Bostonia: 1998-1999, no. 1, 3-4

Founded in 1900, Bostonia magazine is Boston University's main alumni publication, which covers alumni and student life, as well as university activities, events, and programs

Changing Politics: Towards a New Democracy

In October 2014 the PSA joint-funded a Consultation event ‘Changing Politics – Towards a New Democracy’ with St. George’s House. The Chair of the PSA, Professor Matthew Flinders, chaired the event which brought together participants from a range of fields (including academics, think tankers and practitioners in several policy areas). Today, St. George’s House has published a report which highlights the main themes emerging from the discussion as well as some conclusions and recommendations. It identifies several areas where changes are urgently needed to reinvigorate democracy. The report concludes that to fully succeed in addressing the growth of political apathy and disengagement, parties and leaders must forget their differences and join citizens, academics, charities and others to address this problem with all available energy and resources

Physical parameters of erupting Luminous Blue Variables: NGC 2363-V1 caught in the act

A quantitative study of the Luminous Blue Variable NGC 2363-V1 in the Magellanic galaxy NGC 2366 (D = 3.44 Mpc) is presented, based on ultraviolet and optical HST/STIS spectroscopy. Contemporary WFPC2 and WHT imaging reveals a modest V-band brightness increase of ~ 0.2 mag per year between 1996 January and 1997 November, reaching V=17.4 mag, corresponding to Mv=-10.4 mag. Subsequently, V1 underwent a similar decrease in V-band brightness, together with a UV brightening of 0.35 mag from 1997 November to 1999 November. The optical spectrum of V1 is dominated by H emission lines, with Fe II, He I and Na I also detected. In the ultraviolet, a forest of Fe absorption features and numerous absorption lines typical of mid-B supergiants are observed. From a spectral analysis with the non-LTE, line-blanketed code of Hillier & Miller (1998), we derive stellar parameters of T*=11kK, R*=420Ro, log(L/Lo)=6.35 during 1997 November, and T*=13kK, R*=315Ro, log(L/Lo)=6.4 for 1999 July. The wind properties of V1 are also exceptional, with Mdot ~ 4.4 x 10e-4 Mo/yr and $v_{\infty} ~$300 km/s, allowing for a clumped wind (filling factor = 0.3), and assuming H/He ~ 4 by number. The presence of Fe lines in the UV and optical spectrum of V1 permits an estimate of the heavy elemental abundance of NGC 2363 from our spectral synthesis. Although some deficiencies remain, allowance for charge exchange reactions in our calculations supports a SMC-like metallicity, that has previously been determined for NGC 2363 from nebular oxygen diagnostics. Considering a variety of possible progenitor stars, V1 has definitely undergone a giant eruption, with a substantial increase in stellar luminosity, radius, and almost certainly mass-loss rate.Comment: 29 pages, 10 figures, Submitted to Ap

Search for QTL affecting the shape of the egg laying curve of the Japanese quail

BACKGROUND: Egg production is of critical importance in birds not only for their reproduction but also for human consumption as the egg is a highly nutritive and balanced food. Consequently, laying in poultry has been improved through selection to increase the total number of eggs laid per hen. This number is the cumulative result of the oviposition, a cyclic and repeated process which leads to a pattern over time (the egg laying curve) which can be modelled and described individually. Unlike the total egg number which compounds all variations, the shape of the curve gives information on the different phases of egg laying, and its genetic analysis using molecular markers might contribute to understand better the underlying mechanisms. The purpose of this study was to perform the first QTL search for traits involved in shaping the egg laying curve, in an F(2 )experiment with 359 female Japanese quail. RESULTS: Eight QTL were found on five autosomes, and six of them could be directly associated with egg production traits, although none was significant at the genome-wide level. One of them (on CJA13) had an effect on the first part of the laying curve, before the production peak. Another one (on CJA06) was related to the central part of the curve when laying is maintained at a high level, and the four others (on CJA05, CJA10 and CJA14) acted on the last part of the curve where persistency is determinant. The QTL for the central part of the curve was mapped at the same position on CJA06 than a genome-wide significant QTL for total egg number detected previously in the same F(2). CONCLUSION: Despite its limited scope (number of microsatellites, size of the phenotypic data set), this work has shown that it was possible to use the individual egg laying data collected daily to find new QTL which affect the shape of the egg laying curve. Beyond the present results, this new approach could also be applied to longitudinal traits in other species, like growth and lactation in ruminants, for which good marker coverage of the genome and theoretical models with a biological significance are available

The sound of revolution: BBC monitoring and the Hungarian uprising, 1956

Radio played a vitally important role during the 1956 Hungarian uprising: as an information service, diplomatic interlocutor and cultural mediator. Broadcasters and the authorities that stood behind them on both sides of the Iron Curtain mapped, interpreted and, at times, appeared to influence the course of events on the ground. The BBC Monitoring Service Transcription Collection offers an essential and unexplored perspective on the mediated experience of the Hungarian uprising, in the context of the wider political warfare battle of the cold war

The contribution of insects to global forest deadwood decomposition

The amount of carbon stored in deadwood is equivalent to about 8 per cent of the global forest carbon stocks. The decomposition of deadwood is largely governed by climate with decomposer groups—such as microorganisms and insects—contributing to variations in the decomposition rates. At the global scale, the contribution of insects to the decomposition of deadwood and carbon release remains poorly understood. Here we present a field experiment of wood decomposition across 55 forest sites and 6 continents. We find that the deadwood decomposition rates increase with temperature, and the strongest temperature effect is found at high precipitation levels. Precipitation affects the decomposition rates negatively at low temperatures and positively at high temperatures. As a net effect—including the direct consumption by insects and indirect effects through interactions with microorganisms—insects accelerate the decomposition in tropical forests (3.9% median mass loss per year). In temperate and boreal forests, we find weak positive and negative effects with a median mass loss of 0.9 per cent and −0.1 per cent per year, respectively. Furthermore, we apply the experimentally derived decomposition function to a global map of deadwood carbon synthesized from empirical and remote-sensing data, obtaining an estimate of 10.9 ± 3.2 petagram of carbon per year released from deadwood globally, with 93 per cent originating from tropical forests. Globally, the net effect of insects may account for 29 per cent of the carbon flux from deadwood, which suggests a functional importance of insects in the decomposition of deadwood and the carbon cycle

Bostonia: 1997-1998, no. 1-4

Founded in 1900, Bostonia magazine is Boston University's main alumni publication, which covers alumni and student life, as well as university activities, events, and programs

Bostonia: 1997-1998, no. 1-4

Founded in 1900, Bostonia magazine is Boston University's main alumni publication, which covers alumni and student life, as well as university activities, events, and programs

Unpopular Culture: Ecological Dissonance and Sustainable Futures in Media-Induced Tourism

The article deconstructs media-induced tourist development’s relationship with “sustainability,” “ecology” and the “popular”. I highlight the interconnected, but often competing interpretations of “ecology” as interactions among technics (representational regimes), technological regimes and institutions (media, tourism), social agents (media/tourism experts, fan tourists and their hosts), and the natural and built environment in which these take place. Constitutive of contemporary economic and sociocultural complexities in which media-induced “popular cultures” are produced and consumed, these ecological landscapes are increasingly in conflict between and within themselves. Such conflicts destabilize “popular culture” as ritualized behavior or experiential domain, enmeshing it into populist reactions against tourists/guests/strangers