactory way to define a (useful) notion of energy that is generically conserved. Finally, we focus on the implications of this for the semiclassical gravity program and conclude that Einstein's equations cannot be said to always hold

Codesign principles for the effective development of digital heritage extended reality systems for health interventions in rural communities

We present a methodological, theoretical, and technological outline of codesign principles for the effective development of digital heritage extended reality systems for health and care. The paper is based on two large-scale research projects involving ageing in rural and coastal communities, focused on the codesign of extended reality systems to stimulate new forms of access to local heritage sites with potential impact on health outcomes. Our approach stems from a multi-disciplinary collaboration between health, digital design, and heritage specialists, and suggests ways to reconcile diverging forms of knowledge production, such as our ‘researcher in residence’ methodology and the place-based complexities of codesigning such systems. Based on an analysis of fieldwork data and our own fieldwork experiences, the paper presents a roadmap for the codesign of digital heritage extended reality systems for health interventions that meet the needs of stakeholders and organisational implementation requirements, providing a useful tool in supporting the health and social care system for our ageing population

Generally covariant dynamical reduction models and the Hadamard condition

We recall and review earlier work on dynamical reduction models, both non-relativistic and relativistic, and discuss how they may relate to suggestions which have been made (including the matter-gravity entanglement hypothesis of one of us) for how quantum gravity could be connected to the resolution of the quantum-mechanical measurement problem. We then provide general guidelines for generalizing dynamical reduction models to curved spacetimes and propose a class of generally covariant relativistic versions of the GRW model. We anticipate that the collapse operators of our class of models may play a r\^ole in a yet-to-be-formulated theory of semiclassical gravity with collapses. We show explicitly that the collapse operators map a dense domain of states that are initially Hadamard to final Hadamard states -- a property that we expect will be needed for the construction of such a semiclassical theory. Finally, we provide a simple example in which we explicitly compute the violations in energy-momentum due to the state reduction process and conclude that this violation is of the order of a parameter of the model -- supposed to be small. We briefly discuss how this work may, upon further development of a suitable semiclassical gravity theory with collapses, enable further progress to be made on earlier work one of us and collaborators on the explanation of structure-formation in a homogeneous and isotropic quantum universe and on a possible resolution of the black hole information loss puzzle

Genetic Diversity and Population Structure of the Secondary Symbiont of Tsetse Flies, Sodalis glossinidius, in Sleeping Sickness Foci in Cameroon

Human African trypanosomiasis remains a threat to the poorest people in Africa. The trypanosomes causing the disease are transmitted by tsetse flies. The drugs currently used are unsatisfactory: some are toxic and all are difficult to administer. Furthermore, drug resistance is increasing. Therefore, investigations for novel disease control strategies are urgently needed. Previous analyses showed the association between the presence of Glossina symbiont, Sodalis glossinidius, and the fly infection by trypanosomes in a south-western region in Cameroon: flies harbouring symbionts had a threefold higher probability of being infected by trypanosomes than flies devoid of symbionts. But the study also showed substantial differences in S. glossinidius and trypanosome infection rates between Glossina populations from two Cameroonian foci of sleeping sickness. We hypothesized that the geographical isolation of the two foci may have induced the independent evolution of each one, leading to the diversification of symbiont genotypes. Microsatellite markers were used and showed that genetic diversity structuring of S. glossinidius varies at different geographical scales with a low but significant differentiation between the Campo and Bipindi HAT foci. This encourages further work on interactions between S. glossinidius subpopulations and Glossina species that could favor tsetse fly infections by a given trypanosome species