Customary law before the Conquest

An article on early English legal history and customary law by Professor Derek Roebuck (Associate Senior Research Fellow, IALS). The article is taken from a lecture given by the author at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies on February 1, 2006 and was published in Amicus Curiae – Journal of the Society for Advanced Legal Studies at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies. The Journal is produced by SALS at the IALS (Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London)

Opening up Spaces to Support Rural Business in Scotland

The Open University has a commitment to releasing core curriculum openly, while we have always edited for “the open” tailoring has been minor. Rural Entrepreneurship in Scotland is a different model. It is based on material to develop your business idea from across our academic programme. However, the material has been revised significantly to place it in a rural Scottish context. Setting up a business or social enterprise is a complex and personal undertaking. It is about more than knowing the right steps, it is about applying that knowledge in context. The module materials are designed around “real” case studies developed with key stakeholders within rural Scotland. One of the benefits of releasing curriculum in this way is the ability to evaluate how it works in the world and adapt it accordingly. For example, we are using the analytics to track topics of particular interest and looking at how we can enhance and improve those components. One of the benefits of low cost reversioning content for less populated curriculum areas is the ability to invest resources in supporting and understanding how resources are used in practice. Through these workshops with rural entrepreneurs we are able to assess how open education operates in practice for practice. We have learnt from working in the open, our analytics suggest the finance component is of crucial, while our outreach work suggests we need to develop a new component on generating entrepreneurial ideas

Integrated mobility measurement and notation system

System for description of movements and positions facilitates design of space suits with more mobility. This measurement and notation system gives concise and unequivocal descriptions, compatible with engineering analysis and applicable to specific needs

Null Geodesics and Wave Front Singularities in the Godel Space-time

We explore wave fronts of null geodesics in the Godel metric emitted from point sources both at, and away from, the origin. For constant time wave fronts emitted by sources away from the origin, we find cusp ridges as well as blue sky metamorphoses where spatially disconnected portions of the wave front appear, connect to the main wave front, and then later break free and vanish. These blue sky metamorphoses in the constant time wave fronts highlight the non-causal features of the Godel metric. We introduce a concept of physical distance along the null geodesics, and show that for wave fronts of constant physical distance, the reorganization of the points making up the wave front leads to the removal of cusp ridges

Do more immigrants equal more crime? Drawing a bridge between first generation immigrant concentration and recorded crime rates

Immigration and its relationship with crime have long been discussed and researched in a variety of manners. There has been focus on a wide spectrum of research questions concerning the issue, such as public perceptions, immigrant perceptions, crime rates and immigration trends. The present article considers the crime rates in the areas of the UK with the highest concentrations of first-generation immigrants. The areas were gathered using census data and crime rates from police recorded statistics. The first-generation immigrants were categorised by their area of origin: Europe, Africa and Asia. Quantitative analysis showed that the areas containing the highest concentration of first-generation immigrants saw a drop in crime compared to the areas with the second highest concentration. Results also showed that certain immigrant groups combined in high concentrations make for lower crime rates. Such findings suggest that there may be a cultural aspect at play, and begs further research

The glacial question, unsolved: a specimen commentary on lines 1-31

A commentary on J.H. Prynne's poem 'The Glacial Question, Unsolved', from The White Stones (1969

'Great expectation among the learned': Edward Bernard's Josephus in Restoration Oxford

This article traces the problematic editorial work of the Oxford scientist and scholar Edward Bernard (1638-1697) in editing Josephus, and draws out the implications of this story for our understanding of the scholarly and polemical contexts within which Josephus was studied in the late seventeenth century