Reimagining Citizenship: Towards non-penal real utopias

As has long been recognised, the social distance created between offenders and a mythical law-abiding majority helps to fuel punitive practices and hinders any attempts to seriously reform the penal landscape (e.g. Christie, 2000). The commonplace treatment of the majority of offenders as non-citizens precludes meaningful dialogue and debate with ‘the citizenry’. As has been evident in recent years, debate about penal issues amongst those who are seen to be worthy of citizenship has often been reduced to base populism (Pratt, 2007). This presentation will seek to argue that penal reform can only result from adopting a genuinely inclusive, pluralist notion of citizenship (Kabeer, 2005) which is capable of incorporating all those affected by both state-defined crimes and various forms of social harm, whether they are regarded as victims or offenders. Even though we favour a Marshallian rights-based approach to citizenship, we argue that the notion of responsibility is also paramount. Yet, it needs to be understood in the widest possible sense to focus not only on the responsibilities of offenders as citizens but also those of individuals, states and communities to play a meaningful role in tackling harmful behaviour at source. This of course entails shifting the focus beyond harmful actions and those responsible for them to analyse broader agendas for political reform. Here we draw upon the insights of the Argentinian Liberation Philosopher Enrique Dussel (2010; 2013). Just as the debate on penal policy needs to go beyond crime, as it is commonly defined, the solutions proposed for the resolution of harmful behaviour need to go beyond the penal, going further than simply modifying the penal landscape to develop genuine non-penal real utopias

Reawakening Our Radical Imaginations: Thinking realistically about utopias, dystopias and the non-penal

In this introduction we consider the relationship between the European Group for the Study of Deviance and Social Control [European Group] and the promotion of non-penal real utopias. The article begins by considering the historical connections between the New Left, utopian ideas, abolitionism and critical criminology, highlighting the role played by the European Group in the development of utopian thought. It then considers the utopian imagination in critical criminology, paying particular attention to Penal Abolitionism and Zemiology as utopia. It briefly analyses the crisis of utopia undergone by critical criminology in the 1980s before moving on to discuss the recent reawakening of the utopian criminological imagination and discussing the normative framework on which it should be based. Finally, it highlights the importance of developing of an emancipatory politics and praxis

Discovery of pulsations, including possible pressure modes, in two new extremely low mass, He-core white dwarfs

We report the discovery of the second and third pulsating extremely low mass white dwarfs (WDs), SDSS J111215.82+111745.0 (hereafter J1112) and SDSS J151826.68+065813.2 (hereafter J1518). Both have masses < 0.25 Msun and effective temperatures below 10,000 K, establishing these putatively He-core WDs as a cooler class of pulsating hydrogen-atmosphere WDs (DAVs, or ZZ Ceti stars). The short-period pulsations evidenced in the light curve of J1112 may also represent the first observation of acoustic (p-mode) pulsations in any WD, which provide an exciting opportunity to probe this WD in a complimentary way compared to the long-period g-modes also present. J1112 is a Teff = 9590 +/- 140 K and log(g) = 6.36 +/- 0.06 WD. The star displays sinusoidal variability at five distinct periodicities between 1792-2855 s. In this star we also see short-period variability, strongest at 134.3 s, well short of expected g-modes for such a low-mass WD. The other new pulsating WD, J1518, is a Teff = 9900 +/- 140 K and log(g) = 6.80 +/- 0.05 WD. The light curve of J1518 is highly non-sinusoidal, with at least seven significant periods between 1335-3848 s. Consistent with the expectation that ELM WDs must be formed in binaries, these two new pulsating He-core WDs, in addition to the prototype SDSS J184037.78+642312.3, have close companions. However, the observed variability is inconsistent with tidally induced pulsations and is so far best explained by the same hydrogen partial-ionization driving mechanism at work in classic C/O-core ZZ Ceti stars.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figures, accepted to The Astrophysical Journa

Evidence of a high incidence of subclinically affected calves in a herd of cattle with fatal cases of Bovine Neonatal Pancytopenia (BNP).

BACKGROUND: Bovine Neonatal Pancytopenia (BNP) is a disease of calves characterised by bone marrow trilineage hypoplasia, mediated by ingestion of alloantibodies in colostrum. Suspected subclinical forms of BNP have been reported, suggesting that observed clinical cases may not represent the full extent of the disease. However to date there are no objective data available on the incidence of subclinical disease or its temporal distribution. This study aimed to 1) ascertain whether subclinical BNP occurs and, if so, to determine the incidence on an affected farm and 2) determine whether there is evidence of temporal clustering of BNP cases on this farm. To achieve these aims, haematological screening of calves born on the farm during one calving season was carried out, utilising blood samples collected at defined ages. These data were then analysed in comparison to data from both known BNP-free control animals and histopathologically confirmed BNP cases. An ordinal logistic regression model was used to create a composite haematology score to predict the probabilities of calves being normal, based on their haematology measurements at 10–14 days old. RESULTS: This study revealed that 15% (21 of 139) of the clinically normal calves on this farm had profoundly abnormal haematology (<5% chance of being normal) and could be defined as affected by subclinical BNP. Together with clinical BNP cases, this gave the study farm a BNP incidence of 18%. Calves with BNP were found to be distributed throughout the calving period, with no clustering, and no significant differences in the date of birth of cases or subclinical cases were found compared to the rest of the calves. This study did not find any evidence of increased mortality or increased time from birth to sale in subclinical BNP calves but, as the study only involved a single farm and adverse effects may be determined by other inter-current diseases it remains possible that subclinical BNP has a detrimental impact on the health and productivity of calves under certain circumstances. CONCLUSIONS: Subclinical BNP was found to occur at a high incidence in a herd of cattle with fatal cases of BNP

Field deployments of a self-contained subsea platform for acoustic monitoring of the environment around marine renewable energy structurea

The drive towards sustainable energy has seen rapid development of marine renewable energy devices, and current efforts are focusing on wave and tidal stream energy. The NERC/DEFRA collaboration FLOWBEC-4D (Flow, Water column & Benthic Ecology 4D) is addressing the lack of knowledge of the environmental and ecological effects of installing and operating large arrays of wave and tidal energy devices. The FLOWBEC sonar platform combines a number of instruments to record information at a range of physical and multi-trophic levels. Data are recorded at a resolution of several measurements per second, for durations of 2 weeks to capture an entire spring-neap tidal cycle. An upward-facing multifrequency Simrad EK60 echosounder (38, 120 and 200 kHz) is synchronized with an upward-facing Imagenex 837B Delta T multibeam sonar (120° × 20° beamwidth, 260 kHz) aligned with the tidal flow. An ADV is used for local current measurements and a fluorometer is used to measure chlorophyll (as a proxy for plankton) and turbidity. The platform is self-contained with no cables or anchors, facilitating rapid deployment and recovery in high-energy sites and flexibility in allowing baseline data to be gathered. Five 2-week deployments were completed in 2012 and 2013 at wave and tidal energy sites, both in the presence and absence of renewable energy structures. These surveys were conducted at the European Marine Energy Centre, Orkney, UK. Algorithms for noise removal, target detection and target tracking have been written using a combination of LabVIEW, MATLAB and Echoview. Target morphology, behavior and frequency response are used to aid target classification, with concurrent shore-based seabird observations used to ground truth the acoustic data. Using this information, the depth preference and interactions of birds, fish schools and marine mammals with renewable energy structures can be tracked. Seabird and mammal dive profiles, predator-prey interactions a- d the effect of hydrodynamic processes during foraging events throughout the water column can also be analyzed. These datasets offer insights into how fish, seabirds and marine mammals successfully forage within dynamic marine habitats and also whether individuals face collision risks with tidal stream turbines. Measurements from the subsea platform are complemented by 3D hydrodynamic model data and concurrent shore-based marine X-band radar. This range of concurrent fine-scale information across physical and trophic levels will improve our understanding of how the fine-scale physical influence of currents, waves and turbulence at tidal and wave energy sites affect the behavior of marine wildlife, and how tidal and wave energy devices might alter the behavior of such wildlife. Together, the results from these deployments increase our environmental understanding of the physical and ecological effects of installing and operating marine renewable energy devices. These results can be used to guide marine spatial planning, device design, licensing and operation, as individual devices are scaled up to arrays and new sites are considered. The combination of our current technology and analytical approach can help to de-risk the licensing process by providing a higher level of certainty about the behavior of a range of mobile marine species in high energy environments. It is likely that this approach will lead to greater mechanistic understanding of how and why mobile predators use these high energy areas for foraging. If a fuller understanding and quantification can be achieved at single demonstration scales, and these are found to be similar, then the predictive power of the outcomes might lead to a wider strategic approach to monitoring and possibly lead to a reduction in the level of monitoring required at each commercial site

Cosmological Signatures of Interacting Neutrinos

We investigate signatures of neutrino scattering in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) and matter power spectra, and the extent to which present cosmological data can distinguish between a free streaming or tightly coupled fluid of neutrinos. If neutrinos have strong non-standard interactions, for example, through the coupling of neutrinos to a light boson, they may be kept in equilibrium until late times. We show how the power spectra for these models differ from more conventional neutrino scenarios, and use CMB and large scale structure data to constrain these models. CMB polarization data improves the constraints on the number of massless neutrinos, while the Lyman--$\alpha$ power spectrum improves the limits on the neutrino mass. Neutrino mass limits depend strongly on whether some or all of the neutrino species interact and annihilate. The present data can accommodate a number of tightly-coupled relativistic degrees of freedom, and none of the interacting-neutrino scenarios considered are ruled out by current data -- although considerations regarding the age of the Universe disfavor a model with three annihilating neutrinos with very large neutrino masses.Comment: 17 pages, 14 figures, minor changes and references added, published in Phys. Rev.

A trio of new Local Group galaxies with extreme properties

We report on the discovery of three new dwarf galaxies in the Local Group. These galaxies are found in new CFHT/MegaPrime g,i imaging of the south-western quadrant of M31, extending our extant survey area to include the majority of the southern hemisphere of M31's halo out to 150 kpc. All these galaxies have stellar populations which appear typical of dwarf spheroidal (dSph) systems. The first of these galaxies, Andromeda XVIII, is the most distant Local Group dwarf discovered in recent years, at ~1.4 Mpc from the Milky Way (~ 600 kpc from M31). The second galaxy, Andromeda XIX, a satellite of M31, is the most extended dwarf galaxy known in the Local Group, with a half-light radius of r_h ~ 1.7 kpc. This is approximately an order of magnitude larger than the typical half-light radius of many Milky Way dSphs, and reinforces the difference in scale sizes seen between the Milky Way and M31 dSphs (such that the M31 dwarfs are generally more extended than their Milky Way counterparts). The third galaxy, Andromeda XX, is one of the faintest galaxies so far discovered in the vicinity of M31, with an absolute magnitude of order M_V ~ -6.3. Andromeda XVIII, XIX and XX highlight different aspects of, and raise important questions regarding, the formation and evolution of galaxies at the extreme faint-end of the luminosity function. These findings indicate that we have not yet sampled the full parameter space occupied by dwarf galaxies, although this is an essential pre-requisite for successfully and consistently linking these systems to the predicted cosmological dark matter sub-structure.Comment: 32 pages, 7 figures (ApJ preprint format). Accepted for publication in Ap

Multisensor acoustic tracking of fish and seabird behavior around tidal turbine structures in Scotland

Despite rapid development of marine renewable energy, relatively little is known of the immediate and future impacts on the surrounding ecosystems. Quantifying the behavior and distribution of animals around marine renewable energy devices is crucial for understanding, predicting, and potentially mitigating any threats posed by these installations. The Flow and Benthic Ecology 4D (FLOWBEC) autonomous seabed platform integrated an Imagenex multibeam echosounder and a Simrad EK60 multi-frequency echosounder to monitor marine life in a 120◦ sector over ranges up to 50 m, seven to eight times per second. Established target detection algorithms fail within MRE sites, due to high levels of backscatter generated by the turbulent physical dynamics, limiting and biasing analysis to only periods of low current speed. This study presents novel algorithms to extract diving seabirds, fish, and fish schools from the intense backscatter caused by turbulent dynamics in flows of 4ms−1. Filtering, detection, and tracking using a modified nearest neighbor algorithm provide robust tracking of animal behavior using the multibeam echosounder. Independent multifrequency target detection is demonstrated using the EK60 with optimally calculated thresholds, scale-sensitive filters, morphological exclusion, and frequency-response characteristics. This provides sensitive and reliable detection throughout the entire water column and at all flow speeds. Dive profiles, depth preferences, predator–prey interactions, and fish schooling behavior can be analyzed, in conjunction with the hydrodynamic impacts of marine renewable energy devices. Coregistration of targets between the acoustic instruments increases the information available, providing quantitative measures including frequency response from the EK60, and target morphology and behavioral interactions from the multibeam echosounder. The analyses draw on deployments at a tidal energy site in Scotland to compare the presence and absence of renewable energy structures across a range of physical and trophic levels over complete spring-neap tidal cycles. These results can be used to inform how animals forage in these sites and whether individuals face collision risks. This quantitative information can de-risk the licensing process and, with a greater mechanistic understanding at demonstration scales, its predictive power could reduce the monitoring required at future arrays

Real world costs and cost-effectiveness of Rituximab for diffuse large B-cell lymphoma patients: a population-based analysis.

BackgroundCurrent treatment of diffuse-large-B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) includes rituximab, an expensive drug, combined with cyclophosphamide, doxorubicin, vincristine, and prednisone (CHOP) chemotherapy. Economic models have predicted rituximab plus CHOP (RCHOP) to be a cost-effective alternative to CHOP alone as first-line treatment of DLBCL, but it remains unclear what its real-world costs and cost-effectiveness are in routine clinical practice.MethodsWe performed a population-based retrospective cohort study from 1997 to 2007, using linked administrative databases in Ontario, Canada, to evaluate the costs and cost-effectiveness of RCHOP compared to CHOP alone. A historical control cohort (n = 1,099) with DLBCL who received CHOP before rituximab approval was hard-matched on age and treatment intensity and then propensity-score matched on sex, comorbidity, and histology to 1,099 RCHOP patients. All costs and outcomes were adjusted for censoring using the inverse probability weighting method. The main outcome measure was incremental cost per life-year gained (LYG).ResultsRituximab was associated with a life expectancy increase of 3.2 months over 5 years at an additional cost of $16,298, corresponding to an incremental cost-effectiveness ratio of$61,984 (95% CI $34,087-$135,890) per LYG. The probability of being cost-effective was 90% if the willingness-to-pay threshold was $100,000/LYG. The cost-effectiveness ratio was most favourable for patients less than 60 years old ($31,800/LYG) but increased to $80,600/LYG for patients 60-79 years old and$110,100/LYG for patients ≥ 80 years old. We found that post-market survival benefits of rituximab are similar to or lower than those reported in clinical trials, while the costs, incremental costs and cost-effectiveness ratios are higher than in published economic models and differ by age.ConclusionsOur results showed that the addition of rituximab to standard CHOP chemotherapy was associated with improvement in survival but at a higher cost, and was potentially cost-effective by standard thresholds for patients &lt;60 years old. However, cost-effectiveness decreased significantly with age, suggesting that rituximab may be not as economically attractive in the very elderly on average. This has important clinical implications regarding age-related use and funding decisions on this drug