DEFEND MY CASTLE: IS THE UK IN VIOLATION OF ARTICLE 8 OF THE EUROPEAN CONVENTION OF HUMAN RIGHTS?

Since the 1990s approximately 700 000 properties have been repossessed in the UK by mortgagees. While encouraging its citizens to access mortgage finance, the UK government has failed to provide corresponding legal protection and an effective regulatory framework to curtail unscrupulous lenders. What, if any, is the UK government’s responsibility in protecting its mortgagors from losing their homes? By utilising the relatively newfound doctrine of positive obligations, this article elaborates on the extent to which the UK may be held accountable under Art 8 of the European Convention of Human Rights. By rebutting the relevance of the private and contractual nature of the mortgage relationship, arguing for the ability to enforce socio-economic rights and upgrading the concept of home in legal discourse, this article contends that the UK is in breach of Art 8 of the ECHR. This contention is a crucial step towards reformulating states’ role and responsibility under the ECHR and, if elaborated on by the judiciary, will potentially prompt political action to reform the law of mortgages in the UK

The Road that Made Mountains: Highway Design and the Production of Landscape in Vail, Colorado

Constructed between 1972 and 1978, Vail Pass is a 16-mile section of Interstate-70 that crosses the continental divide in the Central Mountains of Colorado. It connects the ski resort communities of Copper Mountain and Vail and has played a significant role in the development of tourism in the Colorado High Country. The design and planning of Vail Pass occurred at a time of increased public concern over environmental issues, and was built following a series of significant pieces of federal environmental legislation. Within this context, highway designers and engineers sought to harmoniously integrate the highway into its natural setting. This thesis tells the story of Vail Pass through the perspectives of environmental legislation and politics, roadway design, and human-nature relations in Colorado. A personal bicycle journey over Vail Pass serves to introduce the central questions of this project. Chapter one discusses scholarly work within environmental history and landscape studies in order to contextualize this project within broader academic debates. Chapter two addresses the environmental politics and legislation that arose around the Vail Pass project and considers the impact of federal legislation on a single landscape. In Chapters three and four, Vail Pass is placed within broader histories of road and landscape design, providing a deeper understanding of the meaning and significance of the Vail Pass landscape. In the concluding chapter, Vail Pass is used to discuss broader questions of infrastructure, tourism, and the environment in Colorado as climate change alters the landscape

Water-ice driven activity on Main-Belt Comet P/2010 A2 (LINEAR) ?

The dust ejecta of Main-Belt Comet P/2010 A2 (LINEAR) have been observed with several telescopes at the at the Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos on La Palma, Spain. Application of an inverse dust tail Monte Carlo method to the images of the dust ejecta from the object indicates that a sustained, likely water-ice driven, activity over some eight months is the mechanism responsible for the formation of the observed tail. The total amount of dust released is estimated to be 5E7 kg, which represents about 0.3% of the nucleus mass. While the event could have been triggered by a collision, this cannot be decided from the currently available data.Comment: Accepted for ApJ Letter

The super-oscillating superlens

We demonstrate a lens that creates a sub-wavelength focal spot beyond the near-field by exploiting the phenomenon of super-oscillation

Experimental Identification of the Kink Instability as a Poloidal Flux Amplification Mechanism for Coaxial Gun Spheromak Formation

The magnetohydrodynamic kink instability is observed and identified experimentally as a poloidal flux amplification mechanism for coaxial gun spheromak formation. Plasmas in this experiment fall into three distinct regimes which depend on the peak gun current to magnetic flux ratio, with (I) low values resulting in a straight plasma column with helical magnetic field, (II) intermediate values leading to kinking of the column axis, and (III) high values leading immediately to a detached plasma. Onset of column kinking agrees quantitatively with the Kruskal-Shafranov limit, and the kink acts as a dynamo which converts toroidal to poloidal flux. Regime II clearly leads to both poloidal flux amplification and the development of a spheromak configuration.Comment: accepted for publication in Physical Review Letter

A comparison of experimental and numerical behaviour characteristics of a ship entering a lock using benchmark test data

This paper discusses several papers that were presented at the 3rd International Conference on Ship Manoeuvring in Shallow and Confined Water, which had a non-exclusive focus on Ship Behaviour in Locks. For this conference, experimental model test data obtained at Flanders Hydraulics Research had been made public and researchers were encouraged to compare numerical with experimental results [1]. Data of benchmark tests carried out both with self-propelled and captive models were used by researchers for comparison with various numerical tools. The objective of this paper is to give a selected overview of how accurately numerical tools are presently able to predict the hydrodynamic forces that occur on ships approaching locks. Based on this, the paper concludes that experiments and numerical tools complement each other

The uniting of Europe and the foundation of EU studies: revisiting the neofunctionalism of Ernst B. Haas

This article suggests that the neofunctionalist theoretical legacy left by Ernst B. Haas is somewhat richer and more prescient than many contemporary discussants allow. The article develops an argument for routine and detailed re-reading of the corpus of neofunctionalist work (and that of Haas in particular), not only to disabuse contemporary students and scholars of the normally static and stylized reading that discussion of the theory provokes, but also to suggest that the conceptual repertoire of neofunctionalism is able to speak directly to current EU studies and comparative regionalism. Neofunctionalism is situated in its social scientific context before the theory's supposed erroneous reliance on the concept of 'spillover' is discussed critically. A case is then made for viewing Haas's neofunctionalism as a dynamic theory that not only corresponded to established social scientific norms, but did so in ways that were consistent with disciplinary openness and pluralism

Urban energy exchanges monitoring from space

One important challenge facing the urbanization and global environmental change community is to understand the relation between urban form, energy use and carbon emissions. Missing from the current literature are scientific assessments that evaluate the impacts of different urban spatial units on energy fluxes; yet, this type of analysis is needed by urban planners, who recognize that local scale zoning affects energy consumption and local climate. However, satellite-based estimation of urban energy fluxes at neighbourhood scale is still a challenge. Here we show the potential of the current satellite missions to retrieve urban energy budget, supported by meteorological observations and evaluated by direct flux measurements. We found an agreement within 5% between satellite and in-situ derived net all-wave radiation; and identified that wall facet fraction and urban materials type are the most important parameters for estimating heat storage of the urban canopy. The satellite approaches were found to underestimate measured turbulent heat fluxes, with sensible heat flux being most sensitive to surface temperature variation (-64.1, +69.3 W m-2 for ±2 K perturbation); and also underestimate anthropogenic heat flux. However, reasonable spatial patterns are obtained for the latter allowing hot-spots to be identified, therefore supporting both urban planning and urban climate modelling