Brexit, the Revocation of Article 50, and the Path Not Taken : Wightman and Others for Judicial Review against the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union

Peer reviewedPostprin

UK Abortion Law : Reform Proposals, Private Members’ Bills, Devolution and the Role of the Courts

Peer reviewedPostprin

Challenging home abortion in Scotland : Society for the Protection of Unborn Children v Scottish Ministers

Peer reviewedPostprin

Marine Reserves and Reproductive Biomass: A Case Study of a Heavily Targeted Reef Fish

Recruitment overfishing (the reduction of a spawning stock past a point at which the stock can no longer replenish itself) is a common problem which can lead to a rapid and irreversible fishery collapse. Averting this disaster requires maintaining a sufficient spawning population to buffer stochastic fluctuations in recruitment of heavily harvested stocks. Optimal strategies for managing spawner biomass are well developed for temperate systems, yet remain uncertain for tropical fisheries, where the danger of collapse from recruitment overfishing looms largest. In this study, we explored empirically and through modeling, the role of marine reserves in maximizing spawner biomass of a heavily exploited reef fish, Lethrinus harak around Guam, Micronesia. On average, spawner biomass was 16 times higher inside the reserves compared with adjacent fished sites. Adult density and habitat-specific mean fish size were also significantly greater. We used these data in an age-structured population model to explore the effect of several management scenarios on L. harak demography. Under minimum-size limits, unlimited extraction and all rotational-closure scenarios, the model predicts that preferential mortality of larger and older fish prompt dramatic declines in spawner biomass and the proportion of male fish, as well as considerable declines in total abundance. For rotational closures this occurred because of the mismatch between the scales of recovery and extraction. Our results highlight how alternative management scenarios fall short in comparison to marine reserves in preserving reproductively viable fish populations on coral reefs

Using local dispersal data to reduce bias in annual apparent survival and mate fidelity

Citation: Taylor, C. M., Lank, D. B., & Sandercock, B. K. (2015). Using local dispersal data to reduce bias in annual apparent survival and mate fidelity. Condor, 117(4), 598-608. doi:10.1650/condor-14-184.1In mark-recapture studies conducted on fixed-area study sites, apparent (or "local") survival (phi) is the product of the probabilities of true survival (S) and site fidelity to the sampling area (F). If marked individuals permanently emigrate from the study site, apparent survival will be biased low relative to true survival. Similarly, estimates of mate fidelity will be biased high because site fidelity is typically higher for individuals that reunite with their previous mates than among pairs that divorce. Here, we develop a method for calculating site fidelity that takes plot boundaries into account, based on a dispersal model estimated from local movements within a fixed study site. We use dispersal estimates to adjust apparent survival and mate fidelity for the effects of short-distance movements out of a fixed area. We demonstrate our method with a retrospective analysis of a published study of 2 species of sandpipers breeding sympatrically at a field site in western Alaska. Estimates of survival probability increased by 0.01-0.03 for males and 0.07-0.08 for females in both species. The larger adjustments for females were expected based on their longer local dispersal movements. Adjusted mate fidelity estimates were lower than the original estimates by 0.04-0.07. Use of local movement data to estimate site fidelity cannot account for permanent emigration due to long-distance movements and, if such movements occur, our adjusted estimates of phi remain a function of true survival and site fidelity. Nevertheless, our method can reduce bias in demographic parameters resulting from local dispersal movements, improving estimates of annual survival and mate fidelity for use in demographic models

Marketing Ethics: A Study of Significance Within National Professional Associations

Professional associations are expected to maintain a reasonable standard of behavior regarding how they market to their service bases. Prior research indicates that the use of written marketing ethics is not standardized and that business codes of ethics are a potential base for a universal code of marketing ethics from which all professionals could draw. We use document analysis to review several professional associations’ codes of conduct across several industries and quantify the mention of marketing ethics within each code to identify and explore gaps. The review found that some associations’ codes had significant representation, and others had a minimal or nonexistent representation of marketing ethics. Our findings also indicate that several external forces may determine the presence of marketing ethics and that such sporadic inclusion of marketing ethics indicates a necessity to develop and implement marketing ethics to protect professional and organizational integrity and market and consumer interests

Manual therapy and cervical artery dysfunction: Identification of potential risk factors in clinical encounters

Cervical artery dysfunction is a reported potential risk associated with manual therapy applied to the cervical and cervicothoracic spine. While a variety of physical examination tests have been advocated to screen patients who may be at risk of adverse events during or after manipulation, their clinical utility is limited. This paper provides an overview of the literature and current thinking with regard to risk assessment and clinical action related to the application of manual and exercise therapy for the cervical and upper thoracic spine. © 201

Evaporation of a Kerr black hole by emission of scalar and higher spin particles

We study the evolution of an evaporating rotating black hole, described by the Kerr metric, which is emitting either solely massless scalar particles or a mixture of massless scalar and nonzero spin particles. Allowing the hole to radiate scalar particles increases the mass loss rate and decreases the angular momentum loss rate relative to a black hole which is radiating nonzero spin particles. The presence of scalar radiation can cause the evaporating hole to asymptotically approach a state which is described by a nonzero value of $a_* \equiv a / M$. This is contrary to the conventional view of black hole evaporation, wherein all black holes spin down more rapidly than they lose mass. A hole emitting solely scalar radiation will approach a final asymptotic state described by $a_* \simeq 0.555$. A black hole that is emitting scalar particles and a canonical set of nonzero spin particles (3 species of neutrinos, a single photon species, and a single graviton species) will asymptotically approach a nonzero value of $a_*$ only if there are at least 32 massless scalar fields. We also calculate the lifetime of a primordial black hole that formed with a value of the rotation parameter $a_{*}$, the minimum initial mass of a primordial black hole that is seen today with a rotation parameter $a_{*}$, and the entropy of a black hole that is emitting scalar or higher spin particles.Comment: 22 pages, 13 figures, RevTeX format; added clearer descriptions for variables, added journal referenc

Spinning Down a Black Hole With Scalar Fields

We study the evolution of a Kerr black hole emitting scalar radiation via the Hawking process. We show that the rate at which mass and angular momentum are lost by the black hole leads to a final evolutionary state with nonzero angular momentum, namely $a/M \approx 0.555$.Comment: 4 pages (including 3 postscript figures), Revtex, uses epsf.tex, twocolumn.sty and header.sty (included). Submitted to Physical Review Letter