The Transition Town Network: a review of current evolutions and renaissance

The Transition Network started as a movement with Transition Totnes (Devon, UK) in late 2005, with Rob Hopkins as its founder. To date it has grown to encompass 313 official Transition Network initiatives spread across the world from the UK (with roughly 50% of all initiatives) to the USA, Canada, Italy, Japan, Germany, Ireland, New Zealand, Chile, the Netherlands, Brazil and so on (Transition Network, 2010a). For any social movement, this could most certainly be described as something of a success and warrants a closer examination. Indeed, the aim of this profile is to explore the movement's aims and modus operandi, the problematics it has faced and how it is now evolving. The profile draws on my auto-ethnographic encounters with the movement in Transition Nottingham and at the recent Transition Network Conference 2010, whilst also being grounded in the material made publically available on the Transition Network and Transition Culture websites (see Transition Network, 2010b and Transition Culture, 2010a)

Rich Tags: Cross-Repository Browsing

We present RichTags, a system for cross-site browsing and exploration of digital repositories. Categorical and faceted search across repositories is poorly supported, especially compared to the support of keyword search through internet search engines. We combine a variety of information retrieval techniques to determine categories of papers, to enable cross-repository browsing by category. The browsing and exploration of this metadata is achieved through a multi-faceted dynamic exploration interface. Social interaction features have also been added to enable cross-repository tagging, commenting and sharing of papers into groups. These social features are available via an API to enable future work to add plugins to pull comments back to the repositories

Persistence of Tripartite Nonlocality for Non-inertial Observers

We consider the behaviour of bipartite and tripartite non-locality between fermionic entangled states shared by observers, one of whom uniformly accelerates. We find that while fermionic entanglement persists for arbitrarily large acceleration, the Bell/CHSH inequalities cannot be violated for sufficiently large but finite acceleration. However the Svetlichny inequality, which is a measure of genuine tripartite non-locality, can be violated for any finite value of the acceleration.Comment: 4 pages, pdflatex, 2 figure

The application of remotely sensed data in support of emergency rehabilitation of wildfire-damage areas

The depth, texture, and water holding capacity of the soil before the fire in the Bridge Creek area of Deschutes National Forest (1979) were determined from available aerial photography and LANDSAT MSS digital data. Three days after the fire was out, complete coverage of the burned area was acquired on 35 mm color infrared film from a near vertical or low oblique perspective. These photographs were used in assessing the condition of vegetation, and in predicting the likelihood of survival. Negatives from vertical natural photography obtained during the same flight were used to produce 3R prints from which large scale mosaics of the entire burned area were obtained. LANDSAT MSS data obtained on the day the fire was under control were used to evaluate vegetative vigor (by calculating a band 7/band 5 ratio value for each spectral class) and to determine the boundary between altered and unaltered land

Signals from the 4th Dimension: Role of Extracellular Matrix Signaling in Synaptic Plasticity Mediating Addiction

Chronic cocaine abuse causes maladaptive neuroadaptations that underlie vulnerability to relapse, even after protracted abstinence. A great deal of work has examined mechanisms of neuroplasticity by which these occur. However, the majority of experimentation has focused on intracellular signaling cascades, while the extracellular compartment has been largely ignored. In the past decade, work has emerged in the learning and memory literature that indicates that extracellular matrix remodeling and signaling is required for adaptive forms of neuroplasticity (e.g. learning and memory), although it has not been thoroughly examined in models of maladaptive neuroplasticity. Throughout this dissertation a drug self-administration, extinction and reinstatement paradigm is used. I first examine the role of the matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) in the nucleus accumbens core (NAcore) in both the persistent synaptic potentiation that occurs following extinction of cocaine self-administration, and in the rapid, transient potentiation that is required for cue-induced reinstatement. By measuring both the expression and activity of MMPs, this work shows that relapse to multiple classes of drugs of abuse (cocaine, nicotine, and heroin) each are accompanied by an induction of MMP activity. Furthermore, this work goes on to show that inhibiting MMP activity also reverses or blocks synaptic potentiation. A second set of experiments examines nitric oxide (NO) signaling as a mechanism of MMP activation. These experiments used biochemical examination of neuronal nitric oxide synthase (nNOS) activity following extinction and reinstatement of cocaine seeking, and a small molecule inhibitor of nNOS to determine the effects of nNOS activity on MMP activity and relapse behavior. Finally, by using NOS1-Cre transgenic mice this work shows that selectively chemogenetically stimulating a small population of interneurons that express nNOS drives reinstatement of drug seeking. This dissertation concludes that nNOS-expressing interneurons may comprise a ‘master-switch’ by MMPs are activated, synapses are potentiated, and strongly motivated behaviors are initiated

Experimental Testing and Development of Improved Modelling for Multistrand Resistive SFCL

Magnesium diboride (MgB2) in a simple round wire form has been tested and shown to be suitable as a low-cost resistive superconducting fault current limiter (SFCL). The commercial exploitation of MgB2 SFCLs requires a considerable scale-up of the current-carrying capability of the MgB2 wire. A multistrand MgB2 wire was developed for an SFCL coil to increase the current capacity. This paper will briefly report on the experimental results on a three-strand MgB2 coil used as a resistive SFCL. An improved analytical model that predicts the behavior of the three-strand SFCL coil was developed, taking the temperature and critical current variation along the wire into consideration. Variations in the critical current along the wire are to be expected as a consequence of normal manufacturing tolerances. The predicted current using the improved analytical model showed good correlation with the experimental test results at different fault current levels. The improved analytical model is a useful tool for the practical design of commercial SFCLs.</p

Investigation of mixed element hybrid grid-based CFD methods for rotorcraft flow analysis

Accurate first-principles flow prediction is essential to the design and development of rotorcraft, and while current numerical analysis tools can, in theory, model the complete flow field, in practice the accuracy of these tools is limited by various inherent numerical deficiencies. An approach that combines the first-principles physical modeling capability of CFD schemes with the vortex preservation capabilities of Lagrangian vortex methods has been developed recently that controls the numerical diffusion of the rotor wake in a grid-based solver by employing a vorticity-velocity, rather than primitive variable, formulation. Coupling strategies, including variable exchange protocols are evaluated using several unstructured, structured, and Cartesian-grid Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS)/Euler CFD solvers. Results obtained with the hybrid grid-based solvers illustrate the capability of this hybrid method to resolve vortex-dominated flow fields with lower cell counts than pure RANS/Euler methods

Temporal and spatial variations in maximum river discharge from a new Russian data set

Floods cause more damage in Russia than any other natural disaster, and future climate model projections suggest that the frequency and magnitude of extreme hydrological events will increase in Russia with climate change. Here we analyze daily discharge records from a new data set of 139 Russian gauges in the Eurasian Arctic drainage basin with watershed areas from 16.1 to 50,000 km2 for signs of change in maximum river discharge. Several hypotheses about changes in maximum daily discharge and their linking with trends in precipitation over the cold season were tested. For the magnitude of maximum daily discharge we found relatively equal numbers of significant positive and negative trends across the Russian Arctic drainage basin, which draws into question the hypothesis of an increasing risk of extreme floods. We observed a significant shift to earlier spring discharge, which is consistent with documented changes in snowmelt and freeze‐thaw dates. Spatial analysis of changes in maximum discharge and cold season precipitation revealed consistency across most of the domain, the exception being the Lena basin. Trends in maximum discharge of the small‐ to medium‐sized rivers were generally consistent with aggregated signals found for the downstream gauges of the six largest Russian rivers. Although we observe regional changes in maximum discharge across the Russian Arctic drainage basin, no evidence of widespread trends in extreme discharge can be assumed from our analysis

Rising minimum daily flows in northern Eurasian rivers: A growing influence of groundwater in the high‐latitude hydrologic cycle

A first analysis of new daily discharge data for 111 northern rivers from 1936–1999 and 1958–1989 finds an overall pattern of increasing minimum daily flows (or “low flows”) throughout Russia. These increases are generally more abundant than are increases in mean flow and appear to drive much of the overall rise in mean flow observed here and in previous studies. Minimum flow decreases have also occurred but are less abundant. The minimum flow increases are found in summer as well as winter and in nonpermafrost as well as permafrost terrain. No robust spatial contrasts are found between the European Russia, Ob\u27, Yenisey, and Lena/eastern Siberia sectors. A subset of 12 unusually long discharge records from 1935–2002, concentrated in south central Russia, suggests that recent minimum flow increases since ∼1985 are largely unprecedented in the instrumental record, at least for this small group of stations. If minimum flows are presumed sensitive to groundwater and unsaturated zone inputs to river discharge, then the data suggest a broad‐scale mobilization of such water sources in the late 20th century. We speculate that reduced intensity of seasonal ground freezing, together with precipitation increases, might drive much of the well documented but poorly understood increases in river discharge to the Arctic Ocean