Building a “community co-operative” at Hill Holt Wood

This article documents the business history of Hill Holt Wood (HHW), a community-run social enterprise based in rural Lincolnshire. It aims to shed light on the issues and obstacles associated with developing a rural enterprise into a ‘community co-operative’ (Somerville, 2007). To this end, face-to-face interviews were conducted with the venture’s founder over a period of approximately five years. It was found that the motivation and persistence of the founder, in addition to key support networks that can be drawn upon when required, were critical to the success of this community-controlled enterprise. The article concludes with a discussion of the future prospects for HHW and similar ‘community co-operatives’

Using Movies to Probe the Neurobiology of Anxiety

Over the past century, research has helped us build a fundamental understanding of the neurobiological underpinnings of anxiety. Specifically, anxiety engages a broad range of cortico-subcortical neural circuitry. Core to this is a ‘defensive response network’ which includes an amygdala-prefrontal circuit that is hypothesized to drive attentional amplification of threat-relevant stimuli in the environment. In order to help prepare the body for defensive behaviors to threat, anxiety also engages peripheral physiological systems. However, our theoretical frameworks of the neurobiology of anxiety are built mostly on the foundations of tightly-controlled experiments, such as task-based fMRI. Whether these findings generalize to more naturalistic settings is unknown. To address this shortcoming, movie-watching paradigms offer an effective tool at the intersection of tightly controlled and entirely naturalistic experiments. Particularly, using suspenseful movies presents a novel and effective means to induce and study anxiety. In this thesis, I demonstrate the potential of movie-watching paradigms in the study of how trait and state anxiety impact the ‘defensive response network’ in the brain, as well as peripheral physiology. The key findings reveal that trait anxiety is associated with differing amygdala-prefrontal responses to suspenseful movies; specific trait anxiety symptoms are linked to altered states of anxiety during suspenseful movies; and states of anxiety during movies impact brain-body communication. Notably, my results frequently diverged from those of conventional task-based experiments. Taken together, the insights gathered from this thesis underscore the utility of movie-watching paradigms for a more nuanced understanding of how anxiety impacts the brain and peripheral physiology. These outcomes provide compelling evidence that further integration of naturalistic methods will be beneficial in the study of the neurobiology of anxiety

The recovery of nickel from hyperaccumulator plant ash : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Chemistry at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand

Nickel hyperaccumulator plants have the unusual ability to absorb nickel from the soil they grow in and incorporate it into their structure, to concentrations greater than 1% dry weight. This selective accumulation process occurs with the relevant exclusion of most other metals from the plant material. Combustion of this material then results in a nickel-rich ash (10-15%) of relatively high purity when compared to commercially mined ore (1-4% Ni). Much work has focused on the plants themselves, with suggestions of them being applied to the commercial extraction of nickel from soil, with yields up to 200 kg per hectare. However, little work has been undertaken on the recovery of nickel from the plant material. Given the refined nature of nickel hyperaccumulator ash and that any commercial enterprise is governed by economics, it was thought that a more specific nickel recovery process could be determined for the ash than simply smelting with nickel ore. Such a process should produce an end product of greater worth than smelted nickel. To this end nickel electrowinning and nickel salt crystallisation were investigated. Ashing of the plant material by open flame combustion was found to produce a bio- ore suitable for nickel solubilisation, with the energy produced by the process possibly being of economic benefit if applied to the generation of electricity. Leaching of the nickel from the ash was investigated using a variety of acids with sulfuric acid primarily used, owing to the common usage of a sulfate medium in both nickel electrowinning and crystallisation. A 96% solubilisation of the nickel from the ash was achieved using 4M H₂SO₄, with resulting extracts containing nickel at approximately 0.35 mol/l concentrations. The addition of nitric acid to aid in nickel leaching while successful, also solubilised greater quantities of impurities and caused complications in later processing. Electrowinning of nickel from an ash extract solution, once neutralised to pH values of 4-6, required the balancing of sulfate and nitrate concentrations. Excesses or indeed the absence of either, proved to inhibit metallic nickel electrodeposition, instead two different hydroxide products were observed. However, once balanced a metallic nickel deposit was produced with a current efficiency for the electrowinning period of 94%. From solutions containing a range of potassium and nickel sulfate concentrations it is found that the double salt K₂Ni(S0₄)₂.6H₂O will crystallise. The ash extract, being of hyperaccumulator origin, contains both Ni and K in high concentrations, with SO₄²- being added during the leaching process. It was found that double salt crystals formed without chemical aid even in a highly acidic solution, but with the addition of KOH and/or K₂SO₄ could be crystallised to the extent where as little as 1.5 g/l Ni remained in solution. The blue/green cubic crystals are easily recovered in good yield, corresponding to a 98% recovery of nickel from the ash extract. While no large market exists for the material at present, there are possibilities for its use and given a theoretical yield of 690 kg K₂Ni(SO₄)₂.6H₂O per hectare, there is potential for substantial monetary return

A precise optical transmission spectrum of the inflated exoplanet WASP-52b

We have measured a precise optical transmission spectrum for WASP-52b, a highly inflated hot Jupiter with an equilibrium temperature of 1300 K. Two transits of the planet were observed spectroscopically at low resolution with the auxiliary-port camera (ACAM) on the William Herschel Telescope (WHT), covering a wide range of 4000-8750 \AA. We use a Gaussian process approach to model the correlated noise in the multi-wavelength light curves, resulting in a high precision relative transmission spectrum with errors on the order of a pressure scale height. We attempted to fit a variety of different representative model atmospheres to the transmission spectrum, but did not find a satisfactory match to the entire spectral range. For the majority of the covered wavelength range (4000-7750 \AA) the spectrum is flat, and can be explained by an optically thick and grey cloud layer at 0.1 mbar, but this is inconsistent with a slightly deeper transit at wavelengths $> 7750$ \AA. We were not able to find an obvious systematic source for this feature, so this opacity may be the result of an additional unknown absorber.Comment: Submitted to MNRAS 17 Jan 2017, revised version after comments from reviewer, 12 pages, 10 figure

All two dimensional links are null homotopic

We show that any number of disjointly embedded 2-spheres in 4-space can be pulled apart by a link homotopy, ie, by a motion in which the 2-spheres stay disjoint but are allowed to self-intersect.Comment: 18 pages. Published copy, also available at http://www.maths.warwick.ac.uk/gt/GTVol3/paper10.abs.htm

The voice of authority : Evelyn Waugh's fiction

A large part of the extant criticism of Evelyn Waugh's fiction is orientated towards either a biographical or a literary-historical interest: there are comparatively few detailed surveys of the novels themselves. This study attempts such a survey, and in particular examines the tension which inheres in the relationship of Waugh's poised, urbane narrators to the social and moral chaos they depict. I have been interested in the source and management of that poise, the testing, as it were to destruction, of a series of narrative positions. There is a very modern equation to be observed in Waugh's fiction, between the potentially anarchic mode of fiction and what Waugh felt to be the actual anarchy of contemporary civilisation. His novels can with interest be read in terms of a comic exploitation of this equation, and subsequently, as the writer aged, of his attempts to evade its logic, to discover a 'voice of authority'. Apparently secure narrative stances are repeatedly undermined, and a succession of 'realities' compromised - Tony Last's, William Boot's, John Plant's, Guy Crouchback's. It is this awareness and exploitation of the reflexive quality of fiction, and its use in disclosing the nature of his age which lends Waugh's writing its real and enduring interest. I seek to draw out this awareness through detailed examination of the different novels' precise narrative stance, the source of their 'voice', and have been largely content to let stand other commentators' descriptions of Waugh's broader thesis. My method involves close attention to Waugh's language, from the conviction that nuances of tone and the development of marginal allusions and metaphors are the keys to many of his characteristic effects

Many hands make light work : The facilitative role of gesture in verbal improvisation

This document is the accepted manuscript version of the following article: Carine Lewis, Peter Lovatt, and Elizabeth Kirk, ‘Many hands make light work: the facilitative role of gesture in verbal improvisation’, Thinking Skills and Creativity, Vol 17, pp. 149-157, September 2015, first published online 25 June 2015. This manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. The version of record is available online at doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tsc.2015.06.001 © 2015 Elsevier. All rights reserved.Verbal improvisation is cognitively demanding, placing great burden on working memory as the speaker is tasked to generate a novel, spontaneous narrative. It is at this point of cognitive overload when individuals pursuing other creative tasks would typically shift the burden and externalise some of their thinking. How do successful verbal improvisers manage without shifting some of their workload into an external space? We argue in this paper that the improviser makes use of what is, quite literally, to hand. Ninety participants were asked to take part in a one-to-one improvisation task and a control task, order counterbalanced, in which they were engaged in a brief conversation to elicit every day speech. Participants' gestures were analysed in both conditions and improvisations rated for quality. As predicted, participants gestured significantly more in the improvisation condition. An analysis of gesture type revealed that improvising elicited greater iconic and deictic gestures, whereas everyday speech was more likely to be accompanied by self-adaptor gestures. Gesture rate was related to the quality of the improvisation, with both the strongest and weakest improvisers producing the most gestures. These gestures revealed the extent to which participants used gestures to facilitate the improvisation task. The strongest improvisers elicited a higher gesture rate for iconic and beat gestures, while weakest improvisers produced more gestures in reference to the abstract, improvisation object. Findings are discussed in relation to the idea that gesture can facilitate performance in verbal improvisation.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio