Reflecting the real world?: How British TV portrayed developing countries in 2005

TV audiences are fed up with how the developing world is portrayed on the small screen, according to a new VSO report published today. Reflecting the real world? How British TV portrayed developing countries in 2005 reveals that television viewers have an overwhelmingly negative view of the developing world and that they hold TV responsible. The report shows that viewers have a real appetite for richer representations of the world outside the UK and calls on broadcasters to invest more money, creativity and talent in bringing the world to UK audiences. The report is based on interviews with TV viewers and leading broadcasters. It shows that despite the high level of developing world coverage on TV over the last year, there has been no sign of a positive shift in public attitude. TV viewers associated the developing world with famine, disaster and corruption and people's initial image was very often of starving babies with flies around their eyes. The research highlights that news coverage and charity campaigns have also contributed to a feeling that the developing world is a hopeless cause. News reporting of the Asian Tsunami and the Pakistan earthquake brought people's attention to poorer countries but reinforced a doom-laden view of them. Even the Make Poverty History campaign and the Live 8 concerts, which enthused millions of people, appear to have inadvertently contrived to confirm a stereotype of Africa as a continent on its knees and added to a sense that nothing has changed over the last 20 years. The research uncovered a very strong sentiment that TV coverage of developing countries is too negative. Viewers expressed a desire to see the positive side of life in the developing world and hear about any progress being made. Crucially, they wanted TV programmes that were positive and transforming, challenged their perceptions, and contained human interest stories, real-life issues and characters they can relate to. Their ideas for new developing world programming tended to reflect their favourite genres and included Jamie's African School Dinners, Life Swap, African Grand Designs, Spooks or 24 in Africa and Africa's Next Top Model

The EU referendum: a social catalyst

The fact that we have left the EU is no surprise. Nor is David Cameron’s resignation. Brexit is the price that we pay for nurturing a political class who care more about their individual careers than the people they have been elected to represent. The referendum was thus not a division between the young and the old, nor the right and the left- rather, Brexit has unearthed the gulf between the general public and Westminster’s untouchable elite. From the onset, I have always maintained that Brexit was a strong possibility. Unlike many of my peers who are fortunate enough to live in a vibrant city such as London, I have seen the division between the British people first hand. To some LSE undergraduates, Brexit was a harmless impossibility; one of my friends even claimed that if she were to vote, she would vote “out for a laugh” because everyone she knew was voting in. And she can’t be blamed for thinking like this; everybody knew that London would come through in favour of Remain, and deep down I knew that despite the campaign’s best efforts, the majority of constituencies would vote Leave. The uncertainty that we now face was beyond my prior comprehension. In my opinion, things can only get worse; as a nation, we are now more divided than ever before

Between land and sea

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Investigating territoriality and movement in Meles meles, in the context of wildlife disease management

1. Badger movement may be of major significance to the spread and control of bovine tuberculosis in cattle. Fragmentation of social groups’ structure in response to culling may exacerbate disease spread. Understanding the reasons why social group cohesion and territoriality may break down naturally and what the consequences are for rates of badger movements, may provide useful information in the context of natural social perturbation. 2. Bait-marking and live trapping data were used to investigate demographic factors that may influence movement or territorial changes at both population level and territory level. 3. There were more territories and more cross-boundary movements with increasing density. Males move across boundaries more than females, but female movement was more closely correlated with population density. Badgers moved more between setts when there was no territory boundary present compared to when there was. 4. Understanding what changes occur in the demographic constitution of social groups before territorial boundaries break down would be highly relevant to badger TB management in the context of when perturbation is triggered. The difference between the types of movement expressed within badger populations need to be taken account of and partitioned accordingly within investigations

A New Look at the Wealth Adequacy of Older U.S. Households

We examine the current wealth adequacy of older U.S. households using the 1998-2006 waves of the Health and Retirement Study (HRS). We find that the median older U.S. household is reasonably well situated, with a ratio of comprehensive net wealth to present value poverty- line wealth of about 3.9 in 2006. About 18 percent of households, however, have less wealth than would be needed to generate 150 percent of poverty-line income over their expected future lifetimes. We see similar patterns of wealth adequacy when we examine ratios of annualized comprehensive wealth to pre-retirement earnings. Comparing the leading edge of the baby boomers in 2006 to households of the same age in 1998, we find that the baby boomers show slightly less wealth, in real terms, than their elders did, but still have appear to have adequate resources at the median. Moreover, we find a rising age profile of annualized wealth, even within households over time and after controlling for other factors, suggesting that older households are not spending their wealth as quickly as their survival probabilities are falling.

Characterisation of electrospray properties in high vacuum with a view to application in colloid thruster technology

PhDThe operational environment of colloid thrusters is high vacuum (10-3 _ 10-6 mbar) however, much of the experimental data collected to date to identify parameter relationships in cone jet mode electrosprays (ES), such as current-volumetric flow rate scaling laws, has been conducted in atmospheric conditions. This highlights a need for electrospray data under high vacuum conditions. Electrospray experimental data was collected using medium conductivity solutions (0.0025 -0.0160 S/m) of TEG doped with sodium iodide in high vacuum. These sprays were obtained from a stainless steel capillary and a disk counter electrode with central aperture. An online flow measurement system is described, which has been developed during this research to measure the fluid volumetric flow rate, concurrently with applied voltage and spray properties such as spray current and cone, jet and spray geometry. This automated flow measurement system was used to measure flow rates as low as InUs with an absolute accuracy of 0.3nUs and a resolution of 0.03nus. It is identified that this system may be easily adapted for lower flow rates and higher resolutions. The ES data collected demonstrates, for the first time, the detailed dependence of volumetric flow rate upon the applied voltage. The sensitivity of nominal flow rate to applied voltage was found to be higher for lower nominal flow rates. For a volumetric flow rate -4nLIs a 25% a change in flow rate per kV was recorded over a cone-jet mode stability range spanning -1.5kV. This volumetric flow rate voltage sensitivity holds particular significance for colloid thruster systems, which operate at or near minimum flow rate conditions. The current was found to have a power law dependence on flow rate similar to the current scaling laws of F. de la Mora and Gahan-Calvo however the exponent of this power law differs significantly from these scaling laws. A study considering the effect of charge carrier mobility in simple 1: 1 electrolytes shows that the exponent of the power law current-flow rate scaling increased with increasing charge carrier mobility. Contrary to the various scaling laws the spray current was found to be dependent on electrostatic conditions. The sensitivity of the emitted current to the applied voltage was also found to increase with increasing nominal volumetric flow rate. The geometrical parameters of cone angle, spray angle and jet length were measured for varying TEG/Nal solution conductivity. Cone geometry was found to be relatively independent of conductivity in the range tested. Jet length was found to have an inverse relationship with solution conductivity

Does Achilles Forgive in the Iliad? The Archaic Origins of the Virtue of Forgivingness

All rights reserved © 2017, Modern Greek Studies Association of Australia and New Zealand. Reproduced with permission of the publisher.In Before Forgiveness, David Konstan argues that the modern concept of interpersonal forgiveness was absent from Western thought until the early modern period. However, by “the modern” concept of the term, Konstan means one specific modern conception of forgiveness: that articulated by Griswold in Forgiveness, a conception unique amongst modern scholarship in its narrow, revisionary and prescriptive nature. In this paper I consider Konstan’s argument with respect to archaic Greece. I argue that, even when we limit ourselves to Griswold’s conception of interpersonal forgiveness, and to the two Iliadic examples considered by Konstan, there is more room for interpersonal forgiveness in the Iliad than Konstan would have us believe. I will show that examination of Achilles’ renunciation of his resentment at Agamemnon in Iliad 18 and Priam in Iliad 24 reveals the earliest depiction in Western literature of the virtue of forgivingness

Doctor of Philosophy

thesisKotzebue was selected initially as a field setting in which to study changing kinship and residence of an Alaskan Eskimo group because of the present high level of acculturation in the community and because I had had prior experience there at a time when it was still essentially an Eskimo village. As reconstruction of the aboriginal culture progressed, it became apparent that the Kikitarmiut Eskimo living along the eastern margins of Kotzebue Sound were a separate ethnic and dialect group; the scope of the paper was expanded accordingly. The aboriginal Eskimo who inhabited the area occupied a small but distinct ecological niche in the Arctic coast line of Alaska. As a result, their land-use and customs differed somewhat from those of other Alaskan Eskimo. Their unique location on the sheltered and quiet waters of kotzebue Sound, at a point adjacent to the mouths of three large Alaskan rivers, provided the setting for the development of a trading complex whose influence was felt throughout the Alaskan Arctic. Stefansson notes that rivers figured importantly in aboriginal trade only in Alaska and Hudson Bay, and that those in the hinterland of Kotzebue were among the principal Western arteries of commerce (1914a, p.3). The aboriginal Eskimo at kotzebue became entrepreneurs and traveled widely. By the latter part of the nineteenth century, individual Eskimo were using scraps of brown paper upon which to make maps of their journeys, indicating the villages visited and, by pictographs, the articles exchanged there (Nelson, 1899, p.198)