115 research outputs found
Don’t put all your speech-acts in one basket: situating animal activism in the deliberative system
In this article I offer deliberative systems as a normative and evaluative approach through
which to appraise typically ‘non-deliberative’ animal activism. Although such actions can
contribute to inclusivity through the political representation of animals, I caution against an
over-reliance on such tactics and interrogate the claim that non-deliberative tactics are
essential ingredients for prompting the reflection and reconsideration that animal rights
philosophy demands. Instead, relying solely on non-deliberative activism may serve not only
to undermine further deliberation but to actually jeopardise animal protection goals
The building stones and slates of Killin : an investigation of stone for the built heritage
The village of Killin lies in an area of dramatic landscape and mountain scenery. The use of local stone
in the buildings gives a direct connection to this landscape and reflects the local geology, comprising
mostly metamorphic rocks of Precambrian age –dominantly limestone, meta-sandstone, mica schist
and meta-igneous rocks. All of these (with the exception of the Loch Tay Limestone which was used for
soil improvement) were used in buildings and structures within the Killin Conservation Area.
The stone masonry in the village is classified into five categories; (1) cottages (mostly harled) built of
random rubble from field and river boulders and surface rock outcrops, (2) two storey buildings with
irregular coursed rubble walls of meta-sandstone and mica schist with large dressings of silver-grey
slabs of actinolite schist, (3) and (4) larger late 19th century buildings with dressings of Central Belt
sandstone used in combination with squared rubble walling of local actinolite schist and metasandstone.
The 5th masonry category represents relatively late buildings constructed using distinctive
imported stone types (e.g. whinstone, granite, red sandstone). These categories are broadly
chronological in order and reflect the development of architectural form along with improving
transportation of materials over time
'TaxTrack': Introducing a Democratic Innovation for Taxation
In this article we introduce an input-oriented democratic innovation – that we term ‘TaxTrack’ – which offers individual taxpayers the means to engage with their political economies in three ways. After joining the TaxTrack program, an individual can: (1) see and understand how much, and what types, of taxes they have contributed, (2) see and understand how their tax contributions are, or have been, used, and (3) control what their tax contributions can, or cannot, be spent on. We explain this democratic innovation in two ways. The first is through evocation to prefigure what the innovation could look like in future practise which raises the prospects for both good and problematic outcomes. The second is through formal theory to produce a detailed model of the innovation to assist theory building. We conclude by discussing three interactive outcomes of ‘TaxTrack’ through the democratic innovations literature to establish the beginnings of a theory for the model. This theory tells us that ‘TaxTrack’ can return benefits to its users and the democratic regimes in which they are located but it may also place restrictions on output-oriented innovations like Participatory Budgeting
The 2018/2019 drought in the UK: a hydrological appraisal
Between 2016 and 2019, the UK was in a period of prolonged dry conditions with varying spatial and temporal foci. We look at the rainfall, river flows, soil moisture and drought impacts leading up to and including the heatwave of 2018, and the following year, placing the events into historical context. Using incident data from the UK regulators, we also explore drought impacts for this period
Expression of a hindlimb-determining factor Pitx1 in the forelimb of the lizard Pogona vitticeps during morphogenesis
With over 9000 species, squamates, which include lizards and snakes, are the largest group of reptiles and second-largest order of vertebrates, spanning a vast array of appendicular skeletal morphology. As such, they provide a promising system for examining developmental and molecular processes underlying limb morphology. Using the central bearded dragon (Pogona vitticeps) as the primary study model, we examined limb morphometry throughout embryonic development and characterized the expression of three known developmental genes (GHR, Pitx1 and Shh) from early embryonic stage through to hatchling stage via reverse transcription quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR) and immunohistochemistry (IHC). In this study, all genes were found to be transcribed in both the forelimbs and hindlimbs of P. vitticeps. While the highest level of GHR expression occurred at the hatchling stage, Pitx1 and Shh expression was greatest earlier during embryogenesis, which coincides with the onset of the differentiation between forelimb and hindlimb length. We compared our finding of Pitx1 expression-a hindlimb-determining gene-in the forelimbs of P. vitticeps to that in a closely related Australian agamid lizard, Ctenophorus pictus, where we found Pitx1 expression to be more highly expressed in the hindlimb compared with the forelimb during early and late morphogenesis-a result consistent with that found across other tetrapods. Expression of Pitx1 in forelimbs has only rarely been documented, including via in situ hybridization in a chicken and a frog. Our findings from both RT-qPCR and IHC indicate that further research across a wider range of tetrapods is needed to more fully understand evolutionary variation in molecular processes underlying limb morphology.Jane Melville, Sumitha Hunjan, Felicity McLean, Georgia Mantziou, Katja Boysen and Laura J. Parr
Dilogarithm Identities in Conformal Field Theory and Group Homology
Recently, Rogers' dilogarithm identities have attracted much attention in the
setting of conformal field theory as well as lattice model calculations. One of
the connecting threads is an identity of Richmond-Szekeres that appeared in the
computation of central charges in conformal field theory. We show that the
Richmond-Szekeres identity and its extension by Kirillov-Reshetikhin can be
interpreted as a lift of a generator of the third integral homology of a finite
cyclic subgroup sitting inside the projective special linear group of all real matrices viewed as a {\it discrete} group. This connection
allows us to clarify a few of the assertions and conjectures stated in the work
of Nahm-Recknagel-Terhoven concerning the role of algebraic -theory and
Thurston's program on hyperbolic 3-manifolds. Specifically, it is not related
to hyperbolic 3-manifolds as suggested but is more appropriately related to the
group manifold of the universal covering group of the projective special linear
group of all real matrices viewed as a topological group. This
also resolves the weaker version of the conjecture as formulated by Kirillov.
We end with the summary of a number of open conjectures on the mathematical
side.Comment: 20 pages, 2 figures not include
Wetting films on chemically heterogeneous substrates
Based on a microscopic density functional theory we investigate the
morphology of thin liquidlike wetting films adsorbed on substrates endowed with
well-defined chemical heterogeneities. As paradigmatic cases we focus on a
single chemical step and on a single stripe. In view of applications in
microfluidics the accuracy of guiding liquids by chemical microchannels is
discussed. Finally we give a general prescription of how to investigate
theoretically the wetting properties of substrates with arbitrary chemical
structures.Comment: 56 pages, RevTeX, 20 Figure
Supersymmetry beyond minimal flavour violation
We review the sources and phenomenology of non-minimal flavour violation in
the MSSM. We discuss in some detail the most important theoretical and
experimental constraints, as well as promising observables to look for
supersymmetric effects at the LHC and in the future. We emphasize the
sensitivity of flavour physics to the mechanism of supersymmetry breaking and
to new degrees of freedom present at fundamental scales, such as the grand
unification scale. We include a discussion of present data that may hint at
departures from the Standard Model.Comment: 23pp. Version to appear in the EPJC special volume "Supersymmetry on
the Eve of the LHC", dedicated to the memory of Julius Wess. References and
brief discussion on collider signatures adde
Developing a predictive modelling capacity for a climate change-vulnerable blanket bog habitat: Assessing 1961-1990 baseline relationships
Aim: Understanding the spatial distribution of high priority habitats and
developing predictive models using climate and environmental variables to
replicate these distributions are desirable conservation goals. The aim of this
study was to model and elucidate the contributions of climate and topography to
the distribution of a priority blanket bog habitat in Ireland, and to examine how
this might inform the development of a climate change predictive capacity for
peat-lands in Ireland.
Methods: Ten climatic and two topographic variables were recorded for grid
cells with a spatial resolution of 1010 km, covering 87% of the mainland
land surface of Ireland. Presence-absence data were matched to these variables
and generalised linear models (GLMs) fitted to identify the main climatic and
terrain predictor variables for occurrence of the habitat. Candidate predictor
variables were screened for collinearity, and the accuracy of the final fitted GLM
was evaluated using fourfold cross-validation based on the area under the curve
(AUC) derived from a receiver operating characteristic (ROC) plot. The GLM
predicted habitat occurrence probability maps were mapped against the actual
distributions using GIS techniques.
Results: Despite the apparent parsimony of the initial GLM using only climatic
variables, further testing indicated collinearity among temperature and precipitation
variables for example. Subsequent elimination of the collinear variables and
inclusion of elevation data produced an excellent performance based on the AUC
scores of the final GLM. Mean annual temperature and total mean annual
precipitation in combination with elevation range were the most powerful
explanatory variable group among those explored for the presence of blanket
bog habitat.
Main conclusions: The results confirm that this habitat distribution in general
can be modelled well using the non-collinear climatic and terrain variables tested
at the grid resolution used. Mapping the GLM-predicted distribution to the
observed distribution produced useful results in replicating the projected
occurrence of the habitat distribution over an extensive area. The methods
developed will usefully inform future climate change predictive modelling for
Irelan
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