The role of the horse in Europe. Editorial

The horse has a unique place in European society. Historically, it has played a major part in shaping political and agricultural advances. Today, the horse has diverse roles ranging from the companion and leisure horse, to the sporting athlete. The horse continues to work on the land in many European countries, it serves in the police and the armed forces, and in some regions is a source of food. This has resulted in a vast range of horse-human interactions and relationships. Despite the long association between man and the horse we still have a great deal to learn about their behaviour and the constraints that domestication has placed on them. The WATHAM Symposium on “The Role of the Horse in Europe”, organized in association with the Anthrozoology Institute at the University of Southampton, brought together researchers involved in the student of equine behaviour management and horsehuman interactions to present some of their recent work and to identify fruitful areas for future research. In addition to the main programme papers, the Symposium also featured a series of poster presentations on a range of topics including the evolution and domestication of horses; their husbandry, behaviour and welfare; and the role of the horse in modern society. The horse industry, and indeed, equine research, appears to be very fragmented by both discipline and country; and European collaboration provides a greater research potential than exists within countries or disciplines. The WALTHAM Symposium was successful, not only in highlighting common areas of interest, but also in revealing gaps in our knowledge where the paucity of information stands a barrier to the advancement of the equine industry, as a whole, across Europe

Evidence for the Strong Effect of Gas Removal on the Internal Dynamics of Young Stellar Clusters

We present detailed luminosity profiles of the young massive clusters M82-F, NGC 1569-A, and NGC 1705-1 which show significant departures from equilibrium (King and EFF) profiles. We compare these profiles with those from N-body simulations of clusters which have undergone the rapid removal of a significant fraction of their mass due to gas expulsion. We show that the observations and simulations agree very well with each other suggesting that these young clusters are undergoing violent relaxation and are also losing a significant fraction of their stellar mass. That these clusters are not in equilibrium can explain the discrepant mass-to-light ratios observed in many young clusters with respect to simple stellar population models without resorting to non-standard initial stellar mass functions as claimed for M82-F and NGC 1705-1. We also discuss the effect of rapid gas removal on the complete disruption of a large fraction of young massive clusters (``infant mortality''). Finally we note that even bound clusters may lose >50% of their initial stellar mass due to rapid gas loss (``infant weight-loss'').Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures, MNRAS letters, accepte

Diamond growth in a novel low pressure flame

Diamond growth using a new low-pressure combustion technique is reported. A large-area hydrogen/oxygen flame is used as the source of atomic hydrogen. Methane diluted in hydrogen is injected into the flame near a heated silicon substrate, on which diamond crystallites nucleate and grow. This technique is potentially capable of large-area film growth, since atomic hydrogen can be generated uniformly over arbitrarily large areas

Deep space network

Background, current status, and sites of Deep Space Network stations are briefly discussed

Not Quite Filling The Gap: Why the Miscellaneous Expense Allowance Leaves the NCAA Vulnerable to Antitrust Litigation

Throughout its history, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) has been repeatedly accused of violating antitrust law in a range of different ways—restricting television broadcasts, limiting coaches’ salaries, and capping the amount of athletic scholarships. Most recently, in the case of White v. NCAA, a class of plaintiffs argued that the NCAA’s artificial limitation on student-athlete compensation violated antitrust law. Although this case settled before trial, it represented a major victory for student-athletes. The NCAA is now considering a proposal— the Miscellaneous Expense Allowance (“MEA”)—that would raise the NCAA’s artificial cap on athletics-related financial aid by $2000. This legislation is partially aimed at protecting the NCAA from further antitrust liability, but it does not quite fill the gap. After providing a brief history of college athletics and student-athlete compensation, this Note then examines the mechanics of antitrust law and how courts have applied antitrust law in the context of the NCAA. This Note then argues that a hypothetical class of student-athletes could still bring a viable antitrust claim against the NCAA, even if the MEA is passed. Subsequently, this Note analyzes the arguments on both sides that would arise in such a hypothetical lawsuit

Monitoring the Health of Computer Networks with Visualization - VAST 2012 Mini Challenge 1 Award: "Efficient Use of Visualization"

The complex computer networks of large organisations contain many machines of many types, used in many geographic locations. Although system administrators should monitor the health of each machine, they need to do so within the context of the whole computer network. Our visualization presents the health of a fictitious financial institution's computer network at a snapshot in time and over a time range, and preserves the important aspects of each facility's administrative and geographic context. Using the "Bank of Money" VAST Challenge dataset, our visualization allowed us to correctly identify several areas of concern, as well as hypothesise about their causes

Seminar on the dual unity and the phantom.

“Seminar on the Dual Unity and the Phantom” translates into English Nicolas Abraham’s notes from a presentation series delivered at the Société psychanalytique de Paris in 1974-5. These were collected as a single essay and published in French by his partner Maria Torok following Abraham’s untimely death in 1975. The Seminar introduces the dual unity as a clinical concept to account for patient symptomatology where traumatic structures resist intervention and are seemingly impossible to locate. Abraham describes these pathologies in terms of a phantom; the transmission down generations of gaps and silences in comprehension that disrupt emerging subjectivity at its foundation. Abraham demonstrates through a number of clinical and fictional cases how phantoms are transferred unwittingly into an individual psyche and uses this to pose questions about the boundaries of selfhood that extend beyond his pathological examples. As a broader metapsychological concept, the dual unity explains the mechanisms of self-formation in general terms as the always incomplete separation of an individual from the maternal context. Abraham conceives of selfhood as a symbolic response to and overcoming of the traumas that characterize human existence, which begin with the loss(es) of the mother. He describes the birth of the subject, therefore, as the accession to symbolic life through words split off from the maternal context and used to designate objects in the outside world. The words, however, still retain traces of that first relationship in the connection they draw to the drama of separation and the maternal unconscious that haunts this scission as the protector and a danger to individuation. The duality of the mother-child relationship is transformed through the objective use of words into a relation between the shared meaning of language (understood at the level of ego) and a “whole stratification of maternal imagos” that constitute the individual unconscious and whose traces inhabit those same words. This constant connection to the mother means we are always separate-unseparated beings; dual unities open to the continual threat of haunting

Fatalism, Social Support and Mental Health in Four Former Soviet Cultures

Research on social support has identified differences in levels of support between cultures, but has provided only a limited explanation of the role of values or beliefs in accounting for such variations. In this paper we examine the relationship between fatalism and perceived support amongst 2672 respondents in four former Soviet States (Russia, Georgia, Ukraine and Belorussia), with participants drawn from groups of manual workers, managers, civil servants, students and the retired in these four countries. We also examine the consequences of such social support for mental health across these nations. Findings indicate a small but significant moderator effect for fatalism on the relationship between social support and mental health. These results are discussed in the context of the continuing economic and social challenges facing the citizens of these nations